Yetis are truly everywhere, including within the popular online game of World of Warcraft. Reportedly WOW, as it is called by those in the know, is played by nine million individuals around the globe, often late into the night.

If you are one of those 9,000,000 players and have gone to level 70, you’ve seen the Yetis. But why do they look the way they do in WOW?

In terms of the creative copycat phenomena, the horned nature of WOW’s Yetis seems to have more in common with the snow creature from the Star Wars movie rather than cryptozoology’s Yetis or Abominable Snowmen. Horns are not reported as part of what are seen on the heads of Himalayan Yetis, period.

The typical Yeti is shown above, as drawn by Harry Trumbore for The Field Guide to Bigfoot and Other Mystery Primates Worldwide (NY: Anomalist Books, 2006).

The Wampa looks, instead, like this:

Horns are to be found on the Star Wars’ Wampa from The Empire Strikes Back. Wampas are the planet Hoth’s alpha predators, and certainly their legacy seems to continue on through the Yetis running around the World of Warcraft.

I don’t think there are any collectible WOW Yetis yet (but I could be uninformed about this). On the other hand, Wampa figurines do exist, in a couple different sizes, for I’ve got a few here looking at me.