Aggrochat Archives - Page 94 of 106 - Tales of the Aggronaut

Holiday Countdown

November 10, 2014 by Belghast

Gone Viral

Yesterday did not go as planned in any sense of the word. Well to be honest the morning went pretty smoothly and I had a rather relaxing go at piddling around in Final Fantasy XIV while doing laundry. However that all changed mid afternoon as we started battling a virus infection on my wife’s laptop. The night before she had some weirdness going on with several DllHost.exe in memory consuming lots of system resources. She rebooted and it seemed to go away at least temporarily. However yesterday morning the virus scanner picked something up and deleted it… which seemed to only cause things to escalate from there. She started getting errors in Powershell which to the best of my knowledge we never actually installed on her system.

It seems as though a new strain of something called Trojan.Poweliks had gone out into the wild on the 8th and she had the bad luck to hit the wrong site and the wrong time and contract it. For a bit we thought maybe it had been stopped, as the virus scanner found several items and correctly identified them as Poweliks. Strange thing is that this only seemed to piss off the system, as constantly more things were popping up with the same infection. Finally around 10pm we decided to just wipe the system taking the “nuke it from orbit” approach. So that is precisely what I did after watching Walking Dead. At least this solves one problem… as that laptop had a 32bit version of Windows 7 on it… which prevented us from giving her some more ram. Problem solved.

Dragoon Legs

Since the 2.4 patch release I have been on an insatiable quest to finish out the level 100 Dragoon set from Syrcus Tower. Sure I could get better items from the soldiery vendor, but at this point it is a matter of principle. I have gathered up every item but one, the legs that drop from Amon the next to last boss. At this point I can run Syrcus Tower in my sleep, as I have quite literally been in there three to five times a night. I have seen the legs drop exactly three times… each of those times I had the misfortune of being in the same dungeon with another dragoon. Each time I lost, one of them by a single point on the roll. Essentially these legs have become the bane of my existence… but I am not giving up, not by a long shot. I know that the moment I switch classes and start running Syrcus as my bard… the legs will drop on the very first time and go uncontested to another Dragoon.

One of the interesting options you have as part of the Duty Roulette is that you can check the “join party in progress” check box… meaning in theory you could get dumped into a partially cleared instance. I actually managed to luck out twice with this… the second time they were on Zande the final boss in the raid. Now when you join it dumps you at the beginning of the instance and you have to take a teleporter that brings you relatively close to the boss that the group is working on. Apparently they pulled before I could get there so the above picture is me dancing the Manderville as the final meteor plummets towards the party. The funny thing is that I still got to roll on all of the items that dropped even though I got locked out of the encounter. While I didn’t win anything… this was the easiest 15 poetics and 20 soldiery I have ever earned.

Holiday Countdown

xmascountdown

It feels like this has been the year of gaming blogosphere events. The first was the always awesome Newbie Blogger Initiative, then I had my own super successful Blaugust, and Izlain just wrapped up Bragtoberfest, and now the ever amazing MMO Gypsy is wanting to create a virtual advent calendar. It seems there is tradition in her area of the world of the “Advent Window” where each member of a town or village decorates their home to represent a day of the advent season, the days leading up to Christmas Day. In a way we are a virtual village, with our blogs representing our homes and the town being made up of the gaming blogosphere as a whole. The idea that she talks about in her blog is that for each of us to create a post on an assigned day highlighting all of the positive things about the gaming community.

If you have a blog and are interested in participating, you can sign up by either leaving a comment in the post announcing it, or dropping Syl a line on twitter. I have been informed that since I helped with the logo, that I had no choice but to participate. Of course I would have signed up anyways, but I will just let Syl think she has some serious pull to order me around like that. I think it is going to be a really interesting event, and hopefully we can come up with some way of visualizing the days of the month to carry out the window on the world feel. All of the specifics about the topic, title, how you get your day assigned can be found in the original post. We have had so much negativity this year in the broader gaming community, and as such it is up to us the gaming bloggers to show that there are still positive voices in our world.

Gaming Blogosphere

While it was not my original intent, I am ending up making thankfulness posts that ultimately relate to the topic I just posted. Similarly this morning I am extremely thankful to be a member of the Gaming Blogosphere. That term in itself is a fairly ephemeral thing, because it means so many different things to so many different people. Ultimately it was the Blog Azeroth folks that gave me the spark to start Aggronaut.com so many years ago. Like so many Tales of the Aggronaut started as a single focus blog, with my intent being focused on World of Warcraft Warrior Tanking. However this shifted focus to being a general tanking blog, with some raid leadership topics… and then ultimately abandoning being World of Warcraft focused at all. At each step of my journey I have had supportive voices cheering me on from the community, and were it not for them I likely would have fallen completely into obscurity.

