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Wishes for the Next Year

December 31, 2014 by Belghast

Failed Futurism

Over the last few days I have made a few posts recounting some of the positives and negatives of the last year. Today I want to place my eyes forward towards the next year and what I hope it might bring. One of the problems with futurism is that generally speaking it is always going to be wrong. 2015 was the year that Marty McFly went forward to in Back to the Future 2, and that movie made a ton of guesses about what the future would look like, most of them being completely wrong. That said we are at least getting a form of a hoverboard next year, granted we will have to pave the streets in conductive metal for it to actually work properly however. The thing I find funny is how no work of futurism ever seems to get just how incrementally fashion evolves, because I doubt any of us are going to start wearing chokers made of bullets or a darth vader breastplate. Instead of futurism I am going to focus on my hopes for the year to come.

Gamers Stop Being Assholes

While yesterday I spent my post reveling in just how awesome my gaming community was over the past year, the larger community has not really been an awesome place to be. Our very small niche of a community has figured out more or less how to exist in a relative state of harmony. Outside the gated community however, things are pretty much in a constant state of martial law. My hope is that this year gamers can figure out that it is cool to have lots of people playing in their sandbox, that may or may not look the same or want the same thing as them. Diversity only serves to make things more interesting, because really as we learned during the 90s… just how many doom clones can we really stomach? At the very least I would love that gamers would stop endangering the lives of others with their misguided crusades. We are all here, we all play games… lets enjoy that fact and quit trying to claim this person or that person isn’t as much of a “real” gamer as you are.

More so than all of this… I would really love it if my natural instinct when confronted with having to play with a group of strangers is not to clench my sphincter and prepare for the worst. I would love to be able to approach grouping with random players the way that I used to before I started turning off every public channel in any game I was playing. There is a great post from Liore summing up a lot of these feelings of dread. Mostly I feel like a lot of gamers have forgotten why we started playing games in the first place… not for the competition, or not to be the best at something… but because we used to honestly have fun doing it. I have tried really hard to embrace this spirit of fun and positivity, but you can only be told “you fucking suck” so many times by a random stranger before you stop trying to interact with anyone that is not already connected to you. I’ve branched out and made a lot of friends, more than I can possibly list… but for the most part when I play a new game, I shut off all the public channels and hang out with people I already knew before going into it. This year… I would love this to change.

Settling Down for Awhile

For years I have been searching for something, a magical spark that seems to have been missing for me in MMO games. Over the last several years I have tried extremely hard to make this game or that game my new home. I tried to make Rift work, and tried to forcibly bring all of my friends along on that journey with me. I tried to do the same with Final Fantasy XIV, and Wildstar, and Star Wars the Old Republic, and The Elder Scrolls Online. In order for that spark to exist two things need to be there… firstly there needs to be tons of things for me to do, and an insane amount of goals and sub goals to keep my mind busy and engaged. Secondly there needs to be a solid and thriving community to keep me engaged socially. This past year I found that spark, but in two different places… both of which appeal to slightly different sides of me. As a result I am splitting time between raiding in Final Fantasy XIV on Mondays and World of Warcraft on Tuesdays and Thursdays… and occasionally Wednesday fun runs.

So far this mix works extremely well for me. There are things I like about both games, and I like the freedom of being able to flip back and forth between them at will. Right now I am spending the bulk of my time in Azeroth, but I think that is a counter reaction to the fact that I spent the last three months exclusively engaged in Eorzea. I feel no less connected to one when I am spending time in the other. I am playing both games and I am happy to be doing it. My hope for this year is that by the time we reach next December that I will still be playing both games happily. I am in amazing raid groups in both, and the content is keeping me engaged in ways that I feel like only one game would not be able to satisfy. I have a feeling that when new content is released in one, I will shift to mostly playing it… and versa vicea. My hope is that I have found a combination that works for me… and I can settle down for a long while here. I’ve gotten tired of the constant game jumping and want some stability for awhile.

