I find your ideas fascinating, and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter!

No really - I do. Reading this made me think back (to my long loved and lost days of console gaming) I *NEVER* turned off the sound on a console game. Ever. Not once. As a matter of fact I own most of that music in some way shape or form today. As you said, those scores bring back fond memories and simply hearing one chord or another (regardless of duration) can make me immediately recall something about a place or another in a beloved game*. Hearing a few measures of a score almost always has me launching into some tale or another that the music is relevant to (whether or not my listener wants all the details )

In MMO's however, I find I *almost always* turn the music OFF - without fail. There have been TWO times that I have not - AO and EQ2. AO because without the music I found the whole world just lost something. With EQ2 it was humor factor (as you pointed out) - the epic soundtrack while killing a bee was a RIOT

I think a game that puts together the suggestions you came up with as well as gave the composer contact with both the artists and lore devs of the world would be absolutely entrancing. The lore and art devs can share their vision with the composer as well as provide the composer with an eager first audience. Sure, it would be challenging to work in such an environment (all the artistic temperaments ) but a truly professional and dedicated team could make magic.

I'd love to find an MMO that would do the same thing that many of my old console games made me want to do - Go out and BUY THE SOUNDTRACK


*depending on the length of the chord and the amount of time I've spent in a particular place in a game

~Naiya~