The AIE Podcast

On this episode of The AIE Podcast...

Mkallah: Prepare for your Destiny

Mewkow: 7.3 has dropped and so has everyone’s jaw

Tetsemi: Final Fantasy XIV four years of fun

Mkallah: Fun is still mandatory

Mewkow: And we have Sema and Apolas here to talk Star Wars, the old Republic

All that and more coming up right now...

Podcast Audio

Raw Video

http://youtu.be/sOKKVrtIU_E

Open

Welcome to episode #283 of the the podcast celebrating the Alea Iacta Est gaming community, the die has been podcast. This is Tetsemi: To my left is Mkallah: - (Hey, guys, there are lemon bars and pineapple upside down cake in the guild kitchen). And to my right is Mewkow: (Greeting, Gamers). This week we are joined by special guests Sema and Apolas who are here to talk to us about AIE in SWTOR Welcome!

Ok, we’ll be digging into SWTOR shortly, but first, let’s cover this week’s news…

AIE News

Imperium Ludi

Destiny 2 was in open beta this week and launches on October 24, 2017 on PC, with the console version starting up on September 6th. We will have a clan setup for folks wanting to jump in and play together, make sure you follow the thread on the forums

http://forum.myextralife.com/topic/57425-destiny-2-discovery/

NOMADS

Did you get No Man Sky when it first came out, or picked it up recently due to the Steam sale? Well the Nomads are spending time in the game, and feel free to join them in the #Nomads channel in AIE Discord to discuss all the things.

WoW

Patch 7.3 has launched and we’re headed to Argus. For those that feel a little bit overwhelmed, even after reading the copious amount of patch notes, check out Bellular Gaming’s Handy Tips for Argus https://youtu.be/CbHjuzoCYAc covering essential tips, tricks, and some undocumented changes. Here are the full patch notes, in case you missed them - https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-gb/news/20947822#1

For those that have ventured to Argus, what’s your favorite find so far?

SWTOR

SWTOR Escape Pod Cast 208: 5.4 is Live

http://www.newoverlords.com/swtor-escape-pod-cast-208-5-4-is-live/

This week @AIESema, @MaxTheGrey and Astromech EPC-208 give a no-spoilers, first impressions view of the 5.4 update.

SWTOR Escape Pod Cast 209: All Up In Umbara

http://www.newoverlords.com/swtor-escape-pod-cast-209-all-up-in-umbara/

This week @AIESema, @MaxTheGrey and Astromech EPC-209 do a live play-through of the Umbara flashpoint and talk through our impressions and a couple tips and tricks.

See more in the discussion in the Game News

FFXIV

It's the fourth anniversary of the game, there was a 14 hour live stream celebrating it.

Patch 4.1, which contains the new housing update, should be live sometime in early October.

The Rising event is also running until September 14th. It has a fun old school style 8 bit dungeon that is randomly generated, with a word puzzle at the end.

There is also an Anniversary sale on all but the newest items on the Mog store, 30% off.

New items on the mog store: Edda's outfit and scythe weapons.

Yokai Watch event is live now. Collect all 13 minions, themed weapons, and 2 whisper flying mounts. Event lasts for a couple of months until November 1st.

GW2

Don’t forget about Mandatory Fun Nights on Monday’s because the AIE team wants to run Dungeons and Fractals!

And with that, let’s get back to Sema and Apolas and find out what’s going on in SWTOR.

GAME NEWS

New Flashpoint - Crisis on Umbara

Umbara is a planet that appears in 4 episodes of The Clone Wars

It’s also called the “Shadow World” because the rays of its sun do not reach the surface which leaves it in a perpetual gloom.

Umbarans have their own technology and their inhospitable planet has lots of new creatures.

The flashpoint (instance/dungeon) occurs on a moving train (it’s a hover train, essentially). You fight your way to the front of the train and then .

You are chasing a traitor and recovering adegan crystals (a valuable component of light sabers).

At various points there are traps that can either result in electrifying you, or a deployable turret popping up and inserting itself into the fight.

Available in one man, 4 man veteran and 4 man master modes.

New Stronghold - Umbaran Mobile Base

Yes.. it’s a train!

Similar to the flashpoint, when you enter your stronghold, you land on the train and the sections between you and the front of the train make up your mobile base.

You can decorate with personnel, speeders, utility items like personal bank, legacy bank (all your characters have access), guild bank, customization stations, mailbox, art, furniture, trophies, holograms, etc. Max has made a bar car in his already!

If you purchase the entire stronghold (there are two expansion areas) you can then take a speeder that flies alongside the train to get you to the front car.

There is one section where in order to move forward you have to grapple.

Something new: You must run the flashpoint several times to get the currency needed to become worthy to buy your train.

AIE in SWTOR

We have raid teams running most nights of the week and it’s always worth checking in to see if fill-ins are needed.

On Tuesday nights we have a Mandatory Fun Night (Attendance is not mandatory..etc). It’s open to everyone that is at least level 50 and sometimes we can take all levels, depending on what we are up to. But usually we do all or part of an operation, hunt down world bosses, or event-related things (special bosses, etc.)

We have a new raid team on Sunday nights. Yay!

We have guilds on both Imperial and Republic sides.

If you would like an invite, the best thing to do is ask in the swtor channel in discord. If someone is available we are always happy to pop in and invite.

CLOSE

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

Just come into the swtor channel on discord and say hello.

SEPC records live on Thursday nights at around 11:30 Eastern - twitch.tv/newoverlords.

You can sometimes find Sema on twitter at @AIESema and put some stuff in here, Apolas!

If you have a question or comment about our show, you can email us at [email protected]. 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://bit.ly/AIEPodcastDiscord . 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...

Welp, the mailbox is empty, but remember, if you’d like to submit a segment for the AIE Podcast, our e-mail is [email protected] .

Next time, we’ll be talking to Hoots in AIEU for EVE. So until then, AIE...

- This is Tetsemi

- This is Mkallah

- This is Mewkow

And this has been... The AIE Podcast.

On this episode of The AIE Podcast...

Tetsemi: Three Cheers for Corley

Mkallah: Winter is… sorry, Gamescon is coming

Mewkow: Pants, we don’t need no stinking Pants

Tetsemi: The Final Fantasy move has been Fantastic for AIE!

Mkallah: Our new AIE Star Trek Online director, Grebog, is here to talk about AIE in STO

All that and more coming up right now...

Podcast Audio

Raw Video

http://youtu.be/q3cAqwVlma8

Open

Welcome to episode #282 of the the podcast celebrating the Alea Iacta Est gaming community, the die has been podcast. This is Mewkow: To my left is Tetsemi: - (catch phrase here). And to my right is Mkallah: (Hey, guys, there is carrot cake in the guild kitchen). This week we are joined by special guest Grebog who is here to talk to us about AIE in Star Trek Online!!! Welcome!

Ok, we’ll be digging into STO shortly, but first, let’s cover this week’s news...

AIE News

NOMADS

Big shoutout to Corley for continuing to maintain and upgrade the Rust server that AIE has been playing on. If you have Rust and are interested in finding out exactly how many caves that Arv has set up shop in, the Rust server info can be found https://rust-servers.net/server/110215/

Thanks again to Corley for keeping this going.

WoW

Gamescom is coming up on August 22 through August 26 and Blizzard will be there with a lot of game news, trailers and announcements. For WoW, gamers will be able to group up with other gamescom attendees and run through a dungeon from World of Warcraft’s upcoming Patch 7.3—details about this content update will be unveiled on stage and via live stream during the Blizzard Reveal Ceremony on Wednesday.

Looking forward to more information about 7.3 and what the new dungeon design is and where the story is going. If you’re looking for information about all the Blizzard games, they will be live streamed at http://gamescom.blizzard.com .

Also, if you’re a caster (sorry warlocks), you have new casting animations to look forward to in patch 7.3. These look very cool, and definitely update the casting animations to match the ‘class fantasy,’ if you’d like to see a preview of them Blizzard has a blog covering what was updated and their thought process behind it http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/20946579?page=1#1

If you have a lot of alts and are having a hard time keeping track of where they are in the various 7.0 story/achievement lines, Wowhead has a new feature for you, http://www.wowhead.com/attunement . Works really well and they’re taking feedback about what else you’d like to see on the page.

And if you’re into transmog, be sure and check out the Trial of Style going on now through August 22nd. Check out the themes for the contest, put together your sets and get your butt on that catwalk. http://www.wowhead.com/news=269877/trial-of-style-transmog-holiday-august-17th-22nd

SWTOR

Mandatory Fun Night is on the Imperial Side this week, so make sure your armor and weapons are on the right characters and you’re wearing pants (*cough* Max *cough*).

Also, dropping this week is new content called “Crisis on Umbara” which will bring a new planet, a new flashpoint, and a new Stronghold (tied to the flashpoint). For those that haven’t listened to episode 207 of The Escape Pod Cast, where Max and Sema cover it, Umbara is the “Shadow Planet” and played a role in the Clone Wars.

SWTOR Escape Pod Cast 206: The Current Sea of Currency

http://www.newoverlords.com/swtor-escape-pod-cast-206-the-current-sea-of-currency/

This week @AIESema, @MaxTheGrey and Astromech EPC-206 talk about what we think a legacy merge of currencies might look like and what we heard about it so far in the brief note from Keith.

SWTOR Escape Pod Cast 207: Umbara Unraveled

http://www.newoverlords.com/swtor-escape-pod-cast-207-umbara-unraveled/

This week @AIESema, @MaxTheGrey and Astromech EPC-207 we talk about the lore behind the planet Umbara, which is central to the update coming next week

FFXIV

FFXIV is more active than ever on their new server! Turns out being on a server that allows character creation really helps boost activity, who knew. Fearless leader Abovan has sold their previous mansion on Gilgamesh and the officers are now poised to to buy a large housing plot when the Shirogane housing area launches!

Friday Fun Nights continue to be both Fun and on Friday nights, hop into #FFXIV in the AIE Discord to see what all the fun is about!

