AggroChat #226 – Diablowing Up

Featuring:  Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra and Tamrielo

aggrochat226

Tonight we have a packed show full of topics to discuss because as we hurdle towards the holiday season… a bunch of stuff is happening.  First up we talk about Super Smash Bros Ultimate and the inclusion of the World of Light single player system. From there with similar Nintendo topics we talk a bit about the Diablo 3 Switch release and just how good it feels.  Chaining off that we get into a discussion about Blizzcon 2018 and the announcement that the community was not prepared for… Diablo Immortal. We try and break this down a little bit, talk about the positives of it, and explain why the community as a whole freaked the hell out in a very toxic and dangerous manner.  

Admittedly somewhere along in here we jump around through a bunch of topics but eventually settle into a discussion of World of Warcraft Classic and all of the things Bel quite honestly didn’t remember from playing on a retro client.  Saturday afternoon Bel, Tam and Kodra spent a few hours roaming around in Fallout 76, so there is some talk about how much they are now looking forward to the release. Finally we wrap up with a brief discussion of Deltarune, which honestly happened in a few places during the show…  but will likely be reprised next week.

Topics Discussed:

  • Super Smash Bros Ultimate
    • World of Light
  • Diablo 3 Switch
  • Blizzcon 2018
    • Diablo Immortal
    • World of Warcraft Classic
  • Fallout 76
  • Deltarune

Shovels and Shoveltusks

Shovels and Shoveltusks

I declared Thursday and Friday to be part of the weekend last week and decided to take myself four days off from the blog and one week off from the podcast.  I feel super chill going into what is likely going to be an exceedingly stressful week so I think it was probably a good call.  Apart of having to help my folks move some furniture yesterday, I mostly had a pretty chill thanksgiving.  Both Friday and Saturday my wife and I attempted to avoid the world, and the only shopping we really did was online apart from a mad dash out to Target around 9 pm on Friday.  At that point the store was largely sane and wasn’t that much different than a normal trip on any other night.  Throughout all of this I have found myself forsaking my normal checking of Pokemon Go in favor of the relatively newly released Animal Crossing Pocket Camp.  First off I have to admit I have never played an animal crossing game before so I didn’t have much of a cultural frame of reference going into this.  The experience instead reminds me a lot of a mix between the former web based casual MMO Glitch and some flavors of Stardew Valley.  Whatever you end up calling it the game is extremely charming and at this point I am level 16 and have a bunch of the animals at my campsite…  enough that the last three or four gave me a messaging saying there was no room.  Unfortunately I have no clue how you actually determine which ones are at your camp and which ones are not…  but for the moment I am rolling with it.

Shovels and Shoveltusks

I’ve also seemingly hit whatever the friend cap is because when I try and add anyone it says that combined between my friends list and the few outstanding requests I have run out of room.  I have no clue what this cap actually is…  I estimated 200 the other day but I am guessing in truth it is closer to 100.  The game is maybe bad at messaging some things but I am largely limping along without doing much in the way of research.  There is a quarry mini-game that requires you to get help from five of your friends, and I wish they messaged when my friends were needing help a little better.  For example if you look at the middle section of the above screenshot you will see a shovel icon out to the side of Kelsey’s name.  I wish there was a way to sort these to the top of the list because they are really the ones I am most interested in given I like helping other players, because you appear to get some sort of cut of their profits.  After that you attempt to guess which rocks have the most profitable stones…  gold nuggets seem to be the best.  I still very much feel like I don’t fully grasp a lot of things…  like how the hell to make large quantities of Bells that Animal Crossing currency.  Right now I have a 30,000 bells loan with the auto place and have never really gotten close to paying it off.  Thankfully they don’t seem to be sending anyone to break my kneecaps because of it though, and they still allowed me to customize my RV regardless of having the loan out.  I feel like maybe they don’t have the best business model.  Regardless if you have not been playing this you should probably check it out because it definitely seems to be addictive as hell given the wide variety of friends that seem to be playing it on a regular basis.

