The AIE Podcast #335 – 2020 Kickoff (Lightning!)

On this episode of The AIE Podcast…

    Tetsemi: It’s 2020 and we are here for the games!
    Mewkow: Umami is a thing of the past
    Mkallah: Have you hugged your Wookie today?
    Tetsemi: SMN for all your FFXIV fun
    Mewkow: And, we are our own guests!

All that and more coming up right now…

Podcast Audio

Raw Video

Open
Welcome to episode #335 of the the podcast celebrating you, the Alea Iacta Est gaming community, the die has been podcast. This is Mkallah: To my left is Tetsemi: – (catch phrase here). And to my right is Mewkow: (catch phrase here). This week we are joined by special guests US who are here to talk to ourselves about what we’ve been up to during the break. Welcome!

Ok, we’ll be digging into all of our fun since the last show 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 – STO 8:30 pm Eastern
Monday – GW2 9:30 pm Eastern
Tuesday – SWTOR 9 pm Eastern
Wednesday – FFXIV 10 pm Eastern
Friday – ESO 9 pm Eastern
Friday – FFXIV(Late Night) 11 pm Eastern
Saturday – LotRO 8:30 pm Eastern
Saturday – Noob Raid (WoW) 11 pm Eastern
Saturday – FFXIV (Maps) 11 pm Eastern

Streaming and guild podcast news
SWTOR Escape Pod Cast 322: Year End Wrap And Predictions
http://www.newoverlords.com/swtor-escape-pod-cast-322-year-end-wrap-and-predictions/

SWTOR Anniversary, Star Wars for watching, and our 2019 review.

SWTOR Escape Pod Cast 323: The Mandalorian
http://www.newoverlords.com/swtor-escape-pod-cast-323-the-mandalorian/

January events schedule is up, our guild events are rolling for 2020, and we review The Mandalorian.

Working Class Nerds
Episode 62: Diggin’ Into the Decade!

https://www.buzzsprout.com/143519/2451068

Marcus and Nick sit down with Dr. SWTOR to discuss their favorite games of the decade and the final episodes from The Mandalorian.

WoW
https://aie-guild.org/blog/2020/01/news-from-aie-in-wow-retail/

UMAMI applications are no longer a requirement for WoW Retail. We are opening up guild recruitment to the server with the in-game recruitment system. New and current members of AIE can continue to use Discord, aielfo in-game community, as well as the new Blizzard guild recruitment system to request guild invites. We want to thank Stigg for everything he has done with our UMAMI system and Greenwall, and we can’t wait to see what else he has in store for AIE.

AIE’s 13th Anniversary next month and 3rd Annual Ralff’s Amazing Race (details coming soon ™)

NOOB Raid tried Mythic….on accident! And it went, well, just like you thought it should.

Patch 8.3 Survival Guide
https://www.wowhead.com/news=305319/patch-8-3-visions-of-nzoth-survival-guide-giveaway

The third major Battle for Azeroth content patch, Visions of N’Zoth, will be releasing on January 14th (US) / 15th (EU).

This new content patch will include N’Zoth Assaults in two zones: Uldum and Vale of Eternal Blossoms. N’Zoth has taken over and Corrupted these areas. Taking part in these Assaults will earn you reputation with the Uldum Accord and Rajani and earn you a new currency: Coalescing Visions.

Wrathion returns in this Patch, starting off with a long Introduction Questline that will act as a tutorial for the major systems of this patch. This includes his own legendary cloak Ashjra’kamas, Shroud of Resolve and a plan to enter and take down the Horrific Visions of N’zoth. Titanforging is being removed for all Patch 8.3 content and replaced by Corrupted Gear which will provide you with powerful effects, but at a cost. Participating in Horrific Visions will allow you to upgrade Wrathion’s Legendary Cloak, helping you to combat some of the negative effects of the Corrupted gear. In addition, new Essences are being added for all roles, as well as new recipes for Professions.

Two new Allied Races are being added to the game: Vulpera for the Horde and Mechagnomes for the Alliance. Allied Race Death Knights are also available this Patch for players who have pre-purchased Shadowlands. Goblin and Worgen Heritage Armor is being added this Patch as well! If you’ve been wanting to transmog Legendary weapons, Patch 8.3 will finally allow you to do so! … except for the Warglaives of Azzinoth, those are still Demon Hunter appearance only. This Patch also helps If you’ve been looking for a unique reward from Island Expeditions, as there are new Salvage Crates which can be bought with Seafarer’s Dubloon. Lastly, the Auction House is getting a much needed rework.

