AggroChat Podcast Archives - Page 80 of 108

Family We Choose

November 8, 2016 by Belghast

On a day that could wind up being absolutely horrible for the future of our country, I find it important to talk about something good to offset the bad vibes. If you really want to read an excellent worded post on the election, then I suggest you go read the heartfelt post by my friend Rowanblaze. Past that my only admonishment to you is to get out and vote, because not voting is functionally the same thing as voting against your beliefs. So now that I have said that… onward with the feel good piece. For the most part I have resigned myself to being an MMO Gamer, because even though there are a plethora of single player games that I would love to be playing… I always find them lacking when it comes to the human interaction that I crave. Sure I occasionally hole up in skyrim or minecraft or some equally engrossing game to hide out from the world, but there will always be a point where I stick my head up and want to interact again. Ultimately it is the people that really matter to me when it comes to gaming, and one of the interesting trappings that comes with the MMO is that you end up getting intimately aware of the folks you are playing with. There are people that I am still in contact with that I played Diablo and Starcraft with in College, and even more that I met playing my first real MMO experience Everquest.

The group that has seemed to have the most permanence however are the folks I have raided with. There is a core group of people that transitioned long ago from acquaintance, to guildie, to friend and eventually wound up in the inner most circle of family. This is a group of people that I quite literally talk to every single day, even if none of us happen to be playing the same game at the same time. The core of this group represents what is remaining intact from the very first raid group I was ever part of. There are other members of course that I stay in contact regularly but, there is a smaller group that held together far more firmly. Of the six regular members of AggroChat myself, Tamrielo, Kodra and Thalen all come from the same non-guild raiding community that sprung up on the Argent Dawn server in World of Warcraft. Now Thalen is a bit of an edge case since he was technically in a competing raid… but there was a bunch of cross over between those two groups with various members of our group the Late Night Raiders, filling in with Last Horse the group he was part of and versa vice. Ashgar is similarly linked to Tam and Kodra from their post LNR raiding, and to me starting at a time in history that I can’t even remember at this point. Right now it honestly feels like Ashgar has just sort of always been there in my life. Similarly I cannot tell you exactly when Grace joined our merry band, because once she arrived she also felt like she had always been there too.

Some time ago Tam came to me and asked if I thought folks would be cool with him commissioning portraits. The catch was that these would be portraits not necessarily of a given character, or a given person… but this strange amalgam of how we represented ourselves and to some extent his mental image of us. I of course thought this was an awesome idea, but then months passed and I had not heard anything about it. I had no clue who he had commissioned and if it actually was still a thing, so I largely filed it away in the back of my brain as a “cool idea”. Recently I myself decided that I wanted to commission our good friend Ammo to pick back up this project and at least do some matching portraits of the current Aggrochat cast and our regular alternates. Ammo told me she was excited about the idea, but that she was working on another big commission so it might be awhile before she could get around to it. Little did I know that the commission in question was the one I had heard so many months ago. Tam made a huge production of the unveiling yesterday, and gathered us all together at the time to announce it. To be truthful I am not sure any of us had a real clue what was going on, until we were presented with the above image. For point of reference… the above image left to right is Ashgar, Neph, Vexa, Grace, Gabri, Kodra, Tam, Me, Toadchild, Inky, Helkim, Sol and scouting ahead is Thalen.

What is so phenomenal about this project is the sheer amount of tiny details that went into each and every portrait. From the moment it was unveiled yesterday afternoon, I literally just kept pouring over the details and finding little things. For example on Gabri the Cooking Mage’s Whisk Staff… there are all these tiny carrots at the bottom. Ashgar similarly is this perfect amalgam of all of these things that we think of when it comes to him… the Earth Mage magic nature… with the shape shifting feral druid spirit behind him that he is just about to shift into. The one that I cannot get over is the portrait of me however. It is this juxtaposition of big dark heavily armored axe wielding warrior… with the whole friend of the woodland creatures thing. We decided that it is now canon that the woodland creatures helped me put on the armor in the same manner as Cinderella. The birbs however have a second meaning in that they are all bluebirds…. the symbol of twitter which my friends are constantly poking fun at me over. There is even the detail of the belt… because we have had all of these conversations about how I really liked the 90’s comic book style of having way too many belts on EVERYTHING. I am sure to strangers, this is just a well rendered image… but to those of us in it… it absolutely captures the soul of every single person. The only way this would have ever worked is because Tam supplied a ton of details… but also that Ammo knows each of us extremely well so was able to fuse the things he was telling her with the things she just inherently knew. When it happened last night… I literally had the sudden desire to run around outside making random strangers look at just how awesome it was. So there was no way we were getting past today’s post without talking about it. I am so completely enamored with each and every portrait, that all I can really think to do is just say thanks to Tam and Ammo for making it happen.

