Tales of the Aggronaut

A Main For Shadowlands

September 14, 2020 by Belghast

Before we know it, the new World of Warcraft expansion will be upon us. It is roughly six weeks away and my mindset has just not really been prepared for that. This post is going to be a little bit of a reprise of a twitter thread from last night, but I have been mulling over what exactly I wanted to play as a main for this coming expansion. I’m actually looking forward to Shadowlands because it seems to be a move back to the sort of storytelling that I particularly enjoy in World of Warcraft. I am happiest when we are focused on big threats and not the stupid red versus blue narrative that has been fed to us over the years. Since making the switch to Horde, I have become even more disillusioned with factional conflicts in part because there is zero nuance there. Not everyone is going to be a rampant nationalist, and there is very little room in that experience for anyone like me that just could not care less about fighting the other faction.

I’ve been on a bit of a mental journey as I unpack the various phases I have had in World of Warcraft. I largely think of myself as the character I pulled my name from… Belghast, but in truth I have hopped around quite a bit between lots of different “mains” throughout the years. In Vanilla I spent most of my time as a Dwarf Hunter named Lodin, and this was in part because I had a death in the family and when I came back to the game found that everyone had leveled well past me. I started playing the Hunter largely due to the extreme solo capabilities and the fact that I could catch up to my friend group relatively easily. I stayed playing the Hunter because a friend and leader of the Late Night Raiders really wanted to replace a frustrating hunter, and that created a neat slot for me to fall into. Once I started accepting gear I largely felt obligated to keep playing this thing.

Towards the end of Vanilla, I wanted to play a Warrior Tank and my friend Ailah wanted to roll Finni her Holy Priest. We leveled the duo together and it was a thoroughly enjoyable experience. As I hit the level cap and started to get gear, I found myself tanking for lots of the LNR “alt night” activities like Zul Gurub and eventually started tanking Molten Core and Blackwing Lair for NSR aka No Such Raid. With the death of Late Night Raiders and the gear reset that came with The Burning Crusade I made the transition from Lodin the Hunter to Belghast the Warrior with relative ease. This was ultimately my main for all of Burning Crusade and the vast majority of Wrath of the Lich King. This will probably always be the character I identify with the most, because I did decide to transition from using Exeter as my internet handle to Belghast.

Near the end of Wrath of the Lich King I was feeling really burnt out from the position I had found myself as being responsible for not only the Guild but as the primary tank for Duranub, our non-guild based raid. In an attempt to freshen things up a bit I switched over to maining the Death Knight that I had been playing with on the side and chose to do so sometime during the tail end of Trails of the Crusader and beginning of Icecrown. I loved how Blood felt, and I really enjoyed DPSing as Unholy… so it gave me two fun things to do and the Warrior more or less took a back seat to helping other teams out as needed. As I entered Cataclysm I found myself disillusioned with the game more than any particular character, but Belgrave served as my main all the way through Pandaria.

I remember getting into the beta of Warlords of Draenor and not liking at all the changes that had been made to Blood Death Knight. I can’t put my finger on it, but something just felt off. At this same time Blizzard did some true nonsense and introduced Gladiator Stance… aka DPS with a Sword and Shield which has long been a fantasy of mine. So you can absolutely bet that as I came back to the game to play the new expansion I was focused heavily on dpsing with a shield. I even got back into raiding again and did so all the way through us clearing Heroic Blackrock Foundry. I also played as Belghast for most of Legion up until the point that I started to dabble heavily with playing Horde Characters and ultimately made the transition there. Even then I rolled an Orc Female Warrior also named Belghast and just transitioned from one Bel to another.

With the launch of Battle For Azeroth, I had every intent of playing Belghast the Orc as my main. I even leveled her to 120 first, but I was not happy in the least with the state of Warrior tanking. So I rapidly poured effort into my Demon Hunter alt and quickly got it up to cap and started tanking dungeons on it. Belblight served as my main for pretty much all of BFA, but I have to admit while it was super enjoyable to play around on, it never really felt like “me”. It was a crazy fun thing, and felt extremely overpowered… but I missed the sword and shield game. There is just something about that fantasy that will always be significant to me… I like bashing things with a big plate of metal.

