Welcome! BFA broke the mechanism to override original sounds with custom sounds in a separate “Sound” folder, presumably to combat dataminers. Blizzard intentionally implemented the feature allowing us to do so and was and is not against the Terms of Service because it does not modify or alter actual game files. The method below adheres to this.
Never fear — OldGunSounds is here! ALL CREDIT GOES TO ADD-ON DEVELOPER Nauseous-Tirion EU / dimodious. It only changes your weapon sounds but mutes most gun/bow sounds coming from NPCs or players. The new structure dictates that sounds can only be muted/unmuted/played, so it is achieved by muting default files, then playing the custom files when triggered.
It comes fully equipped with Vanilla rifle, bow, crossbow, and reload sounds, as well as the old Kill Command hunter ability sound and Outlaw rogue’s old Pistol Shot gun sounds. If that is only what you need, do step 1 and check out step 6. For custom sounds, I will walk you through the simple steps necessary on a PC.
- Install http://curseforge.com/wow/addons/oldgunsounds.
- In File Explorer, go to World of Warcraft> retail> Interface> AddOns> OldGunSounds.
- Open a second File Explorer and locate your custom sounds (must be OGG files).
- In OldGunSounds, find the files with the corresponding weapon sounds and rename your old custom files exactly the same text if they are not already. For instance, if you have custom rifle shots, the matching files are blunderbuss weaponfires. You can only customize what is listed, not add spells (except the Kill Command spell; you can add 2 more). Go over the limit of 3 weapon fires or 6 reloads and you will not hear the exceeding files.
- Delete the OldGunSounds files, then copy and paste your matching renamed custom files into the OldGunSounds folder.
- Optional: In the OldGunSounds folder, open the “OldGunSounds” LUA file towards the top with Notepad or something similar. After the first 17 lines, delete any of the add-on’s pre-muted sounds that you want to hear in-game. (Do not delete the } symbol at the end enclosing all the mutes.) Go to http://wow.tools/files to find the ID of other sounds to add to the list; it will mute anything for you.
- Copy the OldGunSounds folder and paste it somewhere. This way you will not lose the customization with a future add-on update.
If you are logged in, restart WoW completely. You may need to re-equip your weapon for this to take effect as well. That is it! Enjoy playing your hunter or rogue again! This was my experience testing and configuring the add-on. I am not an expert on anything. If I got something wrong, or you know of another add-on with similar functions, please let me know. I will answer questions to the best of my ability. I hope this guide was clear and helped, please share, and thank you for reading!
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so now the question is how to get this to work in classic. I had some modified or silenced sound files I used for years from vanilla to wrath. This addon loads in classic without a problem but I think the sound file names are different from BFA.
wowhead says the new wow classic gun sound is called “gunrelease” with ID#1148 that plays the 3 different classic shots.
I hate the sound of 2 of those shots and want to make them all the same or silence them. nothing I do seems to point the wow classic client to play my chosen sound files.
Classic was based on a 8.1 client so thus far doesn’t have the no direct filenames thing from 8.2 live.
So you’ll need to use the sound replacement method that worked in 8.1
I guess I don’t know how it worked in 8.1 then. the old method was to place folders named “Sound/Spells/” containing the modified sounds files with names of original sounds files into the main wow directory. When you download “old gun sounds” mod it comes like that and you just drop it into the main directory.
I’ve done that in both the “World of Warcraft” folder and the “classic” folder but nothing changes in game.
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- Go to https://www.wowhead.com/sounds and find the sound you want
- URL should be in the form
https://www.wowhead.com/sound=[soundkit_number]/unknown-sound
- Go to https://wow.tools/files/
- Use the search skit:soundkit_number
- The path and filename of the sound you want to replace comes up. This is the filename you want to use not the one that comes up on a search of wowhead
A little confusing I know.
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you’re saying the wow.tool’s FD ID is the number to use?
I had already tried naming the files after those ID’s. in this case for the gun shot sounds it’s: 921248, 921250, 921252, 921254, 921256, & 921258. The wowhead ID for all those sounds is just 1148.
so I renamed the sounds I wanted to those above numbers, put them in folder ‘Spells’ put that folder in folder ‘Sound’ and copied it to the wow directory.
but still nothing in game changed. then copied to the classic directory with the same result 
Nether here nor there, but the beta indicated 7.3.5.
The files should have names and not numbers.
But that doesn’t matter as I tried myself to replace the blunderbuss sounds of a Level 6 Alliance Hunter.
I didn’t have any joy so I’m going to have to play around with it for a few days to see if I can work out a way for gun sounds to be replaced in Classic.
What’s odd is replacing the bag opening and ability window opening sounds work great. Just not gun sounds.
God bless you for this. i’m not fond of the new gun/bow sounds…still not really, but being able to retain the old school sounds for guns and bows is always nice.
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Neither am I, I am so grateful for the add-on developer and glad to hear that this is helping people as well! God bless you too.
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and just like that, the latest patch turned our guns and bows into staplers again. ._.
i also found even enemies with guns/bows were using staplers…dunno know WHY Blizz thought it was a “great idea” to change the sound effect, but i may just stick to Classic from now on…that or forget about playing with sounds on.
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That’s weird, the add-on is still working for me. It still sucks that they can’t just change it back to the way it was. We still have to jump through hoops.
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just checked the addon folder and it was disabled…tried enabling it again, and making sure “load outdated addons” was clicked…and it worked.
funny thing is, i don’t remember turning it off…but that’s at least one thing i don’t have to worry about anymore.
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So glad to hear, that happens to me sometimes. I was worried there for a second that Blizz broke this, too, and we would have to start all over again.
Thank ye so much for fixing this finally! I had been using simple sound replacements all this time and had no idea why they just quit working.
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fingers crossed that this can be fixed…because as it stands, i can’t play my hunter when all his weapons sound like damn peashooters or air guns. ;-;
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I found it jarring too when testing my bow- and gun-wielding hunters yesterday. It will be nigh impossible for me to adapt once I un-shelf them after launch if there is no fix by then. Funnily enough, my Outlaw rogue’s gun sounds still work with the add-on. I am pleasantly surprised that we even got this far and am optimistic for the future! Add-on developers can do amazing things, they stupefy me every time with their knowledge.
Blizzard, please, why do you have to keep messing around with the functionalities? This add-on is our only hope. ;_;
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hmm…i’m using the Upgraded Dwarven Hand Cannon but its transmoged to Thori’dal, the Stars Fury and its making the old gun sounds. (i’ve got the mod still in the usual addon folder too.)
i’ve also noticed, that the OGG files are constantly being rewritten to be blank. that might be why its not working like it should.
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Multiple people have pointed this out too in the add-on comments that all sounds now seem to be gun sounds. Dimodious said it was because Blizzard has changed the function for checking for Transmogrified weapons in some weird way.
and i’m back to having popguns again. ._. Blizzard seems to break things that aren’t broken, and further break things that already WERE broken. really starting get frustrating on my Hunter. i may as well just play with NO sounds on at all, forget about hearing the amazing scores and sounds that were created for this game, and just listen to podcasts, as that’s the ONLY way i can enjoy playing a Hunter now.
edit: i mean, in all fairness i’m working on unlocking the Kul Tiran heritage armor set, so i figured Hunter is the one class i’m most familiar with. i figured, i’d just listen to some podcasts as i quest through whatever zone i feel like questing through, queue for dungeons on the side and hope to the Almighty, that i can get to lvl 50 without losing my mind. ._.
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