Guild Wars 2

TheVirtualFrog.8714:

This a great guide, thank you. Now I can finally replace every single battle situation theme with the Yakety Sax. Much more fitting!

Great idea.8D

Thanks a lot for the guide, everything works for me.

The only thing I noticed so far is that the tracks I have chosen for the MainMenu music is not randomized, the only track that plays there in the main menu is indeed the first one in my playlist, even though I did include a short silent audio file, so it’s probably bugged (the randomization I mean). But other than that everything works. The randomization does work for the others though (Ambient, City, NightTime, etc).

The only thing to keep in mind however is the volume of your tracks guys. The chances are that if you created a playlist of multiple tracks of all types of music coming from various sources be it direct web downloads, conversions from Streams and various formats then more often then not what happens is that not all tracks have the same volume, amplitude, etc. So in-game some of those tracks’ volume will be much louder than the default in-game music would be in the same situations.

In such cases you need to manually edit track volume individually in separate software to fix the volume “gaps” between all of the tracks in your playlist to get a comfortable lower (or higher) common denominator volume threshold.

I just realised your playlist is from dotHack!
Nice guide, glad to no longer be BLASTED by the character select music when I log in.

Which music plays in dungeons, that I wonder?

CharrGirl.7896:

Which music plays in dungeons, that I wonder?

Haven’t really paid attention to it even after getting my dungeon title.xD I don’t think it plays Ambient outside the battles, but that’s ok, since you’re in battle most of the time anyway. Besides Ambient it’ll play all of your custom playlists. Battle during fights, bossbattle in some encounters (a lot in CoE), and Underwater if you’re underwater.

Hey, great guide, thanks for that. I have a question, does it affect your FPS/Performance by doing your own playlists? Also, if I decide that I do not want the custom playlist anymore, do I simply delete it from the music folder and the “default GW2” music should be back again?

Thanks

Revolutia.6507:

Hey, great guide, thanks for that. I have a question, does it affect your FPS/Performance by doing your own playlists? Also, if I decide that I do not want the custom playlist anymore, do I simply delete it from the music folder and the “default GW2” music should be back again?

Thanks

It has no impact on performance whatsoever.
And yeah, if you want the original music back, just remove the playlists from the folder.

I wonder why this isn’t stickied.

As someone else pointed out, you do lose the original
sounds. I wouldn’t want that… So my thought is I’ll wait until
I’ve been through everything, before I change to a custom playlist.

That, or the developers they release the originals or something. I don’t know
if it’s included, but sometimes when you do a Vista, the music is so nice, like
in the Grove. I wouldn’t want to lose that.

The LZ.7891:

I wonder why this isn’t stickied.

That, or the developers they release the originals or something. I don’t know
if it’s included, but sometimes when you do a Vista, the music is so nice, like
in the Grove. I wouldn’t want to lose that.

The vistas keep their original sound even with custom playlists on.

Just a quick note: make sure if you’re using .m3u playlists they have the proper format. For some effed up reason my Winamp (v5) turned out funky playlists, adding numbers (instead of a zero) to the #EXTINF lines, or omitting the #EXTINF line altogether, making GW2 resort to the default music.

VLC made .m3u files that played without a hitch.

Thanks heaps for the guide. Its working for me now and having a great time with it.

My problem was that I was moving the playlists from the media player directory and into the GW2 folder myself. using media player, save the playlist to the directory via the media player and it works fine

tyvm!

My winamp is working fine on creating playlists for GW2, the only issue I found out is with tracks not playing in random order for BossBattle. Anyone know of a fix o this? I don’t want to hear music in the same order for every boss I fight.

Hermes.7014:

My winamp is working fine on creating playlists for GW2, the only issue I found out is with tracks not playing in random order for BossBattle. Anyone know of a fix o this? I don’t want to hear music in the same order for every boss I fight.

Nope, I don’t have my boss music set to random. If it won’t randomise then it might be bugged.

i cant make the bloody thing work correctly. the clips get interrupted all the time with long periods of silence, battle music doesnt come up fast enough and then the clips are also interrupted. its a mess

Wow this is great Thank you! I am so putting this for underwater (Mario 64 underwater music) hahaha: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7boeDmPBZX8

And probably the one from Mario Bros on NES. For fun

Oh this is perfect. I’ve been listening to the FFXI OST from all of the expansions simply because I am so enamored by Naoshi Mizuta and Nobuo Uematsu.