Towards the end of BFA I went on a mission to level as many Horde characters to 120 as I could, and of these… my favorite is Belgrace my Blood Elf Paladin. I am not sure exactly when it happened, but I started to view the WoW Tank Paladin as one of my other favorite classes the Diablo III Crusader. There are so many parts of the kit that feel similar, and once I made this connection playing as a Paladin started to feel more natural. The only healer I have ever enjoyed playing was a Paladin back in Vanilla, and I have always has an affinity for playing Retribution as DPS. So in theory Belgrace seems like a pretty likely option for who I am going to main going into the expansion.

The funniest part about this decision is that back in Vanilla I had ever intent of maining a Paladin. I loved the class in beta and duo’d it a lot with a Holy Priest. Then I found myself deeply disillusioned with the change from the strike system to the seal system. I was stubborn as hell and wanted to level as a Paladin Tank, meaning that I really needed to be leveling with other people. When the death in the family hit, it just became too damned hard to progress at a reasonable pace so I latch onto the hunter and that was that. I did push the paladin up, and this is a picture of Exeter the Paladin killing Twilight Keeper Exeter and dinging 60 shortly afterwards. The frustrations of trying to tank as a paladin during the Seal of Rage era ultimately lead me to create Belghast the Warrior. It just seems like the cycle has completed that I now look at playing a Paladin once again as we move into this new expansion.

Now the only real choice is which covenant to play as on which characters. Right now I am trying to decide if I want to main Revendreth of Kyrian. Style wise I am drawn to Revendreth, especially as a Blood Elf Paladin. However the Kyrian Paladin ability seems like it would be damned solid for tanking and generating AOE threat. Also the Kyrian armor feels mighty Paladin-ish. The only Covenant that I have no real draw towards is Ardenweald. The whole Druid and Night Elf vibe is just not me, so I am going to resign that to my third string alts. Right now I am more or less expecting to at least level three classes on the first pass and here are the tentative choices.

Belgrace – Paladin – Kyrian
Belblight – Demon Hunter – Maldraxxus
Belghast – Warrior – Revendreth

I have no clue what I will play for characters after that, but the Night Fae abilities for Hunter and Warlock both seem compelling so it is likely going to be one of those two. The main reason why I am going Revendreth as a Warrior is that Condemn seems really good. Since Protection warriors can execute once again, it seems really good that this can be used as an opener and a closer at the same time and refunds some of the rage as well as applying damage reduction. I absolutely expect to charge in and condemn immediately. Demon Hunter and Maldraxxus is largely just a choice of giving him some really badass looking armor, and the brand applied seems pretty solid as well.

So as we sit on the precipice of another World of Warcraft expansion, what are your thoughts? Are you planning to also shift things up and choose a new main, or are you going to keep doing the thing you have always done? Drop me a note in the comments.

AggroChat #314 – A Battle of Business Models

September 13, 2020 by Belghast

Featuring: Ammo, Belghast, Kodra, Tamrielo and Thalen

Tonight we had some technical difficulties and as a result got to a bit of a late start… which caused us to lose track of the timing. As a result we recorded a pretty long show, but I think it was one of our better discussions. We start with Kodra explaining why he is the fiercest four year old you know and talking about Crusader Kings III some more. From there Bel talks about effectively being done with Avengers and why it has driven him to deep dive into the Ms Marvel comic series. From there we discuss the Sportscardification of Magic the Gathering and the crashes of Comic Books and Sports Cards and why it feels real similar to the state of premium collector focused products. Thalen talks about breaking down ships for fun and profit in Hardspace: Shipbreaker. We talk about when Quick Time Events feel good rather than something to be avoided, and then dive into the cognitive overhead of trying to return to a game after a long absence. Finally we talk about the Games as a Subscription model and how it may or may not change the game industry. Specifically we talk about the dueling business models of the Xbox Series S/X and the PlayStation 5.

