Old Friends

AggroChat #37  – Games of the Year: Part Two

Last night I uploaded the second half of our Games of the Year broadcast, finishing out our pseudo countdown with the game that four of us voted for.  However while that might have been the game of the year through consensus, it just did not feel quite right to declare an official game of the year for a podcast with so many disparate voices.  As a result each of us gave our own game of the year, and you will have to listen through the podcast to see what my pick wound up being.  I have to say we had an interesting round of discussions about this one and I hope we end up doing this as a yearly thing.  With the end of the year closes what I am calling “Season 1” of the podcast.  I only started classifying things by season because there was a place for that in the ID tag within Audacity, and I figured what the hell… might as well.

With the new year will bring a new season, and at this point I am not quite sure what it will look like.  Right now we have a cast made of of myself, Ashgar, Kodra, Rae, Raven and Tamrielo but I sincerely doubt that most shows will have all six of us.  That seems like a rather large group to podcast with, but hopefully we can muster four to five of us on any given night.  The biggest regret for season one is that we had Tam has a pretty constant part of the show but we never actually updated the logo to include his chibi…  even though he has had one for quite awhile.  Ultimately I figure we should get Rae to draw up a Raven chibi as well just to have it at the ready.  I would love to revamp our homepage a bit to have bios about each of the podcasters.  I would also love to bring back in Dallian on occasion, who filled in quite regularly as this podcast was getting off the ground but we have not had to tag in for awhile.  Hopefully you enjoy this second part of our Games of the Year show.

Old Friends

Yesterday I had an excellent surprise when I saw what character a good friend of mine was playing.  She has favored the horde for some time, and when her guild over on another server went belly up I sponsored hr membership to the guild horde side that I have my alts in the Bloodmoon Chosen.  While it sucked to have her over on the other side of the faction wall, it made me happy that she at least had a good home.  Yesterday however on a whim it seems she decided to play her hunter AIlah.  The above picture is of me and Ailah waiting for the Naxxramas 1.0 raid to start one night, to my left is Saracell another good friend, and hanging out in the background I realized was Vexa.  The Late Night Raiders Hunters were an especially close knit family, and there is not a single one of them that I still do not talk to regularly.  Ailah however was one of the founding members of House Stalwart, and for the most part my right hand woman back then when it came to guild organizational things.

Like happens so many times she became the mommy of two awesome boys, and lost a good chunk of her disposable play time.  I always enjoy seeing her on when she has the time to play, especially now that she seems to be interested in her hunter again.  Thankfully I had been playing Lodin my hunter, so that I could give some basic knowledge about how hunters work these days.  It seemed like she had not actually been touched since vanilla because she was wearing all of the same gear we raided in…  for the most part everything you see in this picture.  I hooked her up with a crafted set of gear that will hopefully ease her transition into Northrend, and some quick advise with at least how I have my bars, talents and glyphs set up.  Thankfully huntering is super easy so I am sure she has picked it up quickly.  I have to say it was an awesome surprise to see an old friend show up like that, and hopefully she will be around more often.  I doubt she will ever have time for raiding and such, but will be nice to run the occasional dungeon together.

Bad At Casters

I have traditionally been horrible at playing casters, that said the warlock feels familiar enough hat this point that it would likely be my caster of choice.  While I knew I would never end up leveling a mage, so I used my free boost to 90…  the Warlock on the other hand I actually enjoy leveling.  He has been sitting at level 75 for quite some time however, so when Ailah started working on the Northrend content I grabbed him to hang out with her for a bit, since he was the only character in the level range.  It took me a bit to get used to the controls again, because warlocking feels nothing like huntering, and that is the pet class I have been playing most recently.  The only problem with leveling these days is that you really don’t need to use any of your abilities, since things die so quickly.  I still have yet to figure out how the whole demonic transformation business works and how best to trigger it.  I know it is a thing I can do every so often, but the mechanics behind it are still pretty opaque since things die so insanely quickly.

At some point I really want to finish leveling my Warlock to at least 90.  I feel like it might be a caster I would actually enjoy playing, since the Mage is most definitely not that.  My biggest problem with the mage is how weak it feels.  I hate playing classes that cannot take a hit, so this is why I tend to play Discipline priest over shadow… because the shielding ability gives that class some serious survival.  Similarly I like Demonology Warlock because the pet is nice and sturdy and can keep me alive through almost anything.  When I say I hate “finger wigglers”, I guess you can more correctly narrow it down to me simply hating the “glass cannon” archetype.  I favor survival over damage any day, which might be why I almost always level in tank mode regardless of the class.  That is one thing I would love to see them add to the warlock, a caster tank mode since they get called on to tank things already in certain circumstances.