Tonight we prove that our show slogan is correct... we talk about stuff and things, and the stuff about the things...  and sometimes gaming.  There is a lot of stuff and things including a discussion of PI day since we are in fact recording the show on 3/14/15.  Additionally Rae and I evangelize the Rocketbook and talk about how we managed to sell all of our co-workers on the concept.  Finally we manage to get around to actually talking about some gaming focusing on Ori and the Blind Forest, the Final Fantasy XIV crafting grind, Trove crafting grind, our progress in both FFXIV and WoW raiding, and the really fun new beta for Moonrise from Undead Labs.  As always there is plenty of verbal meandering in between.

As we wrap up the show we talk a bit about our latest project AggroChat.com which is very much a work in progress, but mostly open for public! 

Last night is another case of us sitting down, saying we had nothing to talk about... and then ending up talking for an hour and a half about everything imaginable.  We talked about Ashgar and the insanity he is currently going through working on his Relic Novus in Final Fantasy XIV.  We talked my recent journey back into Bravely Default and how that game requires a certain measure of degenerate play to defeat encounters after a certain point.  We talk about Tam's brush with near death as he decides that no one should ever be bit by a Black Widow spider because it hurts like hell.  I talk about my experiences in Blackrock Foundry and the World of Warcraft selfie toy filling up my twitter feed.  I talk about hitting level 80 on my first character in Guild Wars 2... and how empty it feels since the last 15 levels or so were essentially given to me for logging in daily.

Our longest discussion however that spawned the quote that I am using for the title of this show was about board games and miniature gaming.  We talk about "long" board games, those taking several hours to play out...  and the frustration of having to devote that much time to a game you are essentially "behind the curve" in the entire time.  We talk about games that require less time to get into and play, and that can be played for a number of times in a single evening.  This also spawns a discussion into miniature gaming talking about the problems with Warmachine and Warhammer 40k contrasted with some of the strengths of Infinity.  As always it is a long rambling discussion between a bunch of friends, and since you apparently like that as AggroChat listeners...  then this should be a banner episode.

Tonight we talk about the events that have essentially stolen our lives...  the release of the Manderville Golden Saucer and the FFXIV 2.51 patch.  The title of the episode comes from the fact that we have spent a good deal of the last week running hard mode dungeon and trial content for the slim chance of getting triple triad cards to drop.  Triple Triad has lead several of us to do all sorts of random stuff trying to obtain cards... and this week I capped Poetics almost exclusively through running trials at 5 poetics per run.  If there was ever a homewrecker of a patch... this would be the one.

So listen to us talk about all the awesome things that happened from Triple Triad, to Chocobo Racing to the insanity that is the Cactpot lottery.  However worry not... we talk about several other things in addition to all the Final Fantasy XIV gushing.  Tam and Kodra talk Elite: Dangerous.  Bel spends some time talking about the new building game Sky Saga, and Rae talks about her recent travels in Trove.  Kodra talks about his experience playing the indie game Deer God and several other points between.  It was a thoroughly fun episode to record, so we hope that translates well in the broadcast.

This evening we delve into our very first AggroChat Game Club title, the earthbound-esc JRPG Citizens of Earth.  We talk about our experiences playing the game on PC, Vita and 3DS and discuss the positives and negatives of each platform.  We then dig into the discussion of the game, its combat, systems, and story.  Finally we give the game our own version of a rating.  It was an interesting first game experiment, and we look forward to the next title which we discuss at the end of the show.  Next week we return to our regularly scheduled AggroChat format, and with it more than likely much discussion of the upcoming Final Fantasy XIV patch that we preview towards the end of this weeks show.  

This week was of course the week of Valentines Day, and as such we actually ended up recording a bit earlier than normal so that each of us could be free for whatever Valentines shenanigans we had planned.  At the suggestion of Kodra we opted to ditch our normal episode and attempt to record one in honor of the relationships in the games we play.  The problem is...  as we found out while recording...  video games are pretty bad at doing relationships still.  I personally think the show ended up pretty interesting, and well worth the listen.

Join Bel, Ash, Rae and Tam in another cavalcade of wonder, known as the AggroChat podcast.  This evening we are missing the illustrious Kodra...  who was simply too sick to record but will hopefully join us again next week.  We start our evening with my mind getting absolutely blown seconds before we start recording.  Tam provides a link to the strangest hobby I have seen..  a man who cooks doll sized food.  So we take a brief intermission from the normal proceedings to talk about this strange spectacle.  Once we get under way we talk Final Fantasy XIV and defeating turn 6 of Binding Coil, and our efforts working in Turn 7.  From here we meander into a disucssion of random elements in raid encounters, comparing and contrasting World of Warcraft Blackrock Foundry to the FFXIV encounters.