Magical Moose

February 14, 2016 by Belghast

Luck and Friendship

Over in World of Warcraft, there has been an item that has lovingly started to be referred to as the Friendship Moose…. and there are good reasons behind it. The mount itself is pretty damned majestic, and makes me feel like Santa Claus when I ride it. It comes from getting the Ahead of the Curve achievement for Heroic Archimonde…. well in truth Archi drops a quest but same basic difference. The reason why it has become known as the friendship moose is the fact that there have been an extremely large number of people in the WoW Community who are going out of their way to try and get people the mount. To the best of my knowledge it was originally @Thomicks that started the #FriendshipMoose hashtag, and then it kinda just went out of control from there. I know @Zelse007 for example has been really knocking these out and as of last night he has gotten 639 Folks their moose. I won’t lie that the thought of getting a spiffy mount is partially what drove me back into raiding in World of Warcraft recently, but more than anything it was to be able to hang out with Horde friends that I had never really raided with. Quite honestly I never expected to get the Reins of the Grove Warden.

The thing is… I have some really amazing friends. Earlier in the week I was pinged by Damai to see if I wanted to join in with his raid for a farm run. The plan was to clear a bunch of bosses on Thursday and then pop in really quickly early in the evening on Saturday and take down Archimonde. Generally speaking I cannot participate in this raid because it happens to coincide almost exactly with our podcast recording session. However this time they planned on being in and out of the raid roughly two hours before our podcast was set to go. I ultimately had to beg off on Thursday, because I kept going into uncontrollable coughing fits, but I was however able to attend yesterday…. which was good enough to get me a moose. I was carried extremely hard last night, the above image is of me being the only dead member of the raid…. from when I tried to run my fixate to the edge and happened to run right in between two folks firing their lasers. Not only did I walk away with a moose but I also picked up a couple of sweet upgrades, one of which is REALLY amazing for my special snowflake Gladiator spec [ Worldbreaker’s Resolve, World Ender’s Gorget]. I gotta say I am happy beyond reason… because I absolutely thought this was far beyond my reach. I want to give a special shout out to Damai, Errya, Pugnodeum, and the rest of the Praetorian Guard crew for dragging my but along.

No AggroChat

So now that the warm and fuzzy bits are out of the way… I have to tell you that right now I am feeling like a complete and total failure. Sure being the only person to die on Archimonde should have done that already, but this is something different. We’ve been recording AggroChat for a little over two years now I believe, and during that time we have missed two episodes. This week being the second episode, and for the most part…. this time is completely because of me. While raiding last night, I was on listen only mode because I quite honestly had no voice to talk with. Throughout the day yesterday, as it went on my voice kept getting weaker and weaker until the point where I simply became a squeaky whisper. On top of this… Tam is out of pocket this week, Grace is out of pocket this week… and yesterday was Kodra’s birthday… leaving it up to Thalen and Ashgar to hold up an entire show. As a result throughout the day we simply decided to call it, and I really hate the fact that it was my fault for doing just that. This crud that I have picked up is driving me insane… I am so ready to be “better” but as the weeks go by it keeps dragging on.

