justin-olivetti
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Jukebox Heroes: PlanetSide 2's soundtrack
PlanetSide 2 has a strange soundtrack, no doubt about it. For starters, the game is more about conflict and fragging than it is about lore and story. That's fine if that's its goal, but since so much about MMO scoring is driven by the story and places, it forced Composer Jeff Broadbent to focus on the factions instead. He then fractured the score into three parts, with each part sounding radically different than the others in an effort to underline a faction with a musical style. Thus, Terran Republic tracks are all about orchestra and choir, New Conglomerate tracks use blues rock, and Vanu Sovereignty rely mostly on synth. The styles are so different from each other that I can't see anyone loving this entire soundtrack, but I bet anyone could find at least one part to enjoy. Let's chew on these notes and spit out our favorites like the rough, tough music fans we are!
Jukebox Heroes: Ultima Online's soundtrack
Ultima Online and EverQuest were bound in blood by their early place in MMO history, but both titles were also two of the very few MMOs that released with a MIDI soundtrack. I've talked about the charms of MIDI before, although I think that a good chunk of the modern playerbase has no idea how games used to sound. In short, UO's original score used to be 100% computer produced, but eventually the MIDI format was replaced by much better-sounding versions in MP3 files around 2002. The core game's music was done by a pair of composers, Kirk Winterrowd and Joe Basquez, both of whom worked on previous Ultima titles. There's not a lot out there about the duo's experience creating the soundtrack nor whom the game studio tapped for music duties after Origin Systems went away. What I find interesting about this score is that not only is it beloved by players who have fond memories for Ultima Online but it is part of the larger Ultima framework, harkening back to The Olden Days of gaming. Seeing as how I was never into any of the Ultima titles (for shame, I know), I'm going to have to fall back on a simple gut-check: Which of this music is appealing simply for its own sake?
Jukebox Heroes Exclusive: Aion 4.0's soundtrack
This week, Aion will welcome into the world a bouncing baby expansion: Dark Betrayal, aka Aion 4.0, on June 26th. While I don't play the game, I've been keenly interested in the soundtrack ever since first sampling its wares for the first-ever Jukebox Heroes column. There are several scores out for Aion now, and once Dark Betrayal hits this week, there will be yet another one. Aion 4.0's score was handled by four composers: Jeon Byungkyu, Joo In Ro, Kim Won Ki, and Park Soyeon. There are action pieces, tranquil tunes, and even goofy medleys, but the theme that connects all of these composers' works together is a pristine beauty that is the hallmark of Aion's collective score. So how would you like to listen to some new music? How would you like to hear six exclusive tracks from Aion 4.0? I know I was pretty excited when the team sent me the entire soundtrack and asked me to cherry-pick my favorites for this column, and I hope you enjoy what you're about to hear.
Jukebox Heroes: Tabula Rasa's soundtrack
It's a well-known fact that the ghost of Tabula Rasa haunts the Massively offices. I think it's because Shawn keeps feeding it ectopellets because he's not quite ready to let his beloved MMO go. The ghost is driving the rest of us crazy because it's constantly switching the labels on our lunchboxes and whistling the Tabula Rasa theme through the air ducts while we're trying to get honest work done. So while the MMO no longer exists outside of a few forlorn collector's editions picking up dust on store shelves, the music persists. Tabula Rasa boasted a strong score thanks to the work of Tracy W. Bush. Bush is a name you should know when it comes to MMO soundtracks: He had a huge hand in the World of Warcraft score and contributed to several NCsoft titles (which are all dead, but that's probably not his fault). [Edit: Several readers wrote in to let me know that Curse Mackey, Stacie Cline, Chris Vrenna, and Clint Walsh also contributed to the score. Thanks!] I find that sci-fi MMOs, particularly shooter-based ones, tend to elicit heavier tracks and more synth work than orchestral, and they are sometimes relentlessly grim. All of the above certainly can be applied to Tabula Rasa, up to and including its final surprising track.
Free for All: My very own top ten list of MMO pet peeves
I couldn't just sit back and let Justin Olivetti have all the fun, could I? When he published The Perfect Ten: My gaming pet peeves, I swept my fist to the sky and screamed "Sypsterrrr!" Literally a week earlier I had jotted down an idea for a similar column. I mean jotted down because I keep yellow pads around the house for late-night ideas or dog-walk eurekas. Of course his will probably end up the superior article as he is the better writer (and has a good bit of facial hair), but I'm going to present mine anyway. In fact I'll do one better by listing 11 of my MMO pet peeves because, well, I jotted down 11.
