Guild Wars 2

I am putting “kinda” because overall the music is very good (we are talking about Jeremy Soule here, hey), the problem is the music themes are too few.
With my Charr I am listening to the same music since the first zone, then in Black Citadel, and then in Diessa Plateau… The biggest dissapointment is when I enter some inn and I was expecting to hear some sweet music that will delve you into the game atmoshpere, but there was nothing, no music at all…
That was one of WoW’s best cards, the awesome and unforgetable music themes, different for every place

GW2 playing the same music in almost every zone (I’ve start of thinking of it as the “adventure” music rather than, say, the Queensdale or Wayfarer music) is deeply disappointing.

I typically am not one of the people in that crowd, but I’ve started playing without music cause I’m sick of hearing the same tracks over and over and over without pause no matter where I go.

The battle theme is also really redundant.

I agree that, not the music itself, but the way it’s used in the game makes it a little bland.

Another area I think they could improve is how songs are incorporated into the cutscenes. A lot of the time when one of those two-person dialogues starts, there’s no music at all, or the ambient song from whatever area it’s in just keeps playing, and it really hurts the mood of some of the scenes. They need more unique themes just specifically for setting the mood of an event/dialogue.

I think the 2-person dialogue portions are really inferior to machinima-styled cut scenes, even if the extra effort needed for them meant compromising with less voice acting, but that’s a separate issue…

I barely hear it really because it doesn’t continue the music it stops plays again like 5 mins later. It’s not that memorable at all because I never heard the battle music lol. I love instrumental/gaming music but GW2 lacks bad but what you do hear is okay, I wish there was more to it.

I’d also like to add that recycling so many of the tunes from the first game makes me immediately wonder if you decided to pinch pennies in respect to the soundtrack.
A couple of GW1 tunes are nice, but the longer I play, the more it seems that there are more GW1 tunes than original GW2 ones.

I kinda have to agree on this one, especially when it comes to using the same tracks. It’s like…watching a better sequel of a movie, and they put same tracks inside. They just don’t do that – they remix them or re-work them in new songs, which would be better imo because Tyria is not GW1 anymore, so that old stuff has to go.

As for music variety well, I can probably remember 2-3 of them. I will probably spark some flames here, but imho, Aion has zillion times more memorable soundtrack, each song unique and oh those awesome battle themes! Sometimes I would just draw my weapon out to hear those kitten BGM’s over and over again. GW2 for it’s excellent sound quality is surprisingly silent.

Agreed. I’m a huge fan of music in gaming and not only is this not Jeremy Soule’s best work (compare the GW2 soundtrack to, say, the Nightfall soundtrack) but it is used in a very ineffective manner for the most part. No area themes, no transition themes (listen to the music after you finish a battle in Skyrim, there is always a short transition before the regular music resumes)… we don’t even get character themes!

The music in GW2 isn’t bad, but it’s not the award-winning soundtrack the game deserves.

Thanks all.
Here I’ll mention WoW again, because for me this is the MMO with the BEST music themes ever!
So you start as a dwarf, there is a music for the whole outdoor zone where you are. You enter a small building and another music starts playing. Then you go in a cave – another music. Later you go in an inn – a tavernish music. Then you go to the capital city – city music unique to only that city. Later you go in some deserted building in the middle of nowhere – a mysterious song starts playing…

There’s nothing like it now in GW2

I have to say I was disappointed about this as well.

WoW is by no means perfect, but I do think that it has one of the best soundtracks of MMOs, and the fact that each zone (generally) had a unique musical theme added a lot to the game.

Even though I haven’t regularly played WoW in a very long time I can listen to a track on youtube and instantly be flooded with nostalgia and warm fuzzies about the zone it was from. I doubt I could ever experience that with GW2, since I just seem to hear the same few musical snippets regardless of where I am.

Some of the tracks are amazing (particularly “The Orders Unite”, and some of the weirder atmosphere pieces like the one used in Sparkfly Fen), but overall it’s a bit samey – a bit “Soule paste”.

However, for those who don’t like the music so often, there is a solution – under audio you can “lengthen interval” to the far right, which means the tracks will play way less often, so you don’t get bored of them so quickly.

Personally, I don’t think it’s as much a problem with the music itself as it is the cue system for the music. If you notice, when you change zones the music will typically persist for a while. When the music ends that’s usually it for a little while. I think the music is there I just think the system that activates it is more concerned about playing pieces all the way through than anything else.

cant say ive noticed too much music at all myself, aside from the log in screen i rarely hear anything. i see n the patch notes its been attended, perhaps i shall hear more

I just find it disappointing to see that Jeremy Soule uses the same themes in his scores time and time again. The GW2 soundtrack sounds a lot like his scores for Oblivion and Skyrim, and you can even hear similar themes in the Harry Potter video games. They are nice scores that complement the games well, don’t get me wrong, but it does get a bit repetitive.

