Tobold's Blog: Can you change the music in WoW?

Tuesday, February 05, 2008

Can you change the music in WoW?

My wife has the bad habit of leaving her computer on with WoW being on the character selection screen or login screen. And World of Warcraft plays one particularly annoying piece of music on those two screens. Well, maybe it is only particularly annoying after you listened to it for hours. I can turn off her sound, but then she has to turn it back on again every time.

So I was wondering whether there was a way to play a different song on the login and character selection screen. Are the WoW music pieces stored somewhere as a file and can be replaced with another file cleverly renamed? Or is there some other trick to change the music in WoW? I know it is possible for example to change the sound of when you catch a fish, making it more audible or even replace it by something silly. Does something similar work for the music?

I'd be grateful for any advice or links to websites explaining how it works.

[EDIT: Copied the following method from the comments section. It works!

Took some research to relearn how to change the login/character screen music 'cause I'm on a WoW hiatus, but here's the no-MPQ-tampering method. Navigate to your World of Warcraft/Data/ directory and create this heirarchy of folders within: Sound\Music\GlueScreenMusic. Once that's done, drop in your desired login music (mp3 only I suppose, thought I haven't experimented with other formats) and rename the file to wow_main_theme.mp3 if you have vanilla WoW or BC_main_theme.mp3 for Burning Crusade installs.

It's actually a somewhat interesting story why this works, going back to the time when there was no Interface folder and the Data folder was your one-stop shop for customizing all sorts of WoW things. Tip: I believe you can also override other default music with this technique, with the correct folder heirarchies and file name in hand.

Enjoy!

-Svartalve]
- posted by Tobold @ 12:01 AM Permanent Link

Comments:

I’m fairly certain that all the .mp3 files used for music are stored in the MPQ file. While these are easily editable, doing so will result in a edited MPQ which is a banning offense. In-game, you can change the sound or use an addon that stores it. At the login screen however, you can’t have addons loaded.

# posted by

Anonymous : 4/2/08 21:30

I'll just ask the question that's going through everybody's mind right now - why not simply turn off the speakers? Or what about closing/minimizing WoW?

# posted by

Anonymous : 4/2/08 23:06

I've used this addon called Soundtrack before and it works extremely well. It doesn't change the main screen, but in game you can customize the entire music settings with your own music.

This is how its described:

"Ever get tired of WoW's default music?

- Wish you could use your Final Fantasy battle music while in combat?
- Your epic Lord of the Rings music while in Elwynn Forrest?
- The Conan the Barbarian score when in Loch Modan?
- Your Indiana Jones score while in Uldaman?
- Some Shadow of the Colossus music when you encounter bosses?
- Metal Gear Solid music when you engage in PvP?
- Bootilicious when your troll girl starts dancing?
- Neverending Story when flying on a hippogryph?

That's exactly what Soundtrack lets you do. It lets you customize various in-game events using your own mp3s, using a very simple interface."

You can find it here: http://wow.curse.com/downloads/details/2342/

Hope that helps!

# posted by

Michael May : 4/2/08 23:07

To the previous poster: Yep. There are several addons that will allow you to play sounds or soundtracks in-game. However, at the login or character select screen, addons are not loaded yet, so you are stuck with the default track. In order to change the track by changing the file name, you would need to edit the MPQ data file. WoW detects changes to that file as an unauthorized modification and it’s possible to get banned for making the change. If they didn’t do this, you could edit the protected LUA files or even the textures and game models.

# posted by

Anonymous : 5/2/08 00:41

How about treating the problem not the symptom? Tell your wife it's annoying as hell and to please knock it off.

# posted by

blachawk : 5/2/08 01:25

Let's have a post where we can add tracks we think are more appropriate to have in game.

Talking Heads - Road to Nowhere
- the casual players level 70 anthem

Iron Maiden - The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner
- For elves wishing to start their game in the human starting area.

Linkin Park - Breaking the Habit
-Are you addicted?

I Wanna Be Sedated - The Ramones
-My anthem right now whilst waiting for patch 'too point-less'. Is anyone picking up on that play on words yet?

Any others?

# posted by

Anonymous : 5/2/08 01:53

I would ask her to tab out if she is going to leave it open. That will cut the music and then she can just click on the WoW tab on the task bar if she wants to save a few clicks logging back in.

