Tales of the Aggronaut

A Truly Amazing Day

One of the huge positives about where we live is that we are close to an awful lot of things that are within reasonable walking distance.  Over the last year or so we have tried to take advantage of this fact by walking to dinner more often.  This weekend however I did something I should have done a very long time ago and walked to the movies.  There is a theater literally less than two blocks away from my house, but I’ve never actually walked there before.  Granted when walking to dinner we walk past it all of the time.  Sunday I decided to go to the 10:30 am matinee and watch the new Avengers movie.  The movie itself was pretty great, and i feel like I need to watch it again to really take in all of the sights the movie had to offer.  This is a very “busy” film packed with some absolutely insane action sequences.  I feel like it is a toss up between the Hulk and Black Widow as to who stole the show, but I have always been partial to both of them.

As I was exiting the theater I texted my wife to let her know that I would be on my way home.  However when I poked my head out into the light there she was waiting on me.  She walked down hoping to surprise me, and then the two of us walked over to get lunch.  It was a really beautiful day, and she is constantly telling me that I need to get more sunlight.  While I am still not the biggest fan of the sun, she is probably right because I feel better today after having done all of this yesterday.  We had some errands to run, but by the time we got back to the house we both decided it was nap time.  After getting back up we ran to target really quickly and then she went outside to read in the rocking chair, and I played games.  It was a pretty great day, and I am hoping to take advantage of the movie theater being so close in the future.  There are a lot of movies that I want to see that she has no interest in.  Walking down makes it feel less of a hassle for some reason, and also serves as some exercise.

Marvel Heroes Binge

It was probably because of the awesome Avengers movie, but when I got home I ran a quick expert roulette and then logged to play Marvel Heroes.  This game has really grown on me and I am feeling like a massive failure for not giving it a chance before now.  Normally the whole Diablo thing is a bit of a turn off anymore, but for whatever reason the combination of Super Heroes and Diablo works well for me.  I have been accumulating a lot of various boost potions, because they give you plenty of them as part of the daily login reward system.  Yesterday I opted to take several of the various 2 hour boosts and see what all I could accomplish.  I pushed Captain America that has become my main from 22 to 27 almost 28 over the course of those two hours.  Right now there are a lot of things working in my favor since there is an event happening that gives Avengers a boost.  The only bad thing is that the cosmic gear I am wearing has yet to be replaced which bums me out slightly.  I guess I might have to try my luck again at the cosmic boxes from Adam Strange.

I am just starting the Savage Lands which according to my friend is one of the more frustrating areas of the game.  I personally found that the tail end of Stryker’s camp to be extremely frustrating with Sentinels dropping on me every five seconds.  I keep feeling like I should probably play other characters up since I now have this whole synergy thing unlocked…  but really I am still having a blast playing Cap.  His skillset is almost perfect suited for my particular play style.  I can charge through a bunch of mobs taking them out, and then when I get into the center of a pack twirl my shield around taking all but the blue or better mobs out.  Then I just mob up with shield throws or punches and repeat.  It feels very enjoyable, but I am actually looking forward to seeing what the new heroic difficulty that I unlocked is like.  There are absolutely times that the game feels mindlessly simple, so I would be curious to see if Heroic is like hard is for Diablo 3… aka the new “normal”.

Closing in on Botanist

Another thing I worked on last night was pushing Botanist up a bit more.  I really want to finish leveling this to 50, and have felt the need to do just this before really starting in on crafting proper.  I realize this might be a bit strange of logic but it works for me.  I spent my evening catching up on Game of Thrones and Silicon Valley, both shows that I had not really watched for the last few weeks.  While doing this I ran a whole slew of Botany leves and managed to push from 35 to 45 which hopefully means I can finish off the leveling process at some point this week.  I will be happy to have finished leveling the two harvesting professions that I am going to need to most while leveling my other  crafters.  Right now however I have to collect 20 high quality mistletoe to turn in to the quest giver.  This is going to be a fairly daunting task, given that I cannot simply buy my way through it.  It seems HQ mistletoe is in short supply as there was absolutely none on the market board.    As a result I will be spending the next little bit in the Whitebrim area harvesting like mad trying to complete the 45 quest.