Personal Projects

2014 saw me getting involved in a bunch of projects other than the Tales of the Aggronaut blog. I kept up my rigor of daily posts and in April I celebrated both my 5th anniversary as a blog, and my first year of daily posting. This coming April I will be able to celebrate a second year of daily posting and another year as a blog. My hope is throughout all of 2015 I will be able to keep up this daily posting thing. This past year also saw the launch of the AggroChat podcast along with my friends Rae, Ashgar, Kodra, Tamrielo and sometimes participants Dallian and Raven. Over the course of the first season we recorded 37 episodes of Aggrochat, and I think that is pretty damned solid. We made it over a lot of the awkward hurdles, especially considering I knew absolutely nothing about making a podcast before we started. Those first few episodes are mighty painful to listen to at this point, and I am sure after another year the entire first season will feel the same. We are anything but professional, but we have a large enough following that I feel like we must be doing something right.

This year also saw me start a fledgling experimental podcast called “Bel Folks Stuff”. So far three folks have been gracious enough to have a conversation about “stuff” with me, and I am thinking overall it works pretty well. The podcast has a much smaller footprint as a whole, but I am okay with that. In January I have another individual lined up for another conversation, and hopefully another in February. Basically this is just an excuse to have a conversation with friends and push the record button while doing so. Other than this there is another thing looming on the horizon that should be exciting for 2015, but I don’t really want to talk about it much until I am ready to announce it. Essentially my hope is that 2015 will be as awesome of a year for my side projects as this year has been. I could not do this without all the awesome people supporting me, and the constant help of my friends who always seem to be willing to follow me down whatever rabbit hole I fall into. Thanks to you all for taking this journey with me… I may not know what the next day will bring… but I know I will always have you along with me.

An Evening With Alternative Chat

December 5, 2014 by Belghast

Bel Folks Stuff Episode 3

This morning sees the release of the third episode of my experimental side podcast, Bel Folks Stuff. For those who have not followed this development, as the title graphic says I have conversations with interesting people about the stuff they are into. So far I’ve had such conversations with Gypsy Syl and Rowan Blaze and his wife Scooters. Both of those were really awesome conversations and I suggest you go back and listen to them at your convenience. This morning however I am releasing an episode that I have been looking forward to with another good friend the Godmother of Faff behind Alternative Chat. As a strict devotee of the Faff lifestyle, or at the very least an aspirant to the lifestyle… I always appreciate her bringing the term to public consciousness. The funny thing is… we really didn’t even talk about this during the podcast. I believe in letting the conversation go where the conversation goes and we filled up an hour of time chatting away about various bits, and probably could have filled up another hour doing the same.

Of note for this episode I also wanted to make sure that the podcast was available on both iTunes and Stitcher radio to help those folks out who prefer to listen to podcasts through those avenues. I admit I was nervous with this episode because Alt herself has such an amazing production quality for her own podcasts. I felt like there was no way I could live up to that standard. That said I feel like this episode is really solid, and that maybe just maybe I am starting to get a hang of what exactly this thing is going to be all about. I don’t really sit down with a fixed number of questions or anything of the sort, but instead just try and keep the conversation flowing as best I can. With Alt the conversation flowed naturally even though later in the cast she admitted to having notes of her own. I still feel like we maybe got more than a few moments of genuine spontaneity there nonetheless. Speaking of spontaneity, I am always trying to evolve as a person and as such would love to hear your comments on how this side project is working.

Rifftrax and Raiding

With the shit storm that happened Tuesday with the Argent Dawn server, we didn’t actually get to start raiding as a group until last night. Unfortunately I had other plans, and had to miss the raid. Some of my co-workers and I have started this tradition of sorts of going to the RiffTrax live shows whenever they happen. Granted they are not truly “live” for us as in performed in theater. Nonetheless each time I go I think to myself “I have never laughed this hard ever” and then the next one trumps it. This go around they were riffing on a show they did during the 5th season of MST3K, a strange version of Santa Claus that involves Santa, Merlin, and some Christmas Devils… you know the standard fare. It turns out that apparently the film originally hailed from Mexico where maybe it made more sense? The final product is this insane dubbed over feature with so many absolutely absurd moments that they had pretty much endless ammunition to make fun of it. If you are really curious you can check out the MST3K version that someone has dumped on youtube, but apparently it was edited down heavily… and they had all new jokes to make at the movies expense.

As far as the raid goes they apparently had a pretty great night of their own right. It seems as thought they managed to two shot Kargath, and then down The Butcher a well. The sounds like they made some good progress on Tectus as well, so they are hoping to easily down that next Tuesday and progress to the next boss. We apparently ran the raid on personal loot and the RNG gods were good to a lot of players. I know Rylacus walked away with three pieces of gear, which means he can officially no longer complain about “never getting drops” for the remainder of this expansion. Admittedly he has always had pretty shitty luck with getting drops he actually needs, but the moment a rare assed mount drops… his dice immediately improve. I can’t really complain because I too have a collection of rare mount drops, but most of those were diligently farmed… and the only one I actually won when it was relevant was the Fiery Warhorse Reins.

