podcast Archives - Page 19 of 21 - Tales of the Aggronaut

Priestcraft

January 12, 2015 by Belghast

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

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

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

October 7, 2014 by Belghast

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

Outland

October 5, 2014 by Belghast

AggroChat Episode 25

Last night we recorded yet another episode of our weekly podcast AggroChat. This week we were missing Rae, but had Ashgar, Kodra and Tam to join me to talk about stuff and things. Of the four of us, three of us have almost spontaneously started replaying Dragon Age: Origins. In truth Ashgar started it and then Tam and I decided it was a pretty excellent idea to follow suit as we all realized we didn’t really have a good save to feed into the upcoming title Dragon Age: Inquisition. As such we have been lost in that title and remembering just how amazing it really is. We gush about about the writing behind the title and some of our favorite and least favorite characters. We try not to give many spoilers since Kodra has yet to make it terribly far in the game, so should be safe to listen to for complete Dragon Age nubs and pros alike.

We meander our way through a couple of indie games, namely Crypt of the Necrodancer that Kodra has been playing, and Outland the awesome metroidvania that I am reviewing as part of my Steampowered Sunday. Ashgar hooked me up with a copy originally with the intent of playing this co-op… but it seems like the latency for co-op play is still absolutely atrocious. So instead I played it all by my lonesome this morning… we at least as lonesome as you can be while streaming it to the internet. Finally we talk about Final Fantasy XIV and the odd sense of compartmentalism in that game. How you can progress among multiple vectors without the need to really mess with the others. Also we walk about how much we are looking forward to the as of yet completely announced 3.0 expansion, which is rumored to have as much content as the original 2.0 release had.

Two other really interesting things happened during the episode. For starters we announced that we were now part of TGEN The Gaming and Entertainment Network of podcasts. Quite honestly I am a bit humbled to be included with such illustrious podcasts as Battle Bards, Beyond Bossfights, Cat Context, Contains Moderate Peril, Couch Podtatoes, Massive Failure and Roleplay Domain. I am also quite humbled to be the first podcast to officially be launching the network, since we record on Saturday nights and launch Sunday, we are the first show sporting the new network bumper. Additionally we talk about the upcoming Extra Life gaming marathon and our team. Right now you can check out Ashgar, Kodra and Myself on the donor pages and our progress… and then tune in Oct 25th to the Alliance of Awesome hitbox team to watch the streamers. Being our first year I set a very low team goal of $200 and so far we have raised just shy of $600 dollars in pledges. Really looking forward to the event, and I hope you join us.

Outland

For a few weeks now my friend Ashgar has been talking about this particular metroidvania with some interesting twists. Last weekend shortly after recording the Steampowered Sunday for Mercenary Kings he hooked me up with a copy on steam, suggesting we might play it for this Sunday. Apparently there is some really cool co-operative play in the game, but at the time of writing this it is apparently completely broken in that the latency makes it absolutely unplayable. I can see how any matter of latency would be a problem, as there are several places where you have a very slim window to time a jump or an attack. Since the co-op was out of the picture, I opted to still play the game but do so solo… or at least as solo as you can be while streaming. At face value it is a really artistically slanted metroidvania game. It follows the artistic style to some extent of the current crop of mostly silhouetted figures against a colorful background. This almost always makes a game feel far more detailed than it actually is, and I tend to enjoy this style of art.

You play the role of the ancestor of a great warrior who tamed the twin sisters of light and dark to save creation. To be truthful while well done the narrative doesn’t seem to matter that much other than add a bit of flavor. You wander through the levels collecting coins and rare pieces of treasure and sometimes unlocking special abilities. The twist on the traditional Metroidvania genre however comes in the fact that over time you can harness the power of the Light Spirit and the Dark Spirit and use these to bypass certain obstacles. The Light is represented by blue, and the Dark by red and while in the same color as an obstacle you can pass directly through it. You can also use your color to active switches and platforms allowing you to traverse the levels. You are rationed these abilities slowly and I didn’t get the second color until I had defeated the first boss. Some of the later puzzles require you to switch colors midair to take advantage of a platform that activates when you land on it with a specific color. This is facilitated by hitting the right shoulder button on your controller. This definitely feels like the sort of game that is greatly improved with a controller, so I did not even attempt to pay attention to the equivalent keyboard controls for things.

Epic Boss Fights

At the end of the first level you have to fight a giant golem that is blocking your way. The scale of the fight is extremely impressive and makes the game feel much larger than it actually is. The camera zooms in and out based on how large the chamber you are in happens to be, and this gives a more dynamic feel to the gameplay. The boss mechanic was rather simple but extremely effective in that you had to avoid a ground slam and then climb the giant itself while it was temporarily drained of its power to attack and exposed weak spot. As the fight got on there were more details that had to be avoided, like a rain of red and blue bullets that gives the game almost a bullet hell feel to it. I had to stand in the blue beams to avoid taking damage from the red beams, and I am imagining that in later encounters you will have to shift back and forth between red and blue to soak specific abilities while flipping to the opposite to be able to damage your target. While you can soak beams of the same color… mobs of that color can still damage you, and you can only damage them when flipped to the alternate polarity.