Now I can listen to their music NOT that I don’t like GW2’s music, but lets face it, even the music becomes repetitive.

Awesome! Will have to check this out for sure!

bakunyu.4532:

Wow this is great Thank you! I am so putting this for underwater (Mario 64 underwater music) hahaha: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7boeDmPBZX8

And probably the one from Mario Bros on NES. For fun

I was thinking its a shame there is no defeated playlist – I’d put in the Mario defeat in there

I put mine in, but it’s not working. It just plays the normal music. I would also like to know how I can make some songs Ambient, some City, etc. Help??

So, no fix on Boss Battles “randomizer” so far? Sure would love not to have to re-arrange my playlist manually every time i get tired of listening to the same music during bosses. Here’s to hoping they’ll fix it eventually

On a side note: Congrats to Anet for making this wonderful game!

If you need a silent mp3 to initiate the randomizer:
http://www.xamuel.com/blank-mp3s/

Having an issue of getting GW2 to play any of my playlists. Have gone through the tutorial provided in this forum. Playlist was created via Windows media player and saved (.wpl) on another HD. I edited and saved ( to GW2 music folder) the correct lines of code to truly reflect Location of media files, which are located on the NAS. I open the default location of the playlist ( C:\User\ insert username\Document\Guild Wars 2\Music) and can double click on playlist and Windows media player can play it. Game however does not pick up on anything. Nothing plays.

Truly at a loss, any suggestions as to what to do would be helpful. Thank you in Advance.

Edit: Also tried to create playlist through Winamp (what a mess) and through VLC still nothing

@Udhir: have you tried using .m3u instead of .wpl ? (I guess you have)

Does the character select screen play its tracks correctly at least ?

Try to create a list with only a couple of tracks, see if that clears it. Having experimented with a lot of tracks I did get the impression no .flac files play (if you have those in) and long tracks tend to get played more than short tracks or don’t play at all.

I also renamed all tracks to a simple format (xx.mp3) and cleared their ID3 (v1 and v2) tags.

Also, my silence file is about 5s long, maybe its length has some influence.

How many tracks are in the your lists ? I can imagine there’s a limit above which the playlist might be rejected.

Not stating anything as fact, just things I’m not sure are working properly all the time.
If you really can’t get it to work feel free to PM me the playlists and/or music tracks and I’ll have a look.

Would be great if we could set song for the crafting of a legendary…Ode to Joy.

I have tried the suggestion of putting a short sound file at the begining of the playlist but I still hear only about 5-10 songs off my playlist. Is there a max number of songs that can be on one playlist? I don’t get any randomization of the songs, they always seem to play in order no matter what. I really want to know what I’m doing wrong.

Update: for whatever reason my playlist did not like the short clip I origianly used – have since changed it for another and it seems to be working but still finding some of the music isn’t cycling in the mix – is there a max number of songs?

Check theres no # or ’ in any part of the path/file/song name

Udhir.6518:

Having an issue of getting GW2 to play any of my playlists. Have gone through the tutorial provided in this forum. Playlist was created via Windows media player and saved (.wpl) on another HD. I edited and saved ( to GW2 music folder) the correct lines of code to truly reflect Location of media files, which are located on the NAS. I open the default location of the playlist ( C:\User\ insert username\Document\Guild Wars 2\Music) and can double click on playlist and Windows media player can play it. Game however does not pick up on anything. Nothing plays.

Truly at a loss, any suggestions as to what to do would be helpful. Thank you in Advance.

Edit: Also tried to create playlist through Winamp (what a mess) and through VLC still nothing

Have you tried just saving it as a file in notepad and saving with the right extension?- and remember to get the pathname from your actual music file NOT the library

MajorValtiel.6310:

So, no fix on Boss Battles “randomizer” so far? Sure would love not to have to re-arrange my playlist manually every time i get tired of listening to the same music during bosses. Here’s to hoping they’ll fix it eventually

On a side note: Congrats to Anet for making this wonderful game!

Still nothing. It should be rather easy, I don’t know why they keep not addressing this.

First of all, this is awesome.