Jav.8053:

I just find it disappointing to see that Jeremy Soule uses the same themes in his scores time and time again. The GW2 soundtrack sounds a lot like his scores for Oblivion and Skyrim, and you can even hear similar themes in the Harry Potter video games. They are nice scores that complement the games well, don’t get me wrong, but it does get a bit repetitive.

I think the sameyness may partly be down to him having a “system” – i.e. he’s probably got a nice setup using Nuendo, Logic or ProTools and some huge orchestral sample libraries, and he has some “templates” with orchestration and some sketch of a form ready set up, and he just plugs tunes he comes up with into that. (Then of course he gets someone to make an orchestral score out of the sampler data, or does that himself, and the stuff is played by a full orchestra, say in Abbey Road or someplace like that.)

Can’t blame him for that, he’s obviously a busy composer. But it does mean that with music he’s not been as inspired by, it all sounds great, but the sound of it in a way over-pumps everything to make it sound equally valid (epic). Whereas if he varied his orchestration a bit more, and didn’t make everything sound like Strauss or Mahler, and sometimes had more ethnic sounds (e.g. tavern music), he’d have a bit of a broader pallette. (I suppose the problem is he’s the go-to guy for epic orchestral soundtracks, and isn’t often given a brief to let his hair down.)

Having said that, none of GW2’s music is actually bad, just a few tracks are a bit less inspired than others – but some are great. (I actually think “The Orders Unite” is a fantastic and original piece of music, and should have been the GW2 theme tune.)

This lack of zone music is an interesting topic. Been brought up twice now in these forums- so don’t worry OP, you’re not the only one who thinks like this!

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/audio/Lack-of-zone-music/first#post225964

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/audio/Landscape-environment-themes-could-do-with-a-bit-of-variety/first#post109339

WoW has such great music because each zone had a theme, and each track was around 5 or more minutes long. (I have the ost for it)

Yeah I left it on for as long as I could hoping it would really change enough in later zones but it really doesn’t.

I eventually got sick of hearing the same stuff and turned it off. =[

The piano piece from some vista’s in sylvari areas was awesome though.

Most of the time while I’m playing all I hear is a warning siren in my left ear. That’s why I have the audio turned off and my own music playing.

Actually I realized it’s not the tracks themselves, they’re pretty epic but we just don’t hear much of them often . And it would help if they weren’t random but location-bound like in most MMO-s. No reason for Black Citadel to have the same tune as the Grove.

Seems people here would prefer more distinct melodies and different themes for zones. This is the model of past games.

I think I prefer the direction we’re going. Instead of immersion breaking jarring changes between tracks, we have a seemless tapestry of beautiful textures and background music. There are times when the music rises and a gorgeous melodic turn emerges and I find myself turning up the volume to enjoy. Other times the music returns to the background and subtly enhances the atmosphere of the game. Even the quiet times help the world breath. The music is layed out this way to support the game, not to become the focal point and detract attention away from the game. These are the same principles that direct the way a musical score in a film is used.

Immersion is key and the music serves the game perfectly.

Age Of Conan still has the best music IMO.

It’s funny, I was thinking of making a post about this exact topic.

I mean, I still remember music from Storm Peaks in WoW, I felt it fit so amazingly well to the theme of the zone – an ancient race pushed to the brink of extinction. Really just sad and melancholy theme that worked fantastically well. Or the Nagrand theme that really reinforced the feeling of vastness of that zone. There’s many more examples like that.

Age of Conan also had a decent soundtrack, for the most part, that fit the zones well.

But in GW2, the lack of variety in zones, plus the same bland and generic quests, plus lack of music really just smear the entire PvE experience into something really unimpressive.

Which is really sad, I think, because graphically the game is pretty good. But between the lack of variety of mobs, lack of variety in zones and lack of variety in music, the whole PvE experience doesn’t really leave a mark it could have. Fell miles short of how the world felt in WoW. Though admittedly fast travel killed the feeling of a cohesive world for me much more than music ever could. Fast travel instead of mounts was the single biggest mistake in GW2 design, I think.

I love Jeremy Soule’s work, but too much of anything isn’t always good, however, custom playlists are just … so … darn … handy!

I’m a bit of a “philistine” with my custom playlists, as I use quite a lot of Russell Brower, David Arkenstone and Jason Hayes’ music (some of the composers for Blizzard’s games) in it.

With all respect to Mr. Soule’s personal quest to create the perfect digital orchestra … there is just something about a real orchestra, the expressiveness, the “soul”, the emotion the instruments convey, that cannot be trumped.

It’s such a shame they couldn’t employ a live orchestra for Guild Wars 2’s music, but I know costs (and the sheer logistics behind working with a full-on orchestra) can be somewhat daunting. So for GW2, I’m glad if they saved on those costs and used it in other, important areas of the game. One can dream though, and I tend to dream pretty big.

P.S. Zone customization in the playlists are a fantastic idea! I really hope ArenaNet could give us this functionality some day.