I am in the same boat as well, except as usual the apple product I am interacting with feels the need to annoy me as much as possible, this time by crashing my browser repeatedly (zune would never do such a mean thing). It is reminiscent of the time a mac computer told me it was not its fault ( the voice actually came from inside the box) it couldn't save data to a flash drive. No amount of therapy helped that go away.

Hey, think of it as a compliment. You ladies did win, afterall

Love this week's show with Musco. Good to hear your voice again.

I thought you guys had a really REALLY good point about Gabe's comments and the closed Beta restrictions. When he came out with the comments, the first thing I thought was, "how is he allowed to say all this?" I guess that's what you get with being a "celebrity-beta-tester". Glad you addressed it because I was wondering the exact same thing.

I think you guys have the exact same opinion with the WoW comparisons as I do. There is no point avoiding making the comparison, or even worse, pretending that it doesn't exist and not learning anything from its successes and mistakes. People need to chill out when WoW gets mentioned. It's not a four letter word; it's the current genre leader for subscriptions. Bioware is certainly not avoiding it. Why should we?

On talking about WoW....

What you guys missed, completely, is that simply people don't want to hear WoW war stories. Ever. I played a little, find it boring, and hate hearing people talk about WoW on a podcast that is supposed to be about SWTOR.

If you can't keep on the topic of SWTOR, with out making the easy comparisons or easy analogy, you're doing it wrong.

Challenge yourselves:

Don't mention WoW once for a single episode.

SWTOR is an MMO, why is it so taboo to talk about another MMO? Making analogies is a communication method which allows people to more easily understand a specific point or piece of commentary, not making analogies isn't good podcasting either.

You hating WoW and not wanting to hear about it is completely valid, but I think solely because you don't like WoW, not because making comparisons is bad. I despise Metallica but if I listened to a podcast about Metal, I would expect to hear them making some comparisons to them.

I agree with Musco here. You are going to hear stories of things that were funny, awesome, or bad in other MMOs as people discuss what they want/do not want in SWtOR.

SWtOR is an MMO, so other MMOs will be talked about.

That analogy would only work if the podcast was about MMO's. If it was about general MMO's, then WoW is guaranteed to come up. But a podcast about TOR should try to steer away from talking about other MMO's entirely. That being said, I don't mind them bringing it up in a show, especially since the game isn't out yet so they have to find something to talk and relate about. Once the NDA is dropped, I imagine there will be less WoW references, as the testers start shouting from the highest mountain about how awesome the game is.

CountMercury - I don't know if you are aware of this, but the guys at MER don't get paid a dime, nor even a penny. They are gracing us with their auditory awesomeness due to their sheer dedication to SWTOR and Star Wars as a whole. If by talking about WoW, you think it is too "easy" as you stated above, I say to you, that's the point.

Why should ANY podcast about TOR have to go through the painstaking detail like this:

"Ok, so we were going to fight the boss. We dragged the hotkey that represents the heal spell over to the hotbar. The hotbar is this row of slots that allows you to put spells in them. Each slot corresponds to a button on your keyboard. When you single click and hold the left mouse button you can drag a spell or ability to that hotbar and then simply push the corresponding key on the keyboard. I chose to put my spell for healing in the number 2 slot so that I could simply tap the number 2 on my keyboard and heal the target. To target someone I could simply click on them and their avatar would appear on my screen. This allows me to see how much health they have. An avatar is a visual representation of the character or enemy I have selected. You can also hit the tab button to cycle through all available targets as an alternate method."

Compare that to this:

"The hotbar and targeting works like in World of Warcraft."

/facepalm

- Alan

Fact of the matter is, ToR is not out yet and won't be for a few months. There isn't much to talk about that hasn't already been covered to death with what little information we have. World of Warcraft is the biggest MMO on the planet and it's interesting to see how the Bioware team handles their game differently and directly from the biggest giant there is in the market.

It is very hard to find an Old Republic podcast out there right now that doesn't mention WoW in relation to ToR in some fashion. We all want ToR to succeed and looking about how Blizzard manages to rope in over 11 million players to a single video game is something to look at.

In talking about ANY new and upcoming MMO, you are always going to compare it to the big dog. Particularly the big dog who got it right. In this case, very largely, World of Warcraft. Comparisons to the game are not only a huge compliment of what is going right, but also a tool of speech to compare terms and situations that we all know very well (for those who aren't new to the mmo world) just as Alan mentioned PERFECTLY a couple posts up. People really need to stop getting so bent out of shape just because they throw in terms or comparisons to WoW. It's a game. It's a successful game and it isn't going anywhere. Get used to it.

Don't forget when talking about up and coming First Person Shooters you will ALWAYS hear folks compare it to Call of Duty and Halo because they set the standard for FPS games, just as WoW has for MMOs. It's really no different then when WoW was first coming around, there were tons of references to Everquest...because THEY were the top dog at the time. You just refer to what you and the audience knows best.