Today’s contest is going to be very simple, and very late (for our Australian/Asian friends). Or very early, if you’re hardcore.
How do you suggest we improve The Instance?
What would you like to see us do online, or out in the real world? What would be an epic move we could make with the show? Tell us what you think – only once – in the comments for this post or on our Facebook wall. Multiple suggestions from the same person will disqualify you entirely.
Here’s the twist: We’re going to give away four beta keys – two to the best two realistic suggestions, and two to the best two impossible/moronic/outrageous suggestions. So you’re going to have to decide which of the two sorts you’re going for, and get it done quick. We will award all four keys starting at 11PM PDT. So you have just over 2 hours.
Have fun!!!
Update (9:45PM Hawaiian) — Just sent out four beta keys to tonight’s winners – Amanda S., Ty M., Xagar and Tadrith! So many good suggestions! Thank you, and congratulations!
Try once a month to get a quick celebrity interview. Minor or major one, who plays WoW for a 5 minute chat about why they play, what they like and what faction… ect. Would be really neat to hear something from them and how WoW has affected thier life.
Do a show where you head into the dreams of Deathwing and make an inception regarding how bad of a father he has been to his offspring which will result in the undoing of the cataclysmic events but you only barely get out of the dreamstate by avoiding a scary army of monkeys loudly clashing some cymbals on the back of a slow moving giant turtle. And maybe a squirrel.
Randy can do a weekly Auction House segment revealing his secrets, and telling us all how to make more gold.
I personally think the instance should be video recorded, mashed together so that Randy & Scott are in the same frames, but the twist is.. they do it in the buff.
I mean that’d make for some good television.
How about a podcast host crossover week?
Think of the possiblities:
Randy on No Agenda pontificating about how big business are ruining Hawaii’s produce industry, while Adam Curry is on The Instance expressing his outrage that Cataclysm will finally bring flying mounts, and thus chemtrails, to Azeroth.
Scott on the Crackberry Podcast in a heated debate with Craig Johnston about widget integration into RIM and Apple’s phones, while Crackberry Kevin argues with Randy about how overinflated apps like the WoW Auction House on the iPhone reduce it’s battery life to a hiccup.
Scott, Randy and Ira Glass can do and combined episode of “This Orgrimmarian Life” that tells the bittersweet story of Mankrik’s wife.
The list goes on and on!
This may seem odd from a branding perspective, but to be able to have a show with a guest or two from wow.com or mmochampion would be excellent. We all visit their sites, and would love to hear them on the best WoW podcast out there. Before you say it, I know wow.com has their own podcast, but I think some cross podcasting could be awesome!
Get a representative in several geographical areas to be an official The Instance Rep; you could have people submit who are interested and then choose someone who could organize meet-ups, maybe set up a Cataclysm launch party which could be recorded and posted for others to listen to, and otherwise help advertise The Instance and Frogpants Studios locally in their area
Maybe using a twitter link to theinstance.net as opposed to theinstance.com! :p Btw, Is this beta available for EU users or is it US only? Keep up the gppd work guys – love the show!
it could be fine if you got some of the people how makes guides/addons on the show to tell why and how the are making Guides/Addons
How about an in game recording. Where Randy and Scott are on their toons in game and people could come sit around the camp fire and listen to them.
I for one would love for both Scott and Randy to dress up as their favorite super hero, villain, Warcraft toon or any blizzard character for that matter and do an instance show in the characters voice. So all us u-stream viewers can have a laugh, must be live and on screen.
In all seriousness, more Turpster. Don’t get me wrong, I love Scott and Randy, but hearing The T pontificate about WoW, especially alongside the two of you is just so much fun.
This is well and truly housed in “imagination land” but i’d love to see a live action movie of a day in the life of a hunter. Have Gerp and Henry travel around and do all the quirky and fun things in wow with the AIE guild making cameo appearances, then have all the real world players (both Scott and all the cameo AIE players) try and mimic their toons actions on a green screen.
You could go for fume ride in grizzly hills, fly kites in a thousand needles and raid ICC all with the real world players in live action!
Obviously this is impossible but think of the possibilities!
Try to get every single developer from Blizzard on your show, and call it: The Instance, Blizzard invades edition. Also for a realistic option, try and get to have a new section that will talk about gold making in world of warcraft and have guest people on like Markco or Someone from wow.com that talks gold strategies. It could help a lot of people out, plus it would be fun because Scott and Randy will be the ones talking about it!