From here we meander into a long session talking about Elite Dangerous.  We talk about our pie in the sky ultimate space game, and how maybe we aren't that far away from it.  Finally Rae, Tam and Ash talk about their experiences watching the League of Legends NALCS and how that experience has changed now that they are also competing in a Fantasy League.  We recorded considerably later than normal, so I think towards the end of the show we were all getting a bit drowsy and maybe a tad bit slap happy.

This week is the first live show we have recorded in two weeks.  In the intervening time Bel, Rae and Ash went to Pax South, and Rae and Ash managed to catch the dreaded Pax Pox.  Kodra represented our podcast on the Inaugural episode of the TGEN Tribunal podcast featuring members from all of the various TGEN podcasts and then became the grand Wii Bowling champion of his cruise.  During the course of this episode my cast members try and convince me that I am a "media personality" to which I still deny.  In addition to all of this madness we talk about a lot of games.  

Kodra talks about his experiences with the 3DS port of Citizens of Earth, playing a lot of Sudoku and the punishing game 1001 Spikes.  Ash talks about a week of playing Final Fantasy XIV, and the rogue like overture.  Tam talks about time spent playing the new generation of adventure games including Dreamfall Chapters and Life is Strange.  Rae talks about some FFXIV and her frustrations with the current state of League of Legends Lag, as well as the controversy of them completely blowing off Pax South.  Finally I talk about my experience taking media appointments at Pax South, and getitng to play a lot of Gigantic and Moonrise.  We deep dive into Gigantic talkinga bout our experiences playing together, and what the various champions we played were like.  

Finally at the end I talk a little bit about my joining the staff of MMOgames.com.  It is a big episode full of lots of stuff and I hope you all enjoy it.  We are happy to be back and happy to be hanging out and recording aggrochat once more.

This weeks show is a bit of an odd one, firstly in that we pre-recorded this episode a week in advance.  This week Kodra had a conflict and Ashgar, Rae and Belghast were scheduled to be at Pax South...  leaving only Tam to solo record an episode.  As exciting as that sounds...  we figured we would let him off the hook and record a double episode.  The second strange thing about this episode is that we are introducing what we are hoping will become a new feature.  AggroChat Game Club... where we pick a title each month and play it during that month.  In this episode we deliberate on a list of titles we came up with before hand and at the end of the show reach a vague concensus as to what the title will be.

That said...  we hope you the listening public will play along and the last show in February we will be doing a deep dive into our chosen game.  Of course  this will be a full spoiler discussion as the five of us hash out what we thought about the game.

Tonight we once again have the full AggroChat crew as Tam figures out Seatle and learns to time zone.  As per our usual we talk about lots of different games, but end up devoting a lot of time on a recent addiction.  Hexcells is a slightly older puzzle game that Tam has apparnetly hooked Rae and Kodra on.  Unbeknownst to us it apparently makes you super mellow while playing it.  Another big thing this week was the release of the Patch 2.5 trailer for Final Fantasy XIV so we discuss the things we are most looking forward to.  Another event that happened this past week was the release of H1Z1 to steam early access.  I talk about my initial experiences wandering the zombie filled wasteland... and my general frustrations with early access games.  It was a crazy evening because with three of the five of us being at Pax South next week... we opted to record two seperate episodes.  Hopefully when we come back to live episodes in two weeks... we will have some exciting tales to tell from the trip Bel, Rae and Ash take to San Antonio.

This week we have a shorter show than usual in many different ways.  For starters we only actually ran right at an hour.  Secondly we are short Tam and Rae.  Tam travelled across the country, and is apparently bad at time zone conversions, so until we sort out a better time to record for the growing west coast contingency we are going to be shorthanded.  This week we talk about a wide breadth of topics including Final Fantasy XIV, Pokemon Alpha Sapphire and Omega Ruby, Rogue Legacy, Valdis Story, ittle Dew, World of Warcraft, Aquasphere and Adventure of Link.  With a few other short discussions slid in here and there like we always have.  Additionally we talk about the fact that Belghast, Ashgar and Rae will all be attending Pax South in a few weeks.  We are hoping to meet some of our listeners, so drop us a line to let us know if you also will be attending.