After the popularity of our Friday Fun Nights our very own Durus has started leading folks through the first raid of this expansion, Deltascape, regularly throughout the week. So if you

're looking for gear, you know who to bother! The guild is looking at spinning up one or two 8 person content parties, again, check the #FFXIV channel and ask all about it!

GW2

Disturbed0Angel on the forums has a great post up about folks returning to GW2 and getting ready for the new expansion, Path of Fire.

http://forum.myextralife.com/topic/57456-path-of-fire-info-hype-etc/#entry955859

Thanks to Disturbed for putting that together. Make sure you also check out the #GW2 channel in AIE Discord.

TSW

Are you playing TSW? Are you subscribed, planning to subscribe, or just free to play? Let us know in the forums so we can gauge the current activity level for the game.

http://forum.myextralife.com/topic/57436-secret-world-legends/

STO

As our guest today can attest, the #STO channel in AIE Discord has been hopping lately, make sure you check out the channel if you’re playing or interested in playing STO!

Captain Cybyl’s Star Trek Online News Summary for week ending 8/20/2017:

1. With Season 14 launching October 18th, a new backstory, 'A Warrior Reborn', has been posted on the STO website. This story provides a lead-in to the new season. Deep Space 9 fans will especially enjoy this one.

2. There is an R&D promotion in the C-Store from August 17th to September 7th. R&D packs will be 20% off AND Captains will have a chance to find a Son’a T6 Science Dreadnought starship hidden within the pack. It is a collector edition starship featured in the movie ’Star Trek: Insurrection’. Grab it while you can.

3. Now that you have all those nifty upgrade mats from the R&D packs while acquiring the Son’a starship, take note that this weekend is also an R&D upgrade event! Captains will earn DOUBLE Technology points for upgrading their weapons and equipment.

4. A big challenge for new and veteran STO players is how to build the ship you have always dreamed of. With the vast number of weapon and equipment choices and combinations, this can be a daunting, hit-and-miss task! Captain Qthulhu, a regular member of STO’s Reddit and 'Ten Forward' weekly stream has addressed this dilemma and started posting custom ship configuration and upgrade guides as a service to the STO community. Check the STO website for the links.

5. From August 17th to September 7th, the 'Arena of Sompek' returns. This event is similar to WoW’s arena play. Generous prizes await participants. Details are on the website. Grebog, do you have anything in particular to add to this one?

6. Finally, don’t forget: The AIE Fleet’s Star Bases are always seeking contributions of mats and personnel. And once again, please check out news, backstories, patch notes, forums and other goodies at the Star Trek Online website .

Until next time, Captain Cybyl says, 'Live Long and Prosper'!

And with that, let’s get back to Grebog and find out what’s going on in STO with the AIE Guild!.

GAME NEWS

Guests put show notes here

New Fleet Director

Starbase progress - currently working constructing the rank IV starbase

This is a pretty hefty upgrade, so it will take a little while. All help is appreciated

Research Lab is also nearing completion.

Completing this will unlock more traits for everyone and another R&D crafting slot (traits are little like talents in wow)

Going forward with fleet holdings, we will continue working on the starbase, and after the Research lab is complete, focus more on the Spire to get one of the best tactical consoles in game.

Set Phasers to Fun! - New weekly event starting up on the 26th. Main goal is to have fun, maybe earn some fleet marks or some rep marks and help people try out some different things to do, explore interesting places in the galaxy.

Fleet is going to become more visible in game. I will be allowing the fleet to be visible in the looking for fleet style system. People will still need to go to UMAMI and apply that route, but I want to first make the fleet a little more visible.

Mewkow- So, now that we know a little more about what is going on in STO with the AIE guild, we have a few questions for Grebog!

-Tell us about yourself- how did you first get involved in AIE and STO?

Tetsemi- What is it about STO that appeals to you?

Mkallah- Any plans in the works for events besides Set Phasers to Fun?

Mewkow- If someone were looking to hang out with the STO crew and have some fun, are there particular times that are more active?

Tetsemi: Tell us about your addiction to ships!

CLOSE

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

Check the Forums, find me on discord, or my barely used twiitter account @Grebog

If you have a question or comment about our show, you can email us at [email protected]. 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://bit.ly/AIEPodcastDiscord . 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...

...

On this episode of The AIE Podcast...

Tetsemi: As the Summer of love wraps up

Mewkow: We have lots of video evidence

Mkallah: so .. much… wow.. News

Tetsemi: Fly me to the moon… fire

Mewkow: and we have Captain Cybyl’s STO update!

All that and more coming up right now...

Podcast Audio

Raw Video

http://youtu.be/KrYxycDk_QI

Open

Welcome to episode #281 of the the podcast celebrating 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: (Greetings, Gamers!). This week we have our Summer of Love wrap up! Welcome!

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

For anyone that missed the Summer of Love activities and wants to see what ocurred, please check out the forum post that the wonderful Syreyne has been keeping up to date.

http://forum.myextralife.com/topic/57442-community-summer-of-love-2017-july-31st-to-august-6th/

There were a lot of activities across all the games AIE is in, with the last event running earlier today in WoW with the Transmog Gear and pet Swap meet!

Thank you to everyone that participated and made the Summer of Love a wonderful AIE event.

If you missed some of the events, here are a few videos we found taken by our wonderful guildies.

FFXIV - By Ryooshi - https://youtu.be/RiqEmSWGM5Q (Rememberance Day)

WoW - By Joey Image - https://www.twitch.tv/videos/164656428 (Running of the Beef)

Also for a ton of screenshots, check out the #AIEGuild hashtag on Twitter

https://twitter.com/hashtag/AIEGuild

WoW

There was a live Q&A with Ion Hazzikostas (no spoilers) over general WoW topics and some 7.3 specific information. It looks like Legion is becoming more alt friendly and some catch up mechanisms are in place for those just hitting 110.

The time gate for the 3rd relic slot will automatically be removed in 7.3. In addition, players will not have to do the Broken Shore questline to unlock Concordance of the Legionfall and the other new traits.

Artifact Knowledge is also getting changes and will be global across all player. The week of the patch, all players will be Artifact Knowledge 41.

There are new missions, equipment and chests on Argus that can shoot Champions all the way to item level 900.

Reusable Augment Runes coming from Exalted Army of the Light, the Lightforged Augment Rune.

http://www.wowhead.com/news=269167/liveblog-of-the-q-a-with-ion-hazzikostas

SWTOR

SWTOR Escape Pod Cast 205: To Merge Or Not To Merge

http://www.newoverlords.com/swtor-escape-pod-cast-205-to-merge-or-not-to-merge/

This week @AIESema, @MaxTheGrey and Astromech EPC-205 talk about the current server merge discussion, pros and cons, ways to merge, alternatives, and our views.

Also the Mandatory Fun Night, on Tuesday, will be on the Republic side this week.

FFXIV

Moonfire Fair event begins this Tuesday!

http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/special/2017/Moonfire_Faire/

The quest begins in the Limsa upper decks and you can get a full seasonal outfit and some housing items while the event is live.

STO

Just a quick update from Grebiss on the forums

http://forum.myextralife.com/topic/57452-status-of-the-fleet/

We have completed the required work to allow us to start the Shipyard Tier IV upgrades. This will unlock many more fleet ships for everyone to purchase. And once we complete the shipyards, I believe we will be able to upgrade the starbase to tier IV as well.

I may hold on the Starbase tier IV to keep resources flowing into fleet ship consumables, so everyone can buy their desired fleet ships.

The Research Lab is also making big progress and one of the two branches is nearing completion as well with the other branch over halfway through tier 3.

Captain Cybyl’s Star Trek Online News Summary for week ending 8/6/2017:

Before today’s news:

On Remembrance Day, August 2nd, 2017, Captain Cybyl, representing AIE Fleet, paid the AIE Fleet's respects to the guild's fallen at the Eternal Flame Memorial in Earth's Star Fleet Academy, the Spock shrine on Vulcan, the Spock shrine on New Romulus and finally at the AIE Fleet's star base. Captain Cybyl is humbled and truly honoured to be a member of one awesome gaming family called AIE. Thank you.

Now on to the news:

1. The STO staff is attending Star Trek Las Vegas for the 30th anniversary of Star Trek: The Next Generation. However, Star Fleet leakers have supplied some interesting tidbits:

2. Season 14: 'Emergence' will launch October 18th, featuring the newest addition to the cast: Levar Burton. He will voice the character he portrayed and made famous in the TV series Star Trek: TNG: Geordi La Forge. An exciting trailer for Season 14 and beyond has been posted.

3. On September 12th, an introductory episode to the upcoming Season 14, 'Beyond the Nexus', will allow players to accompany Captain La Forge in investigating a distress call from a Galaxy-class ship with a mysterious emergency. See the STO website for details.

4. Season 13.5 launched July 18th, with the featured episode 'Brushfire’. The last of three weekly rewards for playing this episode have been posted to the STO website.

5. The famous Phoenix Lockbox has arrived for the week of August 3rd to August 10th. Players will have a chance to turn in their spare Summer Event gift vouchers for starships, new equipment, weapons, upgrade tokens and much, much more. The website lists them all.

6. Now that you have al those nifty upgrade tokens from the Phoenix Lockbox, coincidentally, this is also an upgrade weekend! Captains will earn DOUBLE Technology points for upgrading their weapons and equipment.

7. Finally, don’t forget: The AIE Fleet’s Star Bases are always seeking contributions of materiel and personnel. And once again, please check out news, backstories, patch notes, forums and other goodies at the Star Trek Online website .

Until next time, Captain Cybyl says, 'Live Long and Prosper'!

GW2

We have a guild hall! The Roger ‘Ralff’ White guild hall was officially obtained thanks to the diligence and perseverance of the GW2 guildies.

Here’s a brief description of what it takes from Diji on the #GW2 in Discord.

