Mixtape Mondays: Tides of War

Good Morning Friends! I hope that you had a sincerely good weekend and that it was restful in the right ways. It is the start of a brand new week and I hope it is a most excellent one. Later this week Blaugust 2021 officially begins and I am looking forward to seeing all of the participants posting away. For those of you readers who might be finding my blog for the very first time welcome. Mixtape Mondays is a series that I have been doing each Monday for a few months now. As a kid, I loved making Mixtapes for my friends and now that I don’t really use physical media I was missing that experience. After getting heavily into Spotify, I realized just how well the Mixtape format translates, and as a result each Monday I post a new mix with new album art.

Tides of War

I think every generation goes through a period of time where they heavily engage with the music of their forebearers. For me, that time was late middle school and early high school and I am not entirely certain what triggered it. I do know that in 1990 when the massive Led Zeppelin Boxed Set was released I was already bought in and fully engaged. My personal musical explorations were largely contained to the genre then termed “Classic Rock”. It does make me wonder if that moniker is a sliding scale that changes meaning as the music ages. Does that mean that Nirvanna is now considered to be “Classic Rock”? Regardless this is also music that I deeply associate with Vietnam and post Vietnam era thanks to Hollywood choosing to populate the soundtracks of these films with large swaths of these songs. It has become a cliche that if you want to set a war film in the 70s, it needs to include the song “Fortunate Son”. The thing is I get it because that track is an absolute banger.

Track List

  • Immigrant Song – Led Zeppelin
  • Paranoid – Black Sabbath
  • Dream On – Aerosmith
  • Sympathy for the Devil – The Rolling Stones
  • Behind Blue Eyes – The Who
  • Limelight – Rush
  • Radar Love – Golden Earring
  • People are Strange – The Doors
  • White Room – Cream
  • Fortunate Son – Creedence Clearwater Revival
  • You Really Got Me – The Kinks
  • Revolution – The Beatles
  • Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door – Bob Dylan
  • All Along the Watchtower – Jimi Hendrix
  • Comfortably Numb – Pink Floyd

Listen On Spotify

Listen On YouTube

Well, friends that brings to a close Mixtape number thirteen in the series. As always I would love to hear your thoughts below. If you are tuning in late to the entire series you can find the archive page linked below. I hope you have a most excellent week and if you are so inclined, check out the information about Blaugust 2021 and maybe sign up. The post Mixtape Mondays: Tides of War appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.

AggroChat #352 – Partial Vindication

Featuring: Ashgar, Belghast, Kodra, Tamrielo, and Thalen
Hey Friends, it is time for a bit of real talk before I get into the podcast show notes.  We had a discussion last night about whether or not we should talk about the horrific Blizzard situation on the show.  I’ve made my comments pretty clear on my blog, but it also sorta felt gross and weird to engage in a conversation without anyone other than cisgender men.  Real-world emergencies deprived us of both Ammo and Grace last night, and I hope both of those situations got better.  It might come up again in the coming weeks but only if everyone on the show is up for talking about it.

As far as the topics we did discuss we talked a bit about Monster Hunter Stories 2 on the Nintendo Switch and how I apparently completely misunderstand the genre of that game.  Tam talks a bit about returning to Star Trek Online years later and the pattern of play that the game has fallen into.  We also go down a list of games that have quietly been holding on with a steady player base but get very little fanfare.  Kodra talks about his experience streaming Celeste and invites everyone to participate in those streams.  We close out the show with a discussion about Cyberpunk 2077 because Tam decided to give it a shot and Bel feels at least partially vindicated.  It is a mixed bag of a game but an extremely interesting one.

Topics Discussed:

  • Monster Hunter Stories 2
  • Star Trek Online
  • Quietly Successful MMORPGs
  • More FFXIV Discussion
  • Kodra Streams Celeste
    • Speed runs
  • Cyberpunk 2077
    • Horrible Representation and Great Representation
    • Easy to bounce early
    • Extremely detailed and interesting game
The post AggroChat #352 – Partial Vindication appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.

Favorite Fridays – Enbarr Whistle

Good Morning Friends! A few weeks back I had this idea for a Friday mornings series where I talk about something that is special to me. In the first post in this series I talked about my bunny hat, and today I am talking about another item that has deep sentimental meaning to me. I don’t do one of these every week but I do plan on weaving them in from time to time.

