Custom client tags (aka “icons”) are small images that appear next to player names in the channel userlist on the server.

They originally indicated what client a user was connected with (e.g. Warcraft II, Starcraft, Diablo II, etc.) but our server has expanded them beyond that — client tags can now be used to distinguish clans, bots, tourney winners, and so on.

Custom client tag guidelines

You can make your own icons easily in Paint or any other graphics editor as long as they meet the following criteria:

• 28×14 pixels in size
• saved as any regular file format, e.g. .png, .bmp, .gif (avoid saving .jpg if using Paint as it will usually degrade quality)
• decent quality – not blurry, not slapdash, not thrown together in Paint in 10 seconds
• not obscene/offensive

Don’t try to downsize a regular image to 28×14 because it’ll look like garbage. Your icon should ideally be pixel art which will still look nice when you zoom way in on them.

Here’s a blurry icon compared to a pixel art icon:

Using Paint to make icons

1. Launch Paint
    
   
2. Set your canvas size (28×14) by grabbing the corner of the white square and dragging it to the correct dimensions. You’ll see the dimensions in the status bar along the bottom change in real time as you resize the canvas.
    
    
3. Zoom all the way in with the slider in the bottom right corner.
    
   
4. Use the pencil tool on the smallest size to draw your icon pixel by pixel. Copy/pasting regular images is bad because they end up really blurry.

Acceptable icon samples

 

Tips

• Certain colors don’t show up right on the server, especially certain shades of green, so try to stick with a few simple colors only.
• If you really want to use an image in your icon try WC2 unit sprites – they work well since they’re also pixel art. Avoid Orc units though because the green usually doesn’t display correctly on the server. You can also do a general search for sprites/pixel art.
• If you want to use any of tupac’s or War2.me’s custom icons (pictured above) that’s fine too, as long as they haven’t already been claimed by someone else.