What I've Been Listening To: March 15 - 21

This week's listening schedule was light. A lot of my favorite podcasts didn't publish until the end of the week. Yesterday I didn't have my normal EQ2 crafting session due to login issues, so I played Runes of Magic instead. I discovered that playing a new game and listening to podcasts don't really mix. But on the bright side I have a long list of podcasts from Van Hemlock, Scott & Randy, the M team, Sisters Julie and Fran, and 3 (!) from The Dellmon to listen to in the next week.

Channel Massive #81 (Hosts: Noah, Jason & Mark) – Another week, another funny show from the M team. Creating this blog and writing about podcasts has made me realize that the Channel Massive podcast has the funniest “What we’re playing” segment out there. I really hope that’s intentional, or I just insulted the hosts.

Among the other topics were discussions on the continuing research on games and gamers, the close of Tabula Rasa and the Blog-O-Steria concerning Darkfall.

Shut Up We’re Talking #44 (Hosts: Darren and Karen) – In this episode Darren and Karen were joined by Bill from Innner Sanctum of the Ninveah, an Eve Online-oriented blog. Critics of SUWT won’t be able to attack Bill’s Eve credentials. Disclaimer: I have recently become an Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah fanboi and have put the RSS feed on the blog.

The main topics discussed were the introduction of LiveGamer’s real money transaction service onto all of the Vanguard servers, playing games that are out of your normal comfort zone, and game trailers. The discussion of game trailers came about because of CCP’s increasing use of non-game footage in their game trailers for the latest Eve expansions.

I think the choice of topics points out one of SUWT’s strengths, which is making sure that guests are able to talk about all the topics on the show. Not only was Bill able to discuss the game trailer issue, but he was able to explain how Eve’s RMT system works which I thought gave added depth to the discussion.

No Prisoners, No Mercy #26 (Hosts: Sister Julie and Sister Fran) - Sister Julie, step away from the coffee and put your hands in the air! Seriously, though, Sister Julie deserves to be excited about the NPNM podcast making the 6 month mark. Although I will have to take issue with the good sister’s assertion that there are no elves in the world. Who do you think makes all the toys Santa gives out every Christmas?

The best topic of discussion was player versus player combat. The discussion ranged from Warhammer Online to Darfall to Eve Online to Ultima Online. Brent also received a couple of mentions, one for his controversial review of WAR. The conversation may not satisfy hard-core PvP’ers, but this carebear loved it. And I think Sister Fran is the only person podcasting about games today who would have come up with the comparison of Darkfall with Beanie Babies. The weird thing is I think she’s got a valid point.

Free Play Podcast #16 (Hosts: Andras, Riknas and Joe) - Real life kept Joe off this podcast, so two other members of the Virgin Worlds Collective, Philip (Crovan) and Stephen (Alsedrech) from The Drone Bay podcast, filled in. This week’s free-to-play news was followed by a review of Guild Wars.

I think Riknas and Andras are getting more comfortable with having guests on the show (Previous guests were Michael Zenke in episode 12 and Karen from SUWT in episode 15.5). I thought this episode approached the quality of a podcast like SUWT with a healthy dose of the Channel Massive podcast thrown in.

Virgin Worlds #141 (Host: Brent) - This week Urban Mongral acted as guest host for the podcast and interviewd Russell Williams, the CEO of Flying Labs. Flying Labs is the maker of Pirates of the Burning Sea, one of the games on Sony’s Station Pass. PotBS is one of those games that Sony picks up, keeps alive, and gradually gets better. Urban Mongral did a good job in the interview asking intelligent questions about the game and some of the broader issues in the industry.