Tonight we have another show largely made up of topics that have rolled over from previous shows when we ran out of time.  We start the show with some reasonable methadone for Justice Monsters Five… in the form of a little early access Android game called Zombie Rollers.  From there we talk a bit about Dragon Quest XI which leads to a discussion about Dragon Warrior and Quest titles in North America. Tam talks about his experiences with Hyperlight Drifter on the switch which leads its way to a discussion about Hollow Knight.  This time said discussion is a spoiler filled dive and I highly suggest playing the game before checking out this segment. Finally at the very end we talk about Diablo 3 Season 15… the upcoming switch release, our hopes for Blizzcon and some of the rumors circulating.

Topics Discussed

  • Zombie Rollers
    • Justice Monsters Five
  • Dragon Quest XI
    • Dragon Warrior NES Games
    • Phantasy Star Series
  • Hyperlight Drifter
  • Hollow Knight
    • Full Spoiler Deep Dive
  • Diablo 3 Season 15
    • Switch Release
    • BlizzCon Hopes
    • Rumors
Direct download: aggrochat_episode221.mp3
Category:gaming -- posted at: 9:26am EDT

Tonight we record a show that has almost nothing to do with Gorb…  but you are going to get that as a name anyways because reasons. This is another one of those shows that has a bunch of topics that kept rolling over from other shows until we managed to align enough of them that sorta made sense together.  Tonight we talk about MMOs an awful lot covering the life cycle of the new player experience, returning player experience and the completely and total nonsense that happens at end game with power creep.

Rough Approximation of Topics

  • DPS Shortage
    • Why We Apparently Only Know Tanks and Healers
  • The New Player Experience
    • World of Warcraft
    • Final Fantasy XIV
    • Destiny Series
    • Warframe
  • The Returning Character Experience
    • All of the Above Again
    • How The Secret World did it Poorly
  • Power Creep
    • Why did we stat squish only to be irresponsible again?
    • Mudflation the term that actually came from MUDs
  • Nintendo Direct
    • We accidentally talk about stuff coming out on Switch
Direct download: aggrochat_episode220.mp3
Category:gaming -- posted at: 9:54am EDT

Last week we did not have a show because half of AggroChat was at Pax West and no one really wanted to listen to Grace and I trying to do a show by ourselves.  Tonight however we have the entire gang back with a bounty of games to talk about from Pax West 2018. This is a really long list and we managed to get through all of them in our normal allotted time.  Be warned as we go further into the bowels of this list, the discussion points get considerably more brief. There were twenty eight games that I was able to catch… there might have been more and they may not be in the same order…  but we gave it an attempt to track it all.

  • Kodra is Famous Now
  • Pax West Show Run Down
    • Artifact
    • Dauntless
    • Starlink
    • Untitled Goose Game
    • Never Give Up
    • Risk of Rain 2
    • Get in the car, Loser
    • Necrosphere
    • Exception
    • Gris
    • Dragon Marked for Death
    • Spin Rhythm
    • Star Renegades
    • Soundfall
    • Summoner's Fate
    • Indivisible
    • Decoherence
    • Evergate
    • Party Golf/Party Crashers
    • Children of Morta
    • Pathfinder: Kingmaker
    • Necrobarista
    • Russian Subway Dogs
    • Element Space
    • Zombie Rollerz
    • Dusk: Arena of Shadows
    • Gizmos
    • Felix the Reaper
Direct download: aggrochat_episode219.mp3
Category:gaming -- posted at: 9:58am EDT

Tonight we have the full group and end up talking mostly about World of Warcraft and the Battle For Azeroth expansion so far.  If you listened last week... Tam became interested enough in the expansion that he renewed his account which lead to a whole sequence of events happening.  One of which resulted in him finding out he had a hopelessly broken character. We talk about that event and the absolutely primo customer service he received as a result of it.  We talk about the lack of players in War mode and how Blizzard apparently is planning on throwing more incentives towards playing in that fashion. We talk about our experiences in dungeons so far and how some seem way harder than others.  We talk about the release of the Queen Azshara cinematic and what that maybe means for the future. We talk about how we are seeing some of the best storytelling in WoW's history through this expansion. Tam presents an impassioned defense of playing "boring" humans in fantasy games, which leads to a discussion more about world building than anything else.  Finally Kodra talks a bit about his new career in Glitchless Speedrunning primarily through VVVVVV, which turns into a discussion about speedrunning and the glitchless variant in particular.