Enbarr Whistle

The Enbarr Whistle is an item that drops from Whorleater Extreme, one of the original extreme primal fights introduced with the subsequent patches to A Realm Reborn. Most specifically this is the fight in which you tackle the extreme version of Leviathan, and was generally known to be fairly tricky given that it has a mechanic similar to Extreme Titan where players can be knocked out of the fighting arena and cannot be recovered by resurrection abilities. Essentially this means that all of the players have to execute on all of the mechanics in a timely fashion to keep from being knocked off of the barge that the fight takes place on.
Each Primal fight in the sequence had a rare chance of dropping a whistle to summon an elemental pony-themed after that specific encounter. Enbarr, for example, was themed after the color palette of Leviathan and as it runs you can see water splashing up at its feet. These were heavily sought after mounts not just because they look cool, but because while you are riding it the musical theme of the boss plays in the background. For anyone who has never experienced FFXIV boss music, this might not mean a lot… so I challenge you to listen to this banger of a track and not get excited. As you explore the world, this became your soundtrack and each pony allowed you to vary it up.
The Primal fights were just difficult enough to require attention to mechanics, but not so difficult as to feel tedious. Since each of them dropped a Whistle that summoned a different themed pony, we would occasionally do nights where we farmed a bunch of the fights in the hopes of getting drops. Enbarr specifically is special to me because it was the first of these whistles that I got. Based on screenshot evidence I seem to have gotten it on 4/25/2015 and I wrote about it the next Monday in a post titled Splashy Pony. It is also extremely special to me because we farmed it with our original crew and while it was still an extremely challenging encounter. I dug up the above picture… and I believe it is from the same night I got my pony to drop. This is the beautiful thing about having my blog as a memory archive and lots of screenshots to go with it.
Among the Primal Ponies there is one that is significantly rarer than the others. Nightmare has a chance of dropping from any of the original A Realm Reborn Primals, but that drop chance is pretty low. We continued farming Ponies throughout other expansions, trying to complete sets for our members. On one of these Primal farm nights I managed to not only see this mount drop but win the roll. As a result I had it in the back of my head that I now needed to complete the entire set. Slowly over time I gained addition primal whistles. Xanthos from Garuda, Gullfaxi from Titan, Aithon from Ifrit, and Boreas from Shiva. I never had any luck with Markab from Ramuh, in part because that fight was never terribly fun to run and we just didn’t repeat it as often as the others.
Coming back recently I was told by my friends that I could probably easily farm Extreme Primal fights, specifically for the purpose of knocking out Wondrous Journey stamps. This leads me the other night to make an attempt at Ramuh Extreme and wouldn’t you know it… but on that very first kill I managed to get Markab the only pony missing from the set. One of the cool things about the primal pony set is that if you manage to collect them all, it triggers another quest that starts from the Wandering Minstrel in Mor Dhona. You assemble all of the Primal Ponies and it summons a new mount… Kirin. There is a neat cutscene from which the above screenshot is taken. The end result however is that you walk away with a brand new fairly rare steed.
Here is a picture of me riding Kirin, which has a really nice wing animation. The thing is though… Kirin isn’t the mount that is special to me. The one that I think about the most is good ole Enbarr because it sent me down this path and gave me a journey to follow. As gamers, we look for projects and missions in these MMORPGs because that is ultimately the driving force that keeps us engaged. For me, the Pony farm was an equip journey spread out over the course of several years. Now that I have completed it though… there are several more similar journies ahead of me. With each expansion they have introduced a new series of Primal mounts so I feel like I need to collect all of them. The next target is the “Lanner” collection from Heavensward which are a series of giant eagle like birds. So far I only have one of these but I am wanting to start farming the rest. Side note if you want to join in this madness at some point hit me up. More than happy to help folks complete pony sets or come along as I start trying for the other mount series. The great irony here however is that I mostly just ride my Chocobo. The post Favorite Fridays – Enbarr Whistle appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.

