& The Tides of Darkness

So, yesterday was Monday. And for me that often means it's time to find a new music CD to stick in my car (I usually change the CD every week or two). The flavor of the week is Warcraft II. As I have at least 50 soundtracks to choose from, it takes a couple years for me to stick in the same CD twice; this is one of those times. Well, the same thing happened as the last time I put it in: I was awe-struck by how awesome the music is, and why it remains on my list of favorite soundtracks. It was composed by Glenn Stafford, who also did some music on Starcraft, Warcraft III, and Diablo II; however, the Warcraft II music remains his best work.

Here are a couple tracks ripped from the CD (although only 128 kbps MP3):
Human Track 3
Orc Track 2
The legendary Title Theme

Unfortunately, acquiring this music (legally) is rather difficult. The original Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness and Beyond the Dark Portal (the expansion, which contains 3 tracks the original does not) contain the music in beautiful CD audio (what I play in my car) quality; these DOS versions, however, are almost a decade old, and no longer for sale. Warcraft II: Battle.Net Edition (the updated Windows version), contains the music in butchered, 22 khz, lossy ADPCM (and low quality, at that), which would only be acceptable if you're not a big fan of music, and if there was absolutely no other choice.

In other news, my latest shipment of manga arrived today: Yotsuba &! 3, Trigun Maximum 3 and 4, Ai Yori Aoshi 9, the Madlax OST 1 (2 won't be out in the US till next month), Batman Begins OST, and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban OST (both of the last two are movies I've never seen or heard the music to, but they're by composers I like, and rated well).

Also, while I was writing this post up, this amusing exchange occurred in WoW (you'll have to click on the images to bring them to full size):