Russell Brower Leaving Blizzard

[Ianus]

metzen and wei wang left and this guy leaving is fucking gg.. wtf

[leviathonlx]

Don't forget Kosak. As bad as he was, he quietly left the team with no explanation.

He explained it perfectly well. He took a job on the Hearthstone team as it was a promotion over his last job.

[kenthovind]

He said on twitter that it was not his choice. No idea what that initiative thing is but sucks that he's gone, the music was one of the only good parts of WoD and never disappointed, hopefully it stays that way.

I think some other guy made the stormwind theme, login theme, and blackrockmountain and molten core music, that guy is the real genius. Russel Brower also did some insanely well made tracks, as in 10/10. But lately the music in WoW has really not been anywhere close to what classic offered.

[grexly75]

I strongly suspect that Blizzard will come to regret this. Brower has been the shaping force driving much of the music coming out of Blizzard for a very long time now.

He'll be fine. It won't be long before you see his name popping up as music composer for major movies.

Blizzard? Hard to say. They have a very talented team but Brower was more or less the leader of that team. I think it's a mistake myself.

Will be interesting to see how it pans out, and whether the music to come in future patches and xpacs will have the same caliber when Brower was there.. Or whether it will suck monkey balls terrible now that Brower has moved on, only time will tell..

[leviathonlx]

I think some other guy made the stormwind theme, login theme, and blackrockmountain and molten core music, that guy is the real genius. Russel Brower also did some insanely well made tracks, as in 10/10. But lately the music in WoW has really not been anywhere close to what classic offered.

Vanilla music was Glenn Stafford (still at Blizzard), Derek Duke (still at Blizzard), and Matt Uelmen who left in 2005 (who Russell replaced).

[ls-]

Vanilla music was Glenn Stafford (still at Blizzard), Derek Duke (still at Blizzard), and Matt Uelmen who left in 2005 (who Russell replaced).

You forgot Jason Hayes

He's the dude behind SW, Orgri, CoT (few of them), Tirisfal, Elwynn, etc themes, but in this thread people think that everything was done by Mr. Brower who wasn't even working at Blizz at that time.

[leviathonlx]

You forgot Jason Hayes

Yea just remembered that. He's at Riot now after leaving earlier this year to be their Music Director. Funnily enough he did none of Legions music so I'm guessing he was on other games.

[ls-]

Yea just remembered that. He's at Riot now after leaving earlier this year to be their Music Director. Funnily enough he did none of Legions music so I'm guessing he was on other games.

Well, he's credited for some of Warcraft movie sountracks, so...

I wonder if he's hired again at some point, he's been kinda freelance composer since WotLK. He left before/during WotLK, during Cata he's working on Dota 2 OST, but he came back to work on MoP.

I guess now Russell will be doing the same thingy.

[leviathonlx]

Well, he's credited for some of Warcraft movie sountracks, so...

I wonder if he's hired again at some point, he's been kinda freelance composer since WotLK. He left before/during WotLK, during Cata he's working on Dota 2 OST, but he came back to work on MoP.

I guess now Russell will be doing the same thingy.

Yea a lot of them bounce around as it's probably better money.

[Pull My Finger]

I fully agree. The music in general has been rather bland and repetetive for some time. MoP had a lot of great and varied songs, but both cata, wod and legion suffers from repetetions and remixing of the same songs over and over. The music list each expansion offer gets shorter and shorter. This frustrates me as the music tends to be rather noisy and therefore tiresome to listen to, which is a bad thing for videogame music that you will be encountering a lot. Also the flow of the songs tends to be irratic, usually starting out noisily then going calm, or going up and down, not deciding on what kind of music it wants to be. And to be honest, I hate music that blast in your ears the moment you enter a zone. I rather have it start slow, then build up, like it did with most zone music between vanilla and wotlk. especially in tbc. It usually helps a lot against music fatigue.

Not really, but people will have opinions.

[therealbowser]

I'm genuinely upset about this. (Not angry, but sad to see him go.) While I was a fan of Metzen's past work, his moving on was less losing a great developer and more the story being given fresh life without him leading it. Could be good, could be bad, kind of situation.

With Russell Brower, it's just purely bad. Blizzard will struggle to find anything near as good of a composer, but none the less I do wish Russell Brower luck and I am curious where his path will lead from here.

[Eggroll]

This is sad news indeed. Wonder if there was some bad blood since he didn't even get to post his farewell on the forums

I'm actually not looking forward to where Blizzard takes WoW music wise. Legion hardly has any new music. This is actually my biggest issue with Legion.

And NO raid music whatsoever, same as WoD. Very different from MoP. MoP had really outstanding music, but it went downhill from there. Sure WoD had some good tracks, but was no match for previous xpacs.

I'm calling it: the time for high quality soundtracks in WoW is over. R.I.P music.

[MyndZero]

This is sad news indeed. Wonder if there was some bad blood since he didn't even get to post his farewell on the forums

I'm actually not looking forward to where Blizzard takes WoW music wise. Legion hardly has any new music. This is actually my biggest issue with Legion.

