AggroChat #139 – It’s Raining Bears

Featuring: Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Tam and Thalen

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Tonight we talk about our general feelings about the Nintendo Switch and how for most of us it is not in the realm of the day one purchase.  We talk about our track records with Nintendo Consoles in general as well.  Belghast talks about the game formerly known as “Game 4” and now called Pit People from The Behmoth.  Tam talks about Event[0] an alternate history game as told through the terminal screen of a Trash 80.  Bel talks a bit about his experiences with the Wrath of the Machine raid and the Outbreak Prime quest.  Finally we all get wrapped up in a sequence of discussions about MMO games…  namely how they are bad at directing new players to new content.  This then spawns a conversation about the trend of open world games also for some reason forcing open world pvp.  Lastly we get into a discussion about our general desires for MMO housing systems.

Topics: Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Consoles, Pit People, Event[0], Destiny Wrath of the Machine Raid, MMOs are Bad at Returning Players, Forcing PVP in otherwise PVE games, MMO Housing Systems

AggroChat #138 – The Hipster Mushroom

Tonight Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Tam and Thalen talk about a whole list of games.

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Welcome to the beginning of AggroChat Season 4!  This evening we are back to recording normal shows…  and man does it feel weird.  At first we thought we would be short a Kodra, but got an 11th hour message from him stating “I NEEDS TO PODCAST”.  Of note he is on unfamiliar internets and a machine that he does not regularly record on… so the sound quality is a little iffy at times.  Tonight we delve into a huge list of topics that hit all around the map of the things folks have been playing.  Some of the things discussed:

  • Diablo Anniversary Events
  • Diablo 3 Season 9 Start
  • Wildstar
  • Elder Scrolls Online Housing
  • Death of Landmark
  • Fears for Lord of the Rings Online
  • MMO Maintenance Mode
  • Inside
  • Owlboy
  • Ducktales
  • Super Mario Brothers Games
  • Shadow Tactics
  • Dark Souls 3
  • Bloodborne
  • Superhot
  • Glittermitten Grove
  • Frog Fractions 2

AggroChat #129 – Deckbuilding MMO Design

Tonight Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Tam and Thalen Discuss Diablo rumors, Overwatch Co-Op, Master Catching Games, and Guild Wars Deckbuilding in MMOs

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Tonight we have another in a long line of shows where we go into it not really having a clue what we are going to talk about… then wind up discussing topics for a couple hours.  This week we start off talking about Diablo… the largely forgotten Blizzard game and the beginning of Season 8.  We then veer off into tinfoil hat territory as we talk about some of the popular rumors surrounding Diablo 4.  We talk about how much we are enjoying the new Co-Op PVE mode in Overwatch, and how we wish it was a permanent addition.  We also shift course into a discussion about how games seem to have an obligatory e-sports friendly design these days.  We also discuss our recent progress in the World of Warcraft Emerald Nightmare raid, and now much we are looking forward to Karazhan landing this coming week.  Finally we get into a lengthy discussion about the deckbuilding style of MMO design, namely with Guild Wars, Guild Wars 2, Secret World and to some extent Rift.

Topics Discussed – Diablo 3 Season 8 – Diablo 4 Tinfoil Hat Theories – David Brevik – Bill Roper – Co-Op Overwatch – Designing For E-Sports – Co-Op Gameplay – Pokemon Sun and Moon Demo – World of Final Fantasy Demo – WoW Emerald Nightmare Raid – Guild Wars 1 Ability System – Deck Building MMOs

What I’m Playing: August 7, 2016

Hooray, I made it through the first week of Blaugust! WoW has definitely been my main focus, but some other games have still been on my radar too.

World of Warcraft: This is where I spent most of my time this week. I got my legendary mace on my forsaken priest, but otherwise have mostly been playing alliance side. It makes me frustrated and sad, because I just plain like the horde races and story better, but at this point absolutely all of my friends are playing alliance so there’s no escaping it. Once again I find myself really wishing WoW would just add cross faction play already, even if it were tied to battlenet friends or something. I already have prepared myself for the inevitable point in Legion where I get sick of being alliance and go back to level my horde mains all alone. I guess it is a good thing I like alting.

What I’m Playing: August 7, 2016

LFR gets a (mostly deserved) bad rap, but sometimes you luck out and it’s nothing but Gamon and rainbows as far as the eye can see.

Anyway, I’ve been doing a little LFR on my druid and wandering around on my baby spacegoat mage and enjoying it. I’ve been using the baby mage as a chance to really see the low-level alliance quests, and to knock out some of the individual zone loremaster achieves that I never did. I got the overall loremaster achievement and title back before Cataclysm, so there’s a lot of quests I’ve never seen before. See yesterday’s post from Felwood for just one example.

FFXIV: I want to be playing this more, but WoW is really taking up too much of my time and attention for me to bother. Over the past week I’ve logged in for raid and pretty much nothing else at all. Don’t get me wrong, raid time was amazing and probably more fun than all of the time I played WoW put together, but we only raid 2 hours a week. I had been hoping that raiding on a schedule again would reignite my drive to log in more and upgrade my gear and such but it didn’t work out that way.

WildStar: I’m going to come clean and admit I hadn’t logged in to WildStar in a couple months. That just felt wrong, so when WoW got hit by a DDoS attack a few evenings this week I logged back in to WildStar. I didn’t do anything new and exciting, just a couple of expeditions. It still felt amazing and comfortable, like nothing had changed. I will be trying to spend at least one night a week poking around in this game again, because it remains my favorite MMO of all time.

Diablo 3: Season 7 started on Friday! The response to this season seems to be very low compared to all of the previous ones, but I’ve still been playing and having a great time. On Friday I got to play with some friends that I haven’t hung out with in way too long, and had a blast leveling together. This season was the first time in a while that I didn’t get to 70 on the first night, but that was all on me because I decided to get some sleep instead. I hit 70 and completed the first 5 chapters of the season journey yesterday, which included the cosmetic rewards and the full free class set of gear (after chapter 4). Since that was my entire goal for this season, I don’t know if I will stay invested or not, especially with the pre-Legion WoW event coming on Tuesday. A lot of the goals for the stash tab this time around feel easier, but also grindier, and I’m guessing I’m not going to bother when there are new shiny things to distract me in other games.