I know last week when I went ahead and recorded… it was probably a bit of a set back. Because prior to last weeks show I was feeling a bit better…. and then afterwards I was pretty much dead to the world for a few days. What is killing me the most is that when I am in this condition I just don’t want to do much of anything. As a result I have been focused heavily on Elder Scrolls Online, which is a game that I am largely playing by myself. Sure there are a handful of awesome people playing with me like Ammo and Sol, but even then my interaction is mostly that of answering the sort of questions that new players have…. and not so much active grouping. I can zone out and zone into the storyline… and as a result I am probably enjoying it more than I have since I first played alpha. Part of me wants to at least push through the rest of the Aldmeri Dominion content before resigning the game to the back burner again. Another big thing that I want to do at some point is pick up where I left off in SWTOR, and play through the Reven content that I never actually got around to doing. I have this feeling at least in the near future that I am going to be focused on story games, less than I am going to be on raiding and grouping activities. The Final Fantasy XIV 3.2 patch might change that, and in part I hope it does…. because I would love to feel the drive to play that game again. However in the meantime I am going to quietly be piddling over here without my voice.

Frustration and Fallout 4

January 3, 2016 by Belghast

Morning Will Suck

This morning I attempted to get myself back in line for the impending work week, and I have to say the experiment has been a dismal failure. I normally get up for work at 5:30 in the morning, and then get up… do my routine and finally knock out a blog post. Sundays have always been difficult because generally speaking I am up until at least after Midnight and often times 1 am working on the AggroChat podcast that I end up having to finish editing and posting in the morning. Last night I was up until around 1:30 but thought it was probably a good idea to set an alarm. So at 7:30 I at least put toes on the ground…. and sat there teetering on the edge of the bed for a few minutes trying to decide what step came next. I finally realized that hoping in the shower was a good idea, and did that hoping that the water would somehow jog my brain into functioning enough to go through the rest of the morning boot up routine. I had decided yesterday that instead of having a yummy bowl of cereal in my warm home…. I would get out and find something in the cruel cold world to call breakfast. This ultimately meant that I would go outside and scrape the vehicle since apparently over night the temperatures had dropped a bit.

So I consumed my breakfast and a big tall monster zero…. and played the fun game of trying to throw my muffin wrapper away. I say its a game… because my kitten for some reason LOVES muffin wrappers. She will literally go dumpster diving through my trash can trying to get it, only to drag it out from the bottom of the bin…. carefully unwrap the plastic bag I threw it away in and unfold the muffin wrapper so she can lick it. She is a damned determined cat and the second I leave the room and let my guard down…. she strikes and before I know it she has the damned wrapper out again. This will be something that continues over the next several days. The long and short of all of this…. is that tomorrow is going to be pure hell. I am dreading going back, not because there is something there that I dread necessarily… but that twelve days off from work is more than enough time to completely destroy any routines you have had. Many nights it might be two in the morning before I finally get to sleep… which is not exactly conducive to a 5:30 alarm clock. The goal is to have forced myself to get up earlier than normal this morning, and to stay up all day long regardless of how tired I might be…. in the hopes that I will get a nice full night of sleep tonight. I feel like it is not going to go anywhere near as well as I might have hoped.

Making a Murderer

This break has been the one of binge watching content, and while most of it was Star Wars… we did manage to watch a new Netflix series called Making a Murderer over the last few days. Apparently my wife’s friends had been talking about it, and when she said they explained it as “like Serial” I knew I was in for the ride. Serial was one of those things that I got in on late, but I still dutifully listened to the show over the course of a few days while doing other things. The only problem with content like this, is that it does not wrap up neatly in a box at the end of the experience. In a “crime drama” at the end of the show you have some grand exposition that explains how it “really happened”, but real life is never that neat. Serial more or less was a show that made me wonder if this kid did what the police said he did, but it never made me physically angry at the police. I could see their side of the tale and I could see the kids side of the tail… and the end result was you mostly trying to sort out what you personally believed in the mix. “Making a Murderer” on the other hand presents a tale so frustrating that it ended up with me yelling at the screen several times, and my wife having to talk me down.

