Tonight we have Belghast, Ashgar, Thalen, Grace and Tam with Kodra having fun without the rest of us in GenCon.  Once again we return to the standard format of the show talking about the games we have been playing over the last week.  As always the bulk of us have been spending time in Final Fantasy XIV juggling leveling, the Law and Esoteric grind, and Alexander.  Ashgar managed to get his Paladin and Belghast his Dragoon to 60, giving them both a DPS and Tank at max level.  Grace has been focused on trying to play catch up on her relic weapon and is now in the midst of the nexus light grind.

In non FFXIV news Ashgar spent the week working on yet another play through of Final Fantasy V for the Four Job Fiesta.  Thalen spent time delving back into Kingdom Hearts getting the bug to replay it after seeing all the recent buzz surrounding Kingdom Hearts III.  Grace is using Blaugust as a good reason to write some Wildstar blogs, focusing on a guide to the Veteran Shiphand missions as a start.  Tam has been moving deeper into Anime and spent a good chunk of the week watching various shows, and also started playing the remastered Sword Art Online game on the Playstation 4.  Belghast talks a bit about the current state of Skyforge, and his journey into StormHold the time locked Everquest II server.  Bel also talks about his recent binge of Netflix watching including Sense8 and Bojack Horseman.

Finally we get on a discussion where the title comes from, talking about how each of us goes through phases where we need to extract ourselves from the world and how it helps so much to have supportive friends that understand when you are going through one of these phases.

This week we record yet another AggroChat Game Club game featuring the game Astebreed, which is an interesting mix of strange Anime Storytelling and Bullet Hell shooter.  What makes the game very unique is that you are a mech... with a sword as well as your laser weapons.  As far as the story goes, I think several of us were equally confused so we rely on Tam to decode it all for us...  because he apparently was able to follow it the entire way.  We have a lot of conversation about the tone of the game, the boss fights, the controls that may or may not have worked...  and the total package.

Since adding Grace and Thalen to the podcast they were not in the initial rotation of AggroChat picks, so we did the most gamer thing ever... and rolled some dice before the show to graft them into the rotation.  That means for the month of August Grace got to pick a title and we will be playing the bird dating sim...  Hatoful Boyfriend... and Kodra was happier than I have ever heard him be.  He loves this game, and drove us slightly mad with it when he was playing it.  Now we are going to get to experience this madness for ourselves, and I am willing to bet that Game Club Seven is going to be one of the more interesting episodes of AggroChat in our history.

Tonight was a bit of an odd evening, because I absolutely went into this podcast not really thinking we had all that much to talk about.  The truth is anytime I think this... it ends up being a record breaking show.  We recorded for roughly two hours and fifteen minutes, and after editing it still weighs in at a whopping hour and fourty five minutes.  We apparently had lots to talk about.  It would not be an AggroChat without discussing Final Fantasy XIV, and tonight we focused heavily upon our recent experiences in Bismarck Ex and with the Alexander raid.  We talk about the influx of new players into the community, and how sometimes this has had a negative effect on the cohesion of the community as a whole.  Since the Four Job Fiesta is still going on, some of our folks talk about their experiences there especially as Kodra, Ash and Tam have all completed the game at least once, and Ash and Kodra are now on their second play through.

We get the title of the show from a discussion Grace brought to the table about the mobile game Alphabear that has recently invaded twitter.  It is a hyper cute game by the makers of Triple Town where you help adorable bears spell words.... and then you get rewarded by crazy selfies that they take that end up being a random assortment of the words you spelled.  From there we dug deep into the new Magic the Gathering core set outlining the Origins of all of the Planeswalkers.  We also get sidetracked on a length discussion about minature gaming that talks about Warhammer, Infinity and a little WarMachine and the hobby in general.  Finally I talk about my recent experiences in SkyForge and some of the problems I had with the game.  It was an evening packed with conversation, that we ultimately had to reign in and cut short a few times for the sake of time.  Hopefully you all enjoy it as much as we did having the discussion.

This show we were without Tam who is travelling but still have Belghast, Ashgar, Kodra, Grace and Thalen.  For the most part we have all been caught in the gravity well of Final Fantasy XIV Heavensward, and are now pushing through the games gearing process.  This is working for some of us, but others are beginning to get highly frustrated.  We talk about the positives and negatives of the way the gearing system works.  While wandering around aimlessly through the show we also managed to get caught into a nostalgic timewarp as we talk about our early experiences playing Magic the Gathering.  Everyone remembers that new pack smell, and in many ways Grace and Bel both wish they could return to that nostalgic era surrounding the game and playing it with their friends.  Kodra talks about the new expansion coming out and the changes they have made to the game in a site that could be termed as "Worst Version" of existing mechanics.  It was a fun show if a very rambly one.

Due to the Independence Day holiday we opted to record this show a little early this week, and instead of spending Saturday night talking about games, we spent Friday night.  As a result there are several of us who were not quite to level 60 in Final Fantasy XIV but have since caught up and pushed through to the level cap.  However we spent a good deal of time not talking about FFXIV. Grace managed to finish the crazy attunement system in Wildstar and attended her very first raid.  She gives her opinion of the system and how it compares to WoW and FFXIV raiding.  Additionally we go down the rabbit hole that is the Four Job Fiesta and talk Final Fantasy V and the various group compositions fate has given us this year.  I apparently was one job off from the legendary group composition that the person who started the event go their first year:  Monk, Berserker, Beastmaster and Dancer.  Instead the gods saw fit to give me a Samurai so I could quite literally "pay to win".