The game is constantly compared to the fabled bullet hell shooter by Treasure called Ikaruga in that it has similar soak/polarity mechanics. However any many ways it reminds me of the gameplay of Silhouette Mirage and earlier title with the same basic mechanic by Treasure. Similar to Outland it was a side scroller and you had a dual polarity of absorption and repelling based on which direction you pointed your attacks. You can check out my entire hour and a half long play session this morning in the embedded Hitbox video. I have to say I dig the game so far and want to play more of it. I just felt like I needed to wrap up this mornings session so I could get my blog post out, however I played significantly longer than most Steampowered Sunday mornings… so that should tell you something. Right now the game is under $10 on steam, and more than worth that price. I would have paid at least $20 for it to be honest, had someone not ever so graciously gifted it to me. If you like the Metroidvania genre and especially like ones with interesting mechanics like Guacamelee you should check this out.

#Outland #AggroChat

Amazing Neighbors

August 10, 2014 by Belghast

10 Years 10 Questions AggroChat Edition

Last night was another Saturday evening which means we recorded another episode of AggroChat. This week we were joined by Rae, Ashgar, Kodra and Tam who will hopefully be becoming a much more regular member of the cast. As per my post yesterday morning, my good friend Godmother is working on a thing for the 10th Anniversary of World of Warcraft. Last night we decided to skip our normal podcast and instead took up the Alternative Chat 10 Years 10 Questions survey. As a result we ran a bit longer than our normal cast, but since we will be without Kodra next week we wanted to push through all ten questions. I have to say I really enjoyed this trip down memory lane, and even though I know a lot of the information we talked about… I still found out a few interesting things in the process. I am hoping that we gave Godmother some usable content.

I am really happy she is doing this and I look forward to reading and listening to the end result. I believe she has a master plan of doing a documentary podcast about all of this stuff and our responses. While all of us are not really current WoW players, we all owe so much to the game including our friendships. None of us would have known each other without this game and that is pretty crucial to all of us at this point. As Kodra says during the cast, we have a lot of love for each other and it is entirely thanks to this game that we may or may not want to play anymore. I figure that even among the former players we all have to give the game props for giving us so much in the process.

Amazing Neighbors

I have to say that our trip through Final Fantasy XIV just keeps getting more charming. In the 2.1 patch shortly after we quit they put in housing wards. In these semi-instanced wards you have various plots of land that you can purchase for an exorbitant amount of money. The interesting thing about this is that they become a sort of player made town as they have market boards, summoning bells and vendors on top of all of the player housing. I wrote about this some time ago but we found an amazing plot of land in a very heavily built up ward in the Limsa Lominsa area called the Mists. Just like we apparently lucked out on picking the right server we also apparently lucked out and picked one of the coolest wards. Within moments of us plunking down our house we had neighbors welcoming us to the area.

Friday night however something even cooler happened. It turns out that the other residents of the ward decided to create a neighborhood based linkshell. Now we are constantly chatting and getting to know the other awesome members of our ward including the massive guild that lives up the hill from us. It has been awesome to get to know everyone. The above screenshot is me and a member of that guild randomly breaking out into the Manderville dance while standing around at the market board. I took a bunch of screenshots because we were almost perfectly synchronized and it ended up pretty awesome to watch. The little things like this in this game just make me so happy.

It is almost as though we stepped through a time machine and found the server community that assholes forgot. Even as we have moved into harder content, the folks are still extremely chill and willing to work with the people who don’t know the fights. The end result is that even when I have good reason to gripe at someone for failing miserably to do something… I find myself NOT saying anything, or instead being supportive because I just don’t want to do anything to damage this amazing environment. The way people interact with each other reminds me of those early days of Everquest and Dark Age of Camelot… when individual player reputations still mattered and everyone held other players up to higher standards. I am so amazingly happy I decided to re-up Final Fantasy XIV.

Hard Modes with Friends

Last night after the podcast we all decided to stick around and work on some hard modes. I have to say we all kinda dreaded just how hard these might be, but in reality at the 55-60 overall gear score we were sitting out they were difficult but also very manageable. I don’t want to get too much into the various strategies because one of the biggest joys for me is figuring these things out completely cold. However I have to say I really enjoyed myself, and we managed to run Hard Mode Copperbell Mines and Hard Mode Brayfloxs Longstop. In both cases the fights were challenging but after a bit of thinking on our feet we managed to push through and succeed. I look forward to doing the other hardmodes because they were really rather awesome.

What makes them so cool is that unlike World of Warcraft heroics… these are entirely new dungeons. When you step foot into Copperbell MInes for example, there are giant holes in the wall where the mobs from the first version popped out, as well as things like a broken elevator that are the results of your last trip there. To make things even cooler the dungeon music has been changed slightly as well and is more akin to the heavy metal themes to the various primal fights. The zone I absolutely cannot wait to do is Hard Mode Haukke Manor since the original version is this awesome Castlevania like romp through a Haunted Mansion. The hard mode version absolutely has to be amazing, so maybe later this evening we can get that going. For the time being I am absolutely eating up every moment of this game, and I still have a long list of things that I want to be doing.

#FFXIV #AggroChat #Blaugust