“For those not familiar with the fight, allow me to recount the epic tale of how we cleared the Guild hall. You start off in the Lost Precipice map, which is a huge area horizontally and vertically. A single Mordrem Maw spawns on the map with 2 Mordrem Vinetenders, and various other mobs nearby. You have a limited time (I think 3-4 mins if I remember right) to get to the maw, kill the 2 Vinetenders, and then kill the Maw. If you fail to kill the Maw within the time limit, the air toxicity rises, and a new Maw spawns elsewhere. If you lose 5 times, everyone dies and you start over. You have to kill 5 Maws. Once you kill them, a Vine Warden spawns in the middle, and you have a few minutes to down him. Once you do, you win, and the guild hall is yours.

Seems like the first part was far harder than the second part.”

http://forum.myextralife.com/topic/57408-the-roger-ralff-white-memorial-guild-hall/

TSW

Looks like some pre-Tokyo opening content just got released for Legends.

http://forum.myextralife.com/topic/57436-secret-world-legends/

The Dreaming Dark event (AKA The Flappy Raid) is going on, before the Tokyo re-release. So, everything that's been released is almost re-released. I mean, say you took a break, there is content that is now available, for free, in SWL. Just nothing in Tokyo. Though scenarios are there, but that involves the Venice map, and with the group finder tool, you can experience that content, without actually setting foot there.

Also, information on the Whispering Tide Event from the official site

https://secretworldlegends.com/news/the-whispering-tide/

The scales have tipped.

The Filth has entered Agartha, threatening the World Tree itself. Shadows the size of planets gaze upon us and prepare their winged harbingers for invasion. Darkness is upon us; The Whispering Tide has arrived.

Following the latest events from the Main Story, the portal to Tokyo is overflowing with Filth, blocking access and heralding an unkindness of Birds of the Zero-Point Pathogen into Agartha. You, the agents of Gaia, are the only ones that can stem the tide.

Mew and Tet- discuss the game!

And with that, let’s get back to Us and find out what we have been up to. Also, I have a few round table questions.

GAME NEWS

What we have been up to:

Tet: All the Alts in WoW!

Mew:

Mkallah: Wedding (RL summer of love drunken CAH), RPG, podcast stuff

Question: What was your favourite part of Summer of Love:

Tet: Rememberance day

Mew: How active FF14 was for it this year

Mkallah: all the games being involved,

With Russel Brower no longer the official face of music at Blizzard, let’s talk about music. What has been your favourite piece of game music?

Tet:Pandaria themes

Mew:too many to pick one. Fallout series. FF14 dungeons and hildebrad.

Mkallah:Wrath music, how it ranged from ethereal to menacing to fiddle heavy, which I always love. In general, and RedDead for the Wyrd West feel and Bioshock for that feels familiar but alien music

CLOSE

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

If you have a question or comment about our show, you can email us at [email protected]. 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://bit.ly/AIEPodcastDiscord . Our theme was composed by the amazing Andrew Allen, follow him at @keyswithsoul! or visit his website http://keyswithsoul.com !

...

On this episode of The AIE Podcast...

Mkallah: The Nomads love to explore

Mewkow: Thank you for the love of music

Tetsemi: Love is in the air

Mkallah: we have the lovely Captain Cybyl STO Update

Mewkow: Sy and Grimcow are here to talk about the Summer of Love!

All that and more coming up right now...

Podcast Audio

Raw Video

http://youtu.be/9gg9kfwFZBk

Open

Welcome to episode #280 of the the podcast celebrating you, the Alea Iacta Est gaming community, the die has been podcast. This is Tetsemi: To my left is Mkallah - (hey, guys, there are lemon bars in the guild kitchen… and cinnamon rolls…. And carrot cake. Tet, I need a cleanup over here). And to my right is Mewkow: (Greetings, Gamers). This week we are joined by special guests Syreyne and Grimcow who are here to talk to us about AIE in the Summer of Love Welcome!

Ok, we’ll be digging into Summer of Love shortly, but first, let’s cover this week’s news...

AIE News

Community

Summer of Love is coming! More discussion shortly, but first, the links!

NOMADS

Nomads have launched a guild in Albion Online. It's a lot like Ultima Online, meets Diablo 3, meets Eve. If you are interested in joining the guild, head to the #Nomads channel on AIE Discord, or contact Argus or Jehdai for information. Also there is a forum post with more information in it as well. http://forum.myextralife.com/topic/57441-aie-in-albion/

WoW

Just wanted to give a shout out to Russell Brower for all the work he did at Blizzard Entertainment on the music and sound tracks of all the Blizzard games. His position was ‘made redundant’ due to some corporate restructuring of the audio teams and we wish him well. He has a solo album coming up and will still be doing three Video Games Live concerts in the future. You can follow him on Twitter and Facebook to see what he’s up to!

SWTOR

Our usual SWtOR MFN on Tuesday will be focused on SoL. Maybe a Running of the Pancakes on Hoth, a Galaxy World Boss hunt and a trip to get the harder to reach datacrons or something similar. I'm sure @Max will have a bunch of "Mandatory Fun" stuff for us to do.

This week. Tuesday July 25th, MFN will be on the Imp side and next week it will be on the Pub side.

SWTOR Escape Pod Cast 203: There Were Never Such Devoted Sisters

This week @AIESema, @MaxTheGrey and Astromech EPC-203 review the Esne and Aivela boss fight added to the Gods From The Machine operation on Iokath.

STO

Captain Cybyl’s Star Trek Online News Summary for week ending 7/23/2017:

1. Season 13.5 launched July 18th, with the featured episode 'Brushfire’. The first of three weekly rewards for playing this episode have been posted to the STO website. Rewards for weekly replays will be posted at the end of each week.

2. The Son’a Lockbox has arrived for Season 13.5. Two new, artsy-looking Son’a starships are the featured prizes along with new equipment, weapons, player enhancements and much more. Stats for the new ships have been posted.

3. The Xindi Lockbox has been upgraded to include upgraded T6 Xindi starships, along with new equipment, weapons, player enhancements and much more. Stats for the new ships have been posted.

4. The C-Store 15% lockbox key sale has been extended through this weekend! Grab 'em while you can.

5. Finally, don’t forget: The AIE Fleet’s Star Bases are always seeking contributions of materiel and personnel. And once again, please check out news, backstories, patch notes, forums and other goodies at the Star Trek Online website .

Until next time, Captain Cybyl says, 'Live Long and Prosper'!

FFXIV

https://aie-guild.org/blog/2017/07/kittee-and-tiaras-ceremony-of-eternal-bonding/

Kittee Fantastico and Tiara Leigh of our Final Fantasy XIV gaming community will be exchanging vows in their Ceremony of Eternal Bonding on Sunday, the 30th of July 2017 at 7PM EDT.

This may come as a shock to those who know the happy couple. However, between Kittee’s seemingly random, explosive tendencies and Tiara’s great love of collecting mounts in the game; we can all smile and offer sagely Warrior of Light nods to their union. (Tiara is not at all using Kittee to get the mount, and any rumors that say otherwise are clearly false…)

Invitations may be requested from the couple prior to the event, and are required to enter the Ceremony at the Sanctum of the Twelve in the East Shroud. You may send a friend request to either of them so they may mail you an invitation, or you can track them down in game or in the AIE Discord.

Join the FFXIV crew on their "Fun Night" during their Summer of Love meet up at the tiny home in the Goblet on Goblin. It's Final Fantasy Fashionista Fun Night! Come as you are, or in your favorite outfits or glamour to celebrate the AIE community. Kickoff is at 9PM EDT and we'll be coming and going from the house as we embark on our various fun activities of the evening

Just a reminder that the guild has moved to Goblin from Gilgamesh. Unfortunately, Goblin is no longer a preferred server which means free transfers are no longer available. You can still transfer for $18 or roll a new character on Goblin and join the guild. The guild house on Gilgamesh is still open for a little while longer for folks that need to transfer things over to Goblin but will be shutting down in the near future.

Current timelines are pointing to October for the release of 4.1 (yay more story) which will likely bring the new housing area near Kugane, as well as other quality of life additions, such as the removal of restrictions on the job boost potions. As Yoshi-P says, ‘Please look forward to it.’

And with that, let’s get back to Syreyne and Grimcow and find out what’s going on in Summer of Love week.

GAME NEWS

Sy: We’re here to talk about the Summer of Love week long event. Summer of Love is our biggest community wide event each year. It’s a time to reflect on life and friendship and to share and support each other’s sorrow. It’s also a week of games, events, contests, and more across all of our game divisions. All of these events have built up around our community’s single most important, most historic, and most reverent gathering every year: Remembrance Day.

Grim: I joined AIE in April of 2011 on a baby rogue, based, like many of us, on the chatter on The Instance and the warm fuzzies I got listening about the antics and culture and community, etc. I heard about AIE’s Remembrance Day and decided I needed to attend this thing. I was mid-50s, still leveling, I think, and was absolutely blown away by the reverence and feeling of it. My tiny Alliance guild was dormant so I had no problem biting the bullet and thus transferred and faction-swapped my main. My original WoW toon (a dorf pally) became Grimcow as a direct result of Remembrance Day. I have not missed one since.

(Insert here - I (Sy) would like to have a general discussion on how Remembrance Day started here, with dialog from all the hosts. Informal talking. [See below where we mention general rules, like removing weapons.] Talk about Milliway, etc.)

Sy: Between Remembrance Day and the Craft Faire….both those events in AIE were the reasons I factioned changed all of my Alliance toons on Earthen Ring to Horde. Just the idea of a guild and community that would do these things for their members was and still is so incredible.

Grim: I agree with Sy. I got roped into the Craft Faire as the Tailoring Captain by an innocent-seeming chat with Nevermore. Innocent. Yeah, right. I spent the next several years managing 5 guild banks stuffed full of cloth as well as a lot of Google spreadsheets. When the Faire came around, I was running upwards of 8 banks! :) COOP and all of it was and still is gloriously fun. Love being a part of this crew. The community - to this day - remains the best part of the game for me.