# posted by

Anonymous : 5/2/08 02:10

In WoW, every game asset is inside those big .MPQ files.
They are basically an archive (like a zip file).

If I remember well, WoW should look both inside those files and on a flat directory structure. Assets inside MPQ are also files and are accessed like a normal directory/filename.
And WoW should look for a plain file tree before checking inside MPQ.
So if you know what file and what path, you could create a similar path and a similar filename unsider WoW but with different content.
This is because under development can be tedious to build a complete MPQ file of some gigs just to check if a new sound or texture fits correctly with other pieces of the game. Is far easier and faster to place that new asset in a path and load it without need to rebuild.

I'm sure you could do the same to do the trick.

I'll have to check what is correct path and file.....

# posted by

Jack-o-Lantern : 5/2/08 03:30

Dear Tobold Hornblower

If your wife's computer used a powered speaker with on/off button, it will be easier to turn it off for a while. turning on the speaker is just as fast :)

G'day

# posted by

Anonymous : 5/2/08 03:55

Krones beat me to it,

's what I do

# posted by

Anonymous : 5/2/08 08:47

Took some research to relearn how to change the login/character screen music 'cause I'm on a WoW hiatus, but here's the no-MPQ-tampering method. Navigate to your World of Warcraft/Data/ directory and create this heirarchy of folders within: Sound\Music\GlueScreenMusic. Once that's done, drop in your desired login music (mp3 only I suppose, thought I haven't experimented with other formats) and rename the file to wow_main_theme.mp3 if you have vanilla WoW or BC_main_theme.mp3 for Burning Crusade installs.

It's actually a somewhat interesting story why this works, going back to the time when there was no Interface folder and the Data folder was your one-stop shop for customizing all sorts of WoW things. Tip: I believe you can also override other default music with this technique, with the correct folder heirarchies and file name in hand.

Enjoy!

-Svartalve

# posted by

Lloyd V. : 5/2/08 11:30

Nice, thanks Iloyd

# posted by

Anonymous : 5/2/08 16:25

Thank-you to Michael May and Lloyd V. for the best answers.

I can't wait to play Devo's "Working in the Coalmine" when running The Deadmines.

# posted by

DerRaven : 5/2/08 19:01

Have her use Crtl-M to toggle the music off before she log's out of the game.

# posted by

Anonymous : 5/2/08 21:04

Thank you for the great advice, Lloyd / Svartalve, I'll try that tonight.

To all those who advised me to get my wife to do this or that, I have the strong suspicion that you aren't married. Believe me, finding a technical solution is *much* easier than getting the wife to change her behavior. :)

# posted by

Tobold : 6/2/08 08:13

Lmao...if he turns it off or minimize he risks getting hit w/ a shoe. Changing it to a song she hates would in fact let her know that either him or the kids did it and that apparently its annoying. if my bf turned my speakers of or said something about it I'd give him a cold look...the other way would at least let me know he hates when I do it b/c he thought of a clever way to let me know. ALl females aren't like guys remember this. But yea like you said just copy and paste inside folder gluescreenmusic and if she's smart she'll get the point.

# posted by

Anonymous : 17/11/08 13:16

It didn't work for me, with the 3.0.3 patch, I tried wotlk_main_theme.mp3, and nothing!!!!
What should I do now?

# posted by

Anonymous : 18/1/09 17:04

for those who have wrath of the lich king, use wotlk_main_title.mp3 it should work.

# posted by

bleukreuz : 8/3/09 03:24

DAng! All i wanted to do was change the main theme... I want to change it to the anvil of crom from conan the barbarian

# posted by

Riley : 27/4/09 22:35

So... I know this post is years late, but you actually CAN change the login music to be anything of your liking.

Here's how:

1) Take any .mp3 file you want, rename it to "MUS_Shattering_UU01" (ensure that you name it so it has NO ".mp3" extension showing, but is still an .mp3 file)

2) Drop that file into the following location on your hard drive (if the folders do not exist in your Data directory, simply create them):
...\World of Warcraft\Data\Sound\Music\Cataclysm\

*The file path for that song will be:
...\World of Warcraft\Data\Sound\Music\Cataclysm\MUS_Shattering_UU01

That's it!

It should work for the current expansion. Not sure what the name of the new .mp3 file will be come MoP, but we can wait for that to figure it out :)

# posted by

the_real_telene : 15/11/11 23:52