On the FoH forums, someone posted a link to AO music, citing the game as having “… some of the finest music out there… ” Nearly 7 years later, I still remember loving the music. A subsequent poster included a link to an online collection of AO music.
Have a listen to the Ark Theme. Great stuff.
Of course, this triggered an extended search for game music from all the great MMO.
First stop was UO. UO’s music wasn’t perhaps blessed with great production value, but it was all of iconic, memorable, and beautiful.
DDO released their soundtrack for download. It’s all good. I didn’t play DDO long enough to really come to appreciate how well the music fit the game. But in listening to it now, I can’t say that it really says D&D to me, not that I’m really sure what music would. I do like the ‘Tavern Rock’ series.
WoW released a special player for its sound track, available here. The WoW music is great. Despite my distaste for the game, the music does a great job of expressing a world of swords and sorcery.
LotRO’s music is all bound up in a .dat file (anyone know how to extract it?). It was released as a CD as part of the Deluxe Edition, which, unfortunately, I didn’t buy (dang!). Online, it can be found at Game Music Juke Box.
As you may know, LotRO is my current favourite game to rant-on. Somehow, when I play the game, the music sinks into the background. I don’t notice it. This is in contrast to other games (AO / UO) where the music seemed, to me, much more prominent. Had you asked me yesterday, before I began researching this, whether I liked the music in LotRO, I would have said, “What music?”. That said, now that I listen to it on its own, it rocks! Very well produced.
Update: LotRO has released it’s music in MP3 format. Details here.
Another game that one would assume has great music, but the music of which I have zero recollection of, is SWG. Again, the music somehow slips into the background. Tachevert once assured me that the music was awesome. I’ll take his word for it.
Unfortunately, I utterly failed to find an online source for the SWG soundtrack. Anyone have any suggestions? I’ll have to go re-install the game and see if it’s in an easily accessible format.
The music for EQII appears to be easily accessible as MP3’s in the install directory! If you don’t have it installed, it’s down-loadable here. I’ve only listened to a small portion of it, thus far, and so can’t really comment.
I have been itching to play Eve Online (but have not yet done so). The soundtrack for Eve is available here. Some of it is quite beautiful. Again, I haven’t listened to it all yet.
I’m quite excited for the future of MMO soundtracks. FunCom (makers of AO, and the soon-to-be-released AoC) seem to value great music, and what they’ve released so far seems good. Not many games do voices in their score (I think that last link is from a trailer … I’ve no idea if it made it into the game … but it should have!)
As far as favourite goes, I’d say it’s a toss-up between Anarchy Online and Lord of the Rings Online. Special mention goes to Ultima Online : eight years later and still a memorable score.
As far as upcoming MMO, it’s gotta be Age of Conan. Although, I really haven’t been following that many games.
Anyone else got links to MMO soundtracks? What’s your favourite?
Late additions
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SWG music was mostly from the films. I’ve got the soundtracks and they’ll come up once in a while in my music shuffle. “The Meadow Picnic” from Ep2 was prominent on Naboo. I remember “The Return Home” from Ep4 played when it would rain. “Hyperspace” from Ep5, “Fight in the Dungeon” from Ep6, “Return of the Jedi” from Ep6, “Into the Trap” from Ep6, played when you aggro’d something (and the ensuing combat). “Through the Flames” played when it stopped raining. There were a few that were just the intro to the song that played when you entered a city or something. Always thought it was a good use of music.
A veritable gold mine; bravo!
I tend to collect the music where its available as installed MP3s and keep it long after I’ve uninstalled the game.
Managed to salvage the Auto Assault soundtrack before their site went kaput. There were nine or so tracks you could download in their ‘Media’ section. Not sure on its legal status now though (I’ve definitely heard snatches of it in Tabula Rasa), or I’d find somewhere to host the stuff up.
Neocron 2 went with a soundtrack mostly from Steve Roach’s new age ambient stuff – can probably find that on Amazon, and that really did a lot to set the mood of their world.
Oddly enough, the music I liked best in SWG, was the chill-out ambient stuff they looped in some of the Image Designer tents, which was nothing to do with John Williams (Probably done in-house), and something of a blessed relief
The 9 auto-assault tracks are available as a zip at File Planet (which I’m downloading now). It looks like there was a much longer CD released as well?
Dark Age of Camelot is also available at the Game Music Juke Box (http://www.gamemusicjukebox.com/?id=45)
DnL (the utter failure that it was) had a good soundtrack. Unfortunately, I’ve lost my archive.
The LotRO music CD is quite good… want mine?
w00t! Is borrowing legal? Yaar!
Honestly, hearing the initial combat music in SWG was what got me fired up to do battle. It always got me excited, sometimes before I even knew what was chasing me. But, I think it is kinda cheating to count it as a soundtrack, since it was already the soundtrack for the movies.
Even though the music was borrowed from the films, I loved it in SWG. I loved the background music of the world. I loved the music that the musicians could play. And when they introduced juke boxes? Well, I spent way too much just so I could play certain movie music while I crafted. Now, I could have just bought a soundtrack and had it in the background, but the music of SWG really helped me immerse myself in the world and the space between the movies and the game where I was living my own story.
I also enjoyed the music in CoH – and I liked how the music would change by zone. It fit well and made me feel like a superhero… which was the point in the end after all.
It’s so funny that so many people liked earlier SWG and yet they still insist on moving forward, rather than reverting back to the good ol’ days. Maybe they lost the old version?
Leaving SWG was the worst detox I’ve ever had. Hopefully someday I’ll find a 12 step program to truly help me heal.
I really wouldn’t be surprised to hear that, for technical / lack of version control reasons, a reversion to “cool” SWG was flatly impossible.
Great stuff.
My favorite tune in LOTRO is the one played on entering Tom Bombadil’s house. So hard to leave because I just wanted to hear it over and over. There are some downloadable links in their forum page discussing it, http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?t=60352
Guild Wars. Not strictly an MMO perhaps, but love the music all the same. http://www.directsong.com has some free samples.
Was also pleased to see the Oblivion soundtrack available at DirectSong – loved the music, got tired of the gameplay.
WoW’s music is in MP3 form. The only snag is that it’s packaged inside the MPQ files. Fortunately the MPQ format has stayed relatively unchanged, so you can use Warcraft editing tools to extract the MP3 files. While you’re at it, you can also extract the WAV files for boss speeches.
I have always been enchanted by the music in MMOs. It’s really what draws me into the game and lets me forget about my real life worries. The fact you can feel the games presence outside the game just with the music shows its real strength!
Thank you for these websites
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