Tuesday August 1st - Star Wars is hosting a very special Mandatory Fun night from 8pm to 10pm Central Time. (See show notes above. Details coming soon.)

Wednesday August 2nd - Community Wide Remembrance Day at 6pm Pacific/9pm Eastern

Locations:

WoW - Shrine of the Fallen Warrior - west of Crossroads in the Northern Barrens

SWTOR - Juran Mountains on Alderaan

Final Fantasy 14 - Guild House

Guild Wars 2 - Field of the Fallen in west Lion’s Arch

Star Trek Online - They plan to start at Starfleet Academy eternal flame. Then onto the Spock memorial on Vulcan. Next to the Spock memorial on New Romulus. And finally to the AIE Fleet's star base to commiserate over Romulan ale.

As we hear back from more game divisions on locations, we’ll update the Community forum post.

Sy: Just a few reminders to anyone attending Remembrance Day...We ask that everyone remove their weapons out of respect for those that have fallen. A lot of people choose to wear formal tuxedos, suits, dresses, etc, however this is not a requirement. If you would like any dressy items to wear, please speak up in chat and people are always willing to help out. As far as WoW is concerned, please leave your cute and fuzzy pets in your class hall, that includes hunters and warlocks. Please don’t engage with the Horde or Alliance that might troll us during this event. Be the better person and ignore them. Please be respectful of our Alliance friends in Convert to Raid. Many of them show up for this event in support.

Grim: Also, please no ground effect spells or toys - except for your Horde balloon, of course. Many of our members run on sub-optimal machines, and these things can cause lag. We don’t want to accidently boot people out of the game just because a shaman thought Healing Rain would look cool. Remembrance Day is for everyone. Last, but not least, please respect those talking in comms during the event. This is not the time to tell that one dirty joke you know.

Sy:

Friday August 4th - Final Fantasy is doing…Final Fantasy Fashionista Fun Night at 9pm EDT...(ask Mewkow)

Saturday August 5th - WoW is hosting a tribute version of Running of the Beef on Saturday afternoon in honor of one of o

On this episode of The AIE Podcast...

Mewkow: We have Rusty Reminders

Tetsemi: We Love Summer

Mkallah: We have carnage on Iokath

Mewkow: AIE is on the move in Final Fantasy… Finally

Tetsemi: And we have been given carte blanche to ramble!

All that and more coming up right now...

Podcast Audio

Raw Video

http://youtu.be/j_7Cy8OCrrs

Open

Welcome to episode #279 of the the podcast celebrating the Alea Iacta Est gaming community, the die has been podcast. This is Mkallah: To my left is Mewkow: - (Greetings Gamers). And to my right is Tetsemi: (Story? Where’s the story?). Due to a schedule snafu, we are chatting among ourselves, but that is okay- it is us, we have tons to say.

Ok, we’ll be digging into news soon, but first let’s talk about our Nerdtacular impressions and what we have been doing in and out of game.

Mew- FF14, but more on that later.

Nerdtacular souvenirs; con crud.

Black Temple: Fun blast from the past but not nearly as painful as Molten Core was. You got to see the beginnings of the tank swap mechanic, but it wasn’t quite there. Taunt was about useless as a tank, but it was a DPS paradise with many ‘kill it until it is dead’ bosses, or at least boss phases.

Tet- Nerdtacular was amazing and needs to happen again! I love going to Snowbird, it’s very relaxing (when the thermostat behaves) and really enjoying seeing everyone, attending the panels, and playing games. Doing the live podcast this year was definitely a highlight and we’ll do one again, next time the opportunity presents itself.

Rogue Class Mount and Order Hall Campaign - Done! May just be my favorite story and order hall so far.

Hunter is leveling up, just hit 108 about 1/3 rd of the way through Highmountain (Azusa is complete). Working on his engineering while leveling which has been interesting. I like the story bits and the cool items to make. Really enjoyed the fact I can buy the Beastmaster hidden appearance for gold and it’s a bow! Running with a Core Hound and Hati right now for companions, and I love, love, love, that you can just have Volley go off on your auto-attacks. Brings back the flavor of Volley without having to manage it.

Played a bit more of Secret World Legends, playing on the Dragon side as a Gunslinger (insert fake Mkallah shock here) and really enjoying the story (hey! I found the story!) in the game.

MK- TALK ABOUT STUFF

Games- Dammit, Mills (resulted in Castlevania), GnG D&D (now am I the note keeper), Return of Thors Thunder on Woden’s Day

NT- so many good things, coffee with Skky, Rocker, Diji, OLF and rotating guests in the atrium. Hiking, in the snow, in socially acceptable crocs, Marvel Munchkin with the Hordeling (Darth Amber won her first time out)

AIE News

NOMADS

Just a reminder, if you’re interested in checking out Rust, Corley has set up a private server for the AIE community. Check out #survival-exploration channel in the AIE Discord.

WoW

Summer of Love is coming up in August, we’ll have more detail in an upcoming podcast (*cough* Syreyne *cough*) touching on the events, dates, and times, including Remembrance Day.

SWTOR

Patch 5.3 is out and along with some class tuning (*cough* nerfs *cough*) there is a new raid boss, the Sisters of Carnage, to tackle on Iokath.

SWTOR Escape Pod Cast 201: The Last Starfighter

http://www.newoverlords.com/swtor-escape-pod-cast-201-the-last-starfighter/

This week @AIESema, @MaxTheGrey and Astromech EPC-201 talk about the GSF threads now open in the official forums in addition to the continued flurry of community team interaction.

SWTOR Escape Pod Cast 202: Manaan, Sisters And All of 5.3

http://www.newoverlords.com/swtor-escape-pod-cast-202-manaan-sisters-and-all-of-5-3/

This week @AIESema, @MaxTheGrey and Astromech EPC-202 talk about the Manaan Stronghold, the Sisters of Carnage, the class changes, and the bug fixes now live in update 5.3.

FFXIV

* Move has been successful, 69 members active since the move.(edited)

* An interim small house has been purchased in the Goblet while we wait for the new housing area to open (Shirogane). Please do not buy private rooms in the interim house! Save your money for Final House.

* The FC has achieved Rank 8, within the span of a week. Nice job everyone!

* New "Raid" content: The Deltascape has been out for two weeks. Our first, mostly FC group cleared it last night (Friday Fun Night activity). The "Savage" mode of this 8 man encounter is out this coming Tuesday.

* Big Kudos to the officers and members for making it a very smooth transition to Goblin. Huge thanks to Jasmine for coordinating the survey on the move, and both her and Sashi for coordinating the packing of our FC house and subsequent unpacking and decorating of the interim house.

* Thanks to Jehdai for muling over items from the FC chest.

*Welcome to our brand new FFXIV Members, joining us with their first characters to the FC in July: Romulious, Ashlor'n, Moric, Qana, Renga, Tinyguy, Adric, and Yumomo. Also, welcome back to all our recent returners: you know who you are!(edited)

* The lights are still on for a little while on Gilgamesh so folks have time to collect their things from the FC house private rooms, and themselves, before moving on or joining us on Goblin. We will provide some notice before closing down the house on Gilgamesh.(edited)

* Please, please join us in the AIE Discord in channel #ffxiv to keep up to date with all the Free Company's news and events.

* Remember, we're here to help you with your Main Scenario Questline, Duties, Trials, and questions! Look for queue-buddies in FC chat and Discord before queuing up. It is not an imposition! There are perks and benefits gained by doing activities together as a group, especially if it is someone's first time through the content.

Live letter: While some of it is still being fully translated, it seemed like the focus was mostly on the various classes now that many are at max level. They didn’t seem to want to address the server crowding measures, or the new housing area as we were hoping. If you are curious about the coming class changes you can find a post on the official FF14 forums and another on the reddit group for FF14.

STO

Captain Cybyl’s Star Trek Online News Summary for week ending 7/16/2017:

1. Season 13.5 will launched July 18th, with the first new featured episode 'Brushfire’, where players will be contacted by legendary Klingon General Rodek The exciting details are on the STO website.

2. A bonus marks weekend! Earn a 50% bonus on all marks earned by playing any content.

3. C-Store having a 15% lockbox key sale this weekend!

4. The annual Risa Summer Festival is still going strong until July 20th. Get your prize vouchers for numerous prizes plus a new T6 Vorgon starship.

5. Finally, don’t forget: The AIE Fleet’s Star Bases are always seeking contributions of materiel and personnel. And once again, please check out news, backstories, patch notes, forums and other goodies at the Star Trek Online website .

Until next time, Captain Cybyl says, 'Live Long and Prosper'!

CLOSE

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

If you have a question or comment about our show, you can email us at [email protected]. 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 chat room and play along with us on our website at https://aie-guild.org/podcast-live-stream/ and our Discord server for chat at https://bit.ly/AIEPodcastDiscord . 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 segments we received this week, including...

Overly Dramatic News - @HuntsTheWind

Due to a RL wedding, we will not have a show in two weeks- but, we are planning on having one Next week and I am working on, as we speak, getting Sy and perhaps additional guests to talk about Summer of Love.

- This is Tetsemi

- This is Mewkow

- This is Mkallah

And this has been... The AIE Podcast.

On this episode of The AIE Podcast...

Mkallah: Gyms they be a flipping

Mewkow: Give me an R!

Tetsemi: The Meta is Dead, Long Live the Meta!

Mkallah: Klingons off the starboard bow...

Mewkow: But I buzzed in!

All that and more coming up right now...

Podcast Audio

Raw Video

http://youtu.be/vZrxA1vCJHU?list=PL40A0wlOV4STbIbN-wSxLAUGJ6lhuNppb

Open

Welcome to episode 278 of the the podcast celebrating the Alea Iacta Est gaming community, the die has been podcast. This is Tetsemi: To my left is Mkallah: - (catch phrase here). And to my right is Mewkow: (Greetings Gamers). This week we are joined by special guests Ben the Mage who is here to talk to us about AIE in WoW and Nerdtacular Welcome!

Ok, we’ll be digging into WoW and Nerdactular shortly, but first, let’s cover this week’s news...