The other thing I really want to do soon is push my Arcanist from 22 to 30 so that I can become a scholar.  If I manage to do that I can get to 50 relatively easily doing the fast healer dungeon queues.  Depending on how many leves it takes me to get to 50 Botanist, I might follow this interesting guide posted on the FFXIV Reddit.  Ashgar pointed this out, and it seems like a perfectly reasonable way to level.  I actually like chain running leves because it is also a decent source of retainer tokens.  I would love to see myself level a few more classes to 50 before the expansion, because I have 100 level weapons waiting on them.  I have been dumping my excess soldiery into buying the various weapons, and just have one left to purchase, which admittedly is a little insane.  The problem is… what else was I going to use that soldiery on?  I am actually right around the point where I need to buy the final weapon, which makes me feel like a slacker for not leveling all of those classes to 50.  Final Fantasy XIV has way more content than I could ever hope to do… so at times I just feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of things that I want to be doing.

Source: Tales of the Aggronaut
Marvel Heroes Binge

AggroChat 55 – Calling All Bloggers

This week I start off the show, and even title it with a pretty massive plug for the Newbie Blogger Initiative. What is the NBI you ask? Well this is the time of the year when Veteran bloggers support new folks wanting to get started in this madness. This year we are making an extra special push to try and help new podcasters, youtubers, and streamers along with the bloggers. Additionally I myself am making a special push to try to rekindle the fire in some of our wayward bloggers who are no longer as regular as they used to be. The entire month of May is dedicated to helping folks get started and find their niche, and since most of the AggroChat crew have participated in the past, it is time to get the word out.

As far as the rest of the show we had myself, Tam, Ashgar, Kodra and Grace. As always we spent a good deal of time talking Final Fantasy XIV since we are all still heavily playing it. Right now Greysky Armada our Free Company is back holding the bronze medal again for being the third most active Free Company on our server Cactuar. This week also saw myself and Grace spending some more time playing some more Wildstar. The Black Dagger Society the guild I am connected to has been having a guild night on Fridays and as such I have started joining in the festivities. Additionally there was talk of Marvel Heroes, Diablo 3, Ashgar returning to his Gameboy Advance roots, Tam winning his first Infinity tournament since the move, and similarly Kodra beating VVVVVV for the first time in his new place. Since this month is devoted to Shadowrun for the Gameclub we are also starting to play some of this. It was a fun show in spite of being in that pre-E3 gaming doldrum.

Making Progress

I’ve been down a bit on raiding lately in my posts so I wanted to take a moment to give a bit of an update of sorts.  The Tuesday before last was very seriously one of the worst nights of raiding I have had in a very long time.  It really made me question if I wanted to keep trying to raid in World of Warcraft, and I posted this long discussion about it.  It seems like I actually gave voice to some of the same feelings that many of our raid had been having, but for whatever reason had not actually talked about.  As a result a dialog has started among some of the members, and I have to say I think things are starting to improve.  Tuesday this week was still a pretty rough night, but it felt at least somewhat better.  Thursday however on the other hand felt really good.  We were a much trimmed down group due to some absences but I also felt like we were working better as a team.  We lowered the bar slightly and worked on normal content again, clearing everything we had ever cleared before in a single night and putting in some serious work on the forge encounter.

If we had another hour of attempts I feel like we probably could have downed the encounter.  Things were flowing so much better than they ever had before.  We were getting through to the second phase, and then approaching it with a sense of direction and purpose.  We were alternating between burning down the Elementalists and focusing down the waves of adds.  We managed to push through to the final phase, and if we were at our full numbers we might have been able to defeat it.  I think we learned a lot of good lessons that we can hopefully apply this Tuesday.  The thing is… I am feeling something that I have not felt in a very long time… the desire to get back in there and give it another shot.  I am actually looking forward to raiding in World of Warcraft this week, and that is a pretty awesome thing.  Maybe just maybe we can make the changes necessary in the raid to make it a better experience for all of us.  At this point I am glad I said something, and started the discussion.  I guess the truth is if you are not having a good time, chances are you aren’t the only one.

