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BlizzCon 2018 Immersive Sounds of Azeroth Panel

posted 2018/11/03 at 12:00 PM by Serrinn

BlizzCon 2018 Contest

Every comment you leave on any BlizzCon 2018 post is entering you to win prizes like a Big Blizzard Bear. As long as you don't spam, each comment only increases your chances to win by giving you another entry. Read more here--we have several awesome prizes to give out all week.Wowhead's DiscordNews WebhookAbout the Panel

Jay Maguire of the Warcraft Sound team is presenting on the immersiveness of the music in WoW.

Glenn Stafford, Principle composer/Founder of Blizzard Audio department

Michael Hill, Sound Designer

Dave Rovin, Sound Supervisor for BFA

David Arkenstone and his Tavern Band playing music from Boralus.

Sounds as a Narrative Device

Sounds support storytelling, including voice acting and music.

Music can provide emotional guideposts to indicate how you should be feeling.

Sound design can bring you in to an environment, filling in the gaps.

Sound Approach to BFA

3 Sound design pillars:

Make you, the player, feel awesome/as powerful as possible. One way to do this is your personal sounds are louder than anything else.

Help the player play the game: give you audio clues in the world so you know what's going on.

Immersive Audio: Setting the stage for what you will encounter in an area. At it's core, immersion is about emotional engagement.

Volume changes for the things just out of your field of view, but a louder focus in front of you.

Tools and Techniques: Building Drustvar (Michael Hilll)

Classic horror zone - sound design can be very exciting in the horror genre.

Ambiance - using 2004 Elwynn as an example

Avoid sounds that create a noticeable loop - minimize disc space through sharing.

The loop is very important - sound design works hard to avoid making a pattern noticeable in Ambiance.

In Ambiance today, WoW sound design uses "flavour kits" - a simplified base layer but also variation through one -shot randomization. Content specific sounds, more personality, and randomization of where the sound is coming from.

Sounds rooted in the environment as much as possible

The positional sounds are baked into the environment i.e. as you approach a waterfall it gets louder.

Sounds used as punctuation to remind you you're in a real space.

In Drustvar, the effigies hanging from trees emanate a weird noise - it's so subtle but it builds the sound of the zone.

Next step after environment is the creature noise - i.e. Witches in Drustvar with idle/agro noises.

Over the top, cartoony threatening witch noises!

Differentiating between Drust magic and Player spells - sound is included in this. New magic school is a good reason to make a new sound!

Differentiating gameplay mechanics with sound - sound reinforces differences in gameplay and environment.

As you get deeper into Drustvar, the flavour kits change a bit, making things spookier as gameplay gets more dangerous.

Sound foreshadowing has payoff later in the zone.

Creative Process: Building Drustvar (Glenn Stafford)

Music has a similar role to sound design - sometimes it's setting an ambient tone, or setting an emotion.

Walking around Drustvar seeing the artwork was inspiring.

Was tempting to start straight into the Horror music but we needed to start lighter to have somewhere dark to go in the zone with the music.

Abby Lewis as an inspirational starting point - a sense of history or twisted fairytale, more mystery than darker scares. Good starting point to get progressively darker in the zone.

Abby Lewis theme gives you the idea of "something's not quite right here..."

Next up was the area of Fallhaven, needed to build tension.

Darker as you start to encounter bad things

Drawing on orchestral techniques to sell tension.

Next area of inspiration was Glenbrook Wood

Introduced a melody here that gets quoted later in the zone - a strong melody that is introduced early, and reinforced throughout the zone, specifically at Waycrest.

Waycrest Manor - the scarier version of that melody is repeated here.

The melody is more muted here, and now it's instead on a pipe organ.

The organ music levels indicate it is coming from the mansion, and it is much louder inside the Manor.

Waycrest Manor is the most advanced sound work they've done for any dungeon thus far in WoW.

As you know, in Waycrest there is a musical boss fight. This became a kick off point to introduce themes and musical ideas in a zone that lead to a dungeon musically.

The organ became a character itself.

Originally the organ was emanating spells towards pillars, via chords.

It ended up the spells just come from the organ and Lady Waycrest is just playing the organ.

The organ pipes stick out of the various walls of the Manor.

Diagetic audio - sounds actually happening in the world i.e. responses to player actions

Non-Diagetic audio - the background music. Waycrest really let us play with this.

You'll notice this in the upper layers of the manor, emitters from the wall play the sound. If you kill a witch summoned by the emitter, you can hear Lady Waycrest slam her hands on the piano in anger.

The challenge with this was how to make the noises happen in small areas - generally they don't pay attention to walls, so they had to manage turning the sound emitters on and off in a new way.

When you get down to Lady Waycrest boss fight, it's a dynamic boss encounter. Music changes by phase, organ based spells, and it's a final visit to the musical themes of the zone.

Positional sounds coming from the pipe organ instead of the boss you are fighting (Lord Waycrest).

When she jumps over she's no longer playing the organ so the music had to become Non-Diagetic since she's no longer producing the music.

There may still be a musical secret in Waycrest Manor...

New Sound Systems

Coming soon! More immersive sound design for when you are on your mount or using a flight path.

Gallery

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Comment by NethrumSome people just comment for the Big Blizzard Bear. Others comment for the same reason.Comment by Quidi24Everyone wants to win the bear. Poor sound panel.Comment by GrazileI play with sound off most of the timeComment by Aralndawonder how they feel about the old god whispers that are under ambieance and barely heard. Wonder how they want peple to translate the old welsh with new welsh to understand what they are saying, what made them have both of those languages instead of one.Comment by superspazumI've always been super impressed with WoW sounds and their music.Comment by MumotoThe soundtracks of zones in pretty much every expansion has been top notch.Comment by MonastatoI have to play with sound on. I want to be able to hear stealthed players and I base some of my playing on hearing the sounds of certain abilities.Comment by BubaluuWow sounds muted last few years :DComment by KakaMilka<insert bear comment here>Comment by WaterbuffelI still feel like they hit the spot for the music with THE MOTHERLODE!, where the area's between bosses felt more calm and the music pumps up for the bosses. I also loved this use for Argus, where the music was amazing during the fight. I've wanted such dynamic music for a long time, yet it feels like they only made use of it once and went back to their incredibly lazy ways again of using the same music for full raids/dungeons. It still feels incredibly boring to fight G'huun while very calm and normal music is playing in the background. It did absolutely not feel like you're fighting an incredibly dangerous creature which all Horde zones on Zandalar were focused on.

I do love the approaches in theory named in the article, but it still feels that in practice they really fail hard on creating an memorable experience by music. And music can definitely make or break a moment.Comment by conmanWI never noticed the effigies made noises. Neat.Comment by UberpommesAYAYAComment by oluuko123No matter if an expansion is bad or not, the sound and music has always been top notch.Comment by madnimancan I get my bear now? please? panels are now making no sense to me.Comment by PuffexUnmuted background music since legion, and I gotta say, its a better experience for the game, you shoul try it out too!Comment by BernySinarai love Stormsong music :) just be realistic ofc we all comment for bear :D we want opportunity :DComment by GwiezI love the music in BfA (it's even better than the WoD music), but there are some spots where the music change is very abrupt, and some of those spots are in areas players pass through a lot. (eg: In Boralus harbor, especially going in and out of the main inn). That abruptness ruins the immersion and makes it more likely players will turn off the music.Comment by HowlingHawkI play with the music low/medium and turn the ambience all the way up. The game has really nice ambient sounds, love it...

(...when I first go through a zone/quests, atleast. Afterwards, I usually have the sound down and play netflix/youtube in the background. lol)Comment by heroi20Sound is very important. With sound I could hear my big blizzard bear :)Comment by wampa97It's interesting to hear them talk about this, how in depth the design is, how much effort goes into it. I've always enjoyed the atmosphere the sound creates in the game, but I also usually play with sound and music off so that I can play more efficiently, or so I can watch videos while I play. This panel kind of makes me want to turn the sounds back on just to pay more attention to these people's work.

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BlizzCon 2018 Immersive Sounds of Azeroth Panel

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