I promised a review of my PrintWarcraft print a while back, but due to an unanticipated issue (nothing wrong with the Print–just a minor issue that I’ll explain later in the review), I delayed it until now.

As you may know from reading my previous articles on my FigurePrint and the WoWGiggity Holiday Shopping Guide , I like buying WoW merchandise to take my love for the game outside the World of Warcraft.  Incidentally, I got the Quest Completer Hat  for Christmas and a WoW calendar afterward!  Score!  OK…back to the review.  I like WoW stuff.  Even more than just WoW stuff, I like unique collectibles.  I have a Sting Sword from LOTR, as well as a Darth Vader Lightsaber.  Recently my wife and I got an animation cel from Inu Yasha.  We love this kind of stuff.  When I first heard about Printwarcraft.com, they weren’t yet open, so I signed up for updates, and when they opened their doors (virtually), I jumped right in and ordered one.

Printwarcraft.com allows you to make customized posters of Warcraft characters.  At this time you can only put one character in a print at a time, but they plan to add the capability to put multiple characters on a poster later.  The basic process is very similar to FigurePrint, in that you put your character in the armor of choice ingame, and then log out and take a “snapshot” of your character on the PrintWarcraft webpage.  From there, you can put your character in a variety of poses, against a ton of different backgrounds.  The site gives you a lot of customization–you can put your character name, server, and guild on the page, and warlocks and hunters can also include their pets (that option wasn’t yet available when I did mine).  You can actually use multiple backgrounds to create a collage of sorts, and have options for things like Faction emblems, borders, and fonts.  They really have gone all out to make the process as user friendly as possible.  The website is a bit sluggish at times, but overall works very well.  You can build various prints and choose the one you want later, as it will save your art as well.

As for ordering options, PrintWarcraft offers 3 sizes of poster:  12″x18″, 24″x36″, and 27″x40″.  You can get them in either Portrait or Landscape views.  As for pricing, the sizes cost $17.99, $24.99, and $29.99 respectively.  Shipping was about $7 for me (12×18), so mine came to about $25 in all.  The item came in a couple of weeks (again, I bought mine early, so demand was exceptionally high at the time–their shipping times may have changed since), and was well packaged and protected.  As for the print itself–the quality is top notch.  The paper feels like photo paper (which was confirmed by a PrintWarcraft.com representative), and the print quality is excellent.  For my particular print, I chose a Vanilla WoW armor, which I believe causes my particular print to look like it’s slightly lower in resolution (the background remains hi-res, so I’m fairly sure that’s the culprit).  So is the print of high enough quality to frame?  Definitely.

And that brings me to the rub.  I bought a 12×18 print to fit in a very specific location, and guess how many 12×18 frames I was able to find on the shelf?  Zero!  In order to frame a 12×18 print, I bought a custom frame (from framesbymail.com).  A great commenter found that there are quite a few places to find a frame online, and fairly inexpensively, so if you take some time to research, you’ll be able to get the entire package pretty easily.  With the other PrintWarcraft sizes, you can easily buy frames in stores like Hobby Lobby and even Walmart.  If you don’t plan on framing, then this whole exercise is a moot point, but I wanted to put mine up in a way to complement my FigurePrint, so I paid a little extra, and am still overall happy with the investment. 

Without further ado, here’s the PrintWarcraft Print I ordered (as exported from the website):

I got this print to provide a closeup of the armor I used in my FigurePrint (Black Dragon Mail), and to provide the backdrop of Draenor, Elithrea’s homeworld, in its current state.

Here’s a couple of photos of my finished, framed print in its place of honor on my shelf:

Updated for frame options for 12×18 prints.