Guild Leadership Archives - Page 30 of 108

Lalafell Pirate Time

January 19, 2015 by Belghast

The Dust Ruffle

Yesterday ended up absolutely nothing like I expected. I had a super late night recording the double episode of Aggrochat. By the time I had edited episode one, and made my way to bed it was roughly 2 am. I knew two things needed to happen yesterday. Firstly we needed to deep clean the house so it would be nice for the neighbor coming down to check in on the animals, and so that we would also have a friendly home to come back to. So after finishing my blog post I went through a whirlwind of cleaning momentum. I cleaned the livingroom, organized all the loose paperwork deciding what needed to be kept, what needed to be shredded and what could just be pitched. It took about an hour of serious cleaning, some of which requiring both myself and my wife working together to accomplish. We also organized a few areas that really needed help like our “pantry” closet that is really not a pantry not a full closet.

I grabbed a monster and collapsed into my desk chair when finished with the flurry of activity, and my wife did the same out in the loft. I had just started trying to play something when pidgin the IM client I use, started blowing up with bings and bongs. My wife had sent me a few links to look at along with what would ultimately end up being an ominous phrase “(10:01:04 AM) : bwt, I want to go buy a bed skirt today”. For the record I hate bed skirts, and find them both superfluous and annoying when you try and make the bed… they keep getting picked up with your covers and inadvertently tucked places. To my wife however it is a key piece of a bed… and ours has been in pretty poor shape for a few years. Considering that I wouldn’t really get to enjoy myself with another trip looming over my head… I suggested we go shower and get ready and go in search of said dust ruffle.

The Storage Bed

There was another footnote to this story however. For weeks we have been throwing around the notion of a getting a storage bed. Both my wife grew up in the era of the waterbed, and it was pretty standard for those to have a number of drawers set into the pedestal base. This would be perfect for keeping things like socks, scarves, various sundry other bits that need a place to be. One of my wife’s friends mentioned a store in town that she had seen some at, so we started off our trip by going over there to look. One of the problems that we found is that right now for some reason most of these style of beds only actually have drawers in the front. The problem with that is we do not have a massive amount of space in front of our bed. In any case we looked around through the store, found nothing and meandered our way back to the mattresses. During fall break we had gotten pretty close to purchasing a new bed for us, because our previous one was purchased not long after we moved into our house in 1999.

For the most part we thought the whole “every eight years” thing was a marketing ploy… but in truth after about eight years your mattress has doubled in weight from the dead skin cells you have shed… making it a smorgasbord for dust mites. After the guy tried to set us up with a “Bellagio” bed, we snuck away and went on about our business of trying to find the dust ruffle. On the way across town we passed this giant Mattress Firm showroom and opted to stop in. We had a decent experience with the folks in our local store back over fall break… so we figured might as well see what the big location had to offer. After playing the “lay down on all the things” process we found a bed we liked that was the store brand. The person waiting on us was awesome, and a few customers came back in that had apparently talked to her before so she excused herself to go fill out the paperwork for their purchase. This left me to do what I normally do and open up my phone and start googling to see what I could find out about the model and the company.

What I saw I did not like at all. On Consumer Affairs the company as a whole had a one star rating, with huge stacks of complaints… and the final nail in the deal was the fact that on the BBB.org they have a F rating… and are unaccredited. While we had a really nice saleswoman… when I see something like that I back away very quickly. We excused ourselves and said we were going to go eat dinner. Which is not entirely a lie, because we did in fact go eat dinner… but we also started driving towards Denver Mattress. That is where our current mattress came from, and other than the fact that it is very old… we have loved it. While there we found a Mattress we liked, as well as the storage bed above. However after some deliberation decided not to do the storage bed… because it was pretty intense. I am 6’4” and I had to lift myself a bit to get onto the bed… so that would make life hell on my slightly shorter wife. So while we set out to get a dust ruffle… and finally did get that about 7 pm last night at Wal-Mart… we also purchased a new mattress that is being delivered today. As I started off this conversation… yesterday went nothing like we had planned.

Lalafell Pirate Time

When I finally did manage to get home, I opted to pop into Final Fantasy XIV because today there is the big 2.5 patch going on… and the servers will be unplayable. I figured I would run some Syrcus Tower in an attempt to get the rest of my set of bard gear. Sure enough after a 30 minute long wait to get in… my queue popped and I had a pretty relaxed run with no real issues. When it came down to the final boss Zande, there waiting for me was my hat. My friend Thalen I am sure is jealous considering he has run this place on a daily basis trying to get it for months. While I had not officially gotten every piece of gear, I at least had all of the cosmetic ones. The above photo is in me with the full Amon outfit… and I have to say it lasted maybe 10 minutes at most before I was glamouring the hideousness away.

