I’ve been listening to TavernCast, a World of Warcraft podcast, since around Halloween of last year. I’m a big fan of folks looking at stuff from a POV I’m not familiar with, and these folks really help me to understand what the average player things about the game. Being plugged into the mmoblogosphere means never having to wait for information about patch notes, nerfs, or the latest stupidity. These folks are more mature players who have a decidedly different outlook on the game. They’re not desperate infohounds, they play to have fun, and they do a damn good performance.

They very kindly allowed me to sit in with them for a discussion about MMOGs within a greater societal context. Spurred by the ‘WoW as Golf’ article, they wanted to talk about what World of Warcraft meant as a more social space. We did that, and more.

Some additional discussion of what we talked about, and the podcast in general, follows.

PS: They let me plug MMOG Nation on the show, so a big welcome to anyone who followed my mumbled link. Thanks for visiting!

Some general things about this particular podcast:

• Wow is it long. They usually run about an hour to an hour and a half, but because it was their 20th show they went waaay overboard on time. If you’re interested in listening to my piece of the show, I show up around an hour and a half into the program. I liked the episode, becuase I like the show in general, but if I had to pick a big thing they could do better it would be their length. Far far too long for a comfortable listen.
• Kirn, if you see this, please don’t take offense: This particular OOC drove me up absolutely up the wall. ‘My character didn’t wear shoes!” :/ I like RPers, they just … I dunno. To me, they’re MMOGs. The ‘RP’ part of these games has never been more than a wafer-thing coating on a hack-and-slash festival. I run weekly D&D sessions, that’s where I get my goofy RPness out.
• Conversely, I really like their ‘Lore of Warcraft’ sessions, and I wished there’d been one in this episode. I like WoW’s backstory, and I appreciate their digging up some of the plot that players might not otherwise get exposed to.

Some comments on the taping process:

• We did the interview with me on Skype. In order to save them some hassle, my voice was taped by Audacity on my end. I sent them the end result via the interweb, and they synced me up.
• I was apperently less concise than I remember myself being, because I think it’s fairly obvious that they tighted me up a little bit. Thank goodness.
• Those guys are teh awesomez to talk with. It was a heck of a lot of fun to tape. At least with my part, they edited out most of the stupid funny in favour of a more serious tone.

They just hooked up with the PC Gamer podcast network, which I really hope will bring them some new listeners. Congrats on your success, TavernCast. You deserve it.