How to change the WoW log in screen, music and clean it up

I've recently gone through a multiple hour long deep dive trying to figure out how to do this and I figured I'd post it here both to remind myself and in case anyone else is interested.

This all started when I remembered the old Molten-WoW version of the game I had, although it was WOTLK, the log in screen was the vanilla Dark Portal with the song Through the Fire and the Flames by Dragonforce blasting in the background.

There's a lot you can do with this, and pretty much everything you need is already in your game files. You know how every race has a unique background when you're choosing your character? You can have that as your log in screen if you want and you can have any music you like playing in the background. I did this on WOTLK but it may work for other expansions as well.

Example: https://imgur.com/a/TMTGXmC
https://www.virustotal.com/gui/url/7...7e55?nocache=1
Example Patch: https://www.mediafire.com/file/zhjj6...tch-Z.mpq/file
Here's what I'm currently using, it's as I said above, Vanilla Dark Portal log in screen with Through the Fire and the Flames in as background music and I've removed the WoW logo and the Blizzard logo. Just paste this into your Data folder then launch the game to see it in action. Depending on what patches you have in your game, you may need to change the name.
https://www.virustotal.com/gui/url/9...1799?nocache=1

You're going to need at least 1 and at most 3 third party apps but the choice of which one is yours

1. You need an MPQEditor tool anyone should do (I used https://www.hiveworkshop.com/threads...editor.249562/ when downloaded there's two folders of which I chose the x64 version)
https://www.virustotal.com/gui/url/4...23f53c7c30002d

(Note: You can change the background with just this and don't need to download anything else, the other two apps are for editing images. On the regular WOTLK log in screen there's a "World of Warcraft Wrath of the Lich King" Image in the top left which we can replace without needing the following two apps, with them we can either delete the image completely or replace it with something else)

2. Some sort of image editing tool like GIMP or Photoshop (I used https://www.gimp.org and MS Paint doesn't work)
https://www.virustotal.com/gui/url/4...fee05b7cccd227

3. A PNG to BLP and BLP to PNG converter (I used https://www.wowinterface.com/downloa...Converter.html)
https://www.virustotal.com/gui/url/b...eef0b699a70ba6

Let's get started

Step 1: Open MPQEditor and set up where you want it to extract files, in the top left corner select the Open MPQ file option and navigate to your WoW directory. Go to your Data folder within your main directory and then open the enGB or enUS or whatever the folder is called this should work for other languages as well, there should only be one folder in your Data folder so you can't miss it. In this folder, find the "local-enGB.mpq" file replace enGB with whatever your folder is called so if yours was enUS the file should be "local-enUS.mpq" again, there should be only one file that starts with "local" so can't miss it, open that MPQ file with your editor.

Step 2: Now we're going to find the files we need to change the background. Open the Interface folder, scroll down to the GLUES folder, then open the MODELS folder, here you will find all the background folders, all the racial backgrounds and the vanilla background, this part works the same way regardless of what you choose. Choose which one you want, I'm going do the vanilla background so I'm going to right click UI_MAINMENU and click "extract" now go to where you wanted your MPQ files to extract to in step 1 and you should see an Interface folder and if you open it, you should be able to go all the way from Interface < GLUES < MODELS < UI_MAINMENU go into the UI_MAINMENU folder and delete the "Northrend" folder, this step isn't needed if you chose a racial background. Now create a new folder, we'll call it Work and we'll move the interface folder into the work folder, this is important for later.

Step 3: We need to rename some files. Navigate to Work < Interface < GLUES < MODELS folder this is where I have the UI_MAINMENU folder, if you chose say the blood elf character background it would be called UI_BLOODELF etc. either way, edit the folder name and change it to UI_MAINMENU_NORTHREND now open the folder and scroll to the bottom where you'll find 3 files.

For me these are which we will edit to:
UI_MainMenu.m2 ----> UI_MainMenu_Northrend.m2
UI_MainMenu00.skin ----> UI_MainMenu_Northrend00.skin
UI_MainMenu01.skin -----> UI_MainMenu_Northrend01.skin

For the Blood Elf background it would be etc.
UI_BloodElf.m2 ----> UI_MainMenu_Northrend.m2
UI_BloodElf00.skin ----> UI_MainMenu_Northrend00.skin
UI_BloodElf01.skin -----> UI_MainMenu_Northrend01.skin

Step 4: If all you wanted to do was change the background, then you're almost done (If you want to keep going, don't save yet as we'll be adding more things like Music and changing/removing some images), on MPQeditor, click "New MPQ" enter the name of your MPQ file, we're essentially creating a patch file, I called it patch-4 because that wasn't an existing patch name so if you're trying this on another expac you may need to change that. Hit Next at the bottom, tick the "Build MPQ archive from a file or directory" and then click the 3 dots and navigate to your "Work" folder then make sure you change the Game Compatibility to your expac, in this case WOTLK hit Next, Next and Finish (You don't need to change anything else).

You should now have a patch-4.mpq file, copy this into your data file and that's it, launch the game and your background will be applied, congrats and enjoy!