Topics Discussed

Crusader Kings III
- The struggles of succession
Marvel Avengers
- Being mentally done with the grind for now
Marvel Comics Unlimited
- How Marvel Made me Deep Dive into Ms Marvel
Hardspace: Shipbreaker
The good at bad of Quick Time Events
- God of War
- Ghost of Tsushima
- Shinmue
Returning to Games
- The struggle of trying to pick something back after leaving for awhile
- Games left unfinished
- Reminders in Games
Games as a Subscription Model
- Microsoft vs Sony Business Models
- The overwhelming value to players.
- What does this do for publishers?

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Ma Ma Ma Mask

September 11, 2020 by Belghast

I am still not feeling amazing, so once again I am going to lean upon the nostalgia that has been feeding me currently. One of the things that I mourn a little bit in this age of cable television, is the absence of specific dense blocks of cartoons. Saturday mornings for example started some time around 7 am and ended around 11 am with a solid block of new and exciting cartoons swapping every thirty minutes. Something similar occurred before and after school, and one of these blocks will have a special place in my heart.

Growing up we had three UHF channels, 23 which would eventually become a Fox Affiliate, 41 which eventually became a UPN Affiliate and 47 which was a weird religious channel. 41 especially was a magical place that tended to play the sorts of cartoons that I was really into at the time. I remember a very specific line up that included both Robotech and M.A.S.K. back to back… then if I kept watching got progressively stranger with Beverly Hills Teens and then for some reason Jim Baker’s PTL Club show.

I have a deep love of Robotech, but at the very least the Macross portion of that is a very well acknowledged and respected fandom. What effectively was one cohesive show to us kids as actually an edited and dubbed amalgam of Super Dimension Fortress Macross, Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross and Genesis Climber MOSPEADA. We instead understood them as three time periods of the same battle in Macross Saga, The Masters and The New Generation. Of the three the third part was my favorite because of Cyclone armor.

However if I am being completely truthful my favorite of these cartoons was M.A.S.K. and sadly it is a really hard thing to track down. For starters M.A.S.K. has one of the best theme songs of any of the 80s cartoons. I’ve linked it above for your own benefit, because I still get all sorts of happy tingles when I hear it today. The toys were also freaking amazing, and in truth were sort of a weird spin off of transformers. Instead of vehicles that transform into robots… they are vehicles that change up in some way to enter a sort of battle mode with weapons that pop out. In the cartoon the Masks themselves played a role granting the wearer a special power that was never really explained how any of that worked.

There is also something weird going on with the logo that never really made sense. I think the “Mask” shown is supposed to be that of Matt Trakker, because the color scheme fits. However it obviously looks nothing like either the mask from the animation or the mask from the toy. I think instead it was likely supposed to make us THINK of Optimus Prime, and maybe confuse kids who were already into Transformers into maybe buying this other toy line of vehicles that transformed. I mean to be truthful being a fan of both… I was probably way more into M.A.S.K. than I was the Transformers.

I’ve talked about my “cool aunt” before that somehow managed to figure out the toy trends long before we even knew the toys exist. She was the one who got my Optimus Prime for Christmas the year before the cartoon really took off at least on our affiliate stations. The same was true with M.A.S.K. because if my fuzzy memory is correct I believe I got it as a birthday gift and was completely blown away by how cool the toy was. I’ve always been partial to the color green, and given my love of Cyclone Armor from Robotech, I was super on board with this motorcycle that transformed into a helicopter.

Around this same time there was a building toy by Fisher Price called Construx that was, while not hte same scale in the general range of the Mask Figures. I remember as I got more of the toys I built these elaborate bases for the figures and garages for their vehicles. There were many a “defend the base” scenario as Venom attacked, and later when StarCom was a thing… everything got sorta mixed together given they were both around the same scale.