For a long time it felt as though we didn’t have a very strong sense of community out here in the “not entirely devoted to World of Warcraft” blog space. However the events I talked about in this post have helped to create a much more cohesive sense of community. This combined with the fact that this year we launched The Gaming and Entertainment Network has given me a deeper sense of belonging to something larger than just myself. I am deeply thankful for the other bloggers that I interact with on a near daily basis, and thankful that they have for some reason accepted me into their good graces. You have been a supportive voice when I desperately needed one, and I am so thankful to have all of you.

So Many Feels

November 9, 2014 by Belghast

AggroChat Episode #30

I still cannot fathom that we have made it thirty episodes into our podcast and are still apparently going strong. Technically it is 31 weeks since we started this adventure, because we missed one week for various sundry reasons. What shocks me the most is that we still have listeners and that it seems like we keep picking up new ones along the way. I feel Sally Field screaming “You Like Me, You Really Like Me!” but in this case its the Us that is liked not necessarily me. AggroChat is really about pushing record on the type of conversations we have always had over voice chat on a near nightly basis. We are unscripted and unprepared and yet still seem to never had a drought of things to discuss.

This week we go through a whirlwind of topics including: Magic the Gathering Online, Infinity Minatures Game, Dawngate being cancelled, Blizzcon, Overwatch, and the constant frustration over Gnomes being the butt of every joke. I think we were all caught off guard by the news surrounding Overwatch. If you remember several weeks back we speculated as to what might be announced, and while we brought up an FPS we just as quickly dismissed that ideal. The FPS genre is pretty stagnant so I didn’t see much room where Blizzard could improve upon it. Here is hoping this is not the case because the gameplay footage I have seen has me absolutely intrigued. Wolfenstein Enemy Territory was my favorite competitive shooter, and here is hoping that they bring this same level of detail and strategy to the maps. Also hoping that by some token I can manage to score a beta invite.

So Many Feels

If you recall yesterday I talked about the “Blizzcon Spirit” and how that this year I had not really felt it. Well last night it struck with a vengeance. My friend Syl mentioned the Looking For Group documentary and how good it was over twitter. I had already planned on watching it at some point, because I am a sucker for documentaries… especially fan produced ones. I have to say it is so amazingly good, and I am glad that something like that exists. The negative is I am absolutely overwhelmed with feels about Blizzard, World of Warcraft and the community surrounding it. Had it not been super late last night I probably would have logged into the game the moment the documentary had finished if for no reason other than to visit my characters. The documentary is like some crazy aphrodisiac that makes you love World of Warcraft again. One viewing and you will be wanting to scream “For The Alliance!” or horde if that is your persuasion.

Then the reality sets in… that all the same problems I have had with the game, and the players and just years of history… are all still there. If I could return to a snapshot in time, when we were still raiding Icecrown Citadel as the Duranub Raiding Compny… I would do it in a heartbeat. If I could return to a period in time when we were fighting to clear Ahn’Qiraj as the Late Night Raiders… I would also do that in a heartbeat. The problem is there are these epic vignettes of time where it would be amazing to return to and experience all the love and wonderment that existed in that little vacuum. Sad thing is none of those things exist… time happened, years of guild, server and raid drama happened. Folks don’t just stand still in one place, they evolve and move on with their lives.

Glory Days Revisited

When I log back into World of Warcraft amped up on Nostalgia… I feel just like that once upon a time Quarterback reliving their big homecoming win. That world that was meaningful to me and the people that I fought to protect and keep moving towards a goal… just don’t exist any longer, or at least they don’t exist in the same combination that they once did. I have tried to return to the game on two different times and rally the troops to rekindle the spirit that once made my guild a great place to be. Each time I end up frustrated that no one is wanting to work towards those ends with me. People are happy to exist in the comfortable place they have carved out once the epic nature of the game died away. The glory days really can’t be relived, at least not in the same way.

So here I stand wondering what exactly I will do. I know there is no going back, but part of me wishes there was. I have a paid subscription through December, and a fully paid expansion because they allowed me to order it a year ago when I was actually amped up about World of Warcraft once more. I have no idea if I will attempt to log in come release day, and start playing through the new content. One of the things about being open to change, means you can’t fully predict what you will do when a different set of stimulus is applied. I think my time leading the Warcraft House Stalwart is over, and it is time for them to find new leadership that can make them great again. That doesn’t preclude me from occasionally playing the role of war hero and popping my head in from time to time.