Topics Discussed:

  • World of Warcraft
    • How Tam Got His Groove Back
    • Battle for Azeroth Expansion
    • War Mode - Please Be Content
    • Dungeon Experiences
    • Queen Azshara Cinematic
  • Why Humans Are Great
  • The Letter F Six Times
    • VVVVVV
    • Glitchless Speedrunning
Direct download: aggrochat_episode218.mp3
Category:gaming -- posted at: 10:02am EDT

This evening we talk about a bunch of stuff but first Ashgar sings for us and makes me lose my shit…  so working as intended. Grace and Bel talk about their experiences in Battle For Azeroth so far and how it turned out not to be as factiony as we expected.  We also sorta convince Tam to give the story a shot even though we know he will bounce off it eventually. Bel talks about his recent journey into Mastodon and how it seems like a throwback to the early days of the internet.  Tam also has joined in this process and talks about how the experience so far has been better for him than Twitter was. Tam also talks about his experiences with the game Detroit and so far how it seems to be less pretentious than the average David Cage fare.  Finally we talk about some comfort gaming and enjoyable mechanical loops like Warframe, Destiny and Dead Cells.

 

Topics Discussed

  • Battle For Azeroth
    • Convincing Tam to Play
    • Better Story
    • Shockingly Minimal Faction Nonsense
  • Mastodon
    • The New Not-Twitter
    • More like a BBS or Old IRC
    • Strength of Small Communities
    • Totally not another Ello
  • Detroit
    • Interesting story
    • Less Pretentious Cage
  • Comfort Gaming
    • Warframe
    • Enjoyable Mechanical Loops
    • Destiny
    • Dead Cells

 

Direct download: aggrochat_episode217.mp3
Category:gaming -- posted at: 10:04am EDT

Tonight Belghast completely crashes and has to reboot, during the intro.  Additionally Kodra also crashes at some point during the LARP conversation and we sorta have to move on while he comes back online.  It is one of those shows. You have been warned. We talk about GenCon and the convention going experience. We talk a bit about Steambirds Alliance and what a bullet-hell-perma-death-steampunk-bird-mmo is like.  If you have enough dashes you can connect any genres! We talk about Monster Hunter World on the PC and how it isn’t quite the dumpster fire that the internet reports it to be. We talk about questing in 4X games and why everyone but Bel seems to think this is an awesome.  Then we sorta break down into a lengthy diatribe about Dungeons and Dragons and Pathfinder and which versions were good at what. It's a Show!

Topics Discussed

  • Kodra visits GenCon
    • Convention Experiences
    • Here we Go A Larping
  • Steambirds Alliance
    • Ashgar Needs This Game
    • Spryfox Is Awesome
    • Realm of the Mad God
  • Monster Hunter World PC
    • Mostly Fine
  • Quests in 4X Games
    • Bel Thinks it sounds miserable
    • Everyone else loves them
  • Starfinder Thoughts
    • Pathfinder 2.0 Thoughts
    • Devolving into a discussion about D&D Generations
    • 3.5 Thoughts
    • 4e Thoughts
    • Open Gaming License was Awesome
    • Bel says some stuff about Palladium Games
  • The Public Nature of D&D
    • Beginning with 3rd Edition to Now
    • Critical Role
    • Talking D&D on Talk Shows
Direct download: aggrochat_episode216.mp3
Category:gaming -- posted at: 9:05am EDT

As part of the 2018 Blaugust Reborn Initiative the blogger Chestnut from Gamer Girl Confessions (gamergirlconfessions.com) has challenged us to create some mini podcasts.  There is a sequence of questions that we were asked to answer, and in my case I sorta gave some pretty big combo answers for most of them.  You can find the full length of questions as part of this blog post (https://gamergirlconfessions.com/2018/07/30/imposter-syndrome-and-your-blog/).  Essentially Belghast talks about how he got his start with Tales of the Aggronaut and some general advice to new bloggers.