Jukebox Heroes: Starting your MMO music collection
I love seeing people turned on to MMO music, particularly after it's gotten such a bad rap over the years. But for the new fan, it can be a daunting proposition to start up a collection. After all, it's not as if you can go down to your local vinyl shop, peruse a stack of 45s, and come out with a full set of SOE's greatest hits. Only a fraction of MMO scores are available for purchase these days, with the rest being free, packaged in with collector's editions, out of print, or just tucked away inside of game files somewhere. So how do you get started on building up a robust library of MMO music? If you don't have deep pockets, which scores would I recommend you pick up first? Well, my friend, I've given it some thought and have put together a guide to six essential purchases that will get you off to a great start. Don't thank me; thank music. And also me because I did this hard work.
Jukebox Heroes: Warhammer Online's soundtrack
Even though it's fashionable to bash Warhammer Online these days (or every day since 2008, I guess), I still have a lot of affection for this particular game. It was the MMO that got me into blogging, connected me with many of my current online friends, and provided exciting experiences for well over a year. So when I hear the music, there's a rush of nostalgia that floods my brain and runs down to my extremities. That's not to say it's a particularly terrific score. I'd probably classify Warhammer Online's soundtrack as slightly below average; it does the job it needed to do, but it doesn't provide any stellar breakout tracks that will endure long after I've logged out. Still, it's worth examining. The score was handled by Mythic in-house composer Brad Derrick (who also helped to make an amusing Dwarf ballad while he was there). What did he come up with to represent this savagely twisted world? Let's find out!
Jukebox Heroes: EVE Online's soundtrack
EVE Online's soundtrack is a strange puppy to me. I've heard players proclaim their love and undying affection for it, although I believe that a great deal of that is tied into game loyalty and monogamy. From this outsider's perspective, it's a large number of ambient synth tracks that are big on atmosphere and small on catchy melodies or memorable themes. Even though I wouldn't rate it as one of the most exciting scores I've covered for this column, I don't want to dismiss its atmospheric nature as a negative. Creating a soundscape that communicates the wonder, mystery, and largely empty gulf of the cosmos has proven to be a great asset to gamer immersion for EVE, and at least most of these tracks are soothing and low-key enough to warrant a high rating on the replayability scale. Icelandic composer Jón Hallur Haraldsson was in charge of this project. Responding to an interview question about the score's musical category, Haraldsson said, "Back in the days I used to concern myself a lot with defining my music, but I don't do that as much anymore. I like to amalgamate, to take whatever I like from whatever style and try to put that into my music." You can listen to a bulk of the game's music on Sound Cloud, but here are my picks for the six best tracks out of the bunch!
Jukebox Heroes: Character select music
Character select and creation music has always fascinated me. OK, maybe not fascinated; it's interested me. I've always viewed such themes as the overture of the game, the interlude between the title theme and the game proper to come. These themes don't tend to be rip-roaring in their presentation because that's not their purpose. They have to be pleasant enough without being annoying when looped endlessly. After all, sometimes players spend a loooong time making their characters or sitting there at the select screen, and the last thing you want is for their ears to become fatigued by the experience. So here are six MMO character select and character creation themes that I've enjoyed over the years. And if you saw the title graphic up there and immediately started hearing this song in your head, then you and I probably grew up in the same era.
Jukebox Heroes: Defiance's soundtrack
First of all, I wish my first name were a cool animal. Bear McCreary has that on me, so it seems unfair that he's also a geek icon for his work on several beloved TV series (Battlestar Galactica, Eureka, The Walking Dead). And now the guy is composing the soundtrack of one of this spring's hottest MMOs? Where did I go wrong with my life? Before I go and change my name to Sugar Glider Olivetti, I guess it's only fair that I put a lid on my hurt ego to give Defiance's score a fair listen. McCreary was tapped to create the music for both the MMO and the TV series, giving the crossover project a unified sound. "I had to make sure that players could hang out in one area for long stretches of time without getting bored by repetitive music," McCreary wrote on his blog. "As a result, melody plays less of a role throughout many of these cues. The real stars of this music are the texture and colors." Music has texture and colors? If Bear says it, then it must be. Let's dive in!