Feels

Since this post is in large part about feelings, and me struggling with them… I thought it was fitting to state that while often times frustrating… I am glad that I have them. It would suck to go through life with the inability to surrender to your emotions and get caught up in a moment. While society has attempted to teach me that it is somehow “unmanly” to feel emotion, and moreso be swayed by them… for whatever reason this indoctrination never actually took. I feel no shame in choking back tears during certain moments of a lot of movies. There is that moment where you just can’t help yourself, and that story of whatever you are watching has peeled back your layers of defense and landed a blow to your inner core. I embrace that I can empathize with people I have never met, and care even more deeply about them that they will likely ever realize. While it is often cool to be aloof and uncaring about things… I like to care, I like to know I am making a difference. So today I am thankful that I was raised with compassion and the ability to grant that same compassion to others.

NaNoWriMo Supporter

November 2, 2014 by Belghast

AggroChat Episode 28

Last night we once again rallied the troops and recorded another episode of AggroChat. This week Kodra was saddled with the dual burdens of illness and family… and as such could not attend. However we had Ashgar, Rae and Tam. The number one thing on all of our minds was experiencing the 2.4 patch content in Final Fantasy XIV which landed last Monday/Tuesday. During that time Tam has pushed up a rogue from level 1 to 50 and is now gearing it for raiding purposes. I have mostly spent my time running Syrcus Tower trying to get bits to gear out my warrior and dragoon. All of us have been slowly working our way through the brand new dungeon content. Yesterday shortly before the show Ash, Tam and myself finished the last of the three new hardmodes and I have to say I am really damned impressed.

Even more impressive is where the main storyline seems to be going. This is one of the aspects I find the coolest about FFXIV is that the story just keeps evolving and not in an artificial way. The problem with Star Wars the Old Republic is that when you reached 50… especially as a Jedi Knight or Jedi Counselor you had solved the galaxies greatest threat. There was nowhere to go but down from there. In FFXIV when you finish the main story, it is just the beginning and everything about the game tells you… you didn’t solve shit. You took out one pawn in a far greater game. So every three months or so when we get a major patch, I am always amped to see where exactly the story is going to go. Right now I am only a couple of hours into the new story content, and already they have thrown out some allusions to past Final Fantasy games that have me spooked as to where we might be going with this.

NaNoWriMo Supporter

At this point hopefully all of this years participants have at least broken ground on their new novel. Throughout the month of October I mulled around the notion of doing NaNoWriMo 2014, but in the end I have decided not to. Last year if you recall I essentially live blogged my novel and used each days writing as the next days posting on my blog. In the intervening year I have done absolutely nothing with it. I’ve not even cracked the original drive document to even begin editing it. This more than anything else tells me I am not quite ready to undergo the challenge again. Last year I won, and by winning I mean I actually finished my 50,000+ words by the end of the month. The problem is I have a chrysalis for a novel and not really something worth publishing. I need to put at least as much effort as I did writing it into editing it. At least once a week I think about digging into it and ripping things to shreds as I sort bits out that I slammed together in a rush. It just seems so damned daunting to unravel what I was only able to pull together through sheer will.

The other reason why I have decided to skip NaNoWriMo this year is that it took a hell of a lot out of me. My world for the month of November revolved around making sure I got my words done for the day. In the end nothing else mattered, and I pretty much abandoned everything else that I enjoyed. It was during the month of November that I faded away from FFXIV in the first place, because the game required too much effort from me to keep playing it while pouring out 1500 to 2000 words a day. Additionally my blog suffered because I could not keep up my daily blogging AND write that many words a day… was just not something I could juggle. This was the point that I got back into World of Warcraft, because WoW was a game I could play entirely on auto pilot. Nothing about the game made me think, and I could live in this blissful muscle memory zone where I got enjoyment without having to acknowledge the world going on around me. NaNoWriMo was all consuming, and while I think it is something that everyone should complete at least once… I have done that. I completed the competition last year, and wrote a novel… something that I can check off my bucket list. I don’t feel the need for a repeat performance… at least not quite yet.

What I plan on doing is being a cheerleader for the folks who ARE planning on doing the struggle this year. The folks that need inspiration or support as they struggle to keep up with the waterfall of words that NaNoWriMo is. Be it a word of encouragement or a swift kick in the ass when I see they haven’t done their words for the day… I will try and be there. So while I am not a participant I am very much a supporter of the process. Having actually gotten my novel finished on time last year I might even be able to provide a source of advice. I would never have finished last year were it not for the other people struggled through the process with me. They were a source of inspiration and I am hoping some of them will be taking up the challenge this year as well. It is an awesome thing, and hopefully I can play match maker between groups of friends entering the fray together.