And NO raid music whatsoever, same as WoD. Very different from MoP. MoP had really outstanding music, but it went downhill from there. Sure WoD had some good tracks, but was no match for previous xpacs.

I'm calling it: the time for high quality soundtracks in WoW is over. R.I.P music.

What? Legion has amazing music

[Eggroll]

What? Legion has amazing music

Legion has some nice tracks. But it has no dedicated raid music. You hear the same stuff over and over. A lot of it is recomposed tracks from Vanilla to Cata. Music from Suramar is played all over the place, the same tune gets repeated all the time. ToS has music from Cata for example for the Naga bosses. Druid order hall and Val'sharah is all Vanilla Nelf starting zone music. The Ysera death cinematic music is Nightsong from back in Cata, too. Oh, not to forget you hear the Black Temple theme from back in BC all over the place every time a zone is under invasion.

It's just my opinion of course, but I am super disappointed in the Legion soundtrack. Major let down, deal breaker. I thought it was agreed that with every fresh xpac I would get fresh music, too. But they did not deliver, just changed the deal. Bad. Sad.

The only piece of music that is standing out is Canticle of Sacrifice, and even that is recomposed from Stormwind theme.

[Pull My Finger]

The only piece of music that is standing out is Canticle of Sacrifice, and even that is recomposed from Stormwind theme.

Can't say I agree. Legion has some incredible music. All Suramar and elven related pieces are magical, I just never grow tired of them. Anything Highmountain is very inspiring and uplifting. And "Shackled" from Broken Shore deserves a very special mention. It's an incredible piece of music. Ever since I first heard it in one of those preview trailers for the Broken Shore patch, I was totally captivated by it.

I still have to stop and listen to it every time I go there. So heavy with meaning and emotion. Seriosly moving. The different orchestrations of the piece they have are all great. The muted strings version the brassy one, then the one with the choirs ... so cool.

[Blobfish]

Nagrand's music in Outland is my Favorite.

It blends in so well with the spacey starry sky at night in Nagrand.
And also is so nice with the ambience in the day.

Nagrand has such a nice summery feel about it.
My favorite area for leveling in WOW. Even though its only a lvl 65 area

All the best Russell. Good luck.. Write some awesome Movie scores like John Williams.

[EbonBehelit]

Nagrand's music in Outland is my Favorite.

It blends in so well with the spacey starry sky at night in Nagrand.
And also is so nice with the ambience in the day.

Nagrand has such a nice summery feel about it.
My favorite area for leveling in WOW. Even though its only a lvl 65 area

All the best Russell. Good luck.. Write some awesome Movie scores like John Williams.

*snip Nagrand yt vid*

Nagrand's zone music was done by Matt Uelmen actually. The man did a huge amount of Outland's music, and left after TBC. Was a shame really, I'm quite the fan of his work.

[Blobfish]

Nagrand's zone music was done by Matt Uelmen actually. The man did a huge amount of Outland's music, and left after TBC. Was a shame really, I'm quite the fan of his work.

Thank you for clearing that up...
Well , Well done Matt Uelmen then.. The Nagrand piece is so beautiful

I wikied his name & you are correct:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Uelmen

From 2005 to 2007, Uelmen created some of the sound and music for Blizzard's popular MMORPG, World of Warcraft's expansion pack, World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade; his work represents the majority of the music in the new area of the game, Outland.[21] He is one of about ten composers who have contributed to World of Warcraft. After his departure from Blizzard, his work was used as the basis for some of the tracks in the Blizzard Entertainment and Eminence Symphony Orchestra collaboration, Echoes of War (2008).[22]

[leviathonlx]

This is sad news indeed. Wonder if there was some bad blood since he didn't even get to post his farewell on the forums

I'm actually not looking forward to where Blizzard takes WoW music wise. Legion hardly has any new music. This is actually my biggest issue with Legion.

And NO raid music whatsoever, same as WoD. Very different from MoP. MoP had really outstanding music, but it went downhill from there. Sure WoD had some good tracks, but was no match for previous xpacs.

I'm calling it: the time for high quality soundtracks in WoW is over. R.I.P music.

You do realize that Music Director Derek Duke is still at Blizzard right? Along with Glenn Stafford whose a Senior Composer and they've both been with Blizzard longer than Russell was. Then there's the 4 other composers they've been contracting for the past 10 years. People really need to get it through their heads that Russell wasn't anywhere near the only person doing music or even in charge of the music department. I'd even wager a fair number of songs you really like from WoW weren't composed by Russell or were collaborations.

[Eggroll]

You do realize that Music Director Derek Duke is still at Blizzard right? Along with Glenn Stafford whose a Senior Composer and they've both been with Blizzard longer than Russell was. Then there's the 4 other composers they've been contracting for the past 10 years. People really need to get it through their heads that Russell wasn't anywhere near the only person doing music or even in charge of the music department. I'd wager a fair number of songs you really like from WoW weren't composed by Russell.

I'm not saying he composed all of the music. I'm saying making this post redundant means nothing good for the future of music in WoW. Legion has already been an exceptionally weak xpac music wise, imo. It seems music will not play an important role as part of the game in the future. That's my sentiment anyways.