Tracy W. Bush

Tracy W. Bush is a video game composer, sound designer and voice actor who worked at Blizzard Entertainment on StarCraft, Diablo II, Warcraft III and the original World of Warcraft. He is one of the four credited composers of the 2004 World of Warcraft soundtrack, and he recorded the gurgling cry of the game's murlocs, the only World of Warcraft creature he voiced. He left Blizzard in 2007 to become an audio director at NCsoft.

Blizzard career

Bush's Blizzard credits run through the company's late-1990s and early-2000s games. Music databases and Warcraft Wiki credit him as a composer on StarCraft and its expansion Brood War, as a sound designer on Diablo II and its expansion Lord of Destruction, and as a composer and senior sound designer on Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos (2002) and The Frozen Throne (2003). He also did voice work for the Warcraft III and StarCraft games.

He is one of four composers on the Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos Soundtrack, released on July 3, 2002, with Derek Duke, Glenn Stafford and Jason Hayes. His pieces on that album are "Arrival at Kalimdor," "Awakening," "Doomhammer's Legacy," "Rise of the Ancients," "Temporary Alliances" and "The Calm." He was again one of the composers on the soundtrack for The Frozen Throne.

Work on World of Warcraft

On World of Warcraft, Bush worked as both a composer and a sound designer. The World of Warcraft Soundtrack, released on November 23, 2004, with the game's Collector's Edition, lists him as one of its composers alongside lead composer Jason Hayes, Derek Duke and Glenn Stafford. Two of its 30 tracks are his:

• "Darnassus," the theme for the night elf capital, Darnassus.
• "Tanaris," the music for the desert zone of Tanaris.

A 2007 Engadget overview of the game's music named Bush among the composers who wrote much of the original soundtrack.

The murloc sound

Bush's most widely heard contribution to the game is not music. According to Warcraft Wiki, the only World of Warcraft character he voiced was the murloc, so his recording is the cry players hear from murlocs everywhere, from the Murloc Forager packs along the lakes of Elwynn Forest onward.

For years a different story circulated. In 2024, Jason T. Hall, a former Blizzard employee better known as the streamer behind Pirate Software, said on stream that Blizzard staffer Bob Fitch had made the sound by gargling yogurt. Hall later explained that "Bob did it" had been an in-house Blizzard joke for anything whose author was unknown. The German site Mein-MMO reported in June 2024 that Bush, who had in fact recorded the sound, contacted Hall to ask why someone else was getting the credit. Exactly how Bush produced the noise has not been documented.

Later career

Bush left Blizzard in 2007 and joined NCsoft as an audio director. His credits there include Auto Assault, Dungeon Runners and Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa. A 2013 Engadget retrospective on the Tabula Rasa score credited him with much of the game's music, with additional contributions from several other musicians.

Sources

• Tracy W. Bush, Warcraft Wiki
• Tracy W. Bush, Wowpedia
• Tracy W. Bush biography, Last.fm
• World of Warcraft Soundtrack, Warcraft Wiki
• Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos Soundtrack, Warcraft Wiki
• Who made Warcraft's soundtrack?, Engadget (2007)
• Jukebox Heroes: Tabula Rasa's soundtrack, Engadget (2013)
• WoW: Nach vielen falschen Infos wissen wir endlich, woher der Murloc-Sound wirklich kommt, Mein-MMO (2024)