TenTonHammer.com - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

by Cody "Micajah" Bye, Managing Editor

In the beginning, there was art. Before any massively multiplayer online game ever reaches the hands of awaiting consumers, pages upon pages of artwork is created for game designers to utilize. Concept artists tirelessly toil away, trying to create accurate visual displays of the worlds, but often their artwork goes unnoticed by the outside world. At least, that was a common occurrence until someone came up with the idea to utilize stored concept art – along with a bevy of contracted fantasy artists – to create visuals for trading card games.

The Art of the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game

When the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game hit store shelves across North America, people rushed to pop open packs, eager to create their decks, collect the loot, and generally absorb the beautiful art that covers these cards. Although many fans enjoy the artwork and the visuals of the TCG, most simply didn’t have enough money to collect all the cards to observe the artwork crafted by the well-known artists.

For those of you – like me – who don’t have the sort of excess spending money to collect all of the cards, there may soon be a solution to your dilemma. Recently, I received a rather large package in the mail from Upper Deck Entertainment. When I finished tearing open the cardboard box, I found a promotional copy of Upper Deck’s Art of the Trading Card Game: Volume One hard cover book featuring visuals from the World of Warcraft TCG. Being a huge trading card game fan (you can find my review of the WoW TCG right here), I eagerly dove into the meat of this book and wasn’t disappointed with what I found.

No production values were skimped on the creation of the WoW TCG art book; the pages are all the glossy, color, full print images that you’d expect from a book-based gallery of images. Measuring in at approximately 11” by 9”, this book is perfect for any gamers’ display cabinet or coffee table. Complete with a beautiful dust cover, the art book totes a hard cover jacket and a “landscape” sort of viewing style - the book is actually longer than it is tall.

What does this mean for you, as an art aficionado or a simply World of Warcraft fan? You’ll never be worried that the book will crumble at the first sign of mistreatment or show early signs of wear and tear. Even after flipping through the book on multiple occasions, I never once thought a page looked worn or off-colored. It will allow for easy glances at the art whenever you get the urge to check out your favorite TCG pieces.

Common trading card game players may not have the funds to collect anything besides the best cards for their deck.

As you crack open the book, you’ll be greeted with two forewords – one by Sam “Samwise” Didier (senior art director at Blizzard) and the other by Glenn Rane (art lead for Blizzard’s creative-development team) – and an introduction by the art acquisition manager for Upper Deck Entertainment, Jeremy Cranford. While many people may overlook these pieces of text in an otherwise art-filled book, I found their particular viewpoints on “Blizzard quality” and the direction for the TCG art to be particularly informative. Cranford’s “Before and After” art section was incredibly interesting as it really explained how much work the Upper Deck employees were willing to put in to insure that the WoW TCG was a success.

Speaking of the art, I’ve already mentioned that the visuals for the WoW TCG were some of the best in the industry in my review, and seeing them all in full-sized renditions absolutely made my heart soar. Over 300 “dramatic visions of Azeroth” are portrayed in over 275 of the art book’s pages. If you’re at all interested in which card sets these pieces come from, Upper Deck pulled from these card sets: Heroes of Azeroth, Through the Dark Portal, Fires of Outland, Onyxia’s Lair, Molten Core Raid Deck, and Magtheridon’s Lair. Only the best made the cut to get into the Volume One of the art book (there may be more volumes coming down the line), and it definitely shows.

For any MMORPG fan, it’s astounding when you can see the characters that you’ve grown to love and admire visualized in an out-of-game fashion. The images in the WoW TCG art book fill almost the entire length of the page, and I found myself flipping through the pages just admiring the fantastic aptitude that these artists have for conceptualizing a three dimensional, caricatured world into their style of two dimensional art.

Upper Deck's The Art of the Trading Card Game allows players to view the best pieces of art in the whole TCG.

From an organizational standpoint, the art book is separated into three distinct sections: the Alliance, the Horde, and Monsters and Locations. Each of these sections is then broken down into their various racial/location categories. For example, the Alliance section is sequences like so: Humans, Dwarves, Night Elves, Gnomes, and Dranei. If you’re looking for a particular piece of work, you can look it up in the index in the back of the book. Each piece is named after the card title, so if there’s a particularly handsome trading card that you’d like to look up, just head to the index.

Unfortunately, due to the high production values and incredibly aesthetically pleasing appearance, The Art of the Trading Card Game isn’t cheap. With a normal listing at $50.00, gamers may be hard pressed to spend their money on an art book when they could be spending it on another game. However, this book does hold something special for the Warcraft fan, and it would be silly to simply pass it up for those individuals.

In my opinion, if you’re a collector of Warcraft memorabilia, you can’t go wrong with The Art of the Trading Card Game. From cover to cover, you receive a thoroughly Warcraft experience. My one complaint is that more pictures of Murlocs weren’t included in the art book! They’re not a queen like Aquaman (excuse the poorly made reference *grins*), so you at least have to show them a little love! Frivolity aside, Upper Deck's The Art of the Trading Card Game would make an outstanding display piece in any collection of Warcraft memroabilia.   

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