ffxiv 2015-01-18 21-40-43-02

After sifting through my bags and looking on the market board, I settled on a set that I liked for barding. The Buccaneer’s Tricorne, Shirt and Boots are the basis for the outfit. From there I mixed in Foestriker Mitts because they matched and looked awesome, and the Lalafell Gaskins “went” with the outfit given their greenish grey appearance. I needed to shift to something after my recent holiday outfit, and I have to say I am pretty pleased with how it worked out. I am the most adorable pirate ever. After all the outfit shenanigans a guildie was complaining about the lack of luck she had with Garuda. At which point I volunteered to tank it for her, and within a few minutes we had assembled a guild group. Lesson learned for the night… Normal Mode Garuda is NOTHING like the other modes. It took us about four attempts to remember how the fight worked, but was a small price to pay to help out a friend. While the day went nothing like expected, it ended in a really happy way surrounded by friends in Final Fantasy XIV.

Nostaltic Americana

January 18, 2015 by Belghast

Aggrochat #40 – Hexcells and H1Z1

It feels a little insane to be saying that we recorded episode 40 last night of our podcast. It just doesn’t seem like we have been running that long, but quite honestly at this point we have outlasted a large number of podcasts so I guess that’s a thing. We still manage to meet up each week to record a conversation about games… and then manage to like each other enough to do the same thing almost every night throughout the week. So I guess that in itself is an accomplishment. Last night was an absolute insane show, that in it’s content but in the fact that we recorded two shows back to back. So yes we are going to be perpetrating a dirty dirty lie, and releasing the shows a week a part as though it were fresh content.

Next week Kodra was going to be out anyways, and Ash, Rae and myself are going to Pax South and as such won’t have any of our normal recording style equipment. So the first episode we recorded last night follows the normal format, but the second episode is going to be announcing a new thing we are doing. However unfortunately I am going to make you all wait until next week to find out what it is. As far as the show proper yesterday we uncovered a recent addiction to a game called Hex Cells which if I am to believe Tam, Kodra and Rae is this super chill minesweeper like game. The fact that they mentioned minesweeper pretty much flagged me as not interested at all. Additionally we talk about the upcoming 2.5 patch in Final Fantasy XIV and finally I talk about my experiences playing H1Z1 in Early Release. Then I descend into my frustrations about the Early Access model and why if you are taking money for a game… your game is “Release” but you just released a broken game.

In Search of Vitamin D

Lately the weather here in the Tulsa area has been absolutely atrocious, not necessarily in precipitation but in the fact that it has rarely gotten above freezing for the last week. This means that the likelihood of us venturing outside of our house in a major way was next to nil. Now I have a love / hate relationship with the sun. I have super sensitive eyes and being out in bright sunlight pretty much gives me an instant headache. My wife on the other hand LOVES the sun, and during the winter months suffers from Seasonal Affective Disorder or “SAD”, so I know so many times I will be pushed out into the bright light for her health and well being. Yesterday was one of those days because the temperature actually managed to climb up into the 60s. We juggled a few different ideas for how we would spend the day but finally landed upon “junking”.

One of the towns nearby has this really historic main street district where almost every building has been carved up into an “Antique Mall”. For those not familiar with the concept, it is basically where someone renovates a huge old open floor plan, and carves it up into little booths that they then rent out to folks wanting to sell their wares. Generally speaking they have an all too clever name like the image above, that is some sort of pun on what they are selling. The problem is when EVERYONE has a “clever” name it loses much of the desired effect and just becomes a painful cliché. Mixed in among the dross and “upcycled” furnishings are some interesting relics from the past. THIS is why I enjoy going junking, because you never know quite what you might find.

I mostly am interested in relics of my own past, namely interesting toys that I can remember and ones that I didn’t even know existed. Sometimes you find some quirks of branding… for example yesterday I saw an Archie Bunker themed baby doll, and this awesome construction set by Kenner. Mostly I snapped a photo of it because there is this really awesome twitter thread where they tweet various photos of kenner products. We spent the entire day roaming around, and the odd thing is at the end of the day we had purchased exactly nothing. Mostly for us at least it is getting out and doing something rather than just sitting at home, and in that we accomplished our mission.

Nostalgic Americana

While roaming around yesterday I got the “hankering” for some traditional American south “comfort food”, and the best place for something like that is Tally’s Cafe. It is one of those places that has always been there that I can remember and is somewhat of an icon for Tulsa food. It is seated on Historic Route 66, and gets a lot of traffic from folks traveling the old highway. What makes Tally’s so interesting to me is the fact that it is this strange nostalgic version of Americana that likely never existed other than in movies like American Graffiti. The owner Talal Jalil Alame aka “Tally” came to the United States during the 1979 Civil War in Lebanon, and after some time purchased the current restaurant opening on a Friday 13th in 1987. What makes the restaurant special is two fold. The decor is this idealized version of the 1950 that could only exist in the mind of someone who grew up watching 1950s movies. Lots of chrome, neon, and clean tiles give the appearance of this tribute to the mystique of Route 66.

