podcast

Newbie Blogger Initiative 2015

by

It’s That Time Again!

nbi-blog-logo Well folks it is once again May the First and as such time for us to begin the Newbie Blogger Initiative.  For those that are unfamiliar with this program, I thought I would take a few minutes this morning and talk about what exactly it is and what you can expect from it over the coming month.  May is essentially the month that bloggers set aside to helping create more bloggers.  In order to do what we do we need a thriving community to live in, and this is our version of a neighborhood block party.  I once referred to NBI as the BlizzCon of the gaming blogosphere, because really this is the event I look forward to each year.  It is exciting seeing all of the new faces filtered into our world, and seeing others rededicate themselves to creating more frequent content.  Others of us just enjoy helping folks out to get their start with whatever projects they are wanting to do.

For New Bloggers

If you have ever thought about creating a blog, a podcast, or a youtube channel this event is solely centered around you.  For years we have heard that “blogging” is dead but the fact that I have over five hundred active blogs in my feedly account would disagree.  Each time I go to read through my gaming blogs it is like drinking from a firehose.  I love this and I love the fact that there is so much creativity packed into this community.  However in order to keep this a vibrant and fresh community we keep needing to infuse it with some new blood and new ideas.  One of the most difficult parts about starting any new venture is getting an audience.  It can be frustrating to feel like you are writing into the void, and in part the Newbie Blogger Initiative is here to give you what you need most…  exposure.

During this month the gaming blogosphere turns its eyes to the Newbie Blogger Initiative and by choosing to start a blog during this month we are essentially hand delivering you readers.  Now of course starting the blog is the easy part, creating regular and creative content is the challenge.  Throughout the month veteran bloggers will be giving you tips and tricks that we have to help ease your transition.  This has always been a very blogging centric event, but we want to embrace all gaming content.  There have been quite the number of new podcasts spawned out of this event and the connections with other bloggers, as well as a few folks dipping their toes into video creation.  Essentially the sky is the limit on what you can do, but you have to start someplace and we are here to help.

For Veteran Bloggers

While all of this love is getting thrown around on the new bloggers, it is  really the Veteran bloggers that make up the backbone of this initiative.  We need you, your ideas and your wisdom.  Blogging is rough, and getting up and doing this on a daily basis means we need some tools to be able to lean on.  Each of you started out as a fledgling blogger at one point or another, and many of you got a massive boost by the Newbie Blogger Initiative in the past.  Now is the time for us to step up and help the next generation to become the awesome bloggers of tomorrow.  Many times these new bloggers just need someone to talk to and bounce their ideas off.  I personally am always open to new blogger queries and during the course of this event I will end up trying to make a personal connection with as many of the new folks as I can.

What we need more than anything however is for you to keep making awesome content.  Let the bloggers know what works for you, what you have figured out doesn’t work, and general ideas about how to make a blog successful.  I’ve talked about a lot of topics in the  past, and there are a few of them I end up dusting off almost every year.  More than anything we need you showing that this is an achievable goal, and that given dedication you can succeed.  Each of us has tricks that we use to keep us going, and at the end of the day someone starting this is going to need a big bag of tricks to lean on.  Channel your gifts in whatever direction you feel best be it with writing prompts, tutorials or lessons learned, but whatever they might be we need you to make this work.  There are already folks signed up on the forums waiting for us to find them, so I suggest you sign up as mentor today.

For Wayward Bloggers

Now especially I want to address a special kind of blogger this year that I might not have in the past.  Have you lost your way blogging, and somehow lost the will to put pen to paper and create new content?  While I am generally thought of as this prolific daily blogger, there are some pretty massive lapses in my blogging history.  I recently celebrated my second anniversary of making posts every single day…  but prior to starting that there was a seven month lag in my blog.  It is easy to “fall off the wagon” for lack of a better term.  Life gets in the way and your font of inspiration dries up…  then the longer you wait to make a post the more pressure you put yourself under about making said post.  We are our own worst enemies, and as the months tick you suddenly realize you are no longer really a blogger.

