Classic How WoW's music has changed (for the worse)

Something odd has been happening over the last few years with respect to the music of wow. Since shadowlands, and perhaps most of BFA, there has been a definite, almost systematic shift in style of music composition and production.From classic to BFA, wow's music was heavily characterized by distinguishable and often elaborate melodic motifs, but as I will explain, this has given way to palette of sound almost entirely driven by meandering ambiance.Giving examples of wow's rich history of melodic motif is tough because there are just so many of them, and I will only be able to list a few to keep this post from being a true essay.Firstly, with respect to classic, I present the music of Elwynn forest https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MW4fASDkQXA&list=PLdSUTU0oamrzflitm5wLvphEMVbsZwt7L. This is perhaps an ironic example, because it's literally labelled 'Music and Ambience, but the funny thing is that even many of the dedicated ambient sections have more distinct melody than the more melodic sections of DF zone music that I've heard so far (the same goes for most music in shadowlands). In my opinion, a good rule of thumb for distinguishable melodic motif is memorability. Obviously, this is rather subjective, but I challenge anyone to find a section in the current DF zone music that they think will be memorable/easily identifiable (for the sake of the music alone) in years to come - I'm hoping to be proven wrong here.Next we have BC. This expansion was where the melodic motifs of wow really started to take off, with examples such as Eversong woods https://youtu.be/ZNstdF54ypo?t=249, temple of the moon https://youtu.be/soybwtI1edE?t=69 and Illidari https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4BiaLUchRw to name a few.The music of wrath needs hardly any explanation, as the melodies encountered in grizzly hills and storm peaks along with the themes surrounding Arthus dwarf most other video game music in general.In my opinion, the music of cataclysm as a whole wasn't that great, but it at least beautifully developed many of the themes associated with the Night Elves https://youtu.be/NxCrXqlfh0s?t=3949, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ir8iLuzoxQ0, https://youtu.be/QlkubFHKR8Q?t=1025.I view mists of Pandaria as a really strong point in the history of wow's music. It really managed to match theme with distinct melody, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2g-wBrU9keE, https://youtu.be/vsBwvVLeaFg?t=342. And of course, tavern music! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9l7Zm3Mo8QThough many of us would rather forget WoD, it's pretty hard to forget bangers such as https://youtu.be/B0IcI0OeW0U?t=261 and https://youtu.be/P8d2J_wCC7E?t=168\Although many view WotLK's music is the peak of all wow expansions, I actually think that position is held by Legion. There were so many beautiful and impactful themes in this expansion it's really hard to know where to begin. I think the ones which most stand out to me are the Holy Warrior's theme https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBAN_qjiMKs&t=1s, Anduin's theme and all its variations https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvWH1KKOsoY&t=54s and the Temple of the Moon theme rewritten for Suramar https://youtu.be/yghqYwW7EJ8?t=85.BFA was where things started to get a bit rough, but it still had some very memorable melodies. Particularly, some of the Kul'Tiran themes https://youtu.be/K3hjVijzrtM?t=2852, https://youtu.be/4Df-9_YchQE?t=545 and the reforged Zin Azshari themes https://youtu.be/9dA70ZZmIH4?t=6937.Then we get to Shadowlands and melody, for the most part, just stops. I think the closest we got was the the nightfae motif https://youtu.be/tJRwSNNQVps?t=879 (in my opinion really boring) and the quirky gothic Revendreth theme https://youtu.be/zkH-vxrB58w?t=3427. But other than that, the expansion was predominantly just ambient sound. This is perhaps most clear in Zereth Mortis, which as far as I can tell has literally no distinct melodic motif at all. I actually think the ambiance is used really well in this zone and it would be fine in and of itself, but unfortunately it seemed to represent the solidification of an overall change of style in wow's music.A major factor in this shift seems to be a heavy reduction in the use of choral music. Distinct melodic motifs defined by choral/string ensembles used to sort of be wow's musical signature, and it seems like these have mostly just vanished. While I've really been enjoying DF, nothing I've heard so far has assuaged this view of mine, though I really hope this changes.In general, in my opinion, recent music composition in wow is simply of a much lower quality, with seemingly less effort being put in to compose memorable themes. When the soundscape is dominated by ambience, music becomes more about good sound production and design and less about good musical composition. Let me know what you think and please tell me if there are examples of strong melody in DF that I might have missed or not yet heard. via /r/wow https://ift.tt/I7NfKpB