Second, I’m having a rather annoying problem. When in ambient, or any other playlist, no song plays after the first one. I’m using .wpl format and have made sure each file location is properly referenced. Can anyone help me out here?

BurnWeed.5902:

Udhir.6518:

Having an issue of getting GW2 to play any of my playlists. Have gone through the tutorial provided in this forum. Playlist was created via Windows media player and saved (.wpl) on another HD. I edited and saved ( to GW2 music folder) the correct lines of code to truly reflect Location of media files, which are located on the NAS. I open the default location of the playlist ( C:\User\ insert username\Document\Guild Wars 2\Music) and can double click on playlist and Windows media player can play it. Game however does not pick up on anything. Nothing plays.

Truly at a loss, any suggestions as to what to do would be helpful. Thank you in Advance.

Edit: Also tried to create playlist through Winamp (what a mess) and through VLC still nothing

Have you tried just saving it as a file in notepad and saving with the right extension?- and remember to get the pathname from your actual music file NOT the library

I am having this same issue. Tried this in Winamp and WMP, tried m3u and wpl, edited the notepad, got rid of all extra #s and ‘s, checked 4 other sites and guides on how to do this. I just can’t figure it out. If I post the notepad file of one of the playlists can anyone tell me what I’m doing wrong?

Has anyone gotten their playlist to play with Windows 8?

munkaybiznaz.8067:

BurnWeed.5902:

Udhir.6518:

Having an issue of getting GW2 to play any of my playlists. Have gone through the tutorial provided in this forum. Playlist was created via Windows media player and saved (.wpl) on another HD. I edited and saved ( to GW2 music folder) the correct lines of code to truly reflect Location of media files, which are located on the NAS. I open the default location of the playlist ( C:\User\ insert username\Document\Guild Wars 2\Music) and can double click on playlist and Windows media player can play it. Game however does not pick up on anything. Nothing plays.

Truly at a loss, any suggestions as to what to do would be helpful. Thank you in Advance.

Edit: Also tried to create playlist through Winamp (what a mess) and through VLC still nothing

Have you tried just saving it as a file in notepad and saving with the right extension?- and remember to get the pathname from your actual music file NOT the library

I am having this same issue. Tried this in Winamp and WMP, tried m3u and wpl, edited the notepad, got rid of all extra #s and ‘s, checked 4 other sites and guides on how to do this. I just can’t figure it out. If I post the notepad file of one of the playlists can anyone tell me what I’m doing wrong?

So after hours of messing around with it i found the the problem is that for some reason (maybe its a windows 7 thing) instead of putting in C:\User\ insert username\Document\Guild Wars 2\Music it only works when putting the playlist in C:\ProgramFiles\Guild Wars 2\Music.

If anyone else is having problems like i was i would suggest doing this.

Holy crap, I got it. Looking at the above post something caught me. The local data for some reason is stored in your Documents folder. I simply copied my music folder and pasted it in the Documents Guild Wars 2 folder and that fixed it for me.

This may be a weird question but is there a way to implement the same system for sound effects? I would love to have custom sounds for different abilites. Besides that we would also have a workaround for some sound bugs.

(English isn’t my native language either so please excuse any mistakes. )

Can you please let us change the city soundtrack by locations? I decided to leave the default GW2 soundtrack with added new songs from other games but I’d really like if I could change the tracks separately for each main city in the game.

Also would like to add boss battle music does not randomize…I’m sure this is a common problem so could Anet please fix it? I gathered tons of great tracks but it absolutely sucks to hear just one

Two questions:

1) Does the blank mp3 file at the beginning of the playlist need to be a certain length in order for it to work? Ive tried putting a small 1 second blank mp3 at the beginning of each playlist, but the first song is always the same.

2) Any way to have a custom ambient playlist, but the default main menu playlist?

Rick.5781:

Two questions:

1) Does the blank mp3 file at the beginning of the playlist need to be a certain length in order for it to work? Ive tried putting a small 1 second blank mp3 at the beginning of each playlist, but the first song is always the same.

2) Any way to have a custom ambient playlist, but the default main menu playlist?

1. I don’t use this in my own playlists, but I’ve tested it before, and it used to work with a 1 second audio file. I’ve just tested the MainMenu with the blank audio file trick, and can’t seem to get it to work now, so I don’t know what the problem is with it. My guess is that the way it reads the files has been changed to always play them in a set order. You could try out the other playlists, like Ambient, to see if you can get it to work there.

