Burning Crusade Soundtrack Reimagined

What is this?

This is an alternate OST that replaces most pieces of the Burning Crusade soundtrack of the open world zones. It is an attempt to replace Burning Crusade's hard-to-listen-to otherworldly score with a more musical experience, while still keeping true to the alien feel of the world. All replacement tracks are original WoW pieces! See below for details of the music choices.

Check out a video comparing the soundtracks here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VenPmhUoIiI


Important installation instructions

Since this is a drop-in replacement for the Blizzard Sound files, you have to extract the contents of BOTH of the zip files right into your WoW "_classic_" or "_retail_" folder, and not in the Addons folder! If you've done this correctly, a "Sound" folder will appear on the same level of your "Interface" folder.

I had to split the zip files because of WoWInterface's 100MB upload limit. Make sure you download and install both the main file as well as the 2nd zip file found in the "Other files" tab!

This is 100% compliant with the WoW ToS and in no way changes any game files.


Why replace the Burning Crusade soundtrack in the first place?

Burning Crusade's soundtrack is in itself an amazing piece of art. The score perfectly conveys the feeling of being stranded on an alien, broken world. However, it is not very easy on the ears, especially when listening to it for hours while questing. Its drawn-out background noises and often blaring discordant harmonics keep you on the edge of your seat, but don't provide for a comfortable listening experience. I love the WoW soundtrack across all expansions, but Burning Crusade vanilla was the only expansion where I found myself turning the in-game music off.

That is why for the Burning Crusade classic, I compiled different tracks from different parts and expansions of WoW that go well together and have enough of an outlandish feeling to become my "new" soundtrack for Burning Crusade. If you never listen to the in-game music anyways, or are deeply in love with the original Burning Crusade OST, you may safely forget this exists.


What music is the Burning Crusade Soundtrack Reimagined composed of?

I used only official music tracks from WoW expansions. My aim was to preserve the overall theme of Outland and the individual feeling and pace of the zones. I've tried my best to arrange the music so thata it still feels "right" for where you are in the world.

In big parts I used tracks from Burning Crusade itself that are less often heard, such as those of the Azuremyst/Bloodmyst isle and the Exodar. Some smaller parts are from the Draenor-timeline zones of Warlords of Draenor and from low-level Cataclysm zones.

I only replaced music for open-world zones of the main Outland continent. I did not touch Shattrah or any raid zones.

Zone music that was replaced:
- All of Hellfire Peninsula
- All of Terokkar Forest
- Parts of Zangamarsh
- All of Nagrand
- All of Blade's Edge Mountains
- All of Shadowmoon Valley
- Most of Netherstorm
- Most, but not all of the little intense "intro" pieces Burning Crusade features when entering an themed area for the first time in a play session.


How was this created?

I used https://wow.tools/files/ to browse and find replacements for the music tracks and hand-picked each replacement track for each of the BC tracks.