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On this episode of The AIE Podcast…
Final Fantasy Anyone?
Hellscream is about to get what’s coming to him.
Free Spaceships!
EVE is about to jettison some players
And we talk to Pelell and Max about AIE in SWTOR
All that and more coming up right now…
AIE NEWS
AIE’s own Pelell and Abovan will be having an informational meeting about Final Fantasy, including Q&A and open discussion, in Ventrilo at 10:00pm EST on Thursday night. Yes, Thursday, like right after the great, wonderful, entertaining, and insightful AIE podcast! Missed the meeting? The Q&A will continue on the Final Fantasy section of the Imperium Ludi , on the AIE forums!
Speaking of Final Fantasy, the Final Fantasy open Beta starts this weekend! The 16th for previous beta testers, 17th for everyone else, running through the 19th. The Early Access starts on the 24th for pre-orders, with the official launch on the 27th.
So our illustrious Acuzod has taken it upon himself to organize an event in a game which many AIE people play, but there is no ‘official presence’ there. Do you play League of Legends? Of course you do! Zod is looking to get something spooled up so a bunch of folks of all skill levels can participate.
The officers of AIE World of Warcraft would like to remind everyone that if you or a friend are returning to the game after being removed for inactivity, all they have to do is jump into their local AIE LFO channel to ask for readmittance! We would also like to point out that we would love to help everyone but it sometimes takes us a bit to be able to stop what we are doing to help!
Zarhym from Blizzard itself wanted to let us know, in case you have been hiding under an internet ROCK, that there is a new trailer out for the World of Warcraft patch 5.4 patch, Seige of Orgrimmar! If you are looking for a reason to take down Garrosh (beyond what he’s been up to all expansion), then look no further!
If you are out exploring the galaxy in the AIE fleet in Star Trek Online, you should be logging in this week! Takemikazuch has posted in the forums that ships are being given away, for FREE by Perfect World! Log in early, log in often, as there have been some neat things given away! These are items which would normally cost Zen, but not for this time period.
An update from the Spreadships in Spaaaace folks. They’re starting to actually implement a rule that has been on the books from the start! They’re going to start to purge folks who are inactive or just haven’t logged in. The cutoff is 3 months, and logging just to update your skill queues is enough to keep you as ‘active’. Read the post that Hoots made in the forums for more details. Also, due to all the crazy war activities, there is a post regarding making some money in AIEU’s new digs!
GAME NEWS
Recent AIE SWTOR happenings! ~Pel and Max
Greetings!
Before we get to SWTOR news, I would like to preface our segment with something that has been on my mind and some of the other Officers as well. In SWTOR, as a guild, we have taken a hands-off approach in terms of maintaining our numbers. Meaning we haven’t been actively recruiting outside of our already established community. This, in part, has led to a drop off in active players within SWTOR, and I expect this to be the case in some of the other AIE games. We want to change this.
We had been operating on the thought that since AIE:WoW has this previously established player base, that it seems only natural that any other AIE branded game would also have something similar. But there are a couple truths. 1st~ Once the shiny wears off, people migrate back to their game of choice. And 2nd~ A pool of existing members is still a pool of roughly the same numbers, no matter where they come from. Combine these with a mostly hands-off approach to running in game guild events or raids, and we have stagnation within the individual game community.
We need to approach this from a different direction. While we want to create a home for any AIE player to come and check out any particular game, we need to be more proactive in maintaining and growing the community. It’s no secret that AIE is one of the largest gaming guilds in the world, primarily due to the Instance and their WoW numbers, but we want to take it to the next level. And in order to do so, we are going to try to actively recruit beyond what we are doing now.
As we continue to grow, we are going to start using social media sites a bit more than what we have been. Expect to see a Google Plus AIE:SWTOR page and a Facebook AIE:SWTOR page, for example. Personally, I’d also like to start moving away from the #AIEGuild hashtag, and start using game specific ones, ie #AIESWTOR. Whether the other games follow suit remains to be seen, but this is what we in SWTOR want to do in order to grow the community.
Coming off the heels of Remembrance Day, I want to give Brewdawg a special shout out for helping organize events for the week for AIE:SWTOR. He picked up the slack when he didn’t need to, which is totally what AIE is all about. It once again reinforces that Officers don’t necessarily have to be the ones to run events all the time. We still want to encourage our guildies to think outside of the box and do fun things for the community. But that said, expect to see a more hands on approach from the Officers in general.
/soapbox off
There’s a new 16 man team on the block. Well, it’s like a combination of awesomeness, like when you put together 5 lions and they form a kick ass light sword wielding giant robot. Lords of Light and Sith with Unlimited Power have combined to do a one night a week 16 man operation. With the experience of both teams, we are just about killing SM Scum and Villainy in 2 hours. This new team needs a name that matches it’s epic style, though. /looks at Machia.
We still do have the 16 man Size Does Matter team for the uber casual. If you are a new 50-55, we try to run one every few weeks, and would love to take new people along that may not be able to commit to a structured weekly Ops team. Typically, gear is not an issue. So if you are interested, keep your eyes on the forums for the next run.
