Their music. Its rare that the score of an expansion doesn’t contain at least one segment of fabulous music.
Thinking back on WoD, regularly blasted as one of the worst expansions, it has some of the best music. This one in particular, by the excellent composer Eimear Noone, is one of my top 5 favs. I actually contacted her to tell her how much I loved it, and she very kindly wrote back to thank me.
Just, stunning music. She is actually the conductor of this brilliant performance.
https://youtu.be/UuSON351IyY?si=l9ApK_xRILXpf3wa
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This I can actually agree with.
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One other thing. In spite of WoW being a dead game that everyone hates, just about every source you see when you ask “What MMOs should we play in 2025” has both WoW retail and WoW Classic at or near the top of the list.
Every thing I see says WoW has the best combat system or at least one of the two best, the other varying based on who is talking.
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Thank you (: I look forward to the day I get my R3 forum back.
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WoW is currently hard carried by its combat, art, and music.
Combat is usually good but has some peroids of bad design for various classes/specs.
Art and music has been pretty consistent quality-wise. Music isn’t as “in your face” as in FFXIV but is pretty good and just blends into the background.
Story is probably the worst part of WoW.
WoW used to be pretty solid tech wise but recently it’s been plagued by bugs* and performance issues.
* I recently did a WQ in the spider area. One of the NPCs creating the glowing sigils that you are suppose to fly through to get a buff to pop the floating mines was suspended in mid-air. Somehow the NPC’s location was messed up …
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TBH, I don’t recommend wow to new players. 20 years of parasocial relations have driven up the learning curve too high for new players (and no I don’t think the rotation helper is going to help with that, I think it’s going to reinforce bad habits instead). You can jump into classic as a tourist, but if you want to advance past being a tourist then the learning curve is even worse as people assume you should have learnt everything either from when it was current or from private servers and so any failure is met with that much more scrutiny.
That being said, I also can’t recommend any other mmo for a new player in good faith. We’ve had enough experiences with the likes of Elder Scrolls Online, Star Wars The Old Republic, Tera, Wildstar, Aion, Age of Conan, Hellgate London, Rift, Guild Wars 2, Vanguard, Warhammer Online, Lord of the Rings Online, Everquest Next, ArcheAge Chronicles, and every other “WoW Killer” I’ve forgotten about to know that choosing anything but WoW is a gamble you’re likely to lose, with a prize of a game that cannot even be played at all.
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i cant really appreciate game music anymore. always have a couple vidyas/streams ready to play and discord open.
felt a lot more important to me back when i had a single square monitor and if i launched a game, it was the only thing i was doing.
deep down i know it’s important (i still get nostalgia from the everquest opening theme)… but idk, times change and it’s very rare that im sitting there playing the game and doing nothing else to the point where i can get into the music.
I can’t hear the Barrens theme without getting hit with a wave of Nostalgia. There is so much good music in WoW, it’s such a shame that it’s constantly drowned out by mounts flapping, talking heads, and combat SFX.
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To be fair, Elder Scrolls Online, Guild Wars 2, and Final Fantasy 14 are relatively safe picks. They have a been in existence for quite a while now.
ESO likely has a similar risk profile to WoW as they are both indirectly owned by Microsoft.
And my, didnt we drift away from my showing my pleasure at WoW’s music.
Funny how posts on GD have a habit of doing that…
WoW’s music has always been top-notch. Whether I’m listening to the old tracks in classic or the new ones in War Within it’s all just so good. Blizzard games have always had good music though going back to even the classics like Warcraft 2, Starcraft, and Diablo 2.
I still put on some of the Warcraft 3 tracks from time to time. The Night Elf tracks are epic and the Undead ones are chilling. If you’ve never played Warcraft 3 before or heard the soundtrack give them a listen sometime.
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I have to so agree… (edit: it fits the place) except for ‘Undermine’… just not my ‘cup of tea’… but yes, I do love the music!
Agree with this. Only thing is, I personally don’t care about an allaborate story. I care about the feeling of epicness.
The music has always been comforting.
Going back to old zones and hearing it feels like going home.
Every night I sleep to some background music and something from wow is frequently the choice.
There is nothing more zen.
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Wouldn’t know since I muted the music since Wrath. Heard a sample of the Undermine track and still keeping it that way.
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Undermine is very, very different to the rest of WoW’s music to be fair, but if you didn’t even like Wrath’s music so much that you muted it then you’re probably not going to like any of the game’s music period from any expansion.
To each their own, though to me the only time I mute the in-game music is when doing battlegrounds so I can put on some of that old school PvP music. 
To me music helps make a zone come together.
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Basically it has the DotA problem. There’s no such thing as a beginner, everyone is meant to know exactly where all the hidden shops and items are immediately and if you don’t you get yelled at. The kind of game you absolutely do not learn by jumping into public matches. Get a few friends to teach you privately instead.
It applies to all online games really, but I remember DotA being especially bad for it.
the only music i remember is a few of the starter zones, dalaran and a score from everbloom. otherwise wow doesn’t have really particular stuff that really stands out im not sure why that is tbh
100% agree. The music is always aces.
It’s why, back before I discovered addons like “Be Quiet”, that it used to legitimately make me mad that the score was always so freaking solid, so much time and effort and care put into these orchestral compositions, many of them instantly beautiful or epic, and they went and ruined them all by having talking heads and non-stop world quest dialogue over all of it.
It was like getting a beautiful painting, and then someone just takes a crap all over it.
And if you were into doing gathering professions like me over the expansions, and would weave around the same zone you would hear the same gd world quest dialogue and see the same talking head pop-ups over and over and over and over.
It got to the point I had to play with the sound off. I couldn’t take it anymore. Then I was pointed in the direction of the aforementioned addon, and have been able to appreciate the hard work these talented people do.
So much of WoW is lazy or half-baked, but never the score.
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