Newbie Blogger Initiative is also the perfect time of the year for you to get active once again.  Sometimes we start down a path that doesn’t end up as sustainable for our interests, and other times life just simply throws us a curve ball.  In any case I urge you to take this month to get back into blogging.  We are here and waiting to help you with whatever you might need to tweak on your blog to make it sustainable.  We are also waiting with a ready audience to consume your brand new and shiny content.  Each year we lose a number of bloggers to life, and I am hoping to help resurrect some of them and get them making content once more.  The Newbie Blogger Initiative is so much more than just a launch pad for new blogs.  It can be the vitalization of our community every single year, giving us a new perspective to carry us through the next year.  If you want to come back to blogging regularly, we are waiting for you.

#NBI2015

Nostaltic Americana

by

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

sewcool 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”.

kennerbuildingsetOne 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

tallys 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.

Priestcraft

by

Podcasting Weekend

This weekend was a little bit crazy in that I recorded podcasts both Saturday and Sunday.  In theory had things not fallen through I would have actually recorded a third one Friday.  Podcasting is one of those things that is both soothing and stressful at the same time.  I like having conversations and hitting the record button, but the follow up that results in editing what I just recorded…  that can be the stressful part.  I feel like Podcasting is very much a labor of love, that you either get or you don’t get.  I would be curious to find out how many avid podcasters are also avid listeners of talk radio in one form of another.  I personally have my car tuned to NPR pretty much 24/7 and donate each year during their big fund drive.  I see the shows that I record as a bit of a logical extension of that.

The strange thing about once you start podcasting… is that it seems like you could end up recording on someone’s show every single day if you really wanted to.  I’ve had to turn down several “gigs” because I felt like I was just spreading myself too thin.  In fact this is one of the things that I talked about last night when recording the Bel Folks Stuff podcast with Petter Mårtensson.  Ultimately I would love to be able to say yes to every single offer I got to co-host or guest host a new thing.  I am in love with the idea that I am in essence making radio on subjects that are important to me.  For the time being I am going to stick with weekly AggroChat, monthly Bel Folks Stuff and then guesting as the opportunities present themselves.  I don’t think I have the energy or bandwidth to ever try and add a third permanent or semi permanent show to the lineup.

Priestcraft

WoWScrnShot_011115_160152 My primary goal for this week was to be able to push my hunter Lodin to 100 and run LFR before the reset.  This was achieved Friday and I was able to knock out the LFR Saturday morning to some pretty phenomenal success as I wrote about in yesterdays blog post.  After completing that mission my goals shifted to a new target.  There are two classes that I never though I would have at high levels..  the first of which is the Mage and as such I used my Warlords free 90 to get one.  The second class however is the Priest, and when I came back to World of Warcraft at the tail end of Cataclysm… I had been gone long enough to qualify for a free level 80.  This character I decided to make my tailor, and during Pandaria I managed to get it to 85 where it pretty much sat as a tradeskill alt parked in the Dwarven quarter of Stormwind.  With the garrison system, currently the only craft that I do no have access to is tailoring, so I set my mind to fixing that.

As a result Saturday and Sunday I spent my time in game, apart from that doing my “Wizard Chores” working on my priest.  I started off leveling as Discipline, because the last time I played the game this felt like the “survival” option for leveling.  Things died relatively quickly and I didn’t spend all of my time healing myself back up after every fight.  Shadow for whatever reason had never actually worked for me.  Upon coming back however I found leveling as Discipline to be pure pain.  I managed to get from 85 to 87 before I finally said screw it and decided to give Shadow a try again.  Whatever changes and tweaks they have made, seem to have greatly improved shadows survival and I managed to knock out 87 through 88 in no time. So before I went to sleep last night, I had dinged 100 and equipped the set of Timeless Isle items that I had sitting in my bank.  It is shocking just how many of these tokens I still have laying around, more than enough for all of my alts.

