Not sure where else to report this so let me know if another place is better.
I love the sounds in WoW. I love when my druid roars, I love the explosions of moonfire, I love the clatter of hooves when I run over metal ramparts. I have high end speakers and headphones because I enjoy how immersive the sound design is.
Shadowlands is ruining that. There is a constant whisper/wind sound whining nearly everywhere you go. I thought it was just the Maw at first (which would be appropriate since Hell is supposed to be torture afterall), but in certain places in Bastian, in Oribos, in tons of other places there’s this constant whining of wind/whispers that’s at a higher level of all other sound.
Yes, I’ve gone into system preferences and lowered the ambience sound and the music sound, but that doesn’t lower the whispers/wind. The whispers/wind is blended in with the other sound effects.
So if I want to keep my sanity and lower the whisper/winds, I can no longer hear the KABOOM of moonfire or other fun sound effects.
I typically play with music and ambience lowered anyway so I can really enjoy the bass in explosive raid fights. But wow, this wind/whisper stuff everywhere is driving me up the wall, and it’s overpowering all other sound effects in this game.
Please, PLEASE move the constant whisper/wind sound to the ambience control level so we can raise/lower it as we like. This whisper/wind isn’t tied to any enemy nearby or certain areas, it’s just a constant droning on no matter where you are in Oribos, the Maw, the Bastion city and some other places.
I know I haven’t been the greatest in my life on Azeroth but I didn’t think I deserved this punishment in the afterlife…
Thank you for your consideration.
3 Likes
I’ve noticed this as well. Personally I also feel those sounds belong grouped in with Ambient Sound, but it hadn’t really been bothering me so I just assumed it would be changed “someday.”
However, if it is indeed impacting your gameplay, I’d post over in Bug Report so the folks who are responsible for that portion of the game can be made aware.
It’s also worth posting in Technical Support, as those folks might be able to help you with sound drivers and such, to see if there might be a fix or something of that nature.
Unfortunately, the folks here in CS wouldn’t be responsible for making changes to the game audio, and they aren’t a liaison to the developers. Bug Report and/or Tech Support is the way to go on this.
Best of luck!
Edit: … and here we are!
1 Like
I disabled “DIstance Filtering” in the sound settings and it disabled the annoying background “wind” sound.
4 Likes
This worked for me, thank you SO MUCH.
It was honestly giving me a migraine. Who the hell thought this would be a good sound effect?
I tried that and sadly it doesn’t work for me.
This background ambient noise is loud as hell and we can’t change it at all.
1 Like
I disabled Distance Filtering, but it didn’t do enough. The ghost wind sound volume is a tiny little bit lower and it seems more hollow, but it’s just not a good enough solution. It’s noisy like I’m constantly inside a hurricane.
I honestly don’t understand why that does not belong to “ambient sound”. That background wind sound is pretty much the definition of what “ambient” means.
I’ve noticed a glitch at least a dozen times where some sound effect gets stuck in a loop and will continue to play until you relog or go through a “hard” portal like from Oribos to Org. And by relog, I think I had to go all the way back to the login screen or close out of the game. I wan’t to say it was even playing in the character select screen. Turning sound on and off in the settings doesn’t seem to fix it either because it doesn’t actually restart the sound engine (as far as I know, the game still simulates all of the sound effects even if sound is disabled). Not sure if there’s a sound equivalent to /console gxrestart like /console sfxrestart or something like that, but it would be nice to have to “unstick” sounds that get stuck looping because someone forgot to toss a checkmark on something that would tell it to stop.
It seems to happen in SL zones and has been the only place I’ve seen it. The last time I can remember was in Maldraxxus. It was some kind of whispy ghosty hum spell sounding thing and it just stuck around for hours. I didn’t realize it wasn’t supposed to be there until I went to another SL zone and could still hear it. I think it came from a quest in Maldraxxus that had a cutscene? Don’t know for sure, it’s been a while since it happened.