So I’m going to try to get involved with Blog Azeroth’s whole Shared Topic thing. This week’s Shared Topic over at Blog Azeroth was suggested by Saga.
The WoW in-game music is awesome, but there are times (at least for me) when I’m listening to my own music instead. Are there any specific songs that you connect with WoW? Whether it’s tied to your own characters in some way or simply because it reminds you of WoW. Please share!
Music is very important to me and always has been, so this is a topic rather close to my heart. I tend to have a very eccelctic playlist, but there are definite trends and themes that tend to permeate all of my musical choices.
Raiding
For a long time, I would always listen the in game music during raids. I loved the atmosphere of Naxx and Ulduar, and the the music only added to them. During ICC there were many moments when I would call attention to a particularly awesome part of the music (Hey guys! Listen! They’re using a variation on the blood elf starting zone music! Oh my gosh did you hear that little phrase from “Invincible” during the start up speech to fight LK? GUNSHIP MUSIC IS WIN!!!)
For whatever reason, I stopped doing this during Cataclysm raiding, and I think the reason for that is that the music in raids is, for the most part….Not that great or noticeable. For all the time I spent in BWD, I couldn’t tell you a single stand out moment in the music. I listened to the Firelands music for the first couple of weeks, and then got bored and turned it off. The only raid I can think of with really distinct music is TotFW, and my rants about the wasted opportunities of that raid are best left for another day. 😉
But I need music to function, so instead of listening to the in game stuff, I generally turn to my old friend Pandora to get me through my raids. Pandora and I have a long history of me creating playlists and then screaming at it when it thinks that just because I wanted to listen to Metric, that I will also like Phoenix. No really Pandora. Thumbs down. I hate that band. Stop playing them.
For raiding, I tend to go back to my punk roots, and I have a playlist based off of one of my favorite songs ever, “Generator” by Bad Religion.
I chose that song to create a playlist from because it generally makes me feel like I can go out and take on the world. After some tweaking, I got Pandora to understand the kind of punk I wanted to listen to, and now I’m happily healing my way through Firelands with Bad Religion, Social Distortion, the Descendants, Rise Against, Dropkick Murpheys, Fugazi, and many more. And then I get wonderful moments when I mention what I happen to be listening to and one of the younger kids in my raid goes, “Who’s that?” and I can reply “Well, they’re this really great band that’s been around for….oh dear God, 30 YEARS I’M OLD.”
Character Concept and Music
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m and RPer along with being a raider. I love coming up with character concepts and personalities for all of the toons I play. Every one of my toons has some sort of backstory worked out for them, and even if I don’t RP on that toon in particular, I know their story and who they are. Toons that don’t have a personality I can’t get into playing, which is probably why my shaman is stuck at level 55, throwing me furious looks as I ignore her in favor of leveling my night elf.
Since both music and character concept are so important to me, it’s probably no surprise that most of my characters have a theme song that works along with their concept. When I first started playing my pally, I was having a real problem with her. I’ve never liked playing the religious lawful good type in any RP game, but my guild was doing some fun Blood Knight RP that I really wanted to be involved in. So I did a little research and realized that Blood Knights were likely the one brand of pally I could actually manage to play, and Kora was born.
My original concept for Kora was actually based off of an ex of mine. He was a total punk and very much a “eff you authority” type, and yet…he was in the army. Those two things were just so totally at odds with each other. How could someone who really believed all of the anti-authority stuff that spawned punk music have ever thought to enlist? His answer was simple. He was living in New York when 9/11 occurred, and it changed his outlook on a lot of things. And so, applying real life reactions to the fantasy WoW world, I decided I could also have a character who was very much anti-authority but after tragedy felt the need to grow up and change. Silvermoon’s complete destruction by the Scourge seems like a powerful motivator in any Blood Elves life, so I took the idea and ran with it.
Today, Kora is my most developed character and the one I love the most, even if she’s not my main. She is my survivor, and even though she may be a Blood Knight now, she’s still very anti-authority and hates a lot of what goes on in Silvermoon. While writing about her one day, I had my playlist on random, and a song came on that fit her so perfectly that it’s been her theme song ever since. Whenever I’m feeling a little lost with her character, I go back and listen to this song and it gets me back on track.
