The AIE Podcast #223 – LOTRO: Bjorn Again Monster Tribes

On this episode of The AIE Podcast…

All that and more coming up right now…

Podcast Audio

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Welcome to episode #223 of the the podcast celebrating the Alea Iacta Est gaming community. This is Mkallah. With me as always, is Alludra. (Hey, AIE, I think you’re awesome). And right over there, we have Tetsemi (Ow! I think I hurt my spreadsheet). This week we are joined by special guests Dux who are here to talk to us about AIE in LOTRO. Welcome!

Ok, we’ll be digging into Lord of the Rings Online shortly, but first, let’s cover this week’s news…

AIE NEWS

Alludra – General news
Guildie of the Month- Arveshet AKA Arv from SWTOR
He’s continually lead, maintained, and recently expanded the operations team he’s been hosting for a year now and regularly helps any and all guildies with crafting, missions, general questions, etc. With the recent expansion he’s done a bunch over the past couple weeks to help people get geared up and ready for the new operations. He hangs out in Mumble most nights ready to say hi, answer questions, or lend a hand. Let’s take a moment to congratulate Arv for all that he does for AIE. And remember, if you want to nominate a guildie of the month, the email address is gotm@aie-guild.org

The AIE fund-drive is still ongoing, right now, we are at 50% of our goal. Your donations help fund umami, the meetup site, mumble, plus we’re building up the reliability of the new infrastructure we implemented over the summer. You can still donate on the meetup.com site- also, if you want to plan an AIE event, meetup is the perfect place to do so.

http://forum.myextralife.com/topic/54640-2014-alea-iacta-est-fund-drive/

The Nomads aren’t roaming anywhere new in February, mostly because they are having too much fun in Minecraft! Lotwook may or may not of bought some minecraft hosting with the goal of running a Tekkit Server. If you are interested, hit him up on the Imperiam Ludi section of the forums.

http://forum.myextralife.com/topic/55530-minecraft-tekkit-server/

Tetsemi – WoW

Blackrock Foundry opens on February 4th with Normal and Heroic difficulties available, plus at the same time, World boss Rukhmar becomes available in Spires of Arak. On February 10th, Mythic difficulty becomes available. Raid Finder opens for Wing One on the 17th and Wing Two on the 24th.
http://forum.myextralife.com/topic/55597-blackrock-foundry-raid-february-4th/

Want to raid? Plenty of new and old raid teams are recruiting. And the benefit of being part of such a large guild is that there are raid every day of the week, at a wide number of times.
Hit up the team recruitment section of the AIE-Azeroth forums.
http://forum.myextralife.com/forum/13-team-recruitment/

The mistress of RP herself, Irontribe, has posted a WOW parody song- sung to the tune of the popular Let it Go! So, if you are tired of your kids singing the overplayed song from Frozen, take a look on the forums to get new lyrics stuck in your head.

http://forum.myextralife.com/topic/55570-song-parody-ragnaros-to-frozens-let-it-go/

Mkallah – SWTOR

We have a good sized SWTOR contingent in the Minneapolis area. Looks like the gang is looking at February 3rd. SO if you are in the area, throw on your favourite classic Star Wars T-shirt and join the fun.
http://forum.myextralife.com/topic/55618-minneapolis-area-get-together/

The SWTOR Tuesday Mandatory fun nights are still on going, this week they are running the Republic side.

http://forum.myextralife.com/topic/53691-tuesday-mandatory-fun-night/page-18

Arv is looking for a DPS for an Emp side 16 man ops team, Sith with Unlimited Power. They run Wednesdays @ 8:30-11:00pm ET.

http://forum.myextralife.com/topic/55586-16-man-operations-team-on-the-empire-side/

Alludra – Guild Wars 2
Guild Wars 2 is currently 75% off- and on top of that, ArenaNet announced at PAX that a new expansion is on the way – Heart of the Thorns. There isn’t a release date yet, but right now we know that there is new profession specializations that open up a new weapon type, a new profession called the Revenant, a new zone- Heart of Maguuma, hang gliding, Guild vs Guild, new legendary items, and Guild Halls- not only a meeting place, but where you can also open up new raid. And thanks to Velinos on the forums for posting this information.

Tetsemi – Final Fantasy-
www.world-alerts.com has a tool that will scan when the servers are allowing new characters to be created and when it is, it will send you an email. Neat little tool if you are still looking on getting on Gilgamesh to hang with AIE.

http://forum.myextralife.com/topic/55653-new-character-eligible-notification-tool/

Star Trek Online – Star Trek online had a charity drive in December and raised funding for Children’s Miracle network as well.

Mkallah – And with that, let’s get back to Dux and find out what’s going on in LOTRO..

GAME NEWS

Extra Life with LOTRO concluded, raising over $60,000 for the Children’s Miracle Network, Boston Children’s Hospital.
Participants gained in-game cosmetic gear, along with horses, and exclusive pets. Rewards start going out on February 2nd.
Update 15:
A new class, the Beorning – and starting area the Vale of the Anduin.
As a class they have tank, DPS and support specs.
As they build up Wrath they can skin-change into a bear to unlock more powerful abilities.
A new Epic Battle: Pelargir. Originally a solo/duo instance, it has now been expanded to a six person group.
You infiltrate the city with Elrond’s twin sons, Elladan and Elrohir in an attempt to open the gates to Aragorn forces.
Pelargir was founded in the Second Age but the Numenoreans and is a major port city on the Anduin, south of Minas Tirith.
A new region: Central Gondor, with three new zones:
Ringlo Vale: here you can see the clouds from Mount Doom casting darkness on the ground.
Dor-en-Ernil: coastal area, with a hidden sand-castle, and lots of Corsairs (pirates).
Lebennin: many enemy camps, and the city of Pelargir itself in near ruins.
The Epic Story continues in Volume IV: Book 2, starting in Dol Amroth
Many class, and game tweaks.
Update 15.1:
Essence changes: one unique essence per character, not per gear item.
Beorning, along with other class tweaks.
Instance tweaks
2015 roadmap for the 1st half of 2015:
https://www.lotro.com/en/game/articles/2015-producers-letter
imbue level 100 legendary items.
New instance clusters in Osgiliath, along with additional Roving Threats and group content on the landscape.
“Quality of life” improvements – aka bug hunting.
Server merge, more powerful servers?
“Episodic” content – quests similar to the Epic quest line, but localized to an area.
They’re investigating a new PvMP zone in Osgiliath.

CLOSE

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

Dux is @HistoricGeek on Twitter

Alludra- If you have a question or comment about our show, you can email us at podcast@aie-guild.org. You can also follow us on Twitter. The show is at @aiepodcast.. Alludra is at @alludra_aie, Mkallah is at @cyberwaif,and Tetsemi is at @ivorytiger. We record live with video every Sunday at 8pm Eastern/5pm Pacific. You can join the chatroom and play along with us on our website at TheAIEPodcast.com. Our theme was composed by the amazing Andrew Allen, follow him at @keyswithsoul! or visit his website keyswithsoul.com!

Tetsemi- And now it’s time to play all of the great AIE member segment we received this week, including…
Ask Miss Mulgra
Epic Diapers
Overly Dramatic News

Mkallah- Next week we’ll be talking to Lanctharus in World of Warcraft. So until then, AIE…
This is Mkallah
– This is Alludra
— This is Tetsemi
And this has been… The AIE Podcast.

Don’t Forget: Get the show title before closing the broadcast!

Show Title: LOTRO: Bjorn Again Monster Tribes