Ever played World of Warcraft? It’s one of the most popular online video games in the world, with over 8 million subscribers worldwide as of January 2007. You basically select a character and enter an online world where you team up with other players to fight your enemies, gain experience, and develop. Just Google around and you’ll read stories of people getting sucked into this alternate dimension and often never making it back into reality.
But just when you thought WoW fever couldn’t get any more intense, GamingSteve.com reports that you can send a digital image of your character to a company called FigurePrints and have them print out a 3D model for you. Here’s how the process works:
First, you enter a drawing on the FigurePrints website, since there’s limited availability. If you’re selected, FigurePrints takes your online character info from the WoW Armory and creates a digital 3D model that you can pose in any way you want. After that, they use printing technology similar to the Desktop Factory 125ci and the CandyFab and digitally slice the final 3D image into 2D layers, which they then print out one-by-one and stack on top of each other to re-build the 3D model in solid form. FigurePrint prints out the figures on a 1:18 scale so if you’re a 6 foot (or 72 inch) tall human warrior, you get a 4 inch figure. It takes a month or two from the time you order one to get it in the mail, and keep in mind that it’s not cheap: Each figure costs $99.95 plus $14.95 for shipping and handling to addresses in the US and Canada.
So what should we make of the latest development in the WoW phenomenon? It’s certainly an interesting and “practical” application of the growing 3D printing movement. And who knows – if hopeless WoW addicts can now own their own tangible souvenirs from the digital world, maybe they’ll have more incentive to come back to this one once in awhile.
