Delayed Recall: Blue Plz!

Thanks for checking out Delayed Recall. In DR the main premise is that I listen to a podcast without taking any notes and then attempt to write about it from memory a day or two later. Last week it was Total Biscuit's Blue Plz! on Friday where I showed up for the IRC chat.

As Jim mentioned the other day, Total Biscuit gave our blog a fantastic mention near the opening of his show, I would say within the first five minutes. He also introduced me as a special guest in the chat and the Blue Plz! listeners were very kind and inquisitive. I had someone ask if Fred is my real name, which it is. You can probably imagine the amount of times, though, that I had bartenders laugh at me in my younger days when they saw "Fred Jones" on my identification. These days the only places that look at my ID are doctors offices and airports, but I digress.

Something Jim didn't mention is that the chat moderator from time to time would post a bold "as mentioned on the show" note which is a very cool touch for a show with a big audience. The note about our blog said something like: "the only blog epic enough for Total Biscuit to follow!" It wasn't unique to our blog, of course, the IRC moderator would link or bold post the main topics/themes/sites TB mentioned and while I've seen that done in other chats for other shows they could probably take a lesson from WoW Radio here. There was an air of professionalism about it that added to the live show atmosphere for me.

Of course something like this would probably look very silly or become an annoyance if you only had 5-10 listeners in the chat but luckily Blue Plz! probably had about 300 listeners there, can't recall seeing an actual tally and I stopped counting once I reached 75 and realized I was only a quarter of the way through the listener list. And of course I saw one listener request to have the moderator "stop spamming" so you'll never please everyone I suppose.

Back to the show, he went right into email. Email is always email even if TB does do it pretty well. The Blue's Clues email lead-in made me chuckle, especially since my granddaughter is watching that these days. Did you know the Steve guy wasn't a pervert? He actually just left the show to start a music career? For some reason I always thought that guy was creepy. Anyway, all five of us here at UWoW like hearing out of the box thinking and I think TB did a good job of bringing new angles to some questions that perhaps the questioner didn't quite think through all the way.

I like when TB had a drop of glass breaking from out of nowhere for "The Illusion of Choice," which is a chance for listeners to set the last topic of the show. That's a very cool feature of the show and goes straight toward the very spirit of the internet, doesn't it?

If I remember correctly he next started going off on the notion that casual players don't exist. I kind of go with the idea that there are such animals as casual players. There are people who don't read WoW blogs or listen to WoW podcasts, people who never post on the WoW forums or have never heard of WoW Insider. They're around, and they still play for whatever reason makes them happy. I like to think those sort of people are casuals.

TB's rant was based on the fact that the old definition of "casual" as "non-raider" no longer applies. I must admit my mind wandered a bit here. While it was probably informative for new players I think he took longer than needed to give the back history. One great point he made, though, was that a lot of the new end-game raid content doesn't require the huge blocks of time it did pre-Wrath and that you could basically PUG anything. To that end I can understand his point and it is nice to have something to go back at people who "hide" behind their casual status. Took too long to get there though for me.

Good flow between topics from casual players into badge loot. I'm not really concerned with badge rewards right now since I'm leveling alts while helping Melissa level but apparently there's some crying about getting yourself geared up on badge loot. Doesn't really affect me, this would probably be more of an issue for Toothy and Pete Pete but not for Jim, Melissa, or I.

TB then spoke about the Daily Mail article that picked up on the Swedish story which blamed WoW for the kid who passed out after playing the game for 20 hours straight. I think he used the memorable phrase "vomit-worthy" when talking about parents shipping their children off to doctors for pills to make them empty shells just like everyone else, attaching the stigma of being "anti-social" to them in the process. Another major point I remember is the fact that there is no diagnosis for computer game addiction at present. We all know compulsive people who are compulsive at everything they do... but a little more understanding and communication here could go a long way. I can't tell you as an older gamer the sort of stereotypes I usually have to overcome to earn someone's trust in-game. I've had whole ventrillo servers go dead when they hear my older voice. Needless to say, enjoyed this segment muchly. Sounds like more crying from bad parents trying to blame everything but themselves for bad parenting.

Total Biscuit's live shoutcast play-by-play for the 3 vs. 3 PVP game was the highlight of the show for me. TB said he felt an energy rush doing it; I actually got an energy rush and I didn't even sync up my video to watch the action, I was just listening! It was a combination of an auction house auctioneer, horse racing announcer, and football (soccer) commentary. Fantastic.

Wrapped up the end of the show with the live listener submissions and shout outs which is a great way to keep the listeners involved until the very end.

Overall, it's pretty clear Total Biscuit has his shit together. He's pretty damn funny too, without the benefit of notes I can't recall specific quips but if you can sit through Blue Plz! without cracking at least one smile you probably have some sort of mental disease. Clearly this is one of the very best WoW podcasts out there and one of the favorites here at UWoW. The format is unique and streamlined and the IRC works in perfect synergy with the show. Didn't always agree with everything but I appreciate that he's even thinking of original topics to bring into the discussion rather than the same recycled information we can find in a million other places. Would have liked the "made-up topic" of casuals not existing to be a little more on-point but what can you do? My final analysis is that it was a good episode of a very good show.

Delayed Recall: The Instance

THE INSTANCE #137 "Come On Down!"
27th February, 2009

I actually was there for the live chat on this episode and haven't listened to it since.

Whenever I do things these days, as you might imagine even if you haven't yet "crossed over" into your 70s, the thought I always seem to come back to is that I have already lived more years than I have left. And probably by a long margin in my case. So I have little time for bullshit.

In fact, as the philosopher Harry Frankfurt argues, bullshit is a more insidious threat to humanity than lying, because liars at least respect the truth (that's why they lie). Bullshitters don't care what's true or not, it's all about framing the story in order to posture towards some selfish endgame result. They use truth and lies indiscrimentley. Therefore, liars are good-at-heart, bullshiters are evil-at-heart, and yet as a society we tend to hate liars and put up with bullshitters. This has to change.

Getting back to reality, the guest host was Tom Merritt. I had never heard of him before and he didn't seem to know much about World of Warcraft. I think he admitted to not even knowing what DPS was until he was into his 40s (level-wise) but 'm fuzzy on that. Seems odd, that's a core system component. I was catching the vibe that he wanted to differentiate himself from a "crazy hardcore gamer" and so to me he gave off an "us vs. them" vibe when commenting about members of the live chat.

The fact that he didn't say much seemed to jive well with Randy Deluxe. I remember a show some weeks ago where Randy became testy and pouted "if I can get a word in edgewise" when the guest host guy was actually contributing to the show. Can't remember who the guest was, but I actually enjoyed that episode a lot as he seemed to get on well with Scott Johnson.

Scott moves the show along when it needs it, and skillfully at that. He kept saying "a new car!" in that Price is Right announcer voice which I imagine is where the clever title came from. I can't recall if they said "Come On Down!" but I guess they did?

The chat was pretty lively. Over 250 viewers, probably more I just remember seeing that number when I first got onto ustream. Some funny lines were about the WOWMatrix MMO, and someone mentioned that WoWMatrix created the internet in the 1980s which I took as a dig at Tom Merritt who was ridiculously schooling all of us young children with communications 101, namely that the internet has been around longer than 5 years. I think Tom unintentionally offended some gamers with his wanderings into the psychology of gamers, which always had a "to be clear, I'm not one of those crazies" feel to it for me.

Summary: Didn't like this show. I know I'm not supposed to do any research or follow-up or anything for this column but when I saw tweets from Scott saying it was one of his favorites of all time I wondered if it was just a generational thing. My question would be... which part?