More content is coming later in the Patch on January 21st when Season 4 of Battle of Azeroth begins. This marks the opening of the new Ny’alotha Raid, new PvP Season and new Mythic+ Seasonal Affix, Awakened, as well as Heroic Darkshore. Season 4 will also come with an overall Item Level increase to most systems, with the cap from most systems being 475 except for the final two bosses of Ny’alotha dropping 485 gear.

Mewkow- WoW Classic
https://www.wowhead.com/news=305109/classic-wow-content-drop-on-feb-12th-blackwing-lair-level-50-class-quests-eterna

Blackwing Lair

The Blackwing Lair attunement quest, “Blackhand’s Command”, will become available on all realms tomorrow, Friday, January 10.

Level 50 Class Quests

All players, starting at level 50, can now begin class-specific questlines offered by class trainers in capital cities. These quests conclude with a choice of one of three powerful rare items.

New Reputation Rewards

The Argent Dawn, Thorium Brotherhood, Timbermaw Hold, Silverwing Sentinels, and Warsong Outriders faction vendors now offer reputation reward items that were added in patches 1.6 and 1.7 of original WoW.

Eternal Quintessence

Players who complete “Hands of the Enemy” and reach Revered reputation with Hydraxian Waterlords may now obtain Eternal Quintessence from Duke Hydraxis.

Darkmoon Faire – Coming Earlier in February

The first Darkmoon Faire in WoW Classic will get underway in early February, with barkers and the Faire setup appearing on Friday, February 7, and the festivities opening on Monday, February 10. Look for the many Darkmoon Cards that make up the beasts, elementals, portals, and warlords sets to begin dropping from enemies and bosses on Wednesday, February 5.

SWTOR
The holidays in SWTOR were filled with MEGAs, MFNs, snowballs and wookiee hugging. Several guildies were so industrious, they achieved the Wookiee Hugging Champion achievement! Wookiees give the best hugs.

In 2020, we are looking forward to opening the rest of the rooms in both guild flagships, many Operations successes, MFNs galore, MEGAs extraordinaire, Conquest targets met, meetups, trivia, and, of course, lightning

ESO
On January 16th at 5pm EST there will be a Bethesda live stream to reveal the Chapter and year long story. They will have twitch drops live during the stream so you can unlock rewards.
MFN is still on Friday nights at 9pm est where we run dungeons, rampage though zones killing bosses, obtaining sky shards, and looting anything not nailed down, and occasionally jump off cliffs.

FFXIV
We had the first maps night in quite awhile and it was fairly epic. We did level 80 maps, AKA Zonureskin Maps, and reached the final chamber 4 times! That means a +100K payday each time. With total Gil and value of mats dropped in excess of 15M gil.

Map Nights will be a regular Saturday night event going forward, just ping Kelseer on the #ffxiv channel in AIE Discord if you want to join in. Map groups hold about 8 people per team. The Gliderskin maps are more tuned for solo players, if you didn’t want to get a full group.

Raiding will be picking up again soon. Speak with @Durus or @Abovan for details. We’ll likely begin with some of the early extreme fights (Titania and Innocence) to gauge where everyone is, and help gear folks up.

Patch 5.2 is coming in February and includes

-New MSQ (beginning of the end of SHB’s story)
-New Dungeon, “Anamnesis Anyder” (Trust Compatible)
-New beast tribe focusing on gathering, the Qitari
-New Chronicles of a New Era (5.0’s Trials quest chain)
-First Trial will be Ruby Weapon
-New Raid, “Eden’s Verse” (One boss will be related to Ramuh)
-Upgradable Equipment quest series (Relic quest)

EVE
Settled in new home system. Bringing up our lil cubby holes ADM’s so we can truly start doing big boy stuff. Hoots has plans to start making stuff for corpies and corpies are helping by donating needed materials for said process

LOTRO
We finished off 2019 with a lot of fun during SNL. We have stuff planned for 2020. Stay tuned for upcoming details.

And with that, let’s get back to US and find out what’s going on in since the break.

