Project Lore

Sometime in February my day job decided that it would be beneficial to the company's bottom line to disable Internet streaming for audio and video.  The IT department's shenanigans lead me to go on the hunt for my own ear-pleasing cuts.  Considering I haven't purchased a CD since high school, I didn't really know where to turn initially.  Then I remembered that the Wrath of the Lich King Collector's Edition came with the official soundtrack.  After ripping the disk to the hard drive and listening to the OST over and over, I can only say that Blizzard's soundtrack is even more amazing than I may have lead you to believe in the review. My new found appreciation of Wrath's auditory pleasures kicked off my first infatuation for non-MIDI music in video games.  Previous games have had fantastic music (BioShock), but I tended to overlook what the music, rather than sound effects or engineering, can really do for a title.  The fact that BioShock's - whose music is now part of my work collection - and Wrath's OST can remain entertaining pieces outside the game, or even the universe, says a lot.  If you don't believe me, try firing up the Wrath cinematic while some friends are over.  Just play the music and see what kind of responses you get.  The first half of that track is flat out brilliant. There has to be bigger video game OST audiophiles out there.  What OSTs would you recommend?  I am preferably looking for original music, not soundtracks like Grand Theft Auto's.  Currently my collection is fairly bare and very recent, the two aforementioned titles, The Witcher, Red Alert 3 (bad game, nostalgic OST), MadWorld and some random Final Fantasy CD I found. For those of you with the Collector's Edition, I suggest you add the CD to your digital library if you haven't already.  Seriously, play it for some none-WoW friends without telling them what it is, see what they say and report back to us.  If you don't have the cd, may I recommend a pair of e-tailers to you - Amazon and eBay?

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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...

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