The Greater Good: Hypocrisy Trends Well

Are you noticing some strange trends around the WoW podcasting community?

After slogging through what seemed an eternity of shows registering the same complaints about the Love is in the Air achievements, particularly the sinister drop rates on the "bag of candy" (pleased I won't have to hear those charming words again for a year), I'm simultaneously catching the vibe that these same podcasters dislike the fact that Blizzard has been capitulating to the demands of "QQers." I'm catching this vibe because they're saying as much, sometimes one right after the other. On top of that the hypocrisy has been compounded by the fact that some of the complaining has come from folks who claim not to care about achievements at all!

It's enough to make you step back and really look at yourself and wonder if writing about such shallow, artificial people (or, more optimistically, people just ignorant and self-absorbed enough not to realize what they're saying) and calling them out by name is appropriate or even worth it. Does it serve the greater good ("the greater good!") which is what we're all about? Are our reviews actually going to help anything or just contribute to the problem?

As we got into a bit last week around the community everyone's view of a "good" podcast varies. It is common sense to assume that just because a show has a lot of listeners doesn't automatically mean the show is "good" in the same way a show isn't automatically "bad" because they throw in some flashy production values and solid editing. It's also common sense to note that listeners may not know what they're saying. This isn't an insult, but a reality of education, overall time spent listening to podcasts, experience in life, experience in the medium, etc..

But where do we start drawing the auto-line? Hypocritical hosts? Should we call out shows who go against the missions stated on their own websites or should we just laugh these silly matters off because shows are supposed to be "entertainment" first and everthing else second?

It's hard when theorizing about this to remember we're talking about a computer game.

I felt compelled to post this basically as the last disclaimer, before any negative reviews have been posted here at UWoW. I want everyone to know, as I think I've written before, that the reviews are only the opinions of one person on one particular day. That's the way we're taking your podcast and we're spending valuable time listening to it so please give us the courtesy of doing the same.