Certified Gameaholic
HoT soundtrack
Most of the HoT soundtrack was indeed recorded by a live orchestra. The orchestrations were mainly done by Stan LePard while the orchestras that were used had ties to the Dynamedion company which has been behind the orchestral soundtrack of German computer games (Anno and Spellforce series etc.) among others.
However, some tracks on the OST mix live instruments and synth/sampled instruments/voices (e.g. the “Mouth of Mordremoth” track by Maclaine Diemer has live percussion bits but the strings and brass sound very sampled to me, and the “Mordremoth” track by Lena Chappelle appears to be mostly if not entirely sampled as the instruments and the Bulgarian women type choir lack the “organic” feel of live performers).
The Forsaken Thicket boss tracks we hear in the raid wings (which don’t show up on the OST) appear to be sampled, and this also goes for the recycled tracks we hear in game which were taken from Living World season 1 which was entirely sampled (e.g. “Tower of Nightmares” which we hear in Dragon’s Stand and the “Twisted Marionette” battle tracks which show up in a couple of bigger HoT boss fights in the open world).