The second aspect of the restaurant is the fact that the food is really good. Yesterday I had the boneless fried chicken which is precisely what it sounds like. These three huge pieces of fried chicken, deboned and served with two sides and a dinner roll. Quite literally two plates of food, for like $8. Tally could easily get away with charging far more than he does, but in truth he is more than a small part humanitarian. Each year during Thanksgiving he fixes this massive meal, dinner with all the fixings. Anyone can walk in off the street and have a meal, and you quite literally pay whatever you can afford. Honestly when we were not sure what we were doing for thanksgiving, I had seriously considering trying this out and massively overpaying to support the cause. In any case Tally’s definitely fit that comfort food desire and I ended up taking a good chunk of it home for pre-podcast leftovers. All in all it was a pretty great day.

H1Z1 Early Access

January 16, 2015 by Belghast

Bel Folks Stuff #4 – An Evening with Petter

This month the Bel Folks Stuff podcast focuses on the amazing Petter Mårtensson. Petter has been an extremely busy man, and has had a ton of side projects over the years. In his normal fashion he even offered to guest on Aggrochat if we could ever work out the time zone issues. Our listeners could know him from any number of places. For several years he worked for the european gaming magazine GameReactor both as a writer and as an on-air anchor. Similarly while dormant for several years, he is the man behind the Don’t Fear the Mutant blog. On the podcasting front he has been extremely active in the CSICON network serving as a host on several different shows including Claims the Normal, Three MMOSketeers, Enochian Frequency and most recently Who’s Who.

In addition to all of this he was involved in creating the A Tale of Internet Spaceships documentary talking about the culture behind EVE online. Now he is also writing a monthly Final Fantasy XIV column for MMOGames. Like I said… he is an extremely busy man and I am thankful he took the time to sit down with me and have a length conversation… mostly about non-gaming stuff. I think the most interesting thing about the conversation was the delve into Futurism and the things we would love to see. We also geeked out a bit about Doctor Who, which apparently is something that happens on every podcast now that he hosts the Who’s Who show. Definitely was an interesting conversation, and I hope you all enjoy listening to it as much as I enjoyed recording it.

Listen to the Show

H1Z1 Early Access

Yesterday Sony Online Entertainment launched the H1Z1 early access. This was originally supposed to go live on Steam around noon, but various delays pushed it back into the late afternoon. When I got home from work it was available and I figured $20 but satiate my curiosity was a fair price. However the game apparently is very much “not quite ready for primetime”. The above screen is what greeted me when finally after my World of Warcraft raid I fired the game back up. Early in the evening I was not able to get into the server select screen at all so I guess in a way it is progress? I am sure this is another case of “underestimated demand” and I seriously cannot blame them. Throwing a game up on Steam early access as your initial forray into alpha… is pretty damned daring. Right now the game has roughly 2000 reviews, roughly half of those are positive and half are negative, so if only a small fraction of the population comments… that means they sold a ton of early access copies.

I love the concept of a zombie survival game… the problem is I don’t want to have to deal with the world pvp aspect of games like Rust and Dayz. So when this game was announced I had zero interest, until it was confirmed that there would be PVE only server environments at launch. Hell I didn’t even mind that the original icon in the server browser list was a teddy bear. I am a carebear, and I am okay with this notion. While it is immature to taunt the player base that has proved to make up the overwhelming majority of MMO players… I can deal with it. I am sure H1Z1 is going to be a mess for the near future, but hopefully at some point it will be playable and interesting and allow me to play a base building game in a walking dead style world. If it gives me that… then I am largely going to be happy with it and will consider it $20 well spent.

Mar’gok Attempts

Early in the week on Tuesday we had a really phenomenal night or raiding, meaning we cleared 6/7 on normal and 2/7 on heroic. This freed up last night to work entirely on Imperator Mar’gok. While we got a bit of a late start due to key players running a bit behind, we accomplished just that, an entire night of attempts. Mar’gok is one of those fights with a lot of moving parts, and it is simply going to take a lot of repetition before we have our “click moment” when everything falls into place. We however did make good strides in that direction. Essentially there is one transition that is wrecking us… that we need to figure out how to do more smoothly. Once we have that transition down I think we will down the boss. All of that said we did manage to start getting him down into the 40% range each time, which tells me we are likely on the cusp of victory.