Shovels and Shoveltusks

I made a bunch of progress in Destiny 2 but I am likely going to wait until tomorrow to talk about that.  Instead I wanted to talk a bit about the other game I played over the break…  World of Warcraft.  I am still working on my tiny Orc Warrior that is getting less and less tiny as each week goes by.  At this point I have completed the Cataclysm content and am on the airship just about to start the invasion of Pandaria.  This is something I have never actually done on the horde side given my last several characters I leveled were abusing the shit out of the pre-legion launch invasions.  I’ve also not spent much time playing through Warlords of Draenor as a Horde character, so that should be interesting as well.  Similarly I have never seen Legion as the Horde…  all things I am interested in experiencing first hand.  The biggest shock for me is just how fast Cataclysm managed to go given that I started in on Vashj’ir Saturday night and dinged level 85 well before finishing the final section of it Sunday evening.  I realize that zone is in theory about the same size as two other zones combined…  but I did not expect to be getting quite that much experience from it.  Granted I am fully geared out in level 100 heirlooms (minus the rings because I don’t have the patience for that nonsense), but did not partake of any of the experience boosting options.  The mission of the day however is to try and figure out how to get a Pandaria flying book…  because I do not want to return to land based leveling if I can help it.

AggroChat #117 – Death to Garrisons

Belghast, Grace, Neph, Tam and Thalen lack topic ideas… but then record a lengthy show on WoW, FFXIV, Pokemon and other stuff.

aggrochat117_720

This week we are down both Ashgar and Kodra, and in part as a result… and part because we just adore her we talked our friend Neph into joining us.  Before we start recording a podcast we generally try and scribble down a rough list of topics to use as an outline of where to leave the conversation next.  After fifteen minutes of dead air… we finally start coming up with a few things and this weeks show is a result.  We talk about the concept of “Peak Pokemon” and the glee that the media seems to have at heralding the downfall of the game.  With Grace on my side we revisit the discussion about the Legion class changes, and our happiness to completely bury the concept of the Garrison and get out into the world and see it again.  We do a deeper dive into the deepest dungeon in Final Fantasy XIV and Tam and Neph’s experiences leveling alts this week there.  We talk a little bit about Dragon Age Inquisition, and my discovery of how Damage over Time classes work.  So for a show where we didn’t think we had much to say… we certainly said a whole lot of it.

  • Peak Pokemon
  • World of Warcraft
  • Class Changes
  • Death to Garrisons
  • Disappointment in Game
  • Final Fantasy XIV Deep Dungeon
  • Yokai Watch
  • Dragon Age Inquisition
  • DoT Classes

AggroChat #115 – Murder Hobo: The Video Game

This week Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tam, Thalen discuss a bunch of stuff, some of it not Pokemon Go

aggrochat115_720

This marks the second week of the majority of our cast being completely enthralled by the apparent phenomenon that is Pokemon Go.  So as you would expect this weeks episode is a hefty bit of our hosts recounting their recent experiences.  Pokemon Go is a story engine, and we have many stories to tell as a result.  Additionally we talk a bit about Augmented Reality gaming in general, and whether or not Pokemon Go is the “Everquest” or the “World of Warcraft” of this genre.  This week also saw us “getting the band back together” as it were and raiding for the first time in months in Final Fantasy XIV.  We discuss our feeling about raiding again and the hopes of what we might accomplish in the coming months.

Grace and Bel made their way into the Legion Beta finally for World of Warcraft so we discuss a bit in the way of the set up for that expansion.  Bel talks at length about his experiences playing a Demon Hunter and why he thinks this might be a class Tam would actually like.  Tam deftly deflects and turns the discussion back around to the story of Final Fantasy XIV and our feelings about what seems to be the wrapping of this expansion.  In other news we discuss two similar gaming experiences in Necropolis and the brand new chapter of the Monster Hunter saga.  Finally we get into a length discussion about the ramifications of Pokemon Go and what it might mean for Nintendo and accepting that the mobile platform is actually viable.

Topics:  Pokemon Go, Augmented Reality Gaming, Everquest or World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy XIV Raiding, Legion Beta, Demon Hunter, Final Fantasy Story, Necropolis, Monster Hunter, Nintendo Mobile Gaming, Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow.