Music can be absolutely crucial in establishing mood, especially in fantasy games where you don't have the real world visual cues to fill in the ambiance for you. WoW is very good at establishing the mood of a zone and using certain musical moments to accentuate the proper feel, but once the initial theme fades out, they leave you with deep textured background noise. Birds, frogs, rivers, wind, all those auditory bites that make you feel like you're immersed in a full world, not just pixels.

WoW does a great job, and with this expansion really ramped up the quality of music, not that they were having any problems. Mulgore has always been peaceful, Stormwind always martial and heroic, Orgrimmar makes you want to bash things. I say huge congrats to Mr. Tin on his win. Here's to hoping that the Academy (and the general population) give video game music a chance.

Btw, hearing Baba Yetu/Civ IV played at Video Games Live was amazing with the full symphony and choir as well as the male vocalists who absolutely knocked it out of the park. See VGL if you get a chance. Bring that significant other who just doesn't get gaming, bring a parent who wishes you listened to classical music.

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