Less Communicative

Last night after my post yesterday, I had a friend check in on me to make sure I was doing okay. It made me realize that I am doing a pretty bad job of reaching out to say “hey” to people lately. This friend has been logged into WoW at the same time as me for many nights, but I have been stuck in my own little world quite a bit. Right now I have a batch of things that needs to be wrapped up at work before going on my holiday vacation after the 19th. Then there is the daily blogging, and the two podcasts that I am keeping going… one of which records weekly. After that it seems like I always have some OTHER side project to work on, like my upcoming post for Syl’s Bloggy Xmas. Someone started a conversation the other day with “I know you are busy but” and I thought… am I busy? It seems like I very much am, and as a result when I get busy I tend to encapsulate myself in a little bubble or just shift into “speak if spoken to” mode.

Mostly this morning I wanted to take a moment to say that essentially “its me not you”. I feel like I am failing miserably at keeping in contact with people during this holiday season. I promise I still care, and I promise I am still interested in what’s going on in your worlds… but at this point I feel painfully behind in everything. I’ve always taken the Stanley Spadowski “Drink from the Firehose” approach to information intake. The problem is I seem to be falling further and further behind as my blog reader consistently has hundreds upon hundreds of posts to read. Between that and trying to juggle playing World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV and entertain semi-focused raiding in both of them… my attention circuits are maxed out. I promise I am still out here and still caring… I am just not taking it upon myself to engage directly nearly as much as I previously did. All of that said… if you need help with something I will do my best to assist in any way I can. Hopefully after the holiday break things will calm down a bit and I can reach a point of equilibrium.

Opening the Mines

November 30, 2014 by Belghast

AggroChat #33 – Crafting, Puzzles and Raven

Last night we had a special guest on AggroChat that may turn into a more permanent addition, but for not we are playing that by ear. Raven is a friend that I initially met through Twitter but we all have become close to through our time spent in Final Fantasy XIV. She has been awesome with offering to fill in with her characters whenever we happen to need them for our guilds semi-regular shenanigans. With Rae’s recent absence from the show I had been kicking around the idea of bringing on another person, and thankfully Raven showed some interest in doing it. Hopefully she had as much fun as the rest of us did, and she brought some interesting takes on the topics we discussed.

Last night was a massive meandering show where we talked about some of our favorite puzzle games at length even dredging things up like Tetris Attack. We talked about the Road Not Taken, which is quite possibly the most depressing puzzle rpg ever. We talk Super Smash brothers, and do a horrible job at trying to guess Ashgar’s favorite character. We talk about Kodra’s experience playing Dragon Age Origins and how he is ultimately playing a completely different game than I ever managed to play. We fall into a giant Final Fantasy XIV crafting discussion, since Raven is the pocket expert on the topic. Finally I discuss my frustrations with Molten Core 40 man LFR from this past Tuesday and how it really does make players not ever want to do 40 man again.

As I am writing this post I am still editing away on the episode or more so the audio is rendering. We ran really long, but at this point I am not quite sure how long. We might have ultimately recorded our very first two hour long episode… this may or may not be a good thing. I think everything flowed extremely naturally with our newest guest host, so hopefully that can be a thing that happens more often. Even if not I am extremely grateful for Raven filling in and offering her views on the completely unprepared list of topics. Our complete and total lack of organization would throw some people off, but she took to it like a champ.

Opening the Mines

My initial goal upon reaching level 100 was to be able to get geared for the impending opening of the first raid, that happens this Tuesday. As such for the better part of a week I have been well over the 630 required cap to get into raiding. Additionally I have been helping out various players that needed another dps or tank for doing their own heroic gearing. Now however I am taking a bit of a step back and working on some of my alts. Right now my goal is to get each of them to the level where they get their Tier 2 Town Hall and with it a mine and a profession hub. Since I have an army of level 90 characters, this is going to take awhile but it should allow other tradeskill materials to start flowing in naturally on all of my characters. As such I worked up Exeter my blacksmith and miner first with the hopes of eventually using him to fuel some of my gear on my warrior. That said by the time I get around to making that gear I might already have epics in those slots. In any case I now have his T2 Town Hall and T2 Mine so he is finally self sufficient in the creation of truesteel ingots.