Enjoying Wildstar

Similarly this week I have been enjoying quite a bit of Wildstar.  I am still taking it nice and slow, but at this point I am level 16 with just a short ways to go to 17.  I have officially finished the Algoroc zone and will be moving into the next area.  The Black Dagger Society has been awesome to me, and I am super thankful to Chestnut and Chaide for giving me a friendly home to hang my hat in.  It turns out that Friday nights are somewhat of a guild night for grouping, and they have been working on lower level content.  Currently I do not have any other commitments Friday nights, so I am going to try and make that my Wildstar day.  This week they ran me through the earliest Protostar dungeon, and it does a pretty great job of teaching you what you need to do to succeed in a Wildstar instance.  Honestly I wish that this would have been the first dungeon when we were playing at launch, because I feel like it would have cleared up a lot of the frustrations had by many players.

The group we went into Wildstar with was made up of some pretty disparate points of view and skill levels.  For some the extremely frenetic pace of the dungeons was a point of frustration especially as we were trying to learn “on the fly” all of the various things we were supposed to be doing.  This dungeon eases the player in teaching them the various mechanics and then building upon them as the phases go, finally culminating in a boss fight that is fairly representative of what I saw in the “real” dungeons.  While the dungeon is essentially a giant tutorial, it is still extremely fun and when a random stranger asked me if I wanted to join them… I happily ran it again.  The other big switch I have made is previously I was focusing entirely on tanking as the warrior and now  I am starting to build out my dps abilities as well.  In most games I level as tanky as much as anything else in an effort to be as survivable as I can be for fighting the named encounters.  In this game I feel almost more survivable playing DPS as I do as a tank.  Essentially the amount of damage I deal more than makes up for the extra damage I might be receiving.  I am still pleasantly surprised that I am enjoying Wildstar as much as I actually am.  Pretty happy I decided to give it another shot.

Source: Tales of the Aggronaut
Enjoying Wildstar

Tyranny of a Blank Page

Early in the week I had this idea of what I was going to write about for Storytime Saturday, and it was something good.  The problem is as Saturday has now happened I cannot for the life of me remember what it was that I wanted to write about.  Jaedia says this is why she keeps notes…  but I ultimately fail at doing that.  I have literally hundreds of “Untitled” Google documents with only a few sentences in them, so note taking is not exactly my strong suit.  Actually the problem isn’t the notes themselves but the organization.  Some people can neatly compartmentalize their lives into subjects and categories and then there are people like me that are shocked and amazed if anything goes as planned… because we are constantly rewriting that plan as we go along.  This is the point where I admit that I really have no prep work for my blog.

This is a curse and a blessing both depending on the day.  As I could not think of anything to write about this morning it was a curse.  The fact that I could start banging away on my keys and make something work as I went along…  is the blessing.  As writers we have to find whatever it is that works for us.  I’ve always tended to be one of those “rough outline” people, that I need a sketch of a roadmap…  but then prefer to fill in the details as I go allowing myself to be flexible and adjust to change as it happens.  The irony of this… is that I am pretty damned adaptable, but I still end up hating change in most forms.  I guess when you choose to life your life is a state of loosely organized chaos, you learn to really respect the parts of your life that you can commit to routine.  Those are the stable base that you build your ever changing life upon, so when one of those things changes you notice it.

The Wayward Blogger

One of the things I took special time to point out yesterday in all of my NBI 2015 announcements… was that we are also looking for what I termed the “Wayward Blogger”.  I guess this hits home for me especially because still deep within my core I am one of you.  I was a Wayward blogger for years, with weeks where I was extremely active, and month long pauses in activity.  If I could do this whole blogging daily thing naturally then I wouldn’t need to challenge myself by calling it the “Grand Experiment” and keeping track of each and every day  that goes by where I didn’t break the streak.  If you look through my blogs history you will find several six or seven month lapses in posting, and today during Storytime Saturday I guess I want to address those.  Not necessarily why the lapses happened but what my mental state was like during each.