Have a segment dedicated to blogs/news/forums that are of special interest to WoW players. Sites like elitistjerks.com, wow.com, and tankspot are fairly obvious, but the in-depth sites like justmytwocopper.org for money making, graymatterwow.blogspot.com for druids, stratfu.com for boss strategies, and even special youtube channels like wowhobbs and oxhorn. This segment could be as or more helpful than mod of the week, especially for someone trying to familiarize themselves with a new aspect of the game.
I think since Patrick doesn’t have his mod of the week segment anymore you need to get a new person to do one or do it yourself. One more suggestion is maybe during the segment you interview the modwriters about their mods.
You guys should totally make a show or multiple shows where you have live calls coming in form viewers to the WoW line during the taping! many spontaneous and confusing questions form viewers would make the show more amazing-er!
video podcast + gameplay segments
How about something like Quick Fire Sound Effects. 1 host plays 5 Sounds/Voice clips from wow and the other has to guess which NPC, Dungeon it is and if it’s Chris Metzen voicing it or not.
Segment: Jiggernaut of the Week/Month
Players call in with their most Epic story of the week. Can include barely killing a boss, Tactics in pvp/Getting lucky, etc. With the most extraordinary being played and talked about on the show. The player will receive fame greater than the Ice Cream Citadel.
My oh-so-serious suggestion is a series of on-location broadcasts/recordings at hottubs from around the vast Instance community. Friends, fans, and supporters of The Instance undoubtedly have plenty of viable locales (hottubs) where you can do shows from. Why should Scott’s hottub be a seldom and singular event?
Put those advertisement banners of the blonde WoW T-shirt girls all over your site! That will surely make the site more popular, especially since the WoW forums have rotated them out for some Alliance themed head phones at the moment, thus people will visit TheInstance website instead.
I would love to see you guys have a small segment in the show where a WoW class expert discusses Beta changes their class. It just seems to bring more to the show when the person discussing a class is knowledgeable and interested about the topic at hand. Randy is very knowledgeable when priest talk comes up and Scott is genuinely excited about any changes to the way he experiences Gerp and Henry. Surely, AIE has plenty of people who would like to contribute in filling in for the rest of the classes.
You could let your wives come on the show with you and let them tell us about their experiences with you guys playing WoW and doing all this stuff for the Instance and let them tell what effect that has had on their/your lives. In what way has it influenced your families since the start of the podcast till now and are there any rules set for playing games at home, etc…
The Instance….
As much as I love the show the way it is…I would like to see a regular 3rd point of view. Scott and Randy are great but think about all of the great ideas missed from not having a 3rd person. If not for the whole show, then just have a 3rd person for a segment. I think it can add a lot of depth and substance while keeping the show light and funny. More people than 3 can bog it down though IMHO. So in summary, Bring in a 3rd person for a segment or as a regular to the show.
I would love to see an app for the instance on iTunes. More specifically an app that lets you stream every episode of the instance on your phone. You just scroll down a list in chronological order, or search by criteria that you choose and it will open a stream that plays the episode. Not only that but when there is a live broadcast of the instance (or any other frogpants podcast if you’d like) then you can connect directly from there. I know that i’m often at work when the instance is recording and I can never find the ustream link and i see lots of posts of other people who can never find it either. Anyway not sure how realistic that is to make but that’s my 2 cents.
I’d like to see a real life wow music video parody performed by both you guys. That is all.
You should do a show while in game, sitting in a tavern talking over your weekly adventures. And then a fight would break out and you have to duel it out. Well that is my suggestion anytime you have opposing views on issues you throw down in game. It would be great fun to watch. You could even have extra rules. Special outfits who knows. Love the show(s)
Fire Scott, replace him with Gufoni. (obsurd, yet amuzing category)
Buy a spot for a super bowl commercial.
Take over Blizzcast and make sweet verbal love to SC2
Some folks previously really enjoyed some of the Parody songs that Mark Turpin (Turpster) used to contribute to his previous podcast. Perhaps you could discuss with him about contributing some new parody songs as part of a on and off segment?
Might I recommend a segment called “What Tharon’ja Thinks” whereby The Prophet Tharon’ja takes time away from DTK to answer listener questions on life and love? Ingvar would make a nice co-host for this.
