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The Daily Grind: The soundtrack to your virtual life

by Lesley Smith on May 26th 2009 8:00AM

I can't work without background noise and one of the great things about working from home is that I get to decide what that is. I devour boxsets and films and have endless playlists on iTunes. Recently though I've started listening to music while I play MMOs. You'd think the in-game soundtrack would suffice but I find if I'm doing something like grinding I need specific tracks. I've started listening to music while raiding which is often difficult as I'm also on voice chat talking tactics at the same time. However the music does help, especially when it comes to timed or phase encounters.

I'm curious, readers, do you have playlists for raids? What about grinding? Do you find music helps you get through the more boring bits of your game of choice? On the other hand, do you think in-game music is perfect? Do you find yourself listening to other game soundtracks?

Tags: background-noise, music, soundtrack, soundtracks, the-daily-grind

Reader Comments (22)

i usually like to hit up some metal or hard rock when playing eve....the space techno doesnt cut it.

Meh I usually just listen to BBC Radio One on my XM radio.

Good to see I am not the only one originating the online tunes.

I do have a battle play list.

http://www.adric.us/2009/05/26/i-got-a-massive-one/

Whenever I'm crafting, it's always The Cure.

Raids usually consist of VNV Nation, Apoptygma Berzerk and the like.

Grinding is usually just random on ITunes, but most of it seems to have lately fallen into just random on Dr. Steel

When I play in the pvp battlegrounds in WOW I like to listen to some music. I have one playlist that's the best (in my opinion) of the songs from the old Tony Hawk 3 and the newer SSX 2 and 3. All of which work great for pvp bgs.

When I used to grind for 4-8 hours at a time in eq2 I would watch tv shows. I went through most of the Sopranos that way, deadwood, alias and others.

i usually listen to all the mmo podcasts while i'm playing.

Wait... Are you saying there are people who listen to anything other then Dethklok?

Nah, couldn't be...

Offhand the only games I can think of where I didn't mute the in-game music fairly quickly are Parasite Eve I & II. Otherwise, I wish every game had something like the Epic Music Player mod for WoW. Thought it was great when I saw Eve's Jukebox, until I found out you couldn't add your own tracks -- much lameness. Fortunately Fubar (iTunes? Seriously? I've seen viruses that were less intrusive and did less damage to your system performance) hotkeyed to the keyboard's multimedia keys suffices.

I have my own music playing in the background for pretty much any game, the only notable exception being music-based games like Rock Band. I don't make specific playlists or anything though, I just play a random mix of my 3000 or so top-rated songs (with modifiers to not play songs that were played in the last week or so). I don't play music when I'm raiding and need to hear people talking (or need to talk myself) but other than that it's always playing.

I used to play iTunes in the background, but when I had the opportunity to pick up a new iPod speaker dock for cheap, I switched to that. It certainly helps free up resources on the computer.

i scrobble all my listening si you can just have a look

http://www.last.fm/user/hexdsl

Oh yeah
When I play MMOs often hear to a playlist full of Metal, Power Metal, Deep-House,Techno, Maximalist.. Usually with bands like Celesty,Mudvayne, Slipknot, Metallica and InFlames and the techno part a lot of Deadmau5, Boys Noise, Daft Punk and Prodigy..

I really like my playlist since it varies from metal to some celtic weirdly-well-suited-for-mmos and some technos just to relax from all the metal and so on..

I've been updating this playlist for years, its already a little big, perhaps too big..

Oh yeah, and I usually do shuffle lol..

Cheers

Oops, sorry for the clone comment, this thing just.. lagged and I pressed the "Add Comment" twice, sorry mates..

Cheers

Led Zeppelin for GW or WAR, Radiohead or Jimi for EVE

Soad for PvP, or anything with a good beat/rock sound, even rap, especially Busta Rhymes!

Whoever wrote this article and took that screenshot, has terrible taste in music.

My soundtrack tends to be Boston/Queen/Journey/ELP/Van Halen. And during something epic like a raid, it switches to John Williams.

As the byline would suggest, that would be me.

The point is, you might think it terrible, but it's MY taste in music and I like it. I'm quirkly and so is my playlists :D

Whoa whoa, you're listening to Journey and Boston, and you think a playlist that contains Peter Gabriel and Depeche Mode is terrible?

People in glass houses buddy, people in glass houses.

Nilburg, I think that your musical tastes and mine overlap quite a lot. I vastly prefer 60's/70's/80's guitar rock to most of Lesley's playlist (although I was pleased to see Danny Elfman and Mike & the Mechanics rempresented there).

The big difference between us is that I'm not such a jerk about it. Musical taste is so completely subjective that making a declarative statement like that just can't possibly be true. There's no such thing as a "terrible" taste in music, there's just someone who has different taste than yours. But this appears to be a hard lesson for most people on the Internet to learn. Why be reasonable when you can be mean?

Sesame Street, Nacho Libre, Blue's Clues... pretty much whatever my kids are watching whilst I try to sneak in a bit of EVE.

I tend to alternate. If I just want to wind down at the end of the night, I'll play with WoW's in-game music, though most of the time I've either got foobar2000 playing through my CD collection, or I'm watching something on the iPlayer (music off, WoW volume @ 20%)

For Runes of Magic however, I have the music permanently off. It bugs the crap out of me that the incidental music doesn't loop nicely, so I'd rather have my own music playing.

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The Daily Grind: The soundtrack to your virtual life

Reader Comments (22)

Posted: May 26th 2009 8:17AM (Unverified) said

Posted: May 26th 2009 8:31AM Halldorr said

Posted: May 26th 2009 8:48AM (Unverified) said

Posted: May 26th 2009 9:17AM (Unverified) said

Posted: May 26th 2009 9:53AM (Unverified) said

Posted: May 26th 2009 9:58AM AlamoeJones said

Posted: May 26th 2009 10:14AM Myria said

Posted: May 26th 2009 10:20AM Oneiromancer said

Posted: May 26th 2009 10:50AM (Unverified) said

Posted: May 26th 2009 10:56AM (Unverified) said

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Posted: May 26th 2009 11:00AM (Unverified) said

Posted: May 26th 2009 11:45AM wampa stompa said

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Posted: May 26th 2009 1:41PM (Unverified) said

Posted: May 26th 2009 4:53PM Oneiromancer said

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