Forever Ambient Music Extended (FAME)

For World of Warcraft: Forever. Not retail, not Classic Era.

Classic's zone music is beautiful and there is not very much of it. After a few hundred hours you know every bar of Elwynn Forest.

This addon widens the rotation without changing the rhythm. The game's own music schedule stays exactly as it is — the same silences between tracks, the same intros on arrival, its own tracks still in the mix — but some of those tracks now come from a pool of 425 more, each chosen to fit where you are standing: Classic pieces Forever doesn't use in those zones, the new Forever zone music, and selections from Cataclysm through Midnight.

No UI, no setup, nothing to click. It sounds like the default ambient music, with more variety.

What it sounds like

• Duskwood draws on Drustvar, Cinderwold, the Emerald Nightmare and Twilight's Shroud.
• Mulgore gets Highmountain, Ohn'ahran Plains and the Gustberry Lowlands.
• Stranglethorn Vale gets Zuldazar, Sholazar Basin and Zul'Aman.
• The Plaguelands get Lordaeron, Mourning's Rest and the Maw.
• Inns play their own race's tavern music: dwarven drinking songs in Thunderbrew Distillery, human ones in the Lion's Pride, sea shanties in Booty Bay's Salty Sailor.
• Pirate coves get the ocean music they deserve: "Ts Have It" from Warlords of Draenor plays in Booty Bay, Wild Shore, The Merchant Coast and Lost Rigger Cove, and nowhere else.
• Hillsbrad gets its own past: the Caverns of Time music for Old Hillsbrad, Tarren Mill and Durnholde Keep.
• Sholazar Basin's day and night variants only play at the right hour.

Nothing turns up out of place. Every track is tagged by biome, culture and mood, and every zone is an allow-list on all three axes — a track plays only if every tag it carries is welcome there. A night elf lament will not wander into Orgrimmar. Zones with nothing suitable stay quiet rather than reaching.

It keeps the game's rhythm

• The same silences. Between tracks it waits exactly as long as the game would in that place, read from the game's own data: three to five minutes in most zones.
• Loop Music is respected. Turn it on in Audio options and tracks play back to back, just as the game's would.
• 40% of tracks are still the game's own, and the first track when you arrive somewhere always is. Both are adjustable.
• Intros still play — Orgrimmar's fanfare, the Ironforge King theme — on the game's own cooldowns.
• Subzones and inns switch music where the game would: the Crossroads, Booty Bay, and inns in their own race's tavern music. An inn whose race isn't known is left to the game.
• Never the same track twice in a row, and tracks fade out rather than cutting off.
• Dungeons, raids and battlegrounds are left completely alone, and so are death, the spirit walk back, ship crossings on the open sea, and anywhere with music turned off. There the game's own music rules apply, untouched.

Ban what you don't like

Hear something you never want again? /fame ban stops it and bans it, whether it's the game's own track or an extended one. Banned tracks are left out before every decision, so the next pick is always something you allow. /fame banlist shows what you've banned and where; /fame unban <id> or /fame unban all brings tracks back.

Install

1. Drop the ForeverAmbientMusicExtended folder into World of Warcraft/_forever_/Interface/AddOns/
2. Restart the client. The client indexes addon files at launch, so a /reload is not enough.
3. Log in. There is nothing to configure.

Check it loaded with /fame status. Every command is under /fame.

Commands

/fame help lists these with their current settings, plus a few troubleshooting commands (where, pool, play, scan, debug).

Coverage

All 46 Classic zones and cities, plus every new Forever zone: Mount Hyjal, Riverglades, Shen'dralas, Darkspear Islands and Zephras Isle. Most zones have 20–60 eligible tracks; none has fewer than twelve.

By era: 89 Classic pieces Forever doesn't use in these zones, 220 from the Forever soundtrack itself, and 116 across Cataclysm, Mists, Warlords, Legion, Battle for Azeroth, Shadowlands, Dragonflight, The War Within and Midnight.

No Blizzard audio is bundled with or distributed by this addon. Every built-in track is a file your Forever client already has — the list was generated from the client's own file manifest, so there is nothing to download and nothing to go missing.

Plays well with Spoken Quests

FAME fades tracks by moving the music slider, and so does Spoken Quests when it turns music down for a line. FAME gives way: while Spoken is ducking it doesn't touch the slider, and if anything else moves it mid-fade, FAME stops and leaves it alone. Your music volume always ends up where you set it.

Notes

• Some Forever builds write saved settings but don't load them back, so a setting changed with /fame chance, or a ban, may not survive a logout. The defaults are what the addon is tuned for, so this rarely matters.
• Inns are recognised by their English names, so on other client languages they fall back to the game's own music. Everything else works in any language.
• Tuned for interface 16001. If a patch moves it, the .toc needs one line changed.

Found something that sounds wrong?

Please report it. "Track X felt wrong in zone Y" is the single most useful bug report this addon can get, and it's usually a one-line fix. /fame status shows the track's name and ID. Open an issue on GitHub, where the source, zone pools and track tags are all public.