Next I am opting to work on my leatherworker/skinner Worgen Druid Belgarou. I noticed that most of the smithing patterns also require leather, so as such I need someone that can bring it back in large quantities. Last night while recording the podcast I worked on getting the druid through the opening sequence at the dark portal, and now I am working through the various early areas of Shadowmoon Valley. Unfortunately this character does not have an heirloom weapon, and the lower attack damage is noticeable. My hope is that I can limp by with enough gear gained through the various treasure hunts in the zone. I am also having to relearn how to play a feral druid… which feels a bit strange these days. It feels like I only really have one attack button, and a bunch of optional attacks. That said I should probably research that class further, because my survival seems to be lacking at times.

Exciting Guests All Around

Now comes the time to be extremely vague. This morning I am recording the next episode of Bel Folks Stuff, and for those who have not been listening to them.. it is where I grab a personality in our community and talk to them about the various things that are important to them. Previously I have had Gypsy Syl and Rowan Blaze on… and this guest is going to be just as awesome. The thing is I am honestly a bit nervous about it. Syl and Rowan I have gamed with or at the very least hung out on voice chat with… so were both super familiar to me. This guest is someone I have the utmost of admiration for… but have never actually cross paths with in any games. I am sure it will end up being fine, as when I close the office door and go into serious recording mode… I seem to never have a shortage of anything to talk about. That said I think you guys will be absolutely pumped over who I have for a guest this time.

Similarly my hope is to turn this episode around much more quickly than the previous ones. I sat on the recording with Rowan for a good month, and as such it ended up kinda bizarre as we talked about a few issues… that were resolved or at least changed during Blizzcon. Right now I am tentatively planning on having this third episode of Bel Folks Stuff out if at all possible by this coming Friday. That should give me time to edit and fiddle and get things ready for the public, but hopefully still keep it from sounding outdated like the one with Rowan did. I don’t have that huge of an installed listener base yet, but this is mostly something I am doing for my own sake and enjoyment rather than for any sort of internet fame. Then again all of the things I do are mostly for my own entertainment.

The Month is Over

This morning I am thankful that the month is done. This was hands down one of the hardest challenges I have done on my blog. There were so many mornings that I was completely finished with the post and starting at the above logo not sure what to write about under it. The first few days were rather easy, but after that I kept struggling to find something else to say… that also somehow related back to my post. I think I mostly succeeded but there are times when it really is difficult to count your blessings. I think I wrote some really solid blurbs during the month, some of which that maybe even surprised me a bit. That said I am more than happy to close the book on this little chapter and move on to the next thing whatever it might be. Thanks for riding along with me on this journey.

Amon’s Pants

November 15, 2014November 14, 2014 by Belghast

Bel Folks Stuff Episode 2

Since I was sick yesterday I decided to go ahead and wrap up the last bits of editing needed to push the latest episode of Bel Folks Stuff out the door. While editing I had this strange trip into the past, as I had recorded the podcast a few weeks ago. We talked about news… in speculative terms that have long since been resolved. So my important lesson is that I really should not sit in a show as long as I have with this series. The end result feels a little strange, like we are looking into the past and seeing what our thoughts were like on a subject a couple of weeks ago. In any case it was an enjoyable episode to record, and I am fairly proud of this side project as a whole. However it is causing me to rethink my plans to record the next episode now… that I wouldn’t actually release until mid December.

In this episode I am joined by the illustrious Rowan Blaze of the I Have Touched the Sky blog and a frequent guest on the Beyond the Veil podcast covering The Secret World. In an interesting change to the format of the first show… we also had a second guest with us… thought due to some technical constraint she was not extremely chatty. Scooter is Rowan’s awesome wife and constant companion both in game and out. Since one of the more interesting tidbits of his blog is the fact that he is almost always chronicling their adventures together rather than apart. He suggested we include her in the discussion, and I think it turned out to be a fairly brilliant idea. Once again there was not a really strict format, and as I said before… some of the information is a bit dated now… but in any case I think it was a good effort well worth your time.