GAME NEWS
Mkallah
I’m a mom, it was christmas time, I was running around from December 12th until December 26th. I think my final count was twelve pounds of marshmallows, ten pounds of fudge, eight batches of various cookies and bars, three pies, one cake, and one batch of rice krispy treats. ANd, that was just the baking, There was also a lot of hiking, cooking, wrapping, and I even slept in a little. I did manage to read two full books- Catch and Kill by Ronan Farrow, quickly followed by The Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo- because one needs dark modern fantasy dealing with secret magical societies and Yale after 450 pages of the Weinstine investigation.

We had our annual Yule party and our Fert and Friends Christmas eve sushi lunch. We saw Star Wars opening night, and immediately afterwards I got a text from our friend MIlls that he wants to do a Star Wars game taking place 100 years after Rise of the Skywalker and then he gave us the Force and Destiny book for Christmas! I am looking at a Twi’lek Mystic Seer, not good with people, but super connected to the Living Force.

Only one of my D&D groups was semi active this season, but we have managed to get roped into helping a clan of wood elves deal with a mythical monster that has cursed them. And, you know that feeling when you wander into the wrong zone in a video game and almost get your ass handed to you? Yeah, we had that happen.

Mewkow
Still slowly taking down the inside Xmas decorations, the outside were dutifully taken down the weekend after New Year’s Day. Had a decent setup at the new house.

After catching up in the Mandolarian, and seeing the latest saga movie, AND bravely watching the entire Star Wars special (with a little help from riff trax), we have started the clone wars viewing with the intent to complete that 6-7 season show.

Tons of time in FF14 as of late. With about 5 active ‘alts’ in a game that you don’t need to alt in, there is plenty to be done. That means I’ll have done the Shadowbringer MSQ 5 times, and yes it is that good. Also working on dragging others along for the fun when possible. Completed the Eden raids, and the Nier raid a few times, but have not touched the Eden Savage raids yet, and have no desire to go anywhere near the Alexander Ultimate. Explain that fight a bit. Touch on crafting/gathering.

Past week, taking a short break every now and then to poke around FO76. They have the Wastelanders beta coming out this month, and I wanted to be ready to go when that happens. Slowly moving forward in the Pioneer scouts challenges.

Very little time in WoW lately. Seems like the raid scene is on hiatus until the patch. Here’s hoping they solve the absence of tier sets and fix or mitigate the azerite armor.

Tetsemi
Finished the MSQ up through patch 5.1 in FFXIV on my bard, and now working on the Order of the Twin Adder grand company progress as well as leveling up my Red Mage (which is apparently changing a bit in 5.2) as well as my Samurai.

Other than logging in for guild numbers and guild clean up, pretty much took most of December and beginning of January off of WoW, but looking forward to patch 8.3 and if any of the systems will be interesting to me. Oh, I did do the Anniversary LFR with the raid team and got the World Breaker mount, but the pull of FFXIV was too strong to entice me to stay engaged in WoW to do either Korak’s revenge or level any alts.

No D&D on break, however, the group has gotten sucked into the new Force & Destiny system for Star Wars and created a Sentinel Shadow who is hunting down Dark Side force sensitive and force users. Really looking forward to learning a new system and rolling the dice again. Will be the first game our whole family will be playing in that’s not a one-shot, guest appearance, or run this character because the player is out.

Also, we watched all 8 episodes of the Mandalorian, and can’t wait for more. If the Kenobi series is going to be anything like the Mandalorian, especially the two episodes Deborah Chow directed, I can not wait. So ready for some non-Skywalker series that explore more of the Solo and Rogue One type environments and stories, bring it on!

CLOSE
And that’s our show for tonight. While the chatroom begins suggesting show titles, we want to thank US for joining us. And don’t forget, after the show is the AIE podcast stream, this week they are doing:

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. Mew is at @themewkow. Mkallah is at @cyberwaif,and Tetsemi is at @ivorytiger. We record live with video every other 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 our Discord server for chat at https://aie-guild.info/discord . Our theme was composed by the amazing Andrew Allen, follow him at @keyswithsoul! or visit his website http://keyswithsoul.com !

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

Overly Dramatic News – @HuntsTheWind

Just a programing noite, the next show will be Saturday, January 25th, regular show time. We’ll be talking to.. Well, we will let you know as soon as WE find out. So until then, AIE…

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

And this has been… The AIE Podcast.