The problem with a blog is when it starts to get popular you feel like you are forced to produce content.  The irony of doing the blogging every day thing, is that in many ways it is a gimmick.  When you are producing that much content people are generally forgiving on your off days.  Not every single post I make is meaningful or important, and some of them are going to flat out honestly suck.  I’ve talked about the “permission to suck” before, but it is even more than just this.  When you are blogging infrequently you feel like you have to write gold every single time you set your fingers to your keyboard.  This pressure is overwhelming sometimes and each day that passes gets internalized as another rung higher your subsequent post has to be to make up for the fact that it has been six months.

Permission to be Boring

I have no stats on this, but this is something I have heard from each and every other person that has gone dormant.  That they don’t blog because they feel like they simply don’t have anything to say that is worthy of that “triumphant return” post.  This is the instinct we have to figure out how to subvert if we are going to be happy bloggers.  Like the permission to suck when you are just starting out, you have to give yourself the permission to be boring on occasion.  Writing a “return” post is often like ripping off a band aid.  You need to get it over with quickly so you can get on with the normal business of writing posts.  The thing you have to realize is that for most readers your blog has been shuffled into a RSS Reader along with the rest of the people that they follow.  They will notice when you come back, but no one is actually there waiting every single day for that “epic post” you have built up in your head.

Ultimately if anyone is going to read a blog for any length of time, there is a transition that happens.  You stop caring so much about what is being written and begin to focus on the person behind the screen.  Those people, the ones that have transitioned to caring about you as a human being…  they will always be there when you return to welcome you with open arms.  The other folks who were only there when you were producing that thing they desired on that specific moment…  they will always be fickle and aren’t really worth the heartache and frustration.  You need to ask yourself what exactly do you want to write about and then focus on doing just that.  So many of us started our blogs as one thing, and then realized whatever that “one” thing was no longer sustainable.  We then transitioned into writing about the things that made us happy, and have kept going because of whatever that “thing” was.

I Am Proof

Essentially I offer myself as proof that you too can be a pillar of stability in the community.  I was quite possibly one of the least prolific bloggers, with some pretty massive absences.  The longest one that I can remember was the seven months that passed between the last blog post and me rededicating myself to doing the daily blogging experiment.  Each time I felt like a complete failure for letting the blog posts stop.  Each time I beat myself up for not being able to crank out content when I “wasn’t feeling it”.  Each time I could not get the desire that I should be writing something out of my head, and ultimately this small amount of madness lead me to put fingers to keyboard again and start writing.  Now is when I let you in on a little secret…  that inner doubt, the bit of you that tells you not to post.  That never actually goes away.  Most mornings I have to hold my breath and close my eyes… and press the publish button, because the inner voice inside me is constantly telling me that whatever I am doing simply isn’t good enough.

I was and still am in many ways a Wayward Blogger, I am just learning how to overcome those instincts and force myself to perform.  I don’t know what I am doing most days, and in truth I don’t even have a clue.  I just keep moving forward and adapting to whatever happens, coming up with things on the fly as I push forward.  If I can do this…  quite literally anyone can.  I am possibly the least qualified person to be doing what I am doing on a daily basis, yet I keep finding a way to make it happen.  You are significantly more talented than I am, and will go on and make more magic than I could ever dream of.  You simply have to push yourself to do it.  Prove it to yourself, prove it to the community… that you can be our next shining star.  The support is there, you just need to make it happen by finding what it is that you love talking about, and start writing.  My hope this Newbie Blogger Initiative is not so much that we get this massive crop of new bloggers, but that instead we find a way to rekindle the fires of bloggers that have long gone dormant.  If I can do this so can you.

Source: Tales of the Aggronaut
The Wayward Blogger

It’s That Time Again!

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

Source: Tales of the Aggronaut
Newbie Blogger Initiative 2015