We purposefully saved our discussion of Heavensward to the end of the show because I knew that was the one thing we were all playing.  It is extremely difficult to discuss this game without going into spoilers, so there are some details that might be spoiled if you have not played up through the Aery dungeon yet.  The awkwardness of this show was the fact that Ashgar is quite a ways behind the rest of us, making it extremely difficult to add to discussions... because at least one point during the show he made a conjecture that we knew the truth about, but could not really go into it for fear of spoiling key plot points.  My theory is that once we have all finished the 3.0 story arc we will do yet another big "spoil everything" show, like we did for 2.55.  The best snippet for me was when Grace decided to talk about her new loathing for Moogles after completing the Churning Mists zone.  Moogles are in fact lazy bums.

This week represents the fifth episode of the AggroChat Game Club where we discuss the quirky voice controlled RTS, There Came an Echo.  We discuss our experiences with the game, and talk about some of the numerous technical difficulties we encountered.  We also talk about the fantastic cast of actors that make this game what it is, as well as the well written storyline.  This is a full spoiler show and we delve into discussion about the plot points as well as the broader topics they reflect upon.  Kodra made an extremely interesting pick with this game, and I hope some of you out there played along as well.  We have also picked the sixth AggroChat Game Club title, and reveal that at the end of the show.

Listen along and let us know your own comments on what you thought about this game.

I originally thought that when we set down to record this episode of AggroChat we would end up putting aside all pretense and simply talk about the Heavensward expansion for Final Fantasy XIV.  However what happened in reality is we ended up recording an extremely length show where we basically did that... AND a normal show as well.  While many or our weeks revolved around the launch of this new expansion...  we had to do something to bide our time until the Friday launch.  Grace has apparently been completely hooked on Marvel Super Heroes so we talked about that for awhile.  The other game she has been playing is Wildstar, so we spent a good deal of time chatting about how that game has been progressing.

In Final Fantasy XIV before the outage we managed to take down Shiva and Odin once again so we talked a bit about that.  Then myself, Tam and Kodra have been playing an awful lot of ArcheAge so we talk again about that and our progress so far.  Then finally when we start talking about Heavensward we get sidetracked on a lengthy debate about the merits of flight in MMOs and whether or not it is simply GM cheats.  Each of us brought our own perspectives to the conversation and quite honestly this could have been a show topic in itself.  Finally we talk about our experience so far with the Heavensward expansion to close out the show.  It is an extremely packed show, and clocks in just shy of two hours.

Tonight we are down a handful of people with Thalen and Grace being gone, but by that same token it is mostly a cast of original AggroChat folks.  Kodra is back from his traveling and it was awesome to get to spend the night hanging out with him again.  We have all been spending quite a bit of time in ArcheAge as we have been taking a break from Final Fantasy XIV right before the launch of Heavensward.  We talk about our further impressions of the game, and Kodra talks about his since he quite literally just started today.  From there we talk about our expectations for the coming launch of Heavensward and how Ashgar and I apparently have enough faith in the release of this expansion to have taken the day off work.  From there we meander into talk about the upcoming Four Job Fiesta, and how all of our listeners should really take Ashgar's money, since he has put up $5 for every AggroChat listener to defeat the game during the event.  There was talk of Wildstar and Tam injuring himself, but we had a grand time just chatting about the games we had been playing.

Tonight on AggroChat we have Belghast, Tamrielo, Thalen and Grace.  This week Kodra is off playing a rather convincing Fred from Scrooby Doo at Origins, and Ashgar disappeared mysteriously moments before the recording... and we are hoping everything is okay.  The rest of us talked about some recent experiences giving games a second glance.  The first game on that list is Wildstar and both Belghast and Grace have spent a significant amount of time back in the game.  It has been amazing just what an embattled and often times struggling team has managed to accomplish.  Similarly Tamrielo and Thalen have been checking out ArcheAge to find that community is much improved.  Tam talks at length about what he likes about the design of the game, and how it manages to do a better job at being Rift.

Since Ashgar was missing we felt the need to give a huge plug to the Four Job Fiesta program and talk at length about how exactly it works.  For Ashgar the "fiesta" is like a religion, and each June we know that sooner or later we are going to be hit up to join it again.  This year he has pledged $10 for each AggroChat host that manages to beat the game and $5 for each AggroChat listener that beats the game and includes @AggroChat twitter handle on their victory shot.  We talk about a number of other games including Lego Worlds, World of Warcraft, Shadowrun Returns and of course our getting prepared for the launch of the Heavensward expansion in Final Fantasy XIV.  It is a big show chock full of lots of interesting discussions that we hope you will enjoy.  "Please look forward to it."

Tonight we get the folks together to record the fourth AggroChat game club show, this time devoted to Tamrielo's pick.  Shadowrun: Dragonfall is the second game in the Shadowrun: Returns series from the wildly successful kickstarter process.  While the first game focused mostly on getting the engine correct, this game focuses more on weaving an interesting narrative in the Shadowrun setting.  In tonights show we delve deep into the game and talk about the various choices we made while playing it.  Please be warned this is a full spoiler show, and we will talk about some of the plot twists and the alternate choice paths that you can make in the game.  I highly suggest that if you intend to play this game,  that you revisit this show after doing so as not to spoil any of the content.

This title is auspicious for various reasons, primarily because it is the first title that everyone joining in the show either beat or came extremely close to beating it.  Kodra and I started recording tonight and during the course of the show actually defeated it.  Ash however is in the final stretch making him only about thirty minutes away.  The other extremely unique thing about this game is it is quite literally the first game we have played that we all were able to give a big thumbs up to.  Join us next month for Kodra's title as well called There Came an Echo, which is a voice controlled real time strategy game... that is certain to lead to some strange conversations.  Additionally if you played Shadowrun: Dragonfall along with us, please drop by AggroChat.com and leave us a message with your thoughts.