BlizzCon Day 1 Recap, Day 2 Schedule
Warcraft 3: Reforged was announced! Submit your questions now for the developer Q & A! Immersive Sounds of Azeroth Panel
- The panel started out with David Arkenstone and a band playing Kul Tiran music.
- Music often provides emotional guideposts in a story and can act as an anchor in a story arc.
- David Rovin took over as sound supervisor for WoW a year ago. He says WoW has been a legend in the industry for some time.
- Sound design should:
- Make the player feel awesome by having their sounds be the loudest.
- Help the player play the game by having audio cues such as aggro sounds.
- Be immersive.
- Audio on screen that is not directly in front of you is lowered to help you focus on what is right there in front of you.
- Drustvar is a good example of sound design as work in game.
- David Rovin leads a team of 6 sound designers for WoW.
- Building an Ambience in 2004
- Avoid sounds that create a noticeable loop.
- Minimize disc space through sharing.
- WoW Ambience Today
- Simplified base layer.
- Variation through one-shot randomization.
- Content specific sounds.
- More personality.
- Drustvar purposely has some spooky sounds that are tied to the effigies in the trees.
- Every creature has an aggro sound, attack sounds, and a death sound.
- The team also adds creature ambient sounds to make them more alive.
- Idle vocalizations
- Iconic performance
- Distant flavor kits
- Weighs as much as a duck
- Drustvar witch drust magic purposely has its own sound effects that differ from player magic sounds.
- Certain areas in Drustvar purposely have different sounds, most of which are even creepier than the rest of the zone, such as the graveyard and throughout the Crimson Forest.
- Music has a similar role as sound design in setting up a narrative or tone of a zone.
- Abby Lewis Inspired Music of Drustvar.
- Child-like and mysterious.
- Classic horror, not jump scare.
- A sense of history, twisted fairy tale.
- Starting point, leaving room to develop.
- Fallhaven - Tension Builder
- Darker as you start to encounter bad things.
- Drawing on orchestra techniques to sell tension.
- Glenbrook Wood
- Strong melody introduced early.
- Reinforced though question experience leading to dungeon capper and central piece of the zone, Waycrest Manor.
- Waycrest Manor
- The pipe organ was used outside Waycrest Manor and the music becomes more muted.
- Inside, the music is stronger.
- Waycrest Manor was the most intense sound design that the team has ever created in WoW.
- The organ becomes a character in itself.
- It was interesting creating sound for a boss that had an actual organ involved in the fight.
- When you kill a witch in the dungeon, you can actually hear the music play a cord that sounds as if Lady Waycrest is slamming her hands on the keys in anger.
- Encounter logic for creature spawning is utilized in changing the music as well.
- Dynamic Boss Encounter
- Paying It All Off
- Music changes by phase
- Organ based spells
- Final visit to musical themes
- When Lady Waycrest joins the fight, the emitters turn off and the dungeon music raises. When she dies, the music ends for the dungeon.
- Paying It All Off
- Diegetic Audio
- From "wallpaper music" to emanating in the world.
- Responsive to players' actions.
- "Lady Waycrest has offered tribute and is waiting for you to find a little musical surprise." Possible hint at secret in game?
- There are some immersive sound changes coming to when you are mounted.
https://www.mmo-champion.com/content/81 ... of-Azeroth