I am not sure how much I can say that won’t give the entire tale away, because I feel like it is probably best to just watch the 10 episode series for yourself. There are however lots of moments that swayed me to the side of the supposed killer. I feel like he was most definitely not given a completely fair chance in this case, and there is a significant amount of bias in the area against him. There were several incidents that occurred that were never explained… like one of the police officers running the tags for the Jeep two days before the victim was reported missing, but after she WOULD HAVE BEEN missing. The recorded dispatch call sounded as though he was staring at the vehicle reading the plates off, and verifying that it was a jeep. Don’t get me wrong… I know a lot of really awesome police officers, but I also know some that probably would not bat an eye at planting evidence to support their case. The thing is… I believe at no point did anyone think they were framing an innocent man… but instead that from the moment his name was mentioned he was already assumed guilty and they began trying to make a case against him work. I think that is probably the worst thing that the show highlights is how non-existence the burden of proof really is. Maybe I am just more questioning of information… but I had more than enough “reasonable doubt”.

The Fallout 4 Show

Last night we recorded our AggroChat podcast devoted to Fallout 4. More or less this was the reason why I pushed through the storyline recently, and I have to say forcing myself to complete this game was one of the more miserable experiences. I wanted to be able to talk about story plots, but part of me thinks i would have been happier if I had just not done that. Bethesda games in general for me are about the little moments, and not the big picture. This is a game that delivers in spades when it comes to little vignettes, but fails to deliver when it comes to giving me a larger story arc that I really cared about. The biggest problem for me at least was the fact that in no way could you complete the game in a fashion that did not end up with completely closing off all of the other options. I hate red versus blue situations… and even though fallout 4 was red vs blue vs orange vs green…. it still set up an artificial conflict that I had no way of mediating. There were no “grand bargain” options but instead a lot of “nope they will hate you now” paths you were forced down.

All of that said… the game itself was really awesome and I highly suggest it. When we finally do the game of the year show, this is more or less going to be my pick. I love the game, but then again I have loved every Fallout game to date…. well except Tactics… we don’t talk about Tactics. It was awesome and interesting hearing everyone elses options on the game as well. When we got to recording the show neither Ashgar or Kodra had managed to beat the storyline… and I think I probably would have been far happier if I had joined them in that club. Dallian on the other end of the spectrum had gotten 100% of the PS4 trophies, meaning that he had quite literally gotten every ending possible I believe. The takeaway is… this is a Bethesda game. If you like those games, then you are absolutely going to love Fallout 4… and more than likely you already own it and are happily playing it. If you don’t like Bethesda games, then this isn’t the departure you are looking for. If you are on the fence… then wait for a sale and try it then. If you’ve never played a Fallout game… I highly suggest you pick up Fallout New Vegas because it pretty much represents some of the best storytelling in the series. The show itself is full spoilers so if you plan on playing Fallout 4 at some point, and if you are one of those people for whom spoilers mean something…. then you probably should skip the show until a later date.

AggroChat 89 – The Fallout 4 Show

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Day of Destiny

October 5, 2015 by Belghast

So Much Fireteam

Pause in loading gave a rare screenshot opportunity.

It seems my recent Destiny addiction has rekindled the fires in a handful of my friends. As a result over the weekend I spent most of it in a Fireteam with Damai attempting to help level our friend Carthuun represented above by his PSN name Saldonas. Saturday night my wife was freezing, so I got drafted into going to bed the moment our podcast broke up to provide “warmth”. As a result I had to spend a good chunk of Sunday morning editing the podcast, creating the YouTube version, blogging about it and broadcasting it to the world. After that I of course has to throw out my own Aggronaut post… which means that I was fairly late getting started on playing anything. By the time I logged into Destiny Damai and Carth had a fireteam going and were working on the last few missions of the original storyline. From there we pushed through The Dark Below and House of Wolves expansion content as a group, which honestly had been a bullet point that I wanted to get through at some point. The problem is with so much new and exciting stuff to do and gear to get… I never quite got around to making the time for it. However with Carth leveling for the first time… all of the items you get through those storyline elements were actually relevant. I finally st0pped grouping around 7pm when my wife got back home, and I went off to fix dinner for the two of us. At that point I think Carthuun was sitting around the level 25 mark which is not too shabby for a day of grouping.