Please Believe Women

Good morning friends. I come to you with a heavy heart this morning because sometimes I get tired of seeing the same shit play out over and over. I wish I could just say it was a games industry thing, but it absolutely is not. If you have no idea what I am talking about then I suggest you check out this post from Bloomberg Law or even this summary over on WoWHead. Here is the important fact that needs to be taken away from this situation and everyone that has happened since the dawn of time. This kind of abuse continues to happen because somewhere along the chain of events there is a woman who was not believed. This person confided in someone and that confidence either kept their mouth shut, tried to diminish the impact of what happened, or just flat out did not believe them. Things cannot change until we accept that it is each of our responsibility to make sure the abused are safe from the abusers. We need to be better. Our gaming communities need to be better. Our workplaces need to be better. It is around this time that someone generally brings out the “what if it was your wife or daughter” nonsense. It shouldn’t NEED to be that close to home for you to care about it. You should care because everyone deserves to be safe. The thing is, your wife and daughter already have their own history of stories to tell about events that have happened to them. This is happening every day and in almost every environment and needs to stop. I hate having to make public comments, but I also feel like if I don’t use whatever platform that I do have I am failing each and every person that is hurting. If I stay silent, the abusers assume I stand with them, and the abused continue to feel isolated because they question if I am going to hurt them.
So I spent my night alternating between doomscrolling and feeling horrible about the world on Twitter, and tabbing back into my Free Company and feeling good about my friends there. I am doing more with my FCmates and it is enjoyable. Last night Rae, Waffles, and I ended up running a bunch of roulettes together and it was super great. I have enjoyed my time running with random players, but I have to admit that I understand WHY I reached a point where I was mostly just wanting to run with at least a known healer. It felt so great to tank instances last night with a healer I wholeheartedly trusted to keep me alive. Previously I would end up hedging my bets and maybe using a few too many cooldowns just to make sure I survive a pull. With Rae at the helm, I was able to just be the tank I knew I could be. There is also something special about the role of the tank when the ones you are with are your close friends. Like there is an instinct in me to be protective of my friends. Dungeons are so much more enjoyable when that protective instinct is rewarded in trying to get all of the hatred and protect my party when it is actually people that I care about on the line. That is really when I am most in my element when playing an MMORPG. I like being the tank and I am extremely happy that I have somehow managed to navigate the mental block that kept me from being able to enjoy that style of gameplay for a while. I’ve yet to get comfortable enough to start tanking Trials and Raids through the roulette, but I am sure at some point I will throw myself at those as well.
It is probably strange that I am starting this post the way that I did and then interspersing screenshots and comments about Final Fantasy XIV along with it. The thing is… for me video games are how I cope with the wrongs of the world. It is another world that I can sink into where the problems don’t seem quite so big anymore. I think this is the truth for a lot of people and I really feel for the folks who are reading this news and now feeling like they are cut off from this thing that they loved in World of Warcraft. I myself am struggling with the fact that this weekend starts a new Diablo season, and I am not sure if I feel right participating in it. The pain of that decision however are this is also the time that I and my friend Grace spend hanging out and catching up as we both focus on the same shared goal. It is something that I look forward to more than pretty much anything else on the calendar. Right now however I just don’t feel right giving Diablo or Blizzard any oxygen right now. The reaction from the company in an official statement last night only made this situation direr for me on a personal level. I know the right thing to do is to say “fuck this” and stop participating in any Blizzard product, but also I know my actions don’t change anything and only serve to damage our “once every three months” binge of “diabbling”. I also deeply feel for my friends who work at Blizzard because the coming months are going to be awful to be there. When something like this happens everyone who was doing the right thing and acting properly is taken down with the individuals who caused the harm. That said it is almost impossible to be in one of these environments without knowing the lay of the land and understanding just who the abusers are. There is one last piece of advice that I feel like I need to impart. When a situation like this occurs, I hear people talking about the failing of the Human Resources department. What you as an employee need to understand is that Human Resources is not there for your benefit. Sure they are assisting in your benefits or helping you with leave, but their core mission is not to be the advocate of the employees. The role of Human Resources is to make sure everyone is doing what they are supposed to be doing, but not for the greater good. Ensuring that policy is followed takes place in order to limit the legal liability of a given company, which means when a bad situation happens they are always going to side with diminishing the impact of that event. Often times the only way change happens is when one of these stories makes the press, because it puts the company in a posture where they finally have to deal with it. The post Please Believe Women appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.