I realize this is the second of November and not the first, but we are going to temporarily ignore that fact as I introduce a new thing that I am going to do all this month. In truth it was not until yesterdays post that I was made aware that this was a thing. My wife usually skims my posts each day to see if I have written anything about “us” in the blog, and after doing this yesterday she turned to me and said “you should have done a month of thankfulness post”. So yeah… I kind of wish I had thought about that before making my post yesterday. So this morning I pulled together a logo and am setting forth on this adventure. I’ve always liked Thanksgiving the best of all of the holidays because it isn’t about commercialization or how much you can spend to show your love… it is just about a simple thanks for the awesome things in your life. I am not going to make this out to be a big thing like Blaugust was, but I think it would be awesome if it spread a little bit around our community.

My Wife

I figured I would start off my series of posts with a post about my wife. Not only did she give me this idea but she is pretty much a constant source of support in my life. More important than that she keeps me grounded. I get absolutely engrossed in the things I am into, be it my blog, the podcast, streaming or whatever the latest video game I am obsessing over. She has a way of pulling me outside of all of this and focusing me on the real world outside of my computer and consoles. There are a lot of couples that game together, and I have always thought this would be a cool thing… but I also know it would never actually fly for me. If I had a gamer spouse the bills would never get paid, the chores would never get done… and I would ultimately end up losing my job. My wife helps me keep one foot firmly planted in reality, and keep from slipping down that slippery slope.

More than this we compliment each other nicely. She is all of the things I am not. She is a creature of logic and I am a creature of passion, and together we make this awesome pair. I can’t necessarily say that we are opposites, because we have just enough in common to make it work, but we definitely complement each other. The other strange thing is that we rarely actually fight. I mean we bicker back and forth, but there is rarely any spat that isn’t resolved by bed time. We are in fact an old married couple, and have been able to complete each others sentences for years. There are so many times we will just say a word or two before the other person agrees… because after almost two decades we know exactly what the other is thinking. Without having a place of love and stability, I wouldn’t have the courage each day to put myself out here in front of you all. For all of this and more I am very thankful for my wife.

Extra Life Results

October 26, 2014 by Belghast

AggroChat #28 – Server Nightmares and Spycraft

Last night we recorded another episode of the AggroChat podcast, which is something that was a bit up in the air a few weeks back. Because of all of the excitement going on with Extra Life streams and Team Alliance of Awesome… I had wondered at one point if we should just skip the week. Thankfully we had plenty of stuff to talk about and the normal cast of characters were all in attendance. Last night we were joined by Ashgar, Kodra, Rae and Tam as we discuss all sorts of stuff going on. It was a weird lead up for me, since I was out and about all day long, and didn’t really have much time to catch up on the news until right before we started recording.

We talked about the latest round of FFXIV announcements coming out of the London Fanfest. Unfortunately the announcement that we got in Vegas of the Job information coming in London… was a bit of a tease. We also talk about what we are looking forward to Tuesday when the 2.4 patch lands. I talk about my experiences with Rift Nightmare Tide launch and the fairly catastrophic server rollback that caused me to loose essentially one entire days worth of playtime and a bunch of other stuff that came with that. Tam and Kodra talk about their experiences playing Civilization Beyond Earth as a co-operative team. Finally Rae fills us in on some of the craziness that is happening in the post season League. It seems like there is a ton of “horse trading” going on as players are swapping teams left and right.

Extra Life Results

I have to say I am really damned proud of Team Alliance of Awesome. We opted to do the 25 hour marathon relay style where each of us would pass the baton to the next leg of the stream. I personally chose to take the 11pm EST to 3am EST slot thinking I could just stay up after we record the podcast and push through it. I did however take a nap in preparation but I have to thank all of the folks that showed up during the middle of the night to cheer me on. You guys kept me awake and responsive. During that last hour after Pazz logged out of voice chat I got more than a tiny bit quiet. All told we had 9 total participants and as you can see from the image on the right side we raised $1728 for the Extra Life charity. So I want to thank everyone that participated by taking a leg of the stream, and everyone who tuned in to cheer us on. It was an awesome experience and I am hoping next year we can maybe even make it bigger somehow. I know as we neared go time folks came out of the woodwork wanting to participate but we had already assigned all of the slots.

