The AIE Podcast #440 – Homes for the Holidays

On this episode of The AIE Podcast…

We have floor tanking and other WoW noobs… um, news
Happy Lifeday, AIE
December, where the attendance is optional and the fun is mandatory
LOTRO brings YULE Kingdoms of Harad
And, join us for our last show of the year

All that and more coming up right now…

Podcast Audio

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Open
Welcome to episode #440 of the podcast celebrating you, the Alea Iacta Est gaming community, the die has been podcast. This is Tetsemi: To my left is Mewkow: – (catch phrase here). And to my right is Mkallah: (hey guys, there is leftover caramel apple pie in the guild kitchen). This week, we have a wrap up of what is going on for December in AIE and gaming in general.

Ok, we’ll be digging into what we have been up to shortly, but first, let’s cover this week’s news…

AIE News

Community
Mandatory Fun Nights

Where the fun is mandatory but the attendance is not.

Sunday – Destiny 2 8:30 pm Eastern
Monday – GW2 9:30 pm Eastern
Monday – STO 10:00 pm Eastern
Tuesday – SWTOR 9:00 pm Eastern
Wednesday – HFO Mythic+ Mayhem (WoW) 8:00 pm Eastern
Friday – ESO 9:00 pm Eastern
Saturday – LotRO 8:30 pm Eastern
Saturday – FFXIV (Maps) 9:30 pm Eastern
Saturday – Noob Raid (WoW) 11:00 pm Eastern

Streaming and Guild Podcast News
We have a ton of AIE member podcasts! Want to know where to find them? Look no further than here-

New Overlords Podcast (Max and Sema)
https://www.newoverlords.com

Boards and Swords (Chris and Philip)
https://boardsandswords.com/blog?category=Boards%20%26%20Swords

Dr. Gameology ( Dr. Daniel Kaufmann )
https://drgameology.com/

STO – Fleet Action Report (Grebog and Nikodas)
https://www.youtube.com/@fleetactionreport

A Podcast Reborn: A FFXIV Community Podcast (Brandon aka Old Man Franks, Meagan, and Rho) – NSFL
https://www.bonusroll.gg/directory/a-podcast-reborn/

WoW
Noob Raid is on winter break until January 3, 2026 so Dankinia can get a bit of relief from the horrible jokes the group likes to torment her with. During 2025, Dankinia demonstrated her floor tanking abilities 172 times.

While she is out, Celindre will be leading Noob Raid – After Dark during the normal 11pm EST time slot each Saturday.

In WoW, Midnight – the next expansion – has a release date of March 2nd with the pre-patch release on Jan 13. Anyone with an Epic Edition pre-order will have early access – expected Feb 27 according to WoWHead. Players with early access will also be able to use the new Player Housing feature as of Dec 2. This will be a bit complicated for AIE and our co-guilds, which are one of several ways to join “neighborhoods” for player housing. Every player’s Warband gets two houses – one Horde and one Alliance, but any alt can access either home. There will be open neighborhoods that are server wide, and Guilds can create private neighborhoods open to anyone in that guild. Groups of friends (such as Raid Teams) can also create charters for their own neighborhoods. We will have neighb orhoods for all the co-guilds (probably) but haven’t assigned which officer will be assigned to which yet.

Currently, in addition to the Legion Remix event (speed leveling/transmog/mounts etc), the WoW Anniversary is active in Retail WoW, with a rep & xp boost. Visiting the Anniversary Celebration at the Caverns of Time will provide an additional buff. Rep is good – because it’s one of the ways to obtain decor for Player Housing.

SWTOR
SWTOR will see a holiday release of update 7.8 entitled “Pursuit of Ruin”. It will include a new story chapter, a new type of Dynamic Encounter, and a new stronghold (player housing). That’s not to mention Life Day festivities, with the snow balls and the wookiee hugging. Also, for the first year ever, we will be trying out a new guild event during the evenings between Christmas and New Years. Stay tuned to discord for more info on that!

ESO
MFN in ESO generally takes the month of December off, but expect to find a couple of people hanging out at the normal time on Friday nights though the holidays. Attendance will be sporadic but feel free to reach out if anyone would like company while running the holiday events in game.

FFXIV
Patch 7.4 comes December 16th.
Main Scenario – Into the Mist
Raid Dungeon – The Arcadion: Heavyweight Division
Variant Dungeon – The Merchant’s Tale
New Dungeon – Mistwake
New Trial – Hell on Rails
New Unreal Trial – Tsukuyomi’s Pain (Unreal)
New Frontline Campaign – Worqor Chirteh
Weapon Enhancement Quests – Phantom Weapons
Inconceivably Further Hildibrand Adventures
Manderville Gold Saucer GATE – Air Force One (The Cieldalaes)
Cosmic Exploration: Oizys and Tool Enhancement Quests – Cosmic Tools
Strategy Board – Raid explanations but better
Glamour Update – Unlocked all types!
New Theme Settings – Clear Green and Clear White
Mac support (Ventura ends Jan 27, Tahoe now supported)
Save 50% on Collector’s Edition Digital Upgrades Until December 7
New ridiculous hotpot mount (It flies)
And irregular tomestones are active now until 7.4 is live.
Fanfest is happening where Blizzcon is normally, April 24/25th.
Cookbook #2 is out!

LOTRO
New expansion “Kingdoms of Harad” as of right now is scheduled to be released on December 3rd. The instance cluster for the expansion is expected to be delayed, which means this gives a chance to level up to the new level cap and get a group together and look at it as a kinship. Also looking forward to the Yule Festival that starts on December 11th. Join us as we look to have fun in Frostbluff as well as protecting it in “The Battle of Frostbluff”.

STO
Yes, it’s true, Cryptic studios has once again been sold. However, this is not a time for doom and gloom. The new owners have no intentions of sunsetting STO. In fact, STO has simply returned to its original owners who want to see the game succeed.

There are ongoing sales in both the Zen Store and Mudd’s Market. Some of these are as high as 50% off! Lifetime Subscriptions are 33% off until Dec 14th

Q’s Winter Wonderland will be returning on Dec 9th. While we don’t have any specific details on what the rewards will be this year, it’s sure to be something you don’t want to miss!

And with that, let’s get to what we have been doing in and out of the game! And, Mkallah has a question for everyone!

GAME NEWS
Okay, friends! What geeky thing are you planning to give for the holidays, and are there any geeky gifts you hope to receive?

CLOSE
And that’s our show for tonight. While the chatroom begins suggesting show titles, we want to thank us, for joining us.

If you have a question or comment about our show, you can email us at podcast@aie-guild.org You can find us on the AIE Discord and BlueSky https://bsky.app/profile/aiepodcast.bsky.social. We record live with video once a month on Sunday at 8pm Eastern/5pm Pacific. You can join the chatroom and play along with us on our website at https://aie-guild.org/podcast-live-stream/ and look for the link to our discord server at https://aie-guild.org. And for past episodes, you can see them on our Youtube channel, https://www.youtube.com/c/TheAIEPodcast ! Our theme was composed by the amazing Andrew Allen, follow him at @keyswithsoul!

And now it’s time to play all of the great AIE member segments we received this week, including…

We will see you all in January of 2026!. So until then, AIE…

– This is Tetsemi
– This is Mewkow
– This is Mkallah

And this has been… The AIE Podcast.