Pandaria Frustrations

WoWScrnShot_011215_063211 The recent leveling excursions on both Lodin my hunter and Belglorian my priest have made me realize just how much I did not enjoy Pandaria as far as expansions go.  Mind you it is not worth $60 to me to be able to skip it, but I am definitely finding myself taking the shortest possible path to get there.  Right now my leveling process goes a little something like this.  I try and milk as much leveling time out of Jade Forrest as I can get, because overall I like that zone about the best of anything to offer in Pandaria.  My ultimate goal is to get to 87 through whatever means possible, and in theory most of the time I can hit that well before I leave Jade Forrest, worst case I have to do the quests leading up to Halfhill with Chen and LiLi to get there.  Upon dinging 87 I ignore whatever quest line I happen to be on and make a beeline for the Path of a Hundred Steps, and take the quests there that lead you into Kun Lai Summit.

From this point on I am only in a zone as long as is required to unlock the quest that takes me to the next zone.  So in Kun Lai I complete Binan village, Westwind Rest, Shado-Pan Fallback…  which then gives me access to Winter’s Blossom granted me the quest chain that starts Townlong Steppes.  In Townlong I don’t have an exact path really, I am essentially just waiting for the flight path to the Serpent Spine to open up as that grants access to the quest chain leading to the Dreadwastes.  Generally speaking this means I will need to complete Gao-Ran Battlefront and Rensai’s Watchpost quests in Townlong before moving into the Dreadwastes.  The goal of this path is to keep moving every time you can go into an area with quests for higher level mobs.  Higher level quests mean better gear, better experience and a shorter amount of time in that zone before moving on.  You have to essentially throw out all ideas of being a completionist with this method.

Granted this is something I only do to steamroll up alts to the level cap.  When I am working on my main or characters in general that I deeply care about…  I end up doing everything and prodding my way through zones.  At this point however I have leveled so many characters through Pandaria that I just want to rip the bandaid off as fast as possible and move on to quest content that I am not bored with yet.  In theory I will have to do Pandaria two more times on my alliance characters, and an unknown number of times on Horde characters if I actually get around to leveling some.  I am not sure what it was about Pandaria that made me dislike it, but I have similar feelings about the Cataclysm.  Draenor on the other hand has been awesome.  I can choose to be a completionist and move my way through the content more methodically, or I can jump every two levels to a new zone to maximize my experience gain.  There is no need to try and complete X number of hubs to unlock the hubs in the new zone.  I feel like Cataclysm and Pandaria were both failed experiments in “quest gating” content, and my hope is that Draenor will become the new norm for future expansions of being less particular about completing certain quests before moving on.

Amazing Podcasts

by

A Network of Awesome

Yesterday each of the members of The Gaming and Entertainment Network blitzed the world with posts announcing this awesome new venture we are all part of.  However since I ended up technically soft launching the network on Sunday when I posted the latest episode of AggroChat I opted to also follow up at the tail of the pack.  At this point I am uncertain how someone could miss there is such a thing as The Gaming and Entertainment Network, but just in case here goes my attempt to explain just how great this concept is.  TGEN as it will be referred to from this point on as the full name is longer than I want to type on an average basis, is really the brain child of Braxwolf from the Beyond Bossfights podcast.  So the lions share of the credit for this venture has to go to him.  I think each of us had considered the possibility of teaming up with other podcasters, but the most important thing is the person who gets the ball rolling.

Brax had quietly noticed that there were several of us that spring form the same basic community that surrounds MMO gaming and participated in events like the Newbie Blogger Initiative and my little creation Blaugust.  Then over the course of a few months we proceeded to hash out the details in some extremely long gmail threads.  At this point pretty much everyone involved has pitched in with some skill or at least voted in many polls that lead us to reach this point.  So many podcast networks feel corporate and impersonal, and I think while we all wanted to present our best face to the world… we also wanted it to come from the same place as our blogs and podcasts did.  As such TGEN is very much a podcast network for and by the podcasters.

Amazing Podcasts

The entire venture would be completely empty without the actual podcasts and I am not sure if it is absolute coincidence or careful planning but all of the member podcasts fill various niches and happen to be releasing mostly on different days giving us a pretty varied release schedule.  We have a new podcast releasing almost every day except Saturday, but with the whole weekend being family time thing…  at least as far as my blog is concerned that is a dead spot in the statistics anyways.  I feel like at this point I should probably just cut to the chase and introduce the member podcasts.

