Project Lore

Blizzcast, the official Blizzard podcast, is released about as often as new Project Lore videos. They just released Episode 11, where they recap Blizzcon 2009. They seem to be late to the party, as many sites had great Blizzcon coverage back in August.

Regardless, Blizzcast is enjoyable to listen to as always. Rob Simpson, who is on the e-sports team of Blizzard, talks with the Community Managers (or CMs) of the three major Blizzard franchises. Their names were announced on the podcast as screen names, and I had never heard of them, nor were they typed out in any description, so I have no way to look up these CMs. Regardless, it was an entertaining anecdotal account from the side of the organizers of the event. It made me regret not attend Blizzcon; hearing about the pyrotechnics during the Cataclysm trailer when Deathwing appeared absolutely made me pine to see it live.

It makes me wonder about what Blizzard could be doing with Blizzcast. Right now, there is no set schedule, and there have only been 11 episodes over 22 months. If Blizzard's community team committed to releasing a podcast every month with announcements and recaps of the previous month's news, along with other segments for fan-related content and questions, they would have an excellent interface to the community. The use of the forums to make announcements buried deep in discussion threads is awkward and ineffective; I think Ghostcrawler withdrawing from this model is evidence. Having a month to prepare exactly what they want to say to the community in a spoken word format is sure to stimulate better discussion than trying to reason with "enthusiastic" fans.

Do you listen to Blizzcast or any other World of Warcraft audio podcasts?