Also, the Officers have been coming up with new events to get the players engaged a bit more in the guild. A big one we will be talking about shortly. Sema runs a Tuesday night Hard Mode flashpoint run for anyone who wants to see some HM action. Admittedly, I need to pop my head in there, especially to see some of the new Flashpoints. If you are super hardcore, Machia runs a Taco Harder 8 man on Thursdays. Their roster is currently full, but they may take alts if you ask nicely and do a little dance. Friday nights Arveshet also runs the Triple F, Funky Flashpoint Fridays. These are also designed for people that haven’t run any flashpoints to get some in, and even knock out some achievements at the same time. Both of these events happen around 9 p.m. Eastern. Feel free to drop in on one of these nights if you have a itchy trigger finger.
New patch 2.3! ~Max
CZ-198, a new Level 55 Daily mission area, is now available.
2 New Level 55 Flashpoints: Czerka Corporate Labs and Czerka Core Meltdown
New Galactic Reputation Organizations
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CZ Area Rep Rewards: Speeder, probe droid, weapons, Sword of the Vigilant, crafting additions
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Bounty Broker Association: Bowcaster, Smuggler style hat and armor, Treek customization, Drink Server Probe
New Mounts: 2 Tauntaun Creature Mounts
Tauntaun mounts!
New Companion Character:
Treek Ewok Companion
New Event – Bounty Hunter Contract Week:
Each month, players can undertake contracts and pursue dangerous criminals throughout the galaxy! Adventures begin on Republic and Imperial Fleets with a mission given by mysterious Bounty Hunters who are toting a “friend” encased in Carbonite. The first Bounty Contract Week begins on August 14th and will continue for seven days.
New in game guild event! TAR:SWTOR Edition~ Pel
I am extremely excited for this next announcement. The next big guild event we have planned is a SWTOR edition of The Amazing Race. For those of you that are unfamiliar with TAR, basically it’s a race around the world with 11-12 teams of two competing for a prize of 1 million dollars. There are 12 legs of the race where certain objectives must be performed to advance to the next leg, usually 3-5 per locale. The last person to check in on each leg typically gets eliminated, until there are just 3 teams left racing. First team to the finish line wins 1 Million Dollars.
We are changing our set up a bit from teams to individual, due to game mechanics as well as this being the first time we are trying something like this. There will be no eliminations, but there may be time penalties associated with each place for the next leg. Be aware that the Race is not limited to the game itself. Ventrillo will be required for this as well, since there will be audio related clues given. For this particular race, it is recommended you be at least level 50, and you can use either faction.
This will be a 5 night event due to the structure of the game, with each night being a leg of the race. Each leg will consist of about 4 different stages, meaning each leg may last a couple of hours, depending. Because of this, it’s important that you are committed to the race and run each night. If you miss one night, you will not be able to advance to the next leg. Currently, we are trying to nail down which week will work the best, but are shooting for either the last week of August or the first or second week of September. There is a poll in the announcement thread open for 5 days. Majority rules.
We are awarding 1 million credits as a prize to the winner and will have other surprises in store. If this is successful, it is our intent to do this quarterly, hopefully expanding the legs as well. By doing this quarterly, it also gives people some time to level up their toon if they missed one due to level constraints. Second, I may seek volunteers next time for those who can not make every night, but would still like to be involved somehow. It allows the Officers a chance to play if we have volunteers next time around. Finally, I’d like to use this as a tool for recruitment, so the potential is there to us open it up to the server at large, though there will be some things that would need ironed out for sure before that can happen.
If you are still unfamiliar with what The Amazing Race is, check out YouTube, Hulu Plus (which is where I discovered it and have been terribly addicted to), or Amazon Prime. Watching an episode or two will give you the sense of what we are trying to go for. Here is a link to the 1st part of one of my favorite seasons, to give you an idea. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UamvsCv3lkg
Outro~ Pel and Max
It was good seeing everyone at NTXIII and I am about 99% positive that I’ll be returning next year. Hung out with some SWTOR people as well as other members of the community. The live AIE podcast was awesome, even though I was a bit distracted by a Cards Against Humanity game which got me there later than I would’ve liked. The community picture we got on the fly was awesome, and next year there may have to be a bit more scheduling, so we don’t make wedding planners cry by thinking they were being flash mobbed. #AIEProblems 🙂
CLOSE
And that’s our show for tonight, We want to thank [Pelell and Max] for joining us! Next week we’ll be talking to the gang from AIE RIFT
Stay tuned, as we’ve got a full ride of great AIE members segments coming right up, including…
– Mod Shop
– Mega Minute
– Alludra’s Pets
– Azeroth Archives
– Hunter Talk
But first, if you need to reach us, we can be found at…
– Email: podcast@aie-guild.org
– Twitter @aiepodcast, @shownotfound @acuzod @alludra_aie
– Guest Twitter: [@Pelell and @MaxTheGrey]
– We record live with video every Thursday at 9pm Eastern/6pm Pacific. You can join the chatroom and play along with us, or watch one of our past shows, on our website at TheAIEPodcast.com
– Our theme was composed by the amazing Andrew Allen, follow him at @keyswithsoul!
Until next time, AIE.
This is Ghomus
This is AcuZod
And this has been… The AIE Podcast.
Kudos to cybyl for this week’s show title.
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