Creating World of Warcraft-style maps of real-life locations is a time-honored tradition practiced by fans across the globe. Another World of Warcraft fan has recently gotten into the trade, creating Classic-style maps close to a half dozen European nations.
Redditor and Warcraft fan Nomadichedgehog was the artist responsible for creating this batch of maps. According to him, he made them with “Photoshop, a Wacom tablet, and a lot of time and patience.”
Nomadichedgehog first revealed his maps of Italy, Sweden, and the Netherlands a couple of weeks ago, with England coming soon after and Denmark only recently being finished. Most of the maps have versions in both English and their nation’s primary languages as well. Each of them is made with exemplary detail and looks as if it could be found in World of Warcraft today. Many of the major cities and landmarks are represented with assets pulled directly from existing Warcraft region maps.
Nomadichedgehog is not the first artist to take on such a project. ConservationOfWumbo is perhaps one of the most famous, with his ongoing project to recreate all 50 states in World of Warcraft’s style. Spoon has created a number of similar maps as well, including one of England in the Outland style, and Winston-91 had previously made a map of the Netherlands. Most of these artists have commented on each other's work and plugged one another’s projects, creating an unofficial network of cartographers.
Fans were understandably smitten by Nomadichedgehog’s work. Each of his posts accumulated over 100 comments within the first day of coming online. Many asked if he had plans to do other European countries in World of Warcraft style. According to him, Germany is on his short list, with eventual plans to tackle most, if not all, of Europe. Some also asked if he sold prints of the maps, which can be bought from his Etsy store, ForsakenMaps.
World of Warcraft has been in an unfortunate place recently. Reception to the ending of Shadowlands has been mixed, and Blizzard is still in the middle of the sexual assault allegations and lawsuits from last year. However, the communities that surround Warcraft and Blizzard can still find things to come together on, such as amazing fan creations like those of Nomadichedgehog. World of Warcraft is set to announce its next expansion pack in April, so Nomadichedgehog still has plenty of time to map out the rest of Earth before 10.0’s official launch.
World of Warcraft is available now on PC.