The hunt for rare pets
My rare pet hunting continues (141/150!) and I have spent A LOT of time killing stuff in Winterspring and Wetlands, searching for the Azure and Crimson Whelplings. I wasn’t entirely convinced those actually exist until I saw the Azure Whelpling show up on the Alliance AH for 999,000g. Seriously are people on drugs? Anyway, I will obviously not be spending that much for a stupid non-combat pet.
But that means my sanity is wearing thin as I reach upward of 4000 kills in Winterspring for an adorable blue dragon. At first I was listening to all sorts of music while I did this, but even that wasn’t working when I got yet another inert elemental piece rather than the damn pet. So I’ve turned to Audible instead.
Audiobooks can be insanely expensive, and Audible takes the sting out of buying them by signing you up for a monthly fee membership. Rather than spending $40 for a new audio book, you spend $15 a month and get one credit each month to download whatever you like. There are all sorts of other benefits to it, but the main one is preserving your sanity during horrible, soul sucking grinds in WoW. It also works well for hellish drives from New York to Pennsylvania when it takes upwards of three hours to go 30 miles to get out of the NY area.
Right now I’m listening to the Mistborn series by Brandon Sanderson. I was originally introduced to this series through the podcast Writing Excuses, which Sanderson is on. I’ve always highly respected what he had to say about writing but never quite got around to reading his books. Audible gave me that chance. If you’re at all interested in reading epic fantasy and you haven’t yet checked out this series, I encourage you to give it a read or listen. The magic system that he uses is highly inventive, and it managed to suck me in pretty quickly. Plus, hearing stories told about an amazing fantasy world makes killing yet another elemental guy much more bearable.
I had a friend who raided and quested while blaring heavy deathmetal.
Was funny.
I tend to listen to classic rock if not the actual music score. I love the honor hold music.
Honor Hold does have pretty music. But man, I don’t know how you Alliance people can stand all of those keeps. Playing on my Alliance toon has really made me miss simple Horde tents! 😉
I quest while listening to heavy death metal and I LOVE IT.
I raid in silence so I can hear boyfriend/raid leader complain–I mean comment, eh heh… about the raid off-mumble. 🙂
The in-game music is nice, though, especially in certain Alliance cities. I’m guessing, however, that ordinary Ally players might prefer Horde music. The grass is always greener and all that.
See, here’s another reason I should be happy my husband doesn’t play. I don’t know what I would do without being able to turn up my music to drown out the sound of people talking mumble.
…
I AM KIDDING.
And yeah, I know that I definitely like a lot of Alliance music, especially the night elf stuff. After playing my nelf alt so exclusively over the past few weeks, I’m kind of wondering how my friend ever convinced me to ditch my original nelf toon and roll Horde!
Really? Because when i was doing ICC before cata, the GM would make us go on vent. However I also muted the channel and blasted my music pretending like i was listening to the strat. Worked out just fine for me.
Well, I’m sure there’s no reason to listen to mumble any more without me there. 😉 I’m kidding. Sort of. Anyway, nice music choice, though I already knew you had good music taste. My raid music consisted of anything from Two Steps From Hell (orchestra music) to Alterbridge to Korn to Eminem. I like variety and anything that gets me pumped.
Yeah, you should totally come back so that you can talk on Mumble again.
Did I mention rogue legendaries?
[…] Faye from The Dancing Tree […]
Ah look at me, signing up for a thing to post here. And being a creep on your old topics.
As mentioned before, I have (at least) hour long setlists for my three mains that both go in order for their character development story, or just general traits/ideals thing. Back when I had time to kill, I spent alot of time on it.
But the style is pretty arbitrary. Technometal, hipster electronica that I’ll blame my friends for showing me, some anime fighting music, classic ACDC, just… yeah, it’s how I can stand the pet farming.
On that note, I hate how china has awesome promo pets we will NEVER SEE. 😐