2. You’ll have to make a custom MainMenu playlist with the default tracks.

Hey guys,

Just been trying to tackle the randomisation problem. I’ve found no solution but just had a face-palm moment reading the official wiki again: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Customized_soundtrack

It clearly states there that the MainMenu & BossBattle playlists never randomise. The others do and the silent sound clip works for them.

Tom Larder.9701:

It clearly states there that the MainMenu & BossBattle playlists never randomise. The others do and the silent sound clip works for them.

That explains it then. When I made this guide, the MainMenu playlist would randomise using the trick, but I suppose they changed that after the game’s launch.

I’ll add that information to the first post.

if only we could do a more advanced work with this, there are some areas i want certain music but other areas should have different music to fit the mood.
biggest problem is battle music, it barely triggers if at all and there are some battles that need some heavier tracks then regular run-of-the-mill mobs.

Mercedes.9876:

Has anyone gotten their playlist to play with Windows 8?

I wish this answer could be resolved, but I haven’t seen any guide referring to the problem/forum post after I searched for it. Tried all the previous methods of changing the music yet nothing works and I’m guessing it’s Windows 8. Hopefully someone more technologically savy will reopen custom music as an option to us.

well, the playlist is broken for some reason, it doesn’t play anything but the normal OST.
i have done this before and it worked perfectly, now a few months later i want some awesome rock tracks for in battle but nop, it’s just not working anymore.
even the main theme doesn’t work, i tried both m3u and wpl but no luck.

EDIT: found out is an issue of win7, winXP keeps everything on the right spot and picks up everything the right way, win7 puts everything on the wrong spot so i had to find where win7 puts the stuff.
i dunno if Anet has any control over where stuff is kept but i really hope they can make it so that win7 can’t say where things go, i always have everything in the map where GW2 is installed but win7 points to it’s oh so stubborn place in the user→documents map…..

Ian.1349:

DOUBLE EDIT: Making everything .m3u seemed to work. Underwater seemed to stay Ambient. Couldn’t say for dungeons, but everything else was working. Only issue:My modified Ambient playlist started playing a song. I got into combat, my modified battle theme started playing which is good. I got out of combat and the same song in the ambient setlist started up again. Perhaps it’s just luck that the same song played twice.

Original ambient plays over custom Ambient inside dungeons, though Battle and Bossbattle should still work there.

I wish there was a way to hear the new themes and songs coming out with the living story areas while having your own list intact and not needing an all-out disabling.

I actually like most of GW2’s music except for some of the battle themes that gets boring fast … (after hearing it for most of your three digits hours of playtime)

After playing through 20 Sanctum Sprints with my selected tracks (Battle), i learn only now that the place has its own track, propably in the ‘Battle’ category. And its actually pretty good.

I never heard the new track that was to play near the end of the Molten Facility either. I only know there was something noteworthy because my party members mentioned it.

Please, can the new (temporary) areas with unique tracks have their own category or something, so that it doesnt overlap with the custom lists?

Can someone confirm that I won’t get banned for this? With all these random banning during the JPs, I don’t wanna risk anything….

Zylonite.5913:

Can someone confirm that I won’t get banned for this? With all these random banning during the JPs, I don’t wanna risk anything….

The information on how to use these custom playlists was posted by an ArenaNet dev during beta. I’ve been using custom playlists since beta, and still do.

Yeah, I have a question. I got this to work normally no problems but I’m curious if you could help me with something that I noticed that appeared in the playlist files after I used them in game….I reopened them and they had new command lines aka these…

<meta name=“IsFavorite”/>
<meta name=“ContentPartnerListID”/>
<meta name=“ContentPartnerNameType”/>
<meta name=“ContentPartnerName”/>
<meta name=“Subtitle”/>
<author/>

Now I assume they just correspond with the actual files/ Windows Media Player info, however whether that’s true or not, I wonder if the IsFavorite line might actually effect the commonality of a song or to be blunt if I give a song a high rating in WMP will it be more likely to play? Or if I add a song to that line if it would play more often?

Can’t wait to do this.
Gonna get some classic GW1 tracks on there!