One of the things that I thought was awesome was just how varied the group was in what all they streamed. Sure there were a few games that got duplicated but there was a ton of variety from Single Player to MMOs to even Classic Console games. There seemed to be a little bit for everyone. I know Ashgar even managed to completely beat the Kirby game he was playing during his stream, which is pretty awesome. I originally planned on playing The Secret World, Trove, FFXIV and Destiny… but I ended up mixing that up a bit. I started off rolling a brand new Illuminati character in The Secret World, but having not played in awhile I did not make it terribly far into the game before I hit the hour threshold where I had intended to swap games. After that I popped into FFXIV and threw myself at the Mercy of the Duty Roulette, healing an Ifrit and a Tam-Tara Deep Croft run. After another hour had passed I flipped over to Rift and spent the rest of the night working my way through Goboro Reef in the Nightmare Tide content. After two hours of play I managed to finally get back to roughly the same place I was before the server rollback the other day.

The folks I am immensely proud of though are the individuals who took it upon themselves to do the entire 25 hour stream. For me I found four hours late at night a challenge, but I know Braxwolf, Stargrace and Liore all took it upon themselves to do the entire stream. So seriously raise your hands and give all the folks that managed to complete the full 25 hour marathon a huge round of applause. This is an awesome cause and it was great to actually be part of it this year. Like I said before I am hoping to maybe do a better job of assigning slots and getting as many folks participating as we can next year around. For the most part I believe the covered all 25 hours of the marathon, and some streams ran a bit long but it was awesome to have multiple folks streaming at the same time. I really like the team construct in Hitbox, and I just wish Twitch would extend that functionality to mere mortals instead of having it walled up behind being a partner. I will never have the kind of numbers needed to become a partner in any site… but it is awesome to still be able to have a team of friends streaming. You can watch my entire 4 1/2 hours of streaming in the embedded video above.

Valdis Story

This morning I am cheating a bit with my Steampowered Sunday game, in part because I started playing this last week. I have gotten in the habit of picking up almost every Humble Bundle package that comes out, because I know sooner or later I will want to play one of the games in it. Ashgar actually tipped me off to this game, because of the horribly long name I mostly ignored it when I noticed it in the bundle. However he thought I would definitely be interested in it as it is a Metroidvania of a sort. More so than a Metroidvania, it is very much a game in the feel of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night… and if you have been around my blog for very long you will recognize that as most likely my favorite game. I own copies on the PSP, Vita, PS3 and even still have my original Playstation disc around here even though I don’t actually have a functional PSX any longer.

You have a series of characters to choose but initially your only options are Wyatt a emo haired youth with a big sword (see cloud) or Reina a female monk that is labeled for “advanced” players. I of course went for the guy with the big sword… because slashing things with a big sword is fun. At some point I plan on going back through and trying out Reina, especially since during Wyatts play through of the game you encounter her early on… and she seems like a badass. The storyline of the game is a little odd. You are in a world where heaven and hell have both come to the material plain to duke it out for the surface. As one of the last remaining humans you seem to have the ability to use the attacks of either side. There is a lot of this that I don’t quite understand yet, but the devils are reddish hue and the angels tend to have blue color palettes.

The story doesn’t really matter much to me to be honest. Why I am playing this game is that mechanically it is really fun. You wander about and collect new abilities that open up new areas to explore just like the traditional Metroidvania style. For example one of the first abilities you get is a wall jump, allowing you to explore new areas and reach places that you haven’t been before. Today during my stream I managed to find a new ability that allowed me to erect a pillar of ice, allowing me to jump on it to reach areas I couldn’t before. If you are used to Metroidvanias none of this will seem out of the ordinary. There is a basic crafting system that allows you to upgrade your gear in towns, and that aspect actually reminds me a bit of Simon’s Quest the second Castlevania game.

This is the sort of game that you either really like Metroidvania games or you dislike them. You can check out my entire stream from this morning above. I play the area between two towns and end up fighting two bosses… both of which I barely made it through. The boss fights are fairly tough in part because often times the environment conspires against you. The first boss I made it through I literally have no clue quite how I did it. In part I feel like I just lucked into that one. The second boss was difficult because the floor was icy, and the wind would blow you to the side making it super hard to stay on the platforms and time the jumps to avoid the ice beams. In any case it is worth a look. The game is pretty much $15 wherever you go for it and available DRM free through the developer or on Steam. Good game, and I play on playing it some more… I just wish I had it on the Vita to be honest. This seems like the perfect type of game to play before falling asleep.