Greetings.
This is a follow up to my previous thread, where I shared some criticism, concerns and suggestions for updated ladder icons from Reign of Chaos. Since PTR received an update a few days ago that included The Frozen Throne portraits to the party, I figured that it’s best to make a new thiread in this category.
While Reign of Chaos icons got wrong background glow only for 3/5 500 win portraits, this issue expanded with The Frozen Throne¹ ones. Orcs (Red), Humans (Blue), Undead (Teal), Night Elves (Purple) and Random (Lavender?/None) clearly intended to have specific color each, but it’s all over the place:
- 25 Win: Troll Headhunter (Red), Rifleman (Blue), Crypt Fiend (Teal), Huntress (Purple), Myrmidon (None).
- 150 Win: Shaman (Red), Sorceress (Red), Banshee (Teal), Druid of the Talon (None), Siren (Blue).
- 350 Win: Spirit Walker (Red), Spellbreaker (Blue), Destroyer (Teal), Dryad (Teal), Dragon Turtle (Blue).
- 750 Win: Shadow Hunter (Red), Blood Mage (Red), Crypt Lord (Teal), Keeper of the Glove (Blue), Sea Witch (Blue).
- 1500 Win: Rexxar (Blue), Jaina (Blue), Sylvanas (Purple), Maiev (Red), Illidan (Red).
14/25 portraits use right color for their background glow. I didn’t count Druid of the Talon as an error since his face takes all the space. Same goes for Illidan, but he has red (or even pink) line close to his face. Maybe that should be fixed. With TFT’s 25 win & all RoC icons, you have established aforementioned color order. That wouldn’t have been an issue if background glow was absent or you just went for “base game/expansion” theme (Orange for Reign of Chaos, Blue for The Frozen Throne) instead of “races and Random” . I’m obviously not an artist myself, but I believe that it should be very easy to just change the background. Correct me if I’m wrong though.
However, I would like to also provide a few corrections/trivias about a couple of icons. In one of his recent videos, Wtii talked² about Crypt Lord’s “eyes” on the portrait… Actually, that’s not an issue or mistake. Technically. If you look at both regular³ & ladder icon for this hero, you’ll notice that Crypt Lord’s real eyes aren’t visible in both cases. Not even on his Classic Battle.net page⁴! Regular icon even has those derpy pupils on gems/eyes/whatever. Maybe that was part of his older design, who knows. Secondly, I’m going to ruin Druid of the Talon for some people: all three iterations of his icon⁵ has empty spots between his head and hood. No hair there. You can clearly see that on “Classic+” version. But technically that’s not an error as well, so… I don’t know. Just letting everyone know.
Lastly, I would like to reiterate my points from “rocPortraits” thread: especially the first and third ones. Add “Classic+” Peasant, Acolyte, Wisp portraits & fix Thrall’s eyes! Don’t use an excuse like “reaching the middle ground between regular & ladder icons” here, please.
- To regular readers: In case you want to look at all “Classic+” portratis yourself, there’s a good compilation on r/Warcraft3⁶ & album on Hive Workshop⁷ with icons in their original resolution.
There’s one more thing I got wrong, but also just forgot about.
As Xetanth87 pointed out to me in my previous thread, current Blue Dragon portrait is based on his in-game⁸ version instead of ladder⁹ one. Technically, it should be a recolored version of Green Dragon icon. While current portrait is true to the Blue Dragon’s model and Thrall’s portrait is also technically inaccurate (as it was based on his model), I think it’s worth to at least point this out as Green Whelp was done properly because there was no Whelp icon in older versions of Warcraft 3.
It is worth demanding its rework? Honestly, I’m not so sure. I stand for proper 1:1 reintroduction of classic ladder icons, but didn’t object about Thrall. Portrait looks great, albeit you can argue that bringing ladder icon version of Blue Dragon can bring more variety to Reign of Chaos’ Randon portrait selection. However, since nobody seemed to have really noticed it, maybe it’s not that big of a deal. More like an oddity where Green Whelp stayed true to his ladder icon version while Blue Dragon & Thrall weren’t.
This could’ve been a great opportunity to discuss this with Warcraft 3 community to see what they think of this potential issue they’re not really aware of. While I don’t think players would be against getting three more default portraits in “Classic+” style, “revamp” of Blue Dragon could be more contentious topic amongst them. So yeah, that’s not really a “this is a mistake that should be fixed” type of message. More of “it’s not exactly right, but that’s not critical; just keep that in mind”.
Links:
1. http://classic.battle.net/war3/ladder/w3xp-ladder-info-laddericons.aspx
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJH3M33pxbo
3. https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/wowpedia/images/b/b1/BTNHeroCryptLord.png
4. http://classic.battle.net/war3/undead/units/cryptlord.shtml
5. https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/wowpedia/images/e/ed/BTNDruidOfTheTalon.png
6. https://www.reddit.com/r/warcraft3/comments/w9qywe/new_developments_for_classic_portraits/
7. https://www.hiveworkshop.com/media/albums/classic-hd-icons.10207/
8. https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/wowpedia/images/1/11/BTNAzureDragon.png
9. http://classic.battle.net/war3/images/battle.net/icons/tier3-random.gif