As someone who has played FF14 and WoW concurrently for years, one thing that has become jarring, is the raid music and boss music. Burning Crusade was what I considered the peak. The design philosophy was to create thematic and unique ambiance (finally reaching the Black Temple and facing Illidan and the final showdown with Kil’jaeden). It seems now, like the musical team just made a bunch of decent tracks and decided to throw them whereever. A big offender is using the raid music for whatever the current zone is. There’s no excitement musical wise and it makes the raids dull. It seems that the team, while making more unique tracks, has gotten lazy with their implementation.
WoW Raids with unique boss themes (not reused as ambience during current content)
-Naxxramas
-Most of the Burning Crusade Raids (aside from SSC an TK)
-WotlK: Icecrown Citadel
-Cataclysm: Dragon Soul
-MoP: Siege of Orgrimmar
-WoD: None
-Legion: Antorus (Really just Argus)
-BFA: None
-Shadowlands took a step in the right direction with musical motifs unique to each respective raid with The Jailer being a standout (musically speaking)
-Then we have Dragonflight. Some of the tracks may seem unique, however, many of them have been discreetly reused as zone ambiance (Sarkareth, Tindral, and Fyrakk)
My point is, its jarring. There’s no musical direction or identity. Half of the appeal of new content in other MMOs is the interesting themes and unique blend of familiar motifs. I hope that the design team takes what works in other mmo’s and applies it here like they have done before. Like they gave N’zoth the hyped up big bad, the generic Uldum overworld music, Queen Ashzara was given Nazjamar music.
Like come on guys even if you dont want to make new additional tracks, you can at least code the music to create variety. Dungeons have like 4-5 different 2 minute tracks that play randomly. Just use one and stick with it.
Thank you for listening to my tedtalk. I hope The War Within adjusts its music philosophy or at least go back to TBC with unique raid themes.
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None of the boss fights have music that feels like a reward. And I got spoiled with Devil May Cry. For those that don’t play. The music plays better / cooler when you play better. ( heck I remember a journalist trying to cover DMC5 and he said the music sucked. So he just snitched that he played BADLY )
Like its fine for ambience but I’m still annoyed Blizz was just “Yeah lets try this sorta rogue like thing in shadowlands. Lets give it some of the most boring music we can make” with Torghast.
lmao, no.
People like FFXIV music because it’s just straight up rock music half the time.
But there are exactly 0 people who have music as HALF the reason they’re looking forward to a new MMO content patch.
Maybe 1, if you’re counting yourself.
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Heck just gimme something that goes with the music fight wise and I’m good. Like in Sly Cooper how there’s a musical boss and if you get hit, you hear this really loud donk like noise cuz you messed up. But if you play it fine its just loads of fun. Still mad the Sly collection kinda ruined the boss tho. Its all desynced.
I can’t stress this enough. WoW’s ambient music is top tier.
The boss raid music? It’s literally nonexistent.
Which is the reason I mute the music most of the time in FFXIV, to be honest.
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Personal opinion over here is that it’s fine, but it’s just kinda forgettable to me. Just like any random band’s music that doesn’t hook me. But I get that a lot of players like it just because it’s more up-front, tries to make the fight more exciting or whatever.
That’s not to say WoW’s music hooks me either, but it’s not exactly trying to (and that’s okay).
If they’re using zone music and raid music interchangeably, that’s lazier than usual though and they should probably not do that.
Irrelevant
Here lets compare the latest FF14 raid to the latest WoW raid. Search FF14 pandaemonium theme vs WoW amirdrassil theme
FF14 first result 1.1mm views 7 months ago
WoW first result 20k 2 months ago.
FF14’s ultimate selling point is the final phase with a remix of the raid the ultimate is based on. so 0 people is at least 1.1 million.
Same here. It’s not even that the music is bad on its own, it’s just unfitting and kills immersion. Shiva phase 2 is particularly bad going from some orchestral piece that fits the ice theme of the fight really well into some junky rock thing with lyrics.
What dude? Looking up a song on youtube != it being what they care about most in a content patch.