World of Warcraft releases amazing set of lo-fi beats to relax/study to

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Because even heroes need some good songs to play while they chill.

"Lofi hip hop radio - beats to relax/study to" is a livestreaming music phenomenon. Over 40,000 people are listening to the YouTube version of it right now, and it's easy to see why: It's the quintessential background music—a perfect cocktail of melancholic melodies layered over meandering beats with a sprinkle of vintage crackle. And now you can have all of that but World of Warcraft-flavored.

Today Blizzard released an official lo-fi remix of four of the new songs coming in Shadowlands. Each one was created by a different artist well known in the lo-fi hip hop scene, especially if you frequent the 24/7 livestream linked above. But no lo-fi hip hop song would be complete without an anime girl studying or relaxing, so a bunch of Blizzard artists whipped up bespoke art for each of the four songs—one for each of the four new zones coming in the Shadowlands expansion that launches on Monday.

While I'm sad that these songs aren't packaged into a livestream I can leave running for hours on end, the individual tracks are fantastic. I've spent just enough time with Shadowlands' beta to recognize the songs, but it's cool hearing WoW's signature orchestral arrangements broken down like this.

You can find all four videos on World of Warcraft's official YouTube channel, but we've embedded them below too. World of Warcraft Shadowlands launches on November 23.

Steven Messner
Steven Messner

With over 7 years of experience with in-depth feature reporting, Steven's mission is to chronicle the fascinating ways that games intersect our lives. Whether it's colossal in-game wars in an MMO, or long-haul truckers who turn to games to protect them from the loneliness of the open road, Steven tries to unearth PC gaming's greatest untold stories. His love of PC gaming started extremely early. Without money to spend, he spent an entire day watching the progress bar on a 25mb download of the Heroes of Might and Magic 2 demo that he then played for at least a hundred hours. It was a good demo.