Podcast Week: Our Wonderful Guests

Once of the great joys of doing this podcast was getting the opportunity to speak with some of the great minds, talents and personalities in the Hunter community. If I have one regret, it’s that we didn’t have more guests on the show.

We had 64 shows with guest appearances, and 34 distinct guests. Zeherah was our first guest, and she was also our most frequent guest, making nine appearances. Michele Morrow was right behind her with eight appearances, and BigRedKitty was right up there with seven.

There isn’t enough time to write about all of our guests, but I did want to share a few of my favorite memories and moments.

Theorycrafters

We loved theorycrafting. Not only did we have a great theorycrafter on board in Frost, but the Hunter community was filled some great ones. These number crunching shows were some of my favorites.

Zeherah – If you’re a Hunter and you don’t use female dwarf, it may be time to abandon your pets and turn in your license. Zeherah was a great guest and she always brought a lot to the table. In Cataclysm Blizzard acknowledged her work with Zeherah’s Dragonskull Crown. While she was honored, she was quick to point out it was loaded with Hit and Mastery, hardly the ideal stats.

AskMrRobot – These guys made three appearances on our show. Their first appearance was on episode 93, which also included Zeherah. In those days, we had to actually press a record button to capture the audio. Poor Euripides forgot to do this and didn’t realize it until the show was over. This episode was broadcast live only. Thankfully they were gracious enough to return to the show two more times.

World Class Raiders

Munken – Back in the early days of Wrath, Ensidia was the top guild garnering many world firsts. Munken was one of their Hunters and the first top-flight raider we interviewed.

Kripparian – Kripp hit our radar after an article mentioning that he had the highest DPS parses in the game, and that he had completed every achievement in WoW. We brought him on to discuss that and other Hunter stuff. The big takeaway from this appearance was the notion of Cooldown stacking. High-end raiders knew to do this, but it was not quite mainstream. We hoped to change that.

Kruf – As Wrath of the Lich King progressed, Dream Paragon moved into the top spot for world firsts. We interviewed Kruf after they defeated the Lich King on heroic. He was a great guest, and made five appearances before leaving the game.

RogerBrown – Roger made three appearances on the show, starting late in Cataclysm as Method came to prominence in acquiring world first kills. Early in Mists we had a great discussion on BM’s opening rotation which was convoluted at best, and critical that you get right. The loss of readiness has made much of that discussion null and void, but it was fun at the time.

World Class PvPers

If it weren’t for Euripides the only PvP happening on the show would’ve been the quips between the hosts. We didn’t spend a lot of time on Hunter PvP, but when we did, we lined up some good ones for you.

Jurgwena – For a brief period of time he was the PvP writer on OutDPS. Our hope was to have him on every month or so to talk about PvP, but he only ever came on once. His articles can still be found on OutDPS, but they’re mostly outdated.

Loincloth – He was a highly ranked PvPer and contributor over at Skill Capped. He graciously spent an hour of his time answering basic PvP questions from PvE noobs like us.

Zumio – Zumio was the last PvP interview that we did. It was early in the Mists of Pandaria expansion, and a few things have changed, but if you’re into PvP this interview is still somewhat relevant. He appeared on epsiode 141.

Personalities

If there’s one thing the Hunter community is loaded with it’s personalities. These guys were some of my favorites to interview because they accomplished such amazing things both in and out of the World of Wacraft.

BigRedKitty – BRK first appeared on episode 34. Over 200 listeners tuned into this episode. Other than episode 100, this was the largest live audience we’d ever had. I had never spoken to BRK prior to this episode. We chatted before the show and I was surprised to see his real-life personality was very much like the persona he created. In this episode he managed to piss off the entire Mage community. I remember thinking, wow, we’re so good, that even the support classes listen to us. BRK went on to make six appearances on the show.

Michele Morrow – One of our specialties was reading Wow Insider’s 15-minutes of fame and then inviting the Hunters to appear on the show. Michele Morrow was one of them. Her first appearance was on episode 57, and she instantly became a show favorite. She came back seven more times, filling in as a co-host on a couple of episodes. Her most famous appearance was on episode 100, where she and Frost squared off in a drinking dual. Frost won that by the way, but episode 200 is right around the corner.

Quadilious – On Frost’s first show as an official host we interviewed Quadillious (another 15-minute person). Quadillious was a quadriplegic who was doing high-end raiding. We talked about his setup and how he managed to not stand in the stupid and do great DPS. It was truly humbling to speak to him.

Scott Johnson – That’s right, that Scott Johnson from the Instance. This happened very early on in the life of the podcast. It wasn’t our best interview. No fault of Scott’s, we were just a little new at all this. The Hunter quick-fire segment was awkward at best. The thing about this one was, that Scott was already a big deal and well known personality in WoW. The fact that he was willing to come on our show, gave me the confidence that we could really make the show work. I was also a big fan of the Instance, so getting to talk to Scott was a lot of fun. He was big reason why I wanted to get into podcasting.

Non-Hunters

We even managed to squeeze in some non Hunter guests, including a rogue and a priest.

Dawn Moore – Dawn was the Priest writer at Wow Insider. We had her on three times to talk about healing our pets, which I don’t think she did.

Hrist – This was Frost’s tank, and he loved to tell stories about their raiding exploits. The best part of having Hrist on was we could finally get the truth about Frostheim.

Final Thoughts

I loved the guest shows. They were informative and fun to do. I met some great folks and learned quite a bit from them. Here are the rest of the guests we interviewed on the podcast.

• Arth – Graciously filled-in for Frost, and then did a hell of a job as a host.
• Banya – Our favorite real-life zoo keeper who catalogued all of Azeroth’s pets and compared them to their counterparts here on Earth.
• Brigwyn – Retired blogger from the Hunting Lodge. He and Frost got into it over the state of the Hunter Community.
• Pikestaff – A very popular blogger at Aspect of the Hare. She was as big as BRK.
• Morynne – A blogger from Marks-365. She raided with Matticus and filled the chair a couple of times for our missing hosts.
• Mania – Creator of Petopia, everyone’s favorite resource for Hunter pets.
• Garwulf – Blogger over at the Huntsman’s Lodge. Not as active as he once was, but there is still a ton of great information to be found there.
• AFKRogue – A rogue and Frost’s former raid leader. He co-hosted an episode with me.
• Bella – Another of Frost’s guildies who helped organize several WHU events, and made awesome sporebat cupcakes.
• Kinaesthesia – Member of the guild Vodka and founder of the Learn2Raid site which produced awesome raid guides during Cataclysm.
• Matt McCurley – A columnist at WoW Insider.
• Serallios – Founder of Raidbots.
• Onymas – A world first raider, whose guild achieved the world first Glory of the Cataclysm raider.