The big thing that I sorted was how to use PS4 party chat comfortably. I have a Logitech G430 sitting relatively unused because after swapping to using a Blue Yeti microphone on my machine upstairs, I swapped to simply using a pair of Behringer HPS3000 studio headphones. The sound output was better and they are nowhere near as heavy as the Logitech pair because they don’t need an attached boom mic. Ages ago I ordered a few pairs of adapters that take a standard headset and converts it down to the single jack style input that modern phones and the PS4 controller uses. Yesterday I took the time to dig out my G430 and one of those adapters and after some fiddling and piping all of the game audio through the headset… I finally arrived at something that was fairly comfortable to use. I don’t seem to mind the fact that playstation chat is mono audio… when I have the rest of the game audio coming through my headphones as well. Additionally having something other than my dedicated PS4 headset… makes them far more comfortable to use for several hours on end. Also this finally allows me to crank up the game audio without frustrating my wife, who has on occasion asked me to turn it down when a really crazy moment happens and the audio is booming. Now that it is sorted I feel more comfortable using a headset with the console, and am also more likely to just hang out in party chat for awhile. I am wondering what the upper bound on a party group is, and if you can have more than just the three fire team members.

Swapping Companions

When I got downstairs last night to prepare for the season finale of Fear the Walking Dead, I of course booted up and started playing Star Wars the Old Republic. Now that I have finished with my smuggler, I am picking up where I left off on my Sith Warrior. Through the course of the evening I worked my way through the rest of the Nar Shadda storyline and just now starting on Tattooine. I have to say it is very nice to finally have all four buffs after beating one of each base class. I am a bit saddened however that I am finally reaching the stage of the game where it feels like having a healer is a very useful thing. This means relegating Vette to crafting and spending the majority of my time with Malavai Quinn. In the grand scheme of things I have no problem with Malavai, because he seems like the honorable Imperial Soldier type. The problem being that I just like running around with Vette, because I always loved Mission Vao, and honestly for me… she was always Mission 2.0 rather than her own character. Instead she will farm up companion gifts… that I will ultimately give to her later… which seems a little strange?

Basically if I have a shot in hell of getting the special legacy unlock thing for beating all of the stories, that means I have to play through the rest of Sith Warrior, Imperial Agent, Bounty Hunter, and Sith Inquisitor all before the end of the month. I am seriously doubting I will be able to do it, but…. that said if I ONLY focus on the story missions I might be able to make it. When you only focus on the class story the early planets at least go extremely quickly and you stay at a decent level. I might need to spend some cartel coins however to unlock more mod gear to throw on my characters. The plan I arrived at on my smuggler of upgrading my armor every other planet seemed to work pretty well and I would really like to do that with my Sith characters. The problem being the game is not extremely forthcoming with armor options. There are sets available for pretty much any level range on the Cartel Market, but each of them cost a fair amount of coin. So I guess we shall see what ultimately happens. I guess if I got desperate I could make them wear the free moddable flight suits they give you, but that is not exactly a great option. I might use the imperial pilot suit for Malavai Quinn however.

YouTube AggroChat

The funny thing about AggroChat is that in the grand scheme of things… we don’t actually get that many listeners… or at least not enough listeners to go through the trouble of some of the things that I do. For example… our YouTube videos maybe get a dozen views a piece. That said I like doing them, and I am not sure why. I guess they are just far easier to link to someone when they ask you about the show than linking the actual podcast page. Also I like embedding a youtube video far more than I liked embedding the Libsyn player. I feel like I could probably do better about advertising our show. I tend to do it in a rather haphazard fashion, because I feel rushed to get each show out the door and ready. By the time I finish editing, uploading, and doing all the other things… I reach this point where I just want to be done with it for another week. It is not necessarily the most enjoyable period of my week. I love making the show, but the tedium that comes from doing all the fiddly bits to make it happen… gets annoying. So I reach this point where I just want to hurl it out into the world and hope someone finds it interesting. The hardest part is it feels like we don’t have a lot of feedback. Podcast listeners tend to listen silently, and while we have a few people that comment here and there… you don’t get the sort of commentary that you do when you have a blog. There are weeks however like this week, where I feel like we got into some extremely interesting conversations, and it is well worth listening. I love the folks I podcast with, because ultimately they are the folks that I hang out with on a daily basis.