Hey Friends! This morning I woke up and realize that I had committed a travesty and am trying to right that wrong. Almost two years ago I had this grand idea of rebooting Bel Folks Stuff… and had even recorded a few new episodes as part of the process. I had this entire plan of re-releasing all of the original content since it never existed on YouTube and then this giving me a ramp to start recording new content. Then like everything that happened early in 2020, it was derailed by the pandemic. I mean on one hand being stuck at home should have been the opportune time to record something like podcast episodes with so much of the populace now working from home. Instead I personally found that the pandemic and the constant fear of death… pretty much sapped whatever creativity I had in me and left me this hollow shell.
The end result is that I never actually got around to re-releasing the episode featuring my good friend Jaedia, and since today is her birthday I thought I would fix that today. Her blog Dragons and Whimsy is now on its third revision and quite honestly there are so damned many accolades I could throw out here. Many of you specifically may know her from her work that she did on MMOGames.com from 2015 through 2018. I would provide links to profiles, but it is grossly incomplete because the site seems to have a habit of replacing “by lines” and several articles I know she wrote now show up as someone else. I may or may not have pent up bitterness about my brief time writing for the site as well.
Not at all where I intended to go with this discussion, but here we are nonetheless! This episode was recorded in May of 2015, so an awful lot of things have changed in those six years. The discussion that was had though is just as relevant today as it was when it was first recorded. I hope you can enjoy listening to it as much as I enjoy revisiting it in my memories. Here is hoping that this will also act as a catalyst for me actually releasing some of the episodes that I have recorded already as well of the new rendition.
Featuring: Ashgar, Belghast, Kodra, Tamrielo, and Thalen
Hey Folks! Tonight we are down Grace and Ammo but push on with our ever growing list of topics. We start with some discussion about the Stellaris expansion where you can become the Crisis at the end of the game featuring some interesting asymmetrical gameplay. From there Bel talks a bit about the current failed state of New World and the degenerative gameplay of “pay for dungeon runs”. From there we talk about the importance of numbers and whether or not we as players should actually see them. We wrap things up with a discussion about Game Dev and how what is meant by a beta has changed over the years, specifically with the “very alpha” Star Citizen.
Featuring: Ammosart, Belghast, Kodra, Tamrielo, and Thalen
Tonight we are down a few people for various reasons and Bel is hanging on by a thread because he managed to schedule his Covid booster on Friday. We start off with a discussion of the Final Fantasy XIV Endwalker delay and how in theory we would have all been playing the game in another world. In news we never thought we would cover, Fallen Earth has come back from the dead and is actually better than any of our memories. From there we discuss Guardians of the Galaxy, that game we all thought would be another Avengers Flop but has apparently turned out to be pretty dang good. Bel talks a bit about the Outriders New Horizon patch and the changes it made ot the game including a full transmog system. Finally Tam discusses his experiences with Star Citizen and how it is way more of a fleshed out game than he ever expected at this point. Additionally we talk about the free trial that is going on right now.
The extremely keen eyed… or those who follow me on Twitter might have noticed that recently the site masthead has been updated once again. For some time now there has been this tradition of getting my good friend Ammo to create artwork of my characters whenever a game grabs hold of me. This all started in part due to the very first commission that I ever had her do for me years ago for the seventh anniversary of this blog. I have noticed over the years that I attempt to create pretty much the same character or as close as I possibly can in each game that I play, and it is only really through looking at a bunch of my characters stacked up next to each other that this trend is obvious.
So for the Seventh Anniversary of Aggronaut I had her draw a bunch of my characters around the letters VII, and I even got this made into a t-shirt just for the fun of it. Going left to right you have my Warrior from World of Warcraft, my character from The Secret World, my Exo from Destiny 1 and beneath it my Bahmi from Rift, my Imperial from Elder Scrolls Online, and then finally my Lalafel Warrior from Final Fantasy XIV. Commemorating the release of Heavensward I decided to rebrand this blog and wanted to replace the Chibi Bel that had been adorning the site for awhile. My favorite of the above characters was her rendition of my Lalafel and I had her expand that into a full blown character that I could place beside the Tales of the Aggronaut logo.
I think the next commission that I had her do was a Twitter Avatar that I still use today of actual me as my Sunbreaker Titan from Destiny 1. Then my friend Tam did a commission of a bunch of us the way he sees us, which represents the armored version of me with bluebirds circling my head… to represent my online presence on twitter. It just sorta grew out from there with each time I got super into something… I had her craft another visage of my characters. Then over time I just kept adding them to the masthead and it began to slowly evolve over time.
So now we have the most recent rendition and going left to right we have:
Lalafel Bunny Warrior Belghast from Final Fantasy XIV.
My character from Monster Hunter World with my Palico patterned to look more like my actual cat Kenzie.
The Tam rendition of me that largely stands in for my time in World of Warcraft as it wears the tabard of House Stalwart the guild I founded and lead for a decade.
My Imperial Dragon Knight from Elder Scrolls Online in one of the glamours that I wear most often.
My RAcast from Phantasy Star Online 2, which is wearing the PSO1 armor set which is in honor of PSO being my very first MMORPG.
The newest addition my character from New World wearing the mid tier faction gear which I particularly like.
My Titan from the launch of Destiny 2 when I expected to spend most of my time as a void shield charging boy…. but ultimately fell back in love with Sunstriker.
Then a bunch of Moogles making mischief with my stuff… and I consider the one lounging in a hoodie to be pretty representative of me as the actual gamer behind all of this madness.
I am extremely happy with how this latest commission turned out. I apparently made it way more challenging than I expected to with that specific sword, shield, and the tricorn hat. This character also includes way more flowing cloth than is my normal for characters. Ammo did an awesome job of bringing to life my sword and shield character.
This is what the character looked like in game when I was rocking that appearance. We made some purposeful tweaks, namely I didn’t much like the belt and blended everything together to make it feel more cohesive. I really hope at some point that New World allows us to create skins out of pieces of gear because I have this set banked. This looks so much better than the actual Tier V set of heavy gear that you ultimately get as Syndicate.
While my level 60 armor looks considerably different, I think it is still very easily identified as the same character. I guess we will see what game captures my imagination next, and spurs me to do another commission. I have contemplated getting a refresh of my Lalafel, now that I am spending way more time as a Paladin than the other classes, and with it a slightly different glamour. I will likely wait until after I have finished the content in Endwalker to see if I am quite as enamored with that class as I am currently. Ammo does some phenomenal work, and has a very recognizable style… that you will probably notice art from other bloggers as well. If you are interested in getting your own creations done check out her web page with various contact details.