Jukebox Heroes: Wrath of the Lich King's soundtrack
After my so-so review of The Burning Crusade's score a few months ago, I'm sure a few of you thought I was barking mad. World of Warcraft is well-known for great orchestra pieces, but I stick by saying that most of the brilliant stuff stayed the heck away from Outland. Fortunately, the sound quality got a lot better when we went up north for Wrath of the Lich King in 2008. The score was composed and arranged by Russell Brower, Derek Duke, Matt Uelmen, Neal Acree, and Glenn Stafford. As to be expected by that name sandwich, the score features a lot of variety. While there are epic chants and the like that are to be expected from WoW, there's also a lonely, savage feel to the music that represents these far-off lands. There's also a lot of blowing wind that segues between tracks if you listen to the album straight through, and if that doesn't make you envision a snow-blasted landscape, I don't know what would. The liner notes say that "this is the music of ice and despair, a dirge and a call to arms." I couldn't put it better myself. Let's dive into my picks for the best tracks from this score, shall we?
Jukebox Heroes: Battle music!
It's time once again to take a week off from looking at specific MMO soundtracks and open ourselves up to a theme instead. The topic? Battle music. Yeah, it can be some of the most obnoxious music in the game, especially after hearing it for the 3,000th time, but every once in a while I hear a piece that has some merit to it. These are the ones we want to examine today. What makes for a good battle music track? I think it has to get you excited without being annoying or grating and not so loud or incredibly noticeable that you can't help but get tired of it sooner rather than later. It was actually pretty tricky to pull together six such tracks for this column, but I managed to do with with the help of Colonel Bugle up there. He's got the best MP3 collection around.
Jukebox Heroes: Super Adventure Box's soundtrack
OK, yeah, how could I not do this? I know that we at Massively have gone a little ga-ga over ArenaNet's stellar April Fools' Day prank-slash-massive update, but when I saw that the team released a half-hour of original score in addition to all of the pixelated monkey mayhem, I knew I had to review it. Your enjoyment of Guild Wars 2's Super Adventure Box and its score will largely depend on your memories or feelings about old-school video games. For a kid who grew up on 8-bit and 16-bit games, the sound of SAB is pure nostalgia (even if it is original composition). I think it's also as catchy as cooties. Composers Maclaine Diemer and Leif Chappelle put in a lot of effort to not just make a classic-sounding soundtrack here but specifically reference and pay homage to plenty of old-school hits. Hang with me as I highlight the best of Super Adventure Box, and I promise that next week we'll get back to serious business.
The Perfect Ten: Final moments of MMOs, part 1
Maybe many of us would just rather remember MMOs as they were in life rather than at the moment of their demise. But I believe that how a game went out is incredibly fascinating for many reasons and worthy of examination. It's in these final moments when an entire community has to say goodbye. It's in these moments that the developers mourn as well before pulling the plug. It's in these moments that history is being made one last time. And it goes without saying that it's in these moments that everyone curses the unfairness of it all. Today we're going to watch the first half of 10 videos featuring MMOs in their final moments. It's here we'll see how weird, crazy, sad, and interesting things can get. Maybe you were part of one (or more) of these moments or are simply curious what it was like. Either way, it's the end of the world as we know it. And we feel fine.
Jukebox Heroes: Guild Wars Factions' soundtrack
East Asian-themed music in MMOs is something that I generally welcome. Even if the title isn't an Asian MMO, chances are that sooner or later developers like to work an Eastern zone, class, or city into the game -- and with that comes a specific sound. I'm by no means educated on what instruments are used in these tunes, but the result is so distinctive that you can't help but think of the region. Guild Wars: Factions definitely drew upon the Orient for its theme, and composer Jeremy Soule returned to create a score that would paint a picture of Cantha. Unfortunately, I don't think he was up to the task. While technically sufficient, Factions' score is definitely lacking in the grandeur of Prophecies and the basic catchiness necessary to elevate a soundtrack out of the crowd. The best I can say is that none of the tracks is horrible to hear, but the album as a whole is actually a bit bland and forgettable. I'm by no means besmirching Soule here. His previous and subsequent Guild Wars projects are heads and shoulders above this one, and everyone has an off day. Perhaps Asian music just wasn't his forte. In any case, I sifted vigorously to discover six tracks that best represent Cantha and its people.