It feels really good to be doing current content in World of Warcraft. During my time back in Pandaria I attempted to raid with a group that was in theory several content patches behind. There is just something demoralizing about doing that, and especially since we never seemed to make any real forward momentum that would lead me to believe that at any time we were likely to get to current content. When LFR served as my primary source of upgrades… I had to ask myself why was I even bothering with the constant nights of wiping. This expansion however has been a completely different experience. I really want to kill Mar’gok but I have the utmost confidence that we will, and likely before the Blackrock Foundry raid opens. I am just bummed that I won’t be around Thursday night next week… because more than likely after reviewing the logs we will make some tweaks and finish this raid.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Pax Virgin

January 15, 2015 by Belghast

Finger Wiggler Bel

When I came back to the game during the tail end of Cataclysm, my account had been dormant for long enough to be eligible for that “welcome back” program that blizzard was running. One of the perks was to get a free level 80 character on the server that your friend recruited you back into the game on. Since I was recruited back by a friend in my own guild… I decided to spend the free 80 token on a character I thought I would never actually enjoy so I created a Worgen Priest. Over the course of Pandaria I managed to level it to 85, entirely so that I could park it at the silk fields for daily tailoring cooldowns. All of this time Belglorian has lived in this awkward place where he was essentially a glorified bag maker. One of the tasks I have been trying to do is to make sure I had every tradeskill represented in the Garrison system. Belglorian was the character that needed the most effort to get to 90ish and as such he was the last one to make it.

Over the course of the weekend I got him to 90, but as of last night he is now 92 pushing him higher than several of my other Draenor alts. I am not sure how or why… but I have actually been enjoying Shadowpriesting. This is like the least likely class for me to ever be playing, but I find myself having fun. Granted I hate the fact that I have no health and can take no damage, but the rhythms of the actual attacks are pretty enjoyable to me. At this point I have every class over level 90 apart from Warlock and Monk. More than likely those classes are going to be the next thing I try and push to Draenor levels. This expansion more than anything has been an odd case of me enjoying mechanics that I have not in years. I am playing Belghast my warrior as my main again, and Lodin my hunter is quickly becoming my chief alt. The other day when I was playing my Warlock I was really enjoying that as well, so who knows what I ultimately end up leveling.

Pax Virgin

By this time next week I will be in transit to my very first gaming convention. I have this mix of excitement and extreme anxiety about the concept of going to a big convention like this. Granted growing up I went to a few of the local sci-fi or gaming conventions… but never anything of this scale. For my readers and listeners that are savvy convention experts, what tips do you have for me? Right now I am starting to plan what all I am going to bring. As per my friend Ashgar, I plan on having my 3DS set to street pass so I can play the “collect the countries game”. Other than that I picked up a pretty badass messenger bag that I plan on carrying around the necessaries in. I’ve already been warned that food is going to be insane there so I plan on packing a few Cliff bars to tide me over until I can get “actual” food, similarly planning on having a water bottle handy that I can refill from a water fountain.

The biggest thing I have yet to sort out is what exactly I want to do. The schedule is a rather nebulous thing, but there are a handful of panels I know I will already be attending. Most of the events I am really interested in are happening on Saturday, so I am hoping Friday I can hit the floor before the big crush of people appear on Saturday since that day is completely sold out. While I am not a huge fan of Guild Wars 2, I am interested in attending their panel because the speculation is they are going to announce and talk about the expansion. There is even more speculation about what Riot might be announcing on the main stage later that afternoon as well. From what I understand Riot almost always shows up at Pax, but rarely has a main stage presence so it might be interesting. The other big thing that I have to see is the panel with Linda “Brasse” Carlson. Its got Brasse, Lum the Mad and Sanya Weathers in the same room… so it has to be epic right?

More important than any of this… I want to meet awesome people. I’ve put a few queries out to my twitter feed but had minimal results. I am hoping to meet up with various folks from my online connections. If you are going to Pax let me know, and what days you are going to be there. I want to at least do a drive by meet and greet if nothing else. My plan is going to be simple… I intend to post a picture of what I am wearing each day so that if folks see me, even if I don’t know them they can feel comfortable saying “Hi Bel!”. This conference is going to push me far out of my comfort zone. I am generally a deep introvert when it comes to face to face interaction. I psyche myself up that something is going to be awesome… and then right before the time to do whatever it is… I start feeling like it is the worst possible idea in the world. I am sure I am going to go through this cycle on Wednesday and Thursday next week but I am hoping I can power through it and be amped for Pax South.

Square Outage

One of the major frustrations over the last few days has been a series of rolling problems with Squaresoft and their servers. The symptoms seem to be at least partially localized around the server cluster that Cactuar, our server, happens to be in. As a result none of us have been able to log in and play. This has lead one friend to renew World of Warcraft, and live in complete and total denial that they actually have done that. For me it has been a nuisance since I actually have wanted to play. With the big 2.5 patch dropping next week it has me pumped about my member of the Lalafel Master race. Also there have been a bunch of new folks filter into our guild, and I want to hang out with them. I really hope they can get things sorted out soon because it is getting super frustrating. Right now I am not sure if this is another DDoS or something more systemic. In any case especially for my friends sake I hope it clears up before the weekend.