There is still plenty of time to participate in Blaugust this year so check out http://aggronaut.com/2018/07/09/blaugust-reborn/ for more details.

Direct download: blaugustminicast-Belghast.mp3
Category:gaming -- posted at: 10:36am EDT

Tonight we have as show that goes way off course, but often times those are some of our better shows because we follow the passion.  Bel talks a bit about Blaugust Reborn and the successes so far. All of the talk about World of Warcraft has lead Tam to go back and play Warcraft 3.  We talk about where all of the story beats come from and where World of Warcraft maybe went south around Cataclysm. We also talk about maybe that there should have been a World of Warcraft 2.  We talk a bit about the new Richard Garfield game Keyforge and how Magic the Gathering is not actually the game he intended to design. Bel talks a bit about the concept of a Destiny Pen and Paper game which leads into a discussion about Modern Tabletop gaming…  and how we need the gaming version of a Country Club.


Topics Discussed:

  • Blaugust Reborn
    • 88 Participating Blogs So Far
  • Warcraft 3
    • Where the story comes from
    • World of Warcraft
    • Storytelling Issues
    • Things Went South After Cataclysm
    • We Needed World of Warcraft 2
  • Keyforge
    • Everyone likes random decks right?
  • Magic the Gathering
    • Not the game Garfield actually wanted
    • Magic Shifted Over Time
    • Rebalancing Magic
  • Destiny Pen and Paper
    • Fan Built in spite of what Bel thought
  • Modern Tabletop Explosion
  • Need for Gaming Country Clubs
    • We come up with a business model
    • Someone else make this a thing
Direct download: aggrochat_episode215.mp3
Category:gaming -- posted at: 9:46am EDT

Tonight we sit down and talk through our feelings about Battle For Azeroth and its fairly tone deaf ad campaign. We dig into the "It Matters" videos and how it feels fairly irresponsible at a time when our country and world is pulled apart already by some fairly serious points of division. We talk about how playing World of Warcraft should be a thing to bring people together rather than pull them apart. We also talk about the Warbringers video series and how we are afraid it is setting up Jaina, Sylvannas and Azshara to be the next set of raid bosses. Finally we talk briefly about the novel and event that are leading up to this expansion. At the tail end of the show we talk a bit about drafting M19 in Magic Arena and Bel's nonsensical luck at pulling cards.

Topics Discussed

  • Battle For Azeroth
    • The "It Matters" Ad Campaign
    • The "Warbringers" video series
    • The "Before the Storm" novelization
    • The "War of the Thorns" quest event
  • Magic Arena
    • Drafting M19
    • Nonsensical Pulls
    • Golgari Pride
Direct download: aggrochat_episode214.mp3
Category:gaming -- posted at: 9:41am EDT

Tonight we are down a few people... in fact half of them. So you have to deal with the remainder that is left after you take away a Kodra, Thalen and Grace. For those who are caught up with their critical AggroMath skills... you are left with a Bel, a Tam and an Ash. Three individuals who have mostly been playing Elder Scrolls Online and as a result you get to listen to us gush about our most recent experiences... including Bel's Cross-Tamriel murder spree for a creepy dark god. Additionally you get to listen to Ash and Tam talk a bit more about Age of Sigmar and the interesting army choices where we all lose money for Ash not collecting Lizardmen.

Topics Discussed

  • Elder Scrolls Online
  • Age of Sigmar
Direct download: aggrochat_episode213.mp3
Category:gaming -- posted at: 9:20am EDT