Massively^™

Last week Tuebit from the WorldIV blog broke out a great post all about the music from MMOs. The aural background in virtual spaces something we often take very much for granted. Many players turn the music from MMOs off completely soon after entering the game. This blogger takes exception to that, and Tuebit's celebration of the art form is a great tribute to the work. He offers up a number of download and listening links for this music. No illegal torrents here, nothing but legal players and ftp sites. The author follows that post up with one exploring the role of music in MMOs, from the audio cues in LOTRO to the detrimental effect of voice chat on music enjoyment.

If you're interested in a few free soundtracks, some of the most surprising examples are available in that vein. City of Heroes' entire musical score is available via ftp, for example, while the late Auto Assault has its entire soundtrack still on Fileplanet. EVE's soundtrack is online as well, and if you have EQ2 installed you already have the mp3s right there on your system. Non-players can also download it from these here internets. As commentary on the whole situation, Angus has a great angle on the subject: "I can totally see how the music for a place could make it popular or unpopular, in a game that had really good music in other places (so that the players didn't just turn it off)."