Step 5: Ok so you may have noticed that the buttons are still blue and the top left WoW logo still says WOTLK, we're basically just going to recreate some of the steps above to clean that up nicely. We'll start by getting all the files to change the button colours and the logo so open your MPQEditor and repeat step 1 but this time we're going to Interface < GLUES < COMMON

Here we want to extract some specific files:
Glue-Panel-Button-Disabled.blp
Glue-Panel-Button-Down.blp
Glue-Panel-Button-Highlight.blp
Glue-Panel-Button-Up.blp

Optional: If you want to remove the WoW logo completely or replace it with something else, take the Glues-WoW-WotLKLogo.blp there are two very similar files here, make sure you choose the one with the Capital letters and get the Glues-WoW-Logo.blp if you want to use the old logo.

Step 6: Once extracted, head to your Work folder and if it's not there already, move the new interface folder into your Work folder so you have Work < Interface < GLUES < COMMON here we're going to rename some files again

Glue-Panel-Button-Disabled.blp ----> Glue-Panel-Button-Disabled-Blue.blp
Glue-Panel-Button-Down.blp ----> Glue-Panel-Button-Down-Blue.blp
Glue-Panel-Button-Highlight.blp ----> Glue-Panel-Button-Highlight-Blue.blp
Glue-Panel-Button-Up.blp ----> Glue-Panel-Button-Up.blp

Yes, we're adding "blue" in order to make the buttons red, don't ask me why but that's how it works. If that's all you wanted you can repeat step 4 and you're good to go.

Step 7: Ok let's finally sort out the image, we'll start by replacing the WOTLK logo with the vanilla one. We've already got all the files from MPQeditor so head to Work < Interface < GLUES < COMMON. If you want the Vanilla logo, simply delete the existing Glues-WoW-WotLKLogo.blp file then rename the

Glues-WoW-Logo.blp ----> Glues-WoW-WotLKLogo.blp

That's it, repeat step 4 and you've got red buttons and the correct logo with the vanilla background

Step 8: Changing the Music. Once more to the MPQeditor but this time we're not opening the local-enGB file. Navigate to your data folder and open the common.mpq file, it'll load for a little here we go to Sound < Music < GlueScreenMusic in this folder you'll see 2 mp3 files, one is the WOTLK theme and the other is the vanilla theme. If you want the old theme, extract both otherwise just extract WotLK_main_title.mp3 which will give you a Sound folder which you will add to your Work folder. So your work folder should now have Interface and Sound in it. Navigate to the GlueScreenMusic folder. If you want to use the old theme, just delete the current WotLK_main_title.mp3 and rename

wow_main_theme.mp3 ----> WotLK_main_title.mp3

You can put pretty much any mp3 file in here and rename it to WotLK_main_title.mp3 then repeat step 4 to save it all as a patch and that's it.

Step 9: Ok here's the final part which is what I did myself, I found out that you can remove the WoW Logo in the top left and you can get rid of the Blizzard logo at the bottom and the Pegi or ESRB rating on the left as well, it lets you clean up the log in screen quite nicely. It's pretty simple too.

To get rid of the WoW logo, use the BLP to PNG converter to convert Glues-WoW-WotLKLogo.blp to PNG, then open the PNG with GIMP or whatever editor you use (Don't use MS Paint) draw a box around the whole image aka select the whole image and hit delete. Then export the image as a PNG, try opening the image, it should be an empty image file. Convert it back to BLP and repeat step 4 and boom, the logo is gone.

The Blizzard logo is easy too, but we need to find it in the MPQeditor first, it's in Interface < GLUES < MainMenu. It's the only file in there but remember that this means we need to move it into the Work folder once extracted so that we have Work < Interface < GLUES < MainMenu. You need to extract it then repeat the above steps to convert it to PNG, delete the image and then convert it back.

And now the PEGI/ESRB. In the MPQeditor in Interface < GLUES < LOGIN you'll find a whole bunch of different options, I don't know if you'll have the same one I did. Mine said Pegi 12+ which after trial and error I discovered was Glues-FrenchRating.blp, I don't live in france so it's possible you have the same one I do but otherwise you can just extract all of these files, convert them all and go through each image separately. Repeat the same steps as above, converting and deleting then finally do step 4 and you'll have a really nice and clean log in screen.

Bonus Step 10: Do you hate the Breaking News box that's messing up your cool custom background? You can get rid of it by using your firewall to block all communication with the Blizzard servers, this doesn't affect the game in any way. The following are the urls that I've found online that send you this info depending on your language/location.

US - launcher.worldofwarcraft.com
EN - status.wow-europe.com
ES - status.wow-europe.com
FR - status.wow-europe.com
DE - status.wow-europe.com

But in order to block them we need IP adresses, so open CMD on your pc and type nslookup then paste the URL so

nslookup launcher.worldofwarcraft.com

CMD will then give you the IP adress, I blocked both the US and EN IPs (I followed this guide https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Qm2dcu3pAU)
https://www.virustotal.com/gui/url/1...8447?nocache=1

And boom, you've got a custom and clean new login screen, hope this is understandable!