AIE News

Community

Nerdtacular is rolling along! The first full day of content is over and we’re into the second day as we record this. The Paul and Storm concert was epic and they, of course, finished with the Pirate Song (Happy R!) along with many well placed X was the name of cover band.

The Story Time and Drawing with Scott and Turpster was amazing and really needs to be an ongoing segment somewhere in the Frogpants portfolio.

And of course it wouldn’t be the Frogpants All-Stars without controversy and technology fails, but they powered on through and can’t wait for the final this afternoon.

Stop by and check out all the vendors (in fact we swiped Mkallah from her booth, thanks to Kiki for booth sitting while we record) and see what the amazing community has created.

Oh and one last thing, the Pokemon gym battles and raid battles are in full bloom. There is a gym right at the vendor area for Nerdtacular and it is constantly switching hands between Team Mystic and Team Valor (led by Brian Ibbott), although somehow both teams were caught off guard and Team Instinct held the gym for a while.

WoW

See Game News

SWTOR

SWTOR Escape Pod Cast 200: The Meta is Dead, Long Live the Meta

http://www.newoverlords.com/swtor-escape-pod-cast-200-the-meta-is-dead-long-live-the-meta/

This week @AIESema, @MaxTheGrey and Astromech EPC-200 talk about the five class/spec changes that have been announced so far and debate how it might affect the "meta".

STO

Captain Cybyl’s Star Trek Online News Summary for week ending 7/1/2017:

1. Season 13.5 will launch July 18th. In the first new featured episode 'Brushfire’, players will be contacted by legendary Klingon General Rodek, voiced by Tony Todd. The mission is to raid a secret Son’a prison to free a special prisoner: former Klingon Chancellor Martok, who is key to stopping the Tzenkethi advance. The exciting details are on the STO website.

2. For the upcoming Season 13.5 story arc, STO announced the newest addition to the cast: J.G. Hertzler. He will do the voice the of former Klingon Chancellor Martok, the character he portrayed and made famous in the TV series Star Trek: Deep Space 9.

3. The Kobayashi Maru Event returns this weekend until July 3rd. This is the famous no-win Starfleet Academy training scenario that cadet James T. Kirk hacked to win the no-win scenario. Test your captain skills attempting to beat the event and win awesome prizes. See the STO website for more info.

4. A new backstory has been posted to the STO website blog June 29th, entitled 'Retaking the Test' which relates one Starfleet captain’s emotional reaction to having been ordered to retake the hopeless, no-win Kobayashi Maru Scenario. Should the entire Alliance be ordered take it as well? Find out at the STO website for this intense story.

5. C-Store and Zen sale weekend! Buying Zen for the C-Store awards bonus Zen to the transaction! But wait, there’s more: a 20% discount on everything in the C-Store sweetens deal! One more thing: there is a 20% sale on packs. And lastly, buy a 20-key bundle and get a free ultimate tech crafting upgrade.

6. The annual Risa Summer Festival is still going strong until July 20th. There is still plenty of time to win prize vouchers for numerous prizes plus a new T6 Vorgon starship. Prize lists and starship stats are available on the STO website.

7. Finally, don’t forget: The AIE Fleet’s Star Bases are always seeking contributions of materiel and personnel. And once again, please check out news, backstories, patch notes, forums and other goodies at the Star Trek Online website .

Until next time, Captain Cybyl says, 'Live Long and Prosper'!

TSW

The Secret World Legends has launched and Tetsemi and The_Hordling have been playing around with it. The tutorial section is much improved and the story flow to start is much smoother and helps you get into the world and in character. It’s free to play, with 1 character slot if you’re brand new and 3 character slots if you were previously subscribed to The Secret World or are a Patreon contributor.

GAME NEWS

In the Tomb of Sargeras raid, there are several clickable runes hidden across the raid. Each rune can only be clicked once per lockout and will transform the player into Gul'dan with a new set of abilities. More importantly, it will turn you hostile to the rest of the raid!

http://www.wowhead.com/news=266554/guldan-transformation-in-tomb-of-sargeras-raid

CLOSE

And that’s our show for tonight. While the chatroom begins suggesting show titles, we want to thank Ben The Mage and our very special guests for joining us.

If you have a question or comment about our show, you can email us at [email protected]. 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://bit.ly/AIEPodcastDiscord . 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

Next time, we’ll be talking to Be Announced . So until then, AIE...

This is Tetsemi

This is Mkallah

This is Mewkow

And this has been... The AIE Podcast.

On this episode of The AIE Podcast...

Tetsemi: Nerdtacular starts in FIVE DAYS

Mkallah: And we are kind of excited

Mewkow:We have game updates

Tetsemi: Including Captain Cybyl’s STO writeup

Mkallah:: Plus Abovan is here to talk about Final Fantasy XIV

All that and more coming up right now...

Podcast Audio

Raw Video

http://youtu.be/1v3V_OX7ChI

Open

Welcome to episode #277 of the the podcast celebrating the Alea Iacta Est gaming community, the die has been podcast. This is Mewkow: To my left is Tetsemi - (One second, updating my Nerdtacular prep spreadsheet). And to my right is Mkallah: (busy making chicken thingies for the upcoming road trip). This week we are joined by special guest Abovan who is here to talk to us about AIE in FFXIV Welcome!

Ok, we’ll be digging into FFIXV shortly, but first, let’s talk about next weekend’s upcoming event, Nerdtacular and get into this week’s news...

Nerdtacular preview and thoughts:

Tetsemi:

Just a brief WoW update, I got my rogue to 110 and about ½ way through the class story (still need to finish two leveling zones) and got concordance on my other 110’s (Mage, DK, Paladin, and Druid) and now working on their off-spec weapons.

Nerdtacular is one of my favorite get together’s for the AIE guild and the greater Frogpants community. There’s a ton to do both at Nerdtacular and at the Snowbird resort as well. Non-nerdtacular activities I’d recommend. Take the tram to the top of the mountain for the view (if you’re okay with heights) and ride the mountain coaster. The coaster takes you through the forest and some very pretty sites. If you’ve got kids with you, go for the wristband.

For Nerdtacular itself, check out the game room (We miss you Ralffie) and you may find a new favorite game to play or watch.

Cyberwaif:

As always, my computer time is nil, but I am getting back into my first love, RPGs. Our old Monday group is back together, and we have gone through two weeks of a new game that was recently kick started, City of Mist. The starter PDF is available at https://www.cityofmist.co/. It’s a noir game where everyone is the mortal representation of a mythical power. Though, Tet may be the human embodiment of too much gin. We are playing through a premade adventure, trying to solve three mysterious murders and a robbery, preferably before Halloween night. My Thor’s Day thunder group has been moved to Woden’s Day, though we are on a hiatus due to real life schedules. And, my every other Friday group with the GnGs crew is in full swing! Great game so far and the DM has a good combination of battle and player development, just like I like it. Oh, and I am playing a Cthulhu powered crazy warlock from Thay, which makes things….. Interesting. If you want to follow along, we do stream and the the game is available after the fact on their Yourtube channel and on Itunes, search for Geeks and Geeklets. The D&D game is marked “The Forgotten Prince.” And, word to the wise- this game is saltier than a drunken raid night. You have been warned.

Now, to piggy back on what Tet said. Yes, if you are staying at Snowbird, it is good to plan for a free day to do all of the activities and get a wristband! In years past, if you did the buffet breakfast, you got a free tram ticket, so if they still do that, it is a great savings. We like to take the tram up and then take the mile hike down to the ski lift. As for food, it is expensive, but, we love the Aerie, especially if they have any happy hour deals going. And, the Atrium opens at 7 for coffee and breakfast. For food, we also regularly take a trip into SLC for Sushi Groove- the sushi is great, the music can be loud, and they have fun desserts. Check them out at http://www.sushigrooveutah.com/. We also hit up the Target down the mountain for room food like lunch meat and yogurt since the rooms have small refrigerators.

As for NT itself, besides all of the panels and the concert, there is the soon to be world famous game room, occasional CAH and Munchkin games in the halls- and as a word of note, bring your own games to play, and sometimes pick up D&D or Star Wars games. Usually there are a handful of vendors, I know for sure there will be the Tadpool collective, Nevermore, Jules, Gates of Imagination, myself and we will also be carrying some of Leontines crafts as welll. There is the meet and greet on Thursday which is the official start to Nerdtacular and I know a fair few of us are doing a 1920s Disney cosplay. Saturday is always the coplay spectacular, though some people do light cosplay on Friday as well.

Mewkow-

Beyond FF14, which we will focus on shortly, I’ve been spending a bit of time in WoW with the _curiously_ timed launch of Tomb of Sargeras.

I’ve finally been spending a bit of time with Zelda on the Switch. Bringing that with me.

Nerdtacular - Arriving Tuesday via plane. Getting a suv. Stopping before the climb to stock up. Bring these items…

Hills.

Central activity area.

Slalom.

Zip lines

coaster

Various food options.

WATER.

Gift shops.

Moths, and other wildlife.

Mewkow- And now, this week’s news!

AIE News

Community

Gretschen, on the forums, has started new blog about D&D, board games, and other table top RPG’s and would love to have folks check it out

http://forum.myextralife.com/topic/57428-starting-a-new-blog/

WoW

Wowhead has a good write-up of the Warcraft Class Design AMA on Reddit

http://www.wowhead.com/news=266435/all-the-developer-responses-to-the-warcraft-class-design-reddit-ama

Didn’t get your Blizzcon tickets? Well, you have another shot. The new hall at the Anaheim convention center will be useable and Blizzard opened up more tickets - Wednesday, July 5 at 7:00 p.m. Pacific Time. on Universe.com

http://www.wowhead.com/news=266314/blizzcon-tickets-round-3-july-5-7-00-p-m-pt

SWTOR

SWTOR Escape Pod Cast 199: Balancing Act

http://www.newoverlords.com/swtor-escape-pod-cast-199-balancing-act/

This week @AIESema, @MaxTheGrey and Astromech EPC-199 walk through the "feedback" posts from Charles, Eric and Keith and then deep dive into the class balance outline that's been posted recently.

