Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Transcribing Master: YAWOWP #34

Welcome to my first ever Transcribing Master column. Normally I'm going to transcribe a chunk of text from the spoken word that makes up a podcast and look at it from a couple of different angles. Some might call what I propose to do over-analysis and in return I call them lazy. I ask "when do you critics ever spend a moment to analyze anything, ever?" Maybe their own lives would be enriched and their WoW playing more serene if they took the time to look inward before lashing outward.

When I listened to Yet Another World of Warcraft Podcast #34 it struck me that the podcast doesn't really lend itself to long excerpts. They follow the most common format of WoW podcast which is a combination of WoW news, what they did on their characters since the last broadcast, and listener email.

The hosts sound like younger guys and Fred has mentioned before that he likes to listen to this sort of stuff for perspective and Toothy recommended this podcast to me for the column but it doesn't work for me. I think there's some gratuitous cursing from the hosts for coolness factor and it triggers an auto-response from me called "rolled eyes." I also think the format is tired so you really have to be doing something special or at least be a little more slick about it if you're going to impress me. At the very least you shouldn't be yawning audibly and saying "I'm tired" during the opening 20 minutes of the show as Michael does at the 17:14 point.

This was another episode we've heard lately where all of the hosts weren't present, Michael and Cody did the show without Craig so please keep that in mind and it's basically why I won't give a full review or transcribe from the show. But there was certainly some weirdness - an absurd amount of Craig worship going on in the first 16 minutes to the tune of 16 mentions of the word "Craig," almost all of them coming from voice-cracking Cody who sometimes referred to him multiple times in quick succession.

If anyone out there would like to create a mash-up these mentions are approximately at: 1:26, 3:24, 6:04, 7:32, 7:35, 8:26, 8:27, 8:30, 10:53, 11:58, 12:32, 12:52, 12:53, 13:40, 15:49 and 15:51. And then, to add to the weirdness, no mentions of him again for the remaining 40 minutes of the show! WTF? Makes no sense.

What do I think? I think that Mike thinks he's better friends with Craig than Cody, but I think in reality the opposite is true. I have absolutely no information about this, mind you, it just "sounds that way," at least on this episode.

They did a decent job going through some of the Patch 3.1 changes and the flow of the show definitely picked up at that point but for me it lacked the insight into larger gameplay mechanic implications that I can find elsewhere.

Michael did a good job reading the lone email submission they received and I thought that was actually a funny highlight; I like the voice he affected when reading the email which basically mocked the contributor. That really appeals to the sardonic side of me.

Overall I think this is probably a really decent show if you're a younger WoW fan. Having been through that period of my life already and knowing just how lame I was means it's not quite for me.

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