Old spells sounds ?

[Sariath-emerald-dream (Sariath)]

Heya all,

First and foremost my apologies if this has already been asked, which I suspect it probably has, but the forums aren’t my usual roaming ground.

So I’m looking for a way to bring back old spell sounds since Blizzard doesn’t seem eager to give us a toggle to do so. Though I gave up on old animation spells a long time ago - I had to learn to cope with the most disgusting and terribly cartoonish Rot and Decay on my DK - I just can’t stand the sounds of many spells and today, while watching a video of an old tbc stream, I got triggered on it again and remembered how powerful and menacing the sound of the old chain lightning was.

Blizzard, if you’re reading this : yes, spell sounds do impact on fun and class enjoyment, probably more than you think. 'Tis good for your money bro !

If I can more or less live with wild growth’s new paper sound, I have it hardest to deal with solar wrath’s bubble one. Until today I fail to understand how anyone working at the dev team thought that garbage sound could be nice for our main ability as balance. And I’m not even talking about the animation.

So instead of waiting for Blizzard to grow up, admit their mistake and possibly (but unlikely) bring back the old spells’ sounds/animations for whoever want to use them, I decided to figure my own way out of this in the meantime… if I can, that is.
Anyone knowing of a good and not bannable way to do so is more than welcome to share it in here with us, and will in return be rewarded with my eternal gratitude.

Many thanks.

[Gráinne-earthen-ring]

I know the general, non-bannable, method.

You will have to do some work to collect the old sound files though.

See
https://www.curseforge.com/wow/addons/mute-wow-sounds

This is not a normal addon. It contains empty sound files, that make no sound.

When you place a correctly named sound file into a correctly named folder, WoW plays that sound instead of the game sound. This is not an exploit, and not bannable. It doesn’t change any game files, and the devs deliberately write in code to pick up your sound instead of their own, if you have a file in the specified position.

Every sound in the game has a separate file name and directory name. Your job is to figure out what those are, find a copy of the original sound you want to hear, and put it there.

The comments section of the curseforge page is very helpful reading.

Going back to the old forums in 2012 I posted this:

Quoting myself from the thread http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/3144505891

My understanding is this:

Blizzard makes a WAV or MP3 or OGG file for EVERY sound in the game, and designates a directory and filename for that sound, like

World of Warcraft\Data\Sound\YaddaYadda\ThisSound\CreakingBranch.wav

Then they wrap all of those up in a single file called an MPQ file. Like a zip file, it contains many files with their names and directories specified.

When the game wants the creaking branch sound, it looks for the file

World of Warcraft\Data\Sound\YaddaYadda\ThisSound\CreakingBranch.wav

If that exists, it plays it; otherwise it goes to the MPQ file, extracts the data from that file, and uses that.

By default, the game comes with only the MPQ files, but if you can find the name of the sound in the MPQ file, and then create your own sound file and put it in

World of Warcraft\Data\Sound\YaddaYadda\ThisSound\CreakingBranch.wav

then your sound will play instead.

… which is a long-winded way of saying yes as the answer to your question but you have to find the name and path of the file whose sound you want to replace.

Since I wrote that, there has been a change: all files now use the .ogg extension instead of .wav, so I had to rename my .wav to .ogg, but having done that, the sound suppression on the Water Elemental still works.

The full list of sounds it can mute is at http://www.wowpedia.org/User:Kiingy/Muted_Sounds

[Sariath-emerald-dream (Sariath)]

I mean, you’re a ne, I’m a ne, you’re a female, I’m a male, plus we seem to understand each other. What could go wrong between us ?

Hurry up and be my wife already.

[Waldelmar-aggramar]

FBI OPEN UP!

(shes only lvl 15, dude)

[Sariath-emerald-dream (Sariath)]

How do you know ?
I could be 15 too.

[Voodoodle-doomhammer]

You’re 120 lvls old.

[Archronos-silvermoon (Archronos)]

FBI OPEN UP!

It makes it funnier that this comes from a paladin and specifically one from the Scarlet Crusade.