I loved the cartoon for Mask so much, and I was super into the central conceit that they were this group of secret agents and anytime there was a mission they would call upon the specific team members that had the powers needed to solve the problem. Unfortunately that was never really how it worked, because recently I have been watching the show again and I am noticing that for the most part Matt Trakker the leader and Bruce Sato and Alex Sector the team that drives the vehicle Rhino are pretty much on every single mission.

I think looking back, why the cartoon felt so good to watch and why it hooked me in such a significant way is that it had a self insert character in the form of Scott Trakker. So often in the cartoons of the 80s… if there are kids involved they are the ones that are constantly getting into trouble and needing to be rescued. If that is not the case then they serve as the comic relief character, which also feels odd at times. Sure Scott got into plenty of trouble, but they gave him T-Bob a robotic companion that serves as this the Orko or Snarf of this series, allowing Scott to be the brave one that often times saves the day through his misadventures. It was super easy to transplant yourself in the role of this character while still being able to play along as the various team members.

Lately I have really been wanting to watch the cartoon, but the problem is… there are seemingly issues with the distribution. It has been released in two forms so far, a 12 disc dvd set and a “volume one” DVD release that never got any follow up releases. In both cases there are issues, the 12 Disc set claims to be the complete series but includes only 65 episodes and is missing the 10 episode short run season 2. This has also been out of print for some time and I have seen it going on ebay for upwards of $250. The “volume one” is available but only includes 11 episodes, and without any subsequent releases it kinda makes it a useless product.

In my travels however I came across someone who has ripped all 75 of the episodes and uploaded them to YouTube. The quality is not great, and I hope at some point we get a proper release of this series, but for now I am happy enough. I may or may not have downloaded all of the episodes so I have a local copy, and was able to pull them in 480p. Honestly I spent the other night watching several of these and they mostly still hold up. It is absolutely peak 1980s, but so am I at times. Needless to say it is still very watchable and I legitimately think modern kids would probably even be into it.

In my recent tripping down memory lane, I uncovered that apparently there was an unofficial follow up to mask that took place in 1996 called Vor-Tech. The vehicles even looked like maybe they recycled some pieces from the later Mask toys, specially the Desert Striker looks quite similar to one of the later generation Mask releases. While looking functionally different, the Rattler effectively does the same thing that Gator does so there was at a minimum a recycling of ideas. I was in college during this time and completely missed the existence of this thing, which is sort of a bummer. I was collecting the new releases of Star Wars figures at this time, so I probably would have tried to pick some of these up for sheer nostalgia if for no other reason.

Another thing that I have noticed going back and watching these… I am absolutely certain that Bruce Sato and Alex Sector were a couple. Sure Hondy Maclean and Buddie Hawks were paired up in the Firecracker but that made sense given that there was the Truck and attached Motorcycle, and later in the series/toy line they both got their own unique vehicle in the form of the Hurricane and the Wildcat. Bruce and Alex were always paired up in the Rhino and were never dispatched separately, in a vehicle that in theory only ever needed a single pilot. Alex as the bald bear and Bruce his little twink boy toy, and no one is going to change my mind about that.

Mask toys have always been somewhat of a rarity, and as a result command a premium in the aftermarket. However recently there has been an interesting find. Someone was opening up an old warehouse and stumbled upon a bunch of new in box Kenner merchandise from the 80s including case after case of Mask toys. I remember after the second series it became exceptionally hard to find Mask stuff, and if my memory serves me Walmart and K-Mart stopped carrying it entirely. It makes me wonder if this hoard of product form Chile was just stuff that never made it into the distribution system because a bunch of the vendors backed out on the line. Whatever the case, it is really interesting to see this sort of thing pop up. I doubt I will buy any of it, but still very cool nonetheless.

The Importance of Dune

September 10, 2020 by Belghast

This morning is going to be a bit of an odd post, because yesterday was a bit of an odd day. For the last few days I have felt myself getting sick. I think it is just a combination of ragweed pollen and the smoke blowing in from the fires that have combined to make my lungs feel like hell. When I start to get sick however I start to become significantly more susceptible to nostalgia, and then yesterday the Dune trailer dropped tipping the balance towards reliving segments of my childhood. First off if you have not seen the trailer then you should probably stop whatever you are doing now and watch it. Here for your benefit I will embed it right here.