In celebration of the 200th episode of The Instance, make available, in one combined download, all previous espisodes of The Instance. You might even consider making all episodes one combined file so one could listen from the first episode to the most recent episode without interruption. You know, so when one is flying from New York to Tokyo, one would have something to listen to! By the way, I have listened to all episodes of The Instance and have been following your show since almost the beginning, all those years ago. Thanks for an excellent show! Keep up the fantastic work! (For the next 200 shows?)
Here is one for nigh impossible, but yet probable. Get The Artists Formerly Known as Level 80 Elite Tauren Chieftain as guests for the podcast and have them perform an exclusive song for The Instance!
Hello, Instance.
How are you? Fantastic. Look down. Now look up. Do you see this post? This post is the post your podcast could sound like if you had the dulcet tones of the Old Spice man. With the sweet, sweet vocals of the manliest man that ever manned the airwaves, you’re sure to SWAN DIVE! Into the best show of YOUR LIFE.
THIS PODCAST IS NOW DIAMONDS.
I’m on a post.
I love the intro skits you guys do and would like to see more of that, what about a “live” cross to a reporter in azeroth to detail all the latest news and dish the juicy gossip (for example which banshee queen was spotted canoodling with a certain unpopular orgrimmar tauren resident?)
Serious suggestion from me: iPhone app like ‘this American life’ or ‘savage lovecast’. $2-3 gets an app format for all the old shows. Thro in some extras like wallpaper graphics or outtakes or whatever. I would totally buy that to support the show, and it would be great to have a sortable list of all the old shows. If you aren’t sure what I mean, check out dan dashes on the app store, or ‘this American life’ – they get a good amount of dansupport that way $$ and the fans get more of what they like. I really like what you guys do and would love to buy something useful to demonstrate that
The instance “gets the gang together” Im talking all of the old guests…segment contributors, for one amazing opening sketch….in the world of Azeroth of course.
Dangit – somebody already suggested this. Sorry guys, I shall rescind my suggestion and cheer for the previous poster. I thought I had read all the suggestions; guess not.
For scott and randy to finnaly marry each other….move to kentucky…and then record, produce, and put out a two hour episode of the instance every half hour.
How about getting a special guest once a month; doesn’t always have to be a Blizzard/Cryptazoic/Activision rep but rather more towards prominent WoW-related webmasters and player-community members. Also, allow listeners to submit some questions they would want guests to answer (perhaps quick-fire-questions style).
A short suggestion, I think this would be awesome. Obtain a Murloc suit, and wear it while doing the show. You could even add grrrgle or other murloc sounds to the end of your sentences or do some sort of murloc accent to everything you say. It could be interesting to hear.
While this is a World of Warcraft podcast, how about a small “Map of the Week” segment for SC2? There are some really talented map developers out there that really need a chance to get known.
As for people suggesting a video podcast/segment, a lot of people consume podcasts while doing another activity (driving, gaming, working, etc.). Creating a podcast with video only element will severely limit those who can subscribe. Personal opinion anyway
You ever do live shows at a venue? I picture you guys having the same type of fans that go see Diggnation or The Totally Rad Show. If gives the listeners a chance to see you in person and you can just write it off as a business trip.
Change the podcast from a world of warcraft podcast and instead you should discuss how terrible technology is for the world, while riding on dinosaurs which are riding on sharks with lazerbeams attached to their heads.
Video and do the podcast like the Naked News were you slowly remove clothing during the podcast so you both end up naked at the end.
BTW the link on the tweet is bad
MORE COWBELL !!!!
Please spare me, i made a mistake and wrote down a couple of suggestion, and just now i noticed that you couldn’t make more then 1 entry. So please don’t disqualify me for this mistake (and i can’t edit the post either)
“Leeroy Jenkins Moment of the Week” segment. Invite viewers to submit their own and share your own personal ‘epic fail’ moments. Essentially it would be a segment where you give an award (just a little badge drawn by Scott of Gerp and Maui making faces or something with Leeroy Jenkins Award or something to that effect) that people could put on their facebook or their twitter that shows they have epically failed
(They would use photobucket, you would just be making a little drawing to use as the award for everyone and just replace the name each time). I think it would be really great!
The show should have a new segment called The Candy Jar. It would highlight the sweet items that most players would never ever see or hear of such as the Orb of Deception or Piccolo of the Flaming Fire. It could include any number of items from trinkets with weird effects to ones that just look cool to… well anything you want, it’s your show after all. I feel like this is a segment that could lead to fun and entertaining conversations.