FFXIV

See GAME NEWS below

STO

We have Captain Cybyl’s Star Trek Online News Summary for week ending 6/25/2017:

1. The annual Risa Summer Festival is still going strong until July 20th. There is still plenty of time to win prize vouchers for new vanity pets, beachwear, mini-powerboards, jetpacks, a new T6 Vorgon starship and much, much more. Prize lists and starship stats are available on the Star Trek Online website.

2. A new 'Endeavor' system will be coming soon to STO in an upcoming update. Every 2 - 3 days, a new Endeavor mini-mission will begin. No need to hail an admiral and get a lengthy briefing, just jump in and go. Captains are free to pick and choose any mini-missions, each of which earn huge varieties of immediate rewards for captains and their fleets. The STO website says it all.

3. Two new backstories were posted to the STO website blog:

The June 7th posting, 'Cold Dishes', hints at a sadistic Klingon prison warden’s plot to overthrow the entire Klingon Empire!

The June 22nd posting, 'A First’s Tale', relates a Jem’Hadar prisoner’s tale of capture, imprisonment and survival under horrific 'experimentation' by the sadistic Klingon warden.

Both stories are an essential must-read for the upcoming story arc.

4. Lifetime subscriptions for PC players! From now until July 27th, lifetime subscriptions are discounted by $100 to $199! Get yourself a lifetime of Star Trek bliss!

5. Star Trek Online has joined up with the Razer Paid-to-Play Program. Starting soon, you’ll have the option to play STO through the Razer Cortex gaming portal and begin earning Razer’s zSilver currency for every minute you play the game. Use your zSilver to purchase gaming keyboards, gaming mice, headsets and much more from Razer and other participating dealers. The exciting details are waiting for you on the STO website.

6. Starship news: The Constitution and Miranda class cruisers have had their looks updated to match the TV and movie configurations. Also, Ferengi starship campaigns have been added to the Admiralty systems.

7. A 23th century R&D promotion, starting June 22nd through July 5th, will give captains a chance to win a T6 faction-specific Temporal Cruiser whenever an R&D pack is purchased from the C-Store and opened.

8. Finally, don’t forget: The AIE Fleet’s Star Bases are always seeking contributions of materiel and personnel. And once again, please check out news, backstories, patch notes, forums and other goodies at the Star Trek Online website .

And with that, let’s get back to Abovan and find out what’s going on in FFXIV

GAME NEWS

Stormblood! Blood of storms!

Show notes full.

Place in queue, 2045

Oh, and a DDOS attack. Fun!

Stormblood is here!

Highlights

New lands, Al Amigho, Doma

Returning and new characters to adventure with,

New main scenario quests and OMG a lot of side quests!

Combat skill revamp! Some gained, some lost, but simplified skills and reduced skill bloat.

New UI elements for each job and for MSQ

Quick, non spoiler lore intro.

Gilgamesh? Still locked.

Cross server parties

Want to start but can't get on Gilgamesh? We have a linkshell on Goblin. Join the FFXIV channel in discord for details.

How to get started.

PC

MacOS

Steam

PS4

Each one has a different license. One sub can cover all platforms, but you need the license to play on that platform.

Class catch-ups. Story catch-ups. Tomato ketchup.

CLOSE

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

If you have a question or comment about our show, you can email us at [email protected]. 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....

On this episode of The AIE Podcast...

Mew: We are talking to ourselves

Mkallah: There are Rusty Ashes of Creation?

Tetsemi:: Keeping up with Broken Shore

Mew: Are you ready for Stormblood?

Mkallah: We have Captain Cybyl’s STO update

All that and more coming up right now...

Podcast Audio

Raw Video

http://youtu.be/gVRCyAGntoQ

Open

Welcome to episode #276 of the the podcast celebrating the Alea Iacta Est gaming community, the die has been podcast. This is Tetsemi. To my left is Mewkow (Greetings, Gamers). And, to my right is Mkallah (Hey, guys, there are dark chocolate fig cakes in the guild kitchen). We are our own guests again!

Ok, we’ll be digging into News shortly, but first, let’s talk about what we have been up to.

Tetsemi

Got through the Druid Class Order Hall and Artifact Quest line (Tank/Melee DPS) and just getting caught up on the Broken Shore quest line (stuck on the 12 wq’s). Once I get caught up, I’ll start on my Rogue. Also have been working on my crafting a bit, it’s very much a slog on alts, compared to previous expansions, so not focusing too much on it.

Dabbling in SWTOR a bit, checking out Iokath and it’s dailies. Trying to find time to get into either MFN or an operation, but days have been very busy.

Mewkow - In FF14, finally got my Bard to ilevel 230, so I’ll be running the final dungeons for Heavensward and will be ready for the expansion. Once that is done, I’ll try to grind a bit of Gil, and level gathering and crafting classes to try and have those ready for Stormblood. FC has been quite active lately, likely due to expansion hype. Sadly, new players can’t join us on Gilgamesh, but lots of returning players are appearing. I will be joining in the Early Access play on the 16th, which should give me plenty of time to get pretty far in before WoW drops the Tomb in everyone’s laps. Not very subtle of them to have it come out on the same day as Stormblood, which has been a known date for quite a while. Thoughts?

And speaking of WoW, paladin is 110 now and with the partial catch-up of artifact knowledge, and some AP grinding, is closely catching up to my warrior so I can have the two tank types ready for Tomb. Both my FERT druid and worgen warrior are nearly at knowledge level 40 and a couple traits away from concordance. Once I get them to 40, I’ll be sharing the knowledge love around to my many alts. My belf rogue is waiting for the knowledge boost before going too much deeper in that story.

In SWTOR, I have been moving forward in the Fallen Empire storyline with my Bounty Hunter.

In non MMO gaming, I am currently exploring the many mods that are being made for Fallout 4, now that the game is in a more final state as far as DLC goes. There are some impressive DLC like mods out there, adding tons of story and lore to the game. Some even feature voice acting, and add new factions to the game, like the Enclave from Fallout 3, and even NCR armor and power armors from other groups.

A while back, I managed to get my hands on an Oculus, and I’m seeing the promise coming there. I saw a new controller being kickstarted that will bring ‘touch’ to VR by having haptic feedback in a glove. The fact that it is aiming to be compatible with all the existing VR headsets is promising because the more VR becomes interchangeable in tech, the strong it becomes as a whole.

For a recent real life leveling event, I got a nintendo switch. It came with the new Mario Kart, which will allow me to participate in some of the workplace gaming that’s been going on lately amongst the switch owners. It’s a smooth experience on the built in screen, handles nicely. I’ll be trying the new Zelda game next which I hear is rather good. The only sore spot I’ve seen with it is inventory management and equipment breakage. Oh, and suddenly losing all sense of time while playing it.

Mkallah- Phoenix Comicon- our time and misadventures. (some guildies were nice enough to come by and say Hi! We have the best guildmates and yes, there will be some meetups coming up soon after NT- maybe something in the Tempe area even. If you have suggestions of a location, let me know). Now, to Nerdtacular Prep!

Gaming- sadly, due to Phx CC and RL issues, no tabletop gaming, though I have my warlock rolled up for an upcoming 5E came starting this Friday and am halfway through her history. And, it looks like we may be back to RPGs on Monday nights, our buddy pre-ordered a new game coming out, City of Mists, and we are going to start the intro game soon. Looks like a lot of fun, modern noir, but the players are avatars of gods, heroes, even mythological weapons, they just don’t know it yet. I am going to be playing Hel, which should be a ton of fun. And, I may be taking my first foray into running an occasional game- which scared me more than it should considering that I write 20 page character histories.

Tet- Now that we have talked about what we are doing in and out of game, let’s get into this week’s news!

AIE News

Community

Ashes of Creation has released some pre-Alpha gameplay footage that looks very cool. The KickStarter has completed and the team wanted to show off how things look so far in the game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9b_hp9La78g

Check out some of the other videos on their channel as well.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfbi2EvzQmIJ55TJvZumNZw/videos

And discussions are going on in the forums - http://forum.myextralife.com/topic/57396-ashes-of-creation/

Also a reminder that there’s a discovery post for interest in Destiny 2 and which platform you will be playing on in the forums - http://forum.myextralife.com/topic/57425-destiny-2-discovery/

Imperium Ludi

A reminder there is a community run Rust server, administered by Corley, if you’d like more information or just to swing by and say hi, check out the #survival-exploration channel in the AIE Discord.

WoW

Make sure you’re up to date with the Broken Shore questline as this upcoming week is the last quest needed for the achievement and the class mount becomes available for each characters that’s completed the achievement. You can use the class mount on lower level characters of the same class once they have the ability to use mounts. It’s both a ground and flying mount as well, so it’s worth a bit of time to do the quests on Broken Shore.

If you’ve been current on your Artifact Knowledge, you should be hitting level 40 this week which is the cap, for now. Blizzard tweeted out that once you hit level 40 in Artifact Knowledge, you’ll be able to send an AK40 tome to your alts. Originally it was going to be 35, following the 5 levels below your current knowledge divided by 5, but made a design decision to make it 40.

Also don’t forget patch 7.2.5 is slated to drop June 20th, which will be the release of the Tomb of Sargeras raid.

SWTOR

SWTOR Escape Pod Cast 195: Free Droid Companion

This week @AIESema, @MaxTheGrey and Astromech EPC-195 talk about the HK-51 mission line, how to get him as a companion, and what our favorites parts are of this older but still relevant content.

SWTOR Escape Pod Cast 196: Have Roadmap, Will Travel

This week @AIESema, @MaxTheGrey and Astromech EPC-196 talk about the new producer's roadmap that was just published and what the Summer of SWTOR is shaping up to be.

MFN Is imperial side this week and next week will be republic.

