The content on the Warcraft site is probably as most users would expect. It is mainly focused on World of Warcraft, and the content within or relating to the game. However there are other content elements worth noting on this page.

First, and obviously, there are links to non World of Warcraft related material within the realm of Blizzard development. This is most likely because World of Warcraft servers over 10 million users worldwide, all of whom must manage their accounts through this World of Warcraft web portal. One would be pressed to find a more effective outreach when it comes to numbers, especially when the products advertised are within the same genre.

The other main content element presented directly on the main page of the site is images either relating to in game World of Warcraft character models, or screenshots of the game itself. This strongly appeals to the pathos of the gamers either currently playing or planning on playing WoW. They see models of in game characters and remember all the good times they had fighting for Azeroth, or imagine those yet to come.

Analyzing the rhetoric behind the select images the developers choose to use becomes more simple when you put visual rhetoric into perspective. Sonja Foss would say that "our definition of rhetoric features the use of symbols by humans" (Foss, 1), with all of these images becoming symbols of a sort. The epic sword wielding Blood Elf Paladin is not just pixels on a screen, its an extension of the player behind the character.

The image becomes a visual personification in a non physical world that thousands of others will come to recognize as that player. Seeing these images on the World of Warcraft site causes a player to recall these memories, even if the Blood Elf Paladin displayed on the site is not their exact character. Charles Hill would stats that "the hope is that the image and the values that it evokes in the viewer ... will become associated with the institution itself." The use of such images has a powerful effect on the viewer as they read through the page.

Blair would note that visual arguments "are not distinct in essence from verbal arguments" (Blair, 362) which rings true because it can be said that any visual argument can be translated into a verbal argument, and it must be to fully be understood or discussed. When Blizzard shows stunning screenshots of upcoming content in the new Wrath of the Lich King expansion, they are telling a viewer that more great things are yet to come, that epic adventures still await unlike anything they have ever seen before. The same goes for using the same character models present in game on the site, as opposed to rendering them differently.

Some of the images used to demonstrate upcoming
Wrath of the Lich King expansion content:

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