Changing the sound files via file path was never a bannabke offense. No one was banned from it…ever. It doesn’t edit any game files, but rather tells the game “hey, play these instead.” Tons of people would replace Rhonin’s “citizens of Dalaran” speech with blank sound files just to shut him up.
www . wowinterface . com/downloads/info25361-GunSilencerSuppressorClassic.html
Works just like it used to.
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Editing them : NO. The files on your machine are YOUR property
Now the trick : Using them in game : Could. The word created is Blizzard property (Sound effects included).
Personally I wouldn’t.
Blizzard tends to judge these things on a case by case basis. While modifying the client files can be against the rules, in the past they have not punished people for doing it when it is done for benign reasons. This doesn’t mean they can’t punish you for it, it simply means in the past they have chosen not to, or overturned such punishments on appeal.
If in doubt, submit a ticket being quite specific with what you want to do, IE, May I replace the gun sound effects with quieter ones?
Back in BC there was an addon that brought Final Fantasy music to the game and had it integrated. There was also the mod that allowed you to change your appearance on your screen. This allowed you to enable any weapons/race and change how spells looked. These could be against TOS since you are modifying certain game files. Both the addon for changing the internal music and the one for changing appearance have been banned and being caught using them will result in a ban. I have known players getting timeouts for using both these addons after their removal.
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/ui-add-on-development-policy/24534
I will bold the important part:
While we are currently allowing Add-Ons that remove or replace existing sound files, keep in mind that it is illegal to distribute copyrighted materials
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Given that there are regularly mentioned ways of, say, replacing the ‘gun’ sound which are never removbed from these forums and that they use methods that have existed until 8.2 broke them, then I think it reasonable to say that replacing game sounds is something Blizzards are fine with.
You guys remember back in the vanilla days when all it took to swap a model/sound was creating a folder and switching the files? I swapped my Orc Warrior to an Ogre and played like that for a good 6 months, not even caring that I couldn’t see my armor.
Pretty sure doing something like that today would get your account banned.
Editing game files is technically a ToS violation. But it’s unlikely action would be taken against your account if all you’re doing is just editing sound files and it has no impact on anyone else’s gameplay.
If you want to be safe then don’t do it.
I’m the guy in that twitch clip.
Editing sounds requires no modification of game files. You drop files into World of Warcraft\_classic_\Sound and that’s it. In the past it was explicitely allowed by Blizzard and was a side effect of how MPQ files work but being the that MPQ files are in a different folder, it looks like they manually added support for this.
PS all the my sounds are regular wow sounds, u guys must have broken clients or viruses on ur pc if urs are different
So are you adding new sounds or replacing existing ones?
If you’re replacing existing ones then you are indeed modifying game files.
If you’re adding new sounds then it would be pointless since the game would have no references to these new files.
Edit: jk apparently I’m wrong and this method of using sounds doesn’t change existing sound files.
The problem with this statement is that a lot of add-ons, where all you had to do were move a folder to the add-on folder, or texture folders, are now banned. Remember the classic nudity mod, all it did was change the textures on bras and succubi, you can still find it, but it’s banable.
I would argue that a add-on that changes the rogue stealth sound to be a blaring, “danger Will Robinson rogue nearby!” Would garner the same scrutiny from Blizzard.
Technically you can get banned since it’s a ToS violation. But there was a recent ban wave due to just such a ToS violation and Blizz officials said they tried to avoid banning anyone who broke ToS only due to such modifications and instead only ban people who were actually cheating in a way that impacted gameplay.
Adding sounds in that folder in a way that mimics the folder structure and file name of the sounds in the MPQ will override the sounds in the game files. The actual game data is left untouched, only overridden. Support for this is literally coded into the game. The Sound folder doesn’t even exist until you put it there.
Oh. Well I didn’t know they did that. That’s good to know. Thanks for the clarification.
Protip for any gnomes out there: you can mute the godawful noises that mechanostriders make at all times by creating a sound/creature/mechastrider folder and shoving in a blank .ogg named MechaStriderLoop
Changing textures never worked the same way. You had to modify the actual data and there was no way to safely override them.
You can get alternate sound file compilations off of cursefoge/twitch in addon packs, so I don’t think it’s bannable, depending on how you add the sounds.
I know there are addon packs that change the sound of bows and guns. Other than that, I wouldn’t change anything that isn’t part of an addon in the addon folder.
No, they actually aren’t your property. You are licensed to use the software but you don’t retain ownership over any of the files. Read the EULA.
The old nudity mod was just a drop in add-on. In its current state, it is still just a drop in the add-on folder. No idea what it does behind the scenes codeing wise. All I know is it’s banable and changes textures.