FFXIV

The next expansion, Stormblood, is nearly here. Those that have pre-ordered the expansion can start in Early Access play on June 16th at 2am Pacific time, with the official start being on June 20th. (Nice try WoW).

There are several class previews available online to give you an idea of how your classes are changing. I am looking forward to the changes coming for Bard as they are finally fixing the class back to its pre Heavensward mobile glory, while giving the songs a much more synergizing role in battles. You can find this and all other class information videos on youtube by searching for Stormblood Class changes, and the name of the class. You will also find some good videos on the two new classes; Red Mage and Samurai.

STO

Captain Cybyl’s Star Trek Online News Summary for week ending 6/4/2017:

1. It is that time of year for the annual Risa Lohlunat Festival! This event is happening June 8th to July 20th. A New daily event, the Biathlon, has been added. Win prize vouchers for new vanity pets, beachwear, mini-powerboards, jetpacks, and much, much more. The Annual Summer Event Starship is a new T6 Vorgon (NOT Vogon) Ryn’Kodan Carrier! For a complete listing of prizes and starship stats please visit the Star Trek Online website.

2. A new backstory has been posted to the STO website blog on May 26th, entitled 'Fortunes of War and Peace'. If a player miraculously receives a smuggler’s Amarie Heavy Escort as a prize in a random R&D Pack, this backstory explains it’s existence. Get a chance for a new career after retirement from Starfleet!

3. A Duty Officer weekend! From Thursday, June 1st, to Monday, June 5th, playing any Duty Officer content that provides Commendation XP shall yield an additional 50% XP bonus! Also, the annual Particle Scanning Event at the Starfleet Academy campus, will again reward additional Duty Officers.

4. What a coincidence! The C-Store is having a 20% off Duty officer pack sale this weekend. But wait! There’s more: during the previously mentioned Duty Officer Weekend, opening ANY Duty Officer packs purchased on the C-Store will yield a FREE additional green or better Duty Officer.

5. Don’t forget: The AIE Fleet’s Star Bases are always seeking contributions of materiel and personnel. And once again, please check out news, backstories, UI patch notes, forums, commentary, and other goodies at the Star Trek Online website .

Until next time, Captain Cybyl signing off

GAME NEWS

CLOSE

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

...

On this episode of The AIE Podcast...

Tetsemi: Comicon is coming!

Mewkow: Help create the Ashes of Creation

Mkallah: Any plans for Summer of Love?

Tetsemi: Come for the fun nights!

Mewkow: And, we are our own guest tonight

All that and more coming up right now...

Podcast Audio

Raw Video

http://youtu.be/HaRKX6AU0wY

Open

Welcome to episode #275 of the the podcast celebrating the Alea Iacta Est gaming community, the die has been podcast. This is Mkallah: To my left is Tetsemi: - (I have spreadsheets for my spreadsheets). And to my right is Mewkow (Greetings, Gamers!). This week we are joined by ourselves and we are here to talk to us about AIE Welcome!

Ok, we’ll be chatting shortly, but first, let’s cover this week’s news...

AIE News

Community

Phoenix Comicon is coming up next weekend and several AIE folks will be in attendance as vendors and attendees. If you want to see Mkallah and Nevermore, stop by booth 501/503 and browse their wares! If you want to see Alachaas and Leontine (Ozarin) stop by the 501st Legion Outpost and you be able to catch a glimpse of them or take a shot at them in the Shoot a Trooper game! Bouvi will be at booth 396 & 398 (Hero Initiative), stop by and say hi!

Keep an eye out on Meetup.com to see if any of the Phoenix guildies are meeting up at Comicon or for a food gathering nearby!

Imperium Ludi

With the recent announcement by Bungie and Blizzard that the Destiny 2 game will be utilizing the Blizzard Launcher and the Friends/Chat/Voice capabilities it provides, Durus has started a new poll asking folks that are buying Destiny 2 which platform they’ll be playing on. Consider this a check of the community for possible AIE organizational activities :)

http://forum.myextralife.com/topic/57425-destiny-2-discovery/

Galadeon brings us a new update for Ashes of Creation, they’ve launched a Kickstarter and it’s fully funded, you still have 11 days (from this recording) if you want to contribute and have a chance to get into the alpha. There is a new video up for the Kickstarter, and I, personally, am waiting on the 3rd and 4th Nodes videos.

http://forum.myextralife.com/topic/57396-ashes-of-creation/

NOMADS

Corley is hosting a Rust server and a very tight knit community has been actively playing on it. The server is being kept up to date with patches and other features as they become available. If you’d like to try Rust out and play with AIE folks, drop by the #survival-exploration channel on Discord for more information.

WoW

Still working on getting flying in Legion? Some tips and tricks for tracking what you need to do and how to get a little edge on the harder factions to get to revered can be found in the forum thread http://forum.myextralife.com/topic/57404-tracking-your-legion-pathfinder-status/

Summer of Love (slated for the beginning of August) planning is in full swing. If you’d like to run an event, contact Syreyne on the forums, in Discord, or on one of her many alts in game! There will be a CooP run, a Running of the X (most like in conjunction with CTR guild like last time), a Remembrance Day meet up at the Shrine of the Fallen Soldier and a march to Orgrimmar. With Ralff’s passing this year, it will be especially meaningful for the guild. Keep an eye on the Discord channels and forums for the other games as well for their activities!

SWTOR

Roka_imo (on the forums) has rejoined the Wars among the Stars and the forum posting contains a lot of good information for folks recently returning to the game as well as guild activities and things to focus on in game while leveling up.

http://forum.myextralife.com/topic/57419-back-again-into-the-wars-amoung-the-stars/

Mandatory Fun Night will be on the pub side this week and then imp for the next two, continuing the rotation and getting both factions some love!

The summer "roadmap" should be published soon from Bioware. We saw a few hints of what to come earlier from Keith, but the full roadmap with, hopefully, a lot more information should be out in the next couple of weeks.

The next boss of the new operation "Gods from the Machine" is entering testing.

SWTOR Ops Wrapup

Imperial Teams:

Lord of Light is finishing a couple week break with people finishing up school, traveling for work and getting ready for summer.

Sith with Unlimited Power ran Eternity Vault and 4/5 bosses in Karagga's Palace with help from friends. It was a great night for all involved.

Republic Team:

Soldiers of Light ran Dread Fortress and had a great night as a team. Looking forward to tomorrow night.

All the teams are fully staffed, but, keep an eye out on Discord on Mon., Wed., and Thur., because real life happens and fill-ins get needed,lol.

SWTOR Escape Pod Cast 193: I Owe Kath Daily

http://www.newoverlords.com/swtor-escape-pod-cast-193-i-owe-kath-daily/

This week @AIESema, @MaxTheGrey and Astromech EPC-193 do a walkthrough of Iokath dailies and talk about tips and tricks.

SWTOR Escape Pod Cast 194: Stronghold Secrets

http://www.newoverlords.com/swtor-escape-pod-cast-194-stronghold-secrets/

This week @AIESema, @MaxTheGrey and Astromech EPC-194 talk about Strongholds, favorite decorations and tips for using your prosperity as a weapon.

FFXIV

From Durus and the rest of the FF14 officer team:

The Data Center moves for the FFXIV NA servers completed without any significant incident and servers were actually back online ahead of schedule. One thing that does impact AIE's server on the Aether Datacenter, Gilgamesh, is that it is now locked to both character creation and paid transfers. Neither is currently possible as they are working to stabilize population on high pop servers through the launch of Stormblood next month.

However, the officers are keenly aware of the impact this has on recruitment and the the desire of existing members to play with friends new to the game. We're following things closely and while some are concerned and looking at the possibility of server moves, etc., at this time there are no options or incentives in place for us to undertake such a thing but we are eagerly awaiting Square Enix's decisions on how the want to attempt to balance populations. We're hurrying up and waiting, in the meantime let the fun continue.

Our Final Fantasy Fun Nights, @9PM EDT on Fridays, have seen some increased participation and we're working on Alexander 8-man raids. Last Friday we completed the second stage of these raids and we'll be focusing on "Creator", the last four levels of Alexander, moving forward.

STO

Captain Cybyl’s Star Trek Online News Summary for week ending 5/21/2017:

1. The last featured episode, ’Mirrors and Smoke’, released April, 25th. Will be offering new 4th week rewards for replays until Tuesday, May 23rd

2. Kipleigh Brown, the voice actress who voiced Lukari Captain Kuumaarke in many featured episodes, was interviewed by the STO community manager, Ambassador Kael. The interview audio has been posted on the STO blog. A fascinating and talented voice actress indeed!

3. A 20% off starship sale in the C-Store is happening from Thursday, May 18th through Monday, May 22nd! Now is the time for captains to get the ship of their dreams!

4. A bonus marks weekend! From Thursday, May 18 to Monday, May 22nd, playing any game content that provides Fleet or Reputation marks as a reward will give you an additional 50% bonus!

5. The stats of the recently released T6 Light Cruisers as well as the newly upgraded and re-released T1 Miranda class Light Cruiser have been posted to the STO blog.

6. Don’t forget: The AIE Fleet’s Star Bases are always seeking contributions of materiel and personnel. And once again, please check out news, backstories, UI patch notes, forums, commentary, and other goodies at the Star Trek Online website .

Until next time, Captain Cybyl signing off

And with that, let’s get back to ourselves and find out what’s going on in AIE..

GAME NEWS

Tesemi:

WoW

Got my druid to 110 and now working through the class order hall and artifact story lines for her.

Got my Mage, DK and Warrior current on the Broken Shore quest line so far, with my Paladin being held back by the do 12 WQ’s on the Broken Shore. My druid has done the opening scenario and is starting to work on the story line.

Going to work on leveling my Rogue next after I get my druid finished on the Order Hall/Artifact Weapon quests.

SWTOR

Working on Iokath dailies on both Dark and Light side characters, waiting for more story to occur, but enjoying it so far. Almost maxxed out the faction for each.