  • AggroChat – you guys should know this one by now, since it is the podcast tied to the blog.
  • Battle Bards – awesome podcast devoted to something that is often times overlooked in the gaming experience…  the music.  Each episode is thought provoking as they delve into various game scores with the awesome cast of Gypsy Syl, MMOGC, and Sypster.
  • Beyond Bossfights – excellent thought provoking podcast by the man who started this madness.  Braxwolf often digs into deeper topics behind the games and communities we love.
  • Cat Context – awesomely intelligent podcast that is in essence a conversation between friends:  Liore, Arolaide and Ellyndrial.  I started listening because they were my guildies, and stuck around because it was always interesting.
  • Contains Moderate Peril – One of the most polished podcasts I have listened to and always enlightening.  Reminds me of the classic news discussion show, and always has interesting co-hosts.  Additionally Roger has an amazing voice, and I could listen to him read a phone book.
  • Couch Podtatoes – Face it, every podcaster is jealous they thought of this name first.  You come for the interesting name but you stay for the great dynamic of Izlain, J3w3l and Doone.  They always dig into some interesting discussions and have been known to do some interviews as well.
  • Massive Failure – Join the MMO Troll as he talks about what is happening in MMOs and adding commentary to what is going on.  Troll being tongue in cheek as he talks about the good, bad and the ugly in MMOs.
  • Roleplay Domain – And rounding out our founders is a cool podcast that I just started listening to myself recently.  Roleplay Domain is devoted to roleplaying in any form be it on the computer, classic tabletop or live action.

That is one hell of a founding line-up if I do say so myself.  I am absolutely humbled to be included in this venture, and I hope we don’t let everyone down with our more rambling style.  TGEN provides an opportunity for us all to cross pollinate our efforts, and help support each other.  I know personally even in the few days since the launch I have seen a boost in listeners to this past Sunday’s episode of Aggrochat, so it seems like the basic theory is working.

Shared Mission

What makes me the proudest of our network is that while many can say phrases such as “like-minded podcasters” without really hanging that on any sort of a framework, we sought to fix that.  Early on when we started talking about this network we decided that we needed some basic tenets that we should all abide by.  We went into this planning for the contingency that the network might grow beyond these podcasts and encompass new ones, and as we inducted them… we should have a clear “code of ethics” for them to follow as well to insure that the statement “like-minded” stayed true as we moved on.  You can check out the full form on the TGEN About page, but I am going to copy the relevant bits here.

What can you expect from TGEN?

  • Honesty – If we like something, we’ll say so. If we don’t like something, we’ll say so. It’s a pretty simple policy, really.
  • Creativity – We value the diverse, unique talents of our creators. As such, we offer a wide range of shows. At TGEN you’ll find topical discussions as well as news, opinions, interviews, and even music! All of which relate back to our main foci of gaming and entertainment.
  • Diversity – We hail from all around the globe and represent a variety of backgrounds and experiences. As such, you can expect a variety of input and opinions!
  • Collaboration – Even as diverse individuals, we understand that we can accomplish more by working together, not only as creators within TGEN, but also with outside shows, personalities and networks.
  • Consistency – While our creators all lead busy lives and release schedules may differ, we want to make sure that we have a steady flow of new content available. All shows on TGEN are “active” shows that release on as regular a basis as life allows. No waiting months between releases for our shows.
  • Fun – This may be the most important, yet easily overlooked. The purpose of gaming and entertainment is to have fun. And if we’re not having fun, neither will our listeners. Let’s build something fun together!

I think all of this creates a pretty firm foundation for us moving forward.  There has been talk of trying to do some regular mixed podcast roundtables in the future so I can only see things like that strengthening the network as a whole.  Additionally I feel like there is plenty of room for us to grow, and I know personally I have a handful of podcasts that I would love to “adopt” as I am sure other members do as well.  I am extremely excited to be a part of this, and am looking forward to seeing just what awesome things we can do together.

#TGEN #Podcasts