Ctrl + M Executed
Posted by 
iTZKooPA on Wednesday, September 3, 2008 - 14 Comments Tags: mmo, mmog, music, soundtrack, wow
iTZKooPA on Wednesday, September 3, 2008 - 14 Comments Tags: mmo, mmog, music, soundtrack, wow 
I have played my fair share of MMOGs. Many of them I only played for a few months, such as Ultima Online, Everquest, Asheron's Call, Auto Assault and Tabula Rasa. I can only truly say that I've been a hardcore player in World of Warcraft, sticking with it for years after its release – and still counting. But all of those games have at least one thing in common. And I don't mean that they have each sucked days of my life from me.As either a hardcore user or just a casual player looking for a new MMO world to immerse myself in, I always get tired of MMO music. After the first few hours, my hands will systematically reach for Control + M to see if that near-universal hotkey was added to the UI. More often than not, the combination will drop the soundtrack instantly. Finally, I am able to continue on my wolf/alien/bear/horde killing ways without hearing the same piece of music for the xth time.
It isn't that I don't enjoy the music. In fact, I have shown my love for game music on numerous occasions. This is normally where I note some way to fix the problem. Unfortunately, I do not really have any suggestions on how a company could render the issue, other than constantly producing more tracks. Obviously, that is not really feasible in a business sense. At least, not unless the company is releasing the tracks as part of a large content patch or expansion.
Perhaps the greatest screensaver ever created got it right. I am of course speaking of EVE Online. EVE works around the problem by incorporating an MP3 player into their client. This allows players to listen to their own soundtrack without having to alt-tab all the time. For EVE, the addition actually fits their game, but I doubt the citizens of Azeroth would listen to Journey or Tool during their hunting expeditions.
What to do...
Reader Comments (14)
Step 1. Make a Playlist that has only the songs you want to listen to.
Step 2. Turn on iTunes.
Step 3. Start up WoW.
Step 4. Play and listen.
If all else fails sit on vent :)
There are plenty of mp3 addons for wow out there so you wont have to do all that alt tabbing.
I listen to online streaming (di.fm for example) music when I play WoW. My guildmates would alwasy tease me about hearing trance music thumping and bumping in the background.
No need to alt-tab unless I want to change stations. I also have WoW windowed-mode which helps.
If you play WoW on a Mac you'd have iTunes functionality built in to the game. I am still wondering why Blizzard doesn't do that for PC users. Or maybe this is another limitation of the great Windows OS.
Dude, I'm getting a Mac...the next time I decide to do a full blown upgrade...lol
I, too, use a mac and therefore have iTunes functionality in my WoW. I've gotten so used to it that I forgot PC users don't have that.
As for the music its self, there's plenty of stuff out there that fits well, thematically, with WoW. There's soundtracks, folk, filk, or really anything acoustic. Even heavy metal has been shown to match well (a la L70ETC)
The best music ever from an MMO was in SWG. Of course, it was just licensed John Williams tracks straight from the original score, but still. Never got sick of it :)
The only problem is, now I've got one song from the score that will forever be associated with waiting for servers to come up.
tiwtin has a good basic principle. just load up a playlist, that is if you're not already chilling in vent because ten times out of nine that'll keep you just as entertained. And if you don't know how to talk then go to whatever class Juggy's going to. Or "needs" to be going to.
I always play games in windowed mode, over the years of playing MMO's I finally deciphered the secrets to being able to use MSN, IRC, foobar(music player) and web browsers at the same time :P
On OSX, there is some iTunes integration where it shows the song playing and you can use the remote or the f-keys to change songs. Works well.
@pvoice it's more likely a limitation of the "Great" iTunes... but all kidding aside, lets face it, iTunes has never been great, at least not on Windows (blame Microsoft if you wanna, but they didn't create iTunes ;)
Personally I do like some others here and stick on some streaming radio, or a playlist. Requires very little alt-tabbing. Also my keyboard controls work fine in WoW itself to control my external music player.
Wait, you mean you PC guys don't have this built in?
This is what I did.
1) Bought a keyboard with previous/next track buttons on it
2) Setup a playlist in Windows Media Player
3) Load WoW
Never have to alt tab, and I can change tracks if I hate it or find that I need something else. Like "down with a sickness" when I'm on a hunt.
I have only alt tabed once. It messed up my windows and was horrible. If i had to i used window key and went from there. Another choice is find a cheap horrible ctr monitor and play wow windowed and use 2 monitors.
one answer
G15 + winamp
all the music utility one needs to quest in 'peace'