Amon’s Pants

In the weeks after the release of the 2.4 patch, I have been spending most of my time in Syrcus Tower. On the average night I have been running it between 2 and 5 times an evening. At this point I can literally run the place in my sleep… and on more than a few of the runs I am pretty sure I dozed off at some point around Sylla and finally woke up when we were taking down Amon. I’ve been running the raid for several reasons… but primarily to complete the ilevel 100 dragoon set. I started off with extremely good luck, gathering up most of a set within the first few nights. This all had a side benefit of also gathering up quite a few Sands and Oils and enough Unidentified Allagan Tomestones to outfit an army of alts. I reached a point where all that was left were the pants, and that had been the state I was in for the last three weeks. I managed to see them drop a few times, but in all three of those occasions… there was another dragoon and the RNG gods decided to smite me.

Normally speaking Syrcus Tower goes extremely smoothly, as most of the server has reached a point where they are using it as a way to farm oils and sands… and the occasional piece of alternate job gear. In truth most of these runs are actually rather friendly, with folks willing to lend a hand to those just learning. This particular run however was the exact opposite of the spirit I normally experience. For a moment I thought that maybe I was in another game, because I saw the same sort of petty name calling and infighting that I had experienced so many times in the World of Warcraft Looking for Raid tool. It took us no less than four times to finally be able to beat Amon… and when we did there sitting in the loot window were my pants. This time however there were no other dragoons in my party to ruin my day. Never again do I have to run Syrcus Tower as a Dragoon… but that just means I will likely start running it as a bard and working on that set of gear. I might have an issue with grinding things.

Garrisons are Great

I reached a point last night with my Garrison where I finally decided it was a pretty amazing thing. Not that you can really clearly make out what I am doing in the above screenshot… but this is Belghast my Warrior Engineer Enchanter… mining ore. For years I have struggled with my decision to level both enchanting and engineering on the same character. The lack of mining has always been something I have struggled with… but there is a long story behind how I ended up in this predicament. Primarily Belghast started his life as an Enchanter/Tailor because that was a combination of trade skills that I was missing. Then I got serious about raiding… and hit a drought when our raid was clearing Tier 5 content in Burning Crusade. I could not for the life of me get a helm upgrade… and there sitting on the crafting table was the insanity of engineering goggles. At that point they were Tier 6 equivalent… so I made the decision to gather up all the resources and in a single afternoon I dropped tailoring and leveled engineering to the then cap.

While the mine respawn seems extremely long… it still gives me access to gather ore and slowly progress my engineering a little bit while I level. Additionally I am finding the follower missions to be extremely enjoyable. Last night I managed to reach rank two with my town hall, which allowed for a larger selection of plots. As such I now have placed an Engineering plot, Enchanting Plot, replaced the Barracks with a Dwarven Bunker, and kept the Inn with the hopes of upgrading it to rank 2 and recruiting random followers. Essentially on Belghast I am pretty much trying to go with all the “killing stuff in the world has interesting effects” buildings. Since well… I like charging around the map killing things. My hope is that with things like the Dwarven Bunker giving me an increased chance of getting Rares and Epics… I will actually get some stuff I can use. I feel like I have a much larger post entirely devoted to Warlords of Draenor in me, so I will save further information for tomorrows post. Needless to say I am enjoying myself.

That Dad is Okay

I really did not talk much about this next thing, but today I am thankful that my father made it through surgery fine and seems to be improving. For the last several months my father has had a rather scary condition that they originally thought was causing his eyeball to swell up in size. After much investigation, and a slew of specialists it was determined that what was actually happening was that his eye was being pressed forward… giving it the appearance of growth. As it got worse however, he lost his ability to do most things like drive… as ultimately he was always trying to manually reconcile the two images he was seeing at all times. He tried not to let on that it bothered him, but as the months drug on you could tell he was absolutely miserable.

Finally this week a specialist provided a plan of attack, and he went from having a consultation on Tuesday to having full blown surgery on Thursday. Thankfully everything went as planned and to the best of anyone’s knowledge there were no complications. I talked to dad over text this morning and his vision continues to improve. In fact I was shocked that moments after the surgery he was able to see normally again and read signs. It has been a scary time for my family, not knowing quite what was going to happen. As such I am so thankful that things turned out well. One of my biggest fears is the loss of my sight, and I know my father shares that fear. While he never wanted to let on just how frightened he was… I am sure he must have been. I am also thankful that once again we get to share our love of books.