Jukebox Heroes: The Sims Online's soundtrack
The recent SimCity is by far not the only botched product that EA's launched with the Sims name on it. The truth is that The Sims Online had a great potential and franchise behind it, but it let the ball drop, big-time. It was already visually obsolete by the time it launched, and that was the least of its worries. Yet this fizzled MMO-slash-chat room had some pretty solid music backing it up. I've always been partial to the Sims series when it comes to OSTs because sometimes I just want to relax to happy, effervescent tunes. Series composer Jerry Martin produced the score to TSO in the same vein as his other projects, and it's still a delight to hear. Unfortunately, the only way you can get a copy of the soundtrack today is to find a seller who's got an otherwise-useless copy of The Sims Online: Charter Edition lying around. Otherwise, it might just be easier to forge on in this column and get a taste of the Sims soundscape!
Jukebox Heroes: Final Fantasy XI's soundtrack
Hey you! Want a good way to die a horrible, painful death? Enter into any geek domain and put down the music of the Final Fantasy series. Do it. I double-dog dare you. Even scrubs who couldn't identify a single other composer or notable video game soundtrack will leap to the defense of One-Winged Angel. While I generally do like the Final Fantasy tunes, especially the earlier 8-bit era stuff and Final Fantasy IX, I haven't seen it as an infallible series in regard to its music. I think along the way Nobuo Uematsu's become this person who can Do No Wrong in the gaming community, which has stifled an honest look at both the highs and lows of his soundtracks. I don't want to be all about hero worship or mindless bashing today; I want to examine a fairly good but not perfect soundtrack that represented Final Fantasy's first foray into MMOs. Along with Uematsu, Naoshi Mizuta and Kumi Tanioka shared composing duties on this project. There's some terrific stuff here that you'll listen to after the jump, but there are a lot more completely forgettable (and sometimes annoying!) tracks that have been shoehorned into FFXI's expansive game. So let's come down to earth and see what Final Fantasy XI has in store for us.
Jukebox Heroes: The Matrix Online's soundtrack
It's been almost three-and-a-half years since players were forced to unplug from The Matrix Online for the last time, but the memories and music remain. When I first was wowed by The Matrix back in 1999, the dark, action-packed score became an instant favorite of mine. It's a franchise in which the sound is critical to the feel of the films, and it makes sense that this would extend to the MMO. The makers of MxO went to great lengths to retain the look, story, and audio of the films, which is why the trilogy's composer, Don Davis, was called in to create the music for the game. While the films are more dependent on an orchestra for the score, Davis went with a heavy synth sound for the MMO. It's still quite Matrix-y, however, and pretty dang cool to discover (or discover all over again). Let's boot up this ancient laptop that I found and see if we can coax a few tunes out of it before Windows 98 shuts down on us for good.
Music on the frontier: An interview with WildStar composer Jeff Kurtenacker
A great soundtrack has the ability to raise the mundane to memorable and the wonderful to epic. It's hard to imagine films like Star Wars or Back to the Future without their iconic scores or video games like Super Mario Bros. and Final Fantasy without their catchy tunes. So I'm always keen to hear the soundtracks of up-and-coming MMOs because they give me an indication of how much care is being given to the overall quality of the project. I'm doubly excited for WildStar's score because it's being composed by Jeff Kurtenacker. Kurtenacker produced one of my all-time favorite MMO soundtracks, Pirates of the Burning Sea, which is a playful, exuberant romp through the nautical soundscape. And so far from what we've heard of WildStar's score, we can expect much of the same when we make planetfall on Nexus. On one drizzly afternoon in a country that you've never heard of, Kurtenacker met with us in a small pub to talk about the joys of creating the music that will soon be infecting the brains of thousands (millions?) of gamers worldwide. Read on, space-man or space-woman, and be astounded!
Jukebox Heroes: Soul of the Ultimate Nation's soundtrack
Yes, you're seeing the header graphic correctly; Howard Shore is the powerhouse behind Soul of the Ultimate Nation's soundtrack. Yes, it's that Howard Shore -- The Lord of the Rings guy (not to mention all of his dozens of other film score projects dating back to 1979). How this smallish MMO was able to attract the likes of Mr. Shore I have no idea, but we're faced with the reality that the game did and this exists. Other than doing a little double-take when I first found this out, I'm really cool with it. I love it when well-known movie composers dip into video games, such as when Harry Gregson-Williams branched out to do several of the Metal Gear Solid titles. Shore's works are really distinctive and give SUN a sound that's far more "professional" than many of the game's contemporaries. That said, it's not the best score I've ever heard. It's quite noisy and pulls a little too much from the LotR films. Sometimes composers crib their own works (Harry Potter's music is John William's shameless ripoff of his own Home Alone soundtrack), and that's just how it goes. Let's take a look at an MMO scored by a Hollywood bigshot, shall we?