First off one thing you need to understand is that Dune plays a very pivotal role in my psyche. There are a handful of pieces of fiction that have served to shape my tastes as an adult, and high on that list is the world crafted by Frank Herbert. I live in this weird place of liking pretty much all of the adaptations of Dune to date, but the David Lynch film and its iconography will always have a special place in my heart. I think that is because I saw the movie before I went down the deep rabbit hole that is reading the novels. I was captivated by the visuals I saw on the screen and completely engaged with its amazing soundtrack by Toto. Again if you have never experienced the soundtrack I will embed it here for you to listen to.

I’ve talked about this before, that I grew up without cable television. So as a result my prime motivation when I was anyplace with that magical service was to soak up as much culture as I could in as short of a period of time as possible. In 1986, my aunt was pregnant with my cousin Christopher and this involved us travelling the two hours down to their house a lot during the pregnancy and especially in the months following it as my mom helped out with various things. They had HBO and were perfectly cool with giving me total control of the television, and during one of these binges of culture I stumbled across the movie Dune.

Towards the end of the movie my Uncle Ron ended up on the sofa with me, and at the end he could see that my little ten year old mind was blown. He gave me a little wise nod and said something to the effect of if I liked that, I should really read the book because it is much better. He wandered off into the bedroom for a moment and returned with an extremely tattered copy of the novel Dune. This began a bit of an obsession of mine that honestly still continues to this day. I was completely enthralled by any book that was so arcane that it required a very thick glossary in the back in order to decode it’s magic. I poured over it until I understood every last bit of it and could effectively live within this world.

This lead me down a path of tracking down copies of all of the other novels in the series. These are not my copies, but are each as I remember them… minus the copy of Dune. My original tattered copy was a significantly older printing. The thing is Dune not only became a thing that I was obsessed by, but also a point of reference between me and my father. He had always been a fan of science fiction, and he is the one that first introduced me to Doctor Who. I however was the gateway to him experiencing the worlds of Dune, and he voraciously tore through all of the novels. He and I both sorta have this proclivity for digging in when we find something we like and consuming every bit of content that is available on the subject.

So now we arrive at the trailer reveal yesterday. As I have said before I have enjoyed all of the Dune releases to date. My ultimately blend would be the story telling of the SyFy miniseries blended with the visuals from the David Lynch film. I think my ultimate struggle with the miniseries is that it felt at times that they tried entirely too hard to look nothing like the movie. As we approach this new rendition, it is very much feeling like it is a movie that is aware of everything that has come before it, and that it is cherry picking the best elements of all of the above. I realize I could be setting myself up for supreme disappointment, but I am choosing to be hopeful.

The casting choices so far are just brilliant. I am so on board with David Bautista as Glossu Rabban. I am also completely on board with the overall style they are going for the Harkonnen aesthetic. I would not have thought of Jason Momoa as Duncan Idaho but it absolutely works, as does Josh Brolin as Gurney Hallek. However that said my heart will always belong to Patrick Stewart and his nine stringed Baliset. I am I think most into Zendaya as Chani and the gender flipped Liet-Kynes. Though again I will always have a deep love and appreciation for Max von Sydow, but I am fully on board with a reinterpretation of the character. Piter De Vries was always one of my favorite characters, and I am hoping that the new rendition can hold a candle to how amazing Brad Dourif was in the Lynch film.

One interesting note that my friend Jason pointed out, is that in many of the scenes it seems like inspiration was taken for vehicle designs from the DOS games. Once again like I said this movie seems to be picking and choosing the best bits to craft together into an homage to everything. I am hoping it works, and I am hoping that the whole is better than the sum of the parts. Based on everything I have read it seems like Denis Villeneuve understands the gravity and difficulty of what he is trying to do. This arrives in the theaters in December and I already have plans with my friend Vernie to go see it at the best theater we have in the posh screening room. I feel like this is going to be a movie that deserves that sort of treatment.