Gaviin

*** UPDATED for WRATH OF THE LICH KING *** I actually like the Lich King music, but if anyone wants to get the original theme back, here it is:

If you're like me, ever since Burning Crusade hit, you don't really like the music that plays at the login and character selection screens. You miss the old theme that you grew very accustomed to back in the dark days of Thunderhorn when you'd spend many many hours a week stuck on that damn screen waiting for the server to come back to life.

Well, good news: you can get that music back! Just follow these simple steps:

1. Download Ladik's MPQ Editor.
2. When you run it and it asks you to confirm the settings, just hit Ok.
3. Within the MPQ editor, open the MPQ file "common-2.mpq" in your World of Warcraft\Data folder. You used to open common.mpq, but the sound files seem to be kept in common-2 as of Lich King.
4. Consider checking the option to open in read-only mode, just to be safe.
5. Navigate to Sound\Music\GlueScreenMusic within common.mpq.
6. Extract the file "wow_main_theme.mp3" to your World of Warcraft\Data folder. This should create the Sound\Music\GlueScreenMusic folder structure within the Data folder (this is what you want).
7. Rename "wow_main_theme.mp3" to "WotLK_main_title.mp3".
8. Enjoy.

Note that this does not actually edit your MPQ file, so if you ever want to revert back to the crappy BC music, just go to your World of Warcraft\Data folder and delete the Sound folder in there.

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Ninja

Gaviin

Just as an addendum to this...

If you want to play a particular game sound or piece of music, you can search for the file using the MPQ Editor (linked above), take note of the file's location in the directory tree, then create the following macro:

So for example, if you want to listen to the [awesome] Lich King login screen music in game, you'd create the following macro:

Make sure you uncheck the "Music" option in your Sound & Voice settings (and your sound effects too, if you want); that way you can hear the macro'd music more clearly. I haven't figured out a way to stop a particular song from playing all the way through once you start it.

Also, there should be four files in your Data folder: common.mpq, common-2.mpq, expansion.mpq, and patch.mpq. Some music may be in other mpq files. For example, the BT music is in expansion.mpq.

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Ninja

Gaviin

In case you've never been into BT (or even if you have been), this is a nice little taste of the music in there. Great stuff. One of the reasons I really enjoyed going back there every week.

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Ninja

ScratchMonkey

How do I make it so I don't have to listen to the login music, but I can listen to everything else? I tend to start up WoW on one machine, then KVM to my email/forum machine to browse. When I get to the end of a thread, I go back to the now-loaded WoW to log in and pick a toon. Then I go read another thread or two, and when the city music plays, I switch back to WoW.

But I've heard the login music (and dragon subwoofer shake) for so long now that I hate it. All I need to hear is something that quietly lets me know the game is done loading.

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Gaviin

The only thing I can think of is to put an empty mp3 in there in step 7. Because if you want to be able to hear the game music, then you're forced to listen to the login screen music, so the only way would be to make it play a blank mp3 at that point. Maybe there's a fancier way, but that's all I can come up with off the top of my head.

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Ninja