Going to work on getting my other characters to end game, have a couple going through the KotFE story right now and a backlog stuck on Ilum (yes I’m a completionist :P)

Mewkow:

Finished second run through Fallout 4 doing BoS faction. First run through was railroad to institute.

Tanked first heroic guldan kill two get the AOTC achievement. Had also gotten the elisande kill before it. Elisande extra rings. Guldan extra add.

Leveling paladin using legion invasions for research.

Started playing with VR in oculus. Learned I need more room. Lots of potential.

Prepping for FF14. Discussions with admin on transfers and what's involved. Pros and cons of staying or moving. Redid my system to support new expansion.

Social opportunities at work due to gaming. Discuss.

Mkallah: Most of my time has been has been spent getting ready for Phoenix Comicon wishing I was gaming, somewhere, on a computer, with friends at a table, with friends over roll20, some D&D with some great people from the Tadpool. Oh, and speaking of gaming- I may have joined a new D&D game….. to later find out that it is also a podcast! My buddy was looking for another player for the group he recently joined since they were going from World of Darkness to D&D and. Started working on my character (yes, I finally get to play a 5th ed Warlock) and getting to know the rest of the crew (great group of geeks who totally know their stuff) when it was mentioned that the gr

On this episode of The AIE Podcast...

Mkallah: Find the Path

Mewkow: And the Blue Prints

Tetsemi: LOTRO turns 10!

Mkallah: Step into the Far Edge of Fate

Mewkow: And, we have Arv and Apolas here to chat about SWTOR

All that and more coming up right now...

Podcast Audio

Raw Video

http://youtu.be/JSonAKjDOZk

Open

Welcome to episode #274 of the the podcast celebrating the Alea Iacta Est gaming community, the die has been podcast. This is Tetsemi: To my left is Mkallah: - (Hey, guys, there is carrot cake in the guild kitchen). And to my right is Mewkow (Greetings, Gamers) This week we are joined by special guests Arv and Apolas who is here to talk to us about AIE in SWTOR Welcome!

Mewkow - Finished Andromeda. Enjoyed the story. Waiting for the DLC. Now diving back into WoW more full time to catch up on 7.2 content. Not too far from getting revered rep for the final piece of pathfinder 2 flying. Will now be able to dig into the new SWTOR content since the wow rep grind is a dailies thing.

Tetsemi - FERT Killed Gul’dan on Normal making this the second raid content, this expansion, we’ve killed before it has been nerfed or the new raid content has launched. Tetsemi has unlocked flying and is halfway to exalted with the Armies of Legionfall. I’ve completed the Class story line on my Mage and Death Knight as well, and working through the Paladin storyline, which is really good so far, as we’ve invaded a demon homeworld providing a daring rescue of our forces and inducted the first Night Elf Priest into the Paladinhood. Hopefully Tyrande didn’t notice we recruited one of her priests.

Got through the initial storyline on Iokath with my Pub Trooper and Imp Sorc, each ultimately deciding to stick with their original faction, although the decision for my Trooper was more difficult than I had thought. When I get to the Bounty Hunter, Smuggler, and Agent it’ll be interesting to see which direction I got. I’m planning on having at least one or two characters go cross-faction just to see how it plays out and fits into their storyline.

Ok, we’ll be digging into the Galaxy far, far away shortly, but first, let’s cover this week’s news...

AIE News

Community

Don’t forget to check the guild calendar out and see what’s going on in all the games that AIE is involved in! Want to lead an activity or have an event or raid team that needs to be on the calendar, just drop a note to the officers in #lfo in AIE Discord or e-mail the officers at aie-guild.org and we can make sure your event is added.

https://wiki.aie-guild.org/index.php?title=Guild_Calendar

Imperium Ludi

Galadeon is keeping us up date with the progress on Ashes of Creation. A new video has been published describing the Nodes in more detail and, I quote Galadeon, “The housing stuff planned is insane”

http://forum.myextralife.com/topic/57396-ashes-of-creation/#entry955435

WoW

Shout out to the guildies for helping Wobbley sort out the last piece of the achievement he needed for the Suramar quest line. Love to see guildies jumping in and helping folks with questions in the forums.

http://forum.myextralife.com/topic/57417-perhaps-im-a-bit-lost-but/

How are you finding patch 7.2? Have you gotten PathFinder part 1 & 2 done and taking to the skies? Are you having flashbacks with the treasure goblin to the Isle of Thunder and the chest room?

This week, if you grab the quest from your journal or the Archmage Timear in Dalaran you can get 5k order resources for completing 20 WQ’s. Between the emissary quests and the Broken Shore dailies it’s fairly easy to hit the 20 WQ’s in a few hours. Also you get 50% more reputation gain from each WQ, so if you’re trying to gain reputation, go grind!

EVE

Eve Online has a great news writeup about current game information and new things coming down in the future.

Looking for new blue prints? Think you’re all that and a bag of chips? Well the Blood Raider Shipyards await the brave capsuleer and friends (always bring friends). Blood Raider shipyards provide a unique opportunity for capsuleers from across the cluster to assault Blood Raider manufacturing facilities and military staging points,salvaging blueprints that will allow the construction of formidable Blood Raider capital vessels.

New to Eve and not quite sure what’s it all about? There’s a new introduction video that was introduced as part of the ongoing project to improve the New Player Experience and give a more meaningful journey through character creation, a new cinematic video has arrived to brief capsuleers on the trials and tribulations of forging their own legacy in New Eden.

https://updates.eveonline.com/date/2017-05-09/

SWTOR

Have you had a chance to play the new content? Confused about what’s going on? Well both the Escape Pod Cast, Dulfy’s, and Arv and Apolas can help!

For those looking for a comprehensive guide and story details, Dulfy’s has you covered.

http://dulfy.net/2017/04/19/swtor-iokath-story-and-dailies-guide/

First impressions from the Escape Pod Cast crew can be found on the latest episode

SWTOR Escape Pod Cast 190: Iokath Expanse First Impressions

http://www.newoverlords.com/swtor-escape-pod-cast-190-iokath-expanse-first-impressions/

This week @AIESema, @MaxTheGrey and Astromech EPC-190 talk through first impressions on Iokath, the new operation and the other bits 5.2 that we managed to check out on day 1 of the update.

And they’ll go more in depth next podcast episode with story thoughts, which side they decided to join (or see if Max’s Merc is still deciding), and how they were judged by Tyth.

For more discussion we’ll go to Apolas and Arv after the news.

LOTRO

Thanks to Dux on the forums and in Discord for letting us know about the LOTRO 10th Anniversary celebrations

Celebrate LOTRO's 10th birthday with fireworks in Bree, and a new quest series starting at the Party Tree in Hobbiton. New horses, costumes, emotes, and decor items. Take a break from the Black Gate and come back to town. Links to the forum post and to the LOTRO official site are below.

http://forum.myextralife.com/topic/57418-lotros-10th-anniversary/

https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthread.php?653142-Anniversary-Festival-Tokens-Time-Saving-Guide&s=e86d01f560410d28fce46f441cb407a6

STO

We have Captain Cybyl’s Star Trek Online News Summary for week ending 4/23/2017:

1. The last featured episode, ’Survivor’, released April, 3rd. Will be offering new 2nd week rewards for replays until Tuesday, April 25th, whereupon the 3rd week replay rewards shall begin.

2. Beginning Tuesday, April 25th, a new story arc, 'Escalation’, will be introduced with a new featured episode, ’Mirrors and Smoke’. Assist the Lukari expedition explore a heretofore unknown artificial nebula that mysteriously appears on the star charts. Surprises await. Rewards shall be announced as Tuesday draws near. Free desktop wallpaper shall also be made available to download to celebrate this new release as well.

3. A new 'Privateer Lockbox' is being introduced next week with a new T6 Privateer Heavy Raider class starship as the main prize. Also included shall be exotic gadgets, hunter-seeker drones and drone systems, advanced disruptor weapons, and much more. Also, a new T6 Privateer warship class starship, privateer and saboteur items shall also be introduced in the Lobi store as well.

4. Double XP weekend, Captains! From Thursday, April 20th to Monday, April 24th, playing any content that provides skill points and expertise will reward a 100% (2x) Bonus.

5. A 15% sale on Keys in the C-Store is happening from Tuesday, April 18th through Monday, May 1st! Now is a great time to load up on lockbox Keys and grab those ships, weapons, equipment, etc, you’ve been eyeing.

6. Don’t forget: The AIE Fleet’s Star Bases are always seeking contributions of materiel and personnel. And once again, please check out news, backstories, patch notes, forums, commentary, and other goodies at the Star Trek Online website .

TSW

There is a beta for Secret World Legends- and I’d love to tell you all about it, but….. Redacted

FFXIV

http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/topics/detail/7ee22ba181fbc53f3579bb5d97e21a459f2ab5b3

Patch 3.57, improving on the 3.5 patch Far Edge of Fate, has dropped, bringing with it a number of quality of life improvements centered around catching up.

Materials needed for Anima weapons have had their drop amount increased, and a number of turn-ins have had their required amounts decreased, allowing for faster completion.

The weekly gear drop restrictions for raiding in Dun Scaith have been removed, allowing multiple runs per week. More gears dropping in the Alexander raids, mostly because Mkallah is bleeding into the worlds.

A number of smaller bug fixes are also live, all of which can be found at the link in the show notes.

And with that, let’s get back to Arv and Apolas and find out what’s going on in SWTOR..

GAME NEWS

Our regular weekly events with three raid teams running, Soldiers of Light (SOL) on the Pub side, Sith with Unlimited Power (SUP) and Lords of Light (LOL) on the Imp side.

Mandatory Fun Night runs every Tuesday at 9pm server time and is open to everyone. We run Operations (raids), Boss kills, and datacron hunts among many other things that we have fun doing. Remember, attendance isn’t mandatory, but fun is.

Patch 5.2 with new Daliy Area on Iokath.

Changes to the Command XP system which rewards CXP for all kills.

New Operation (raid) titled “Gods of the Machine” being released one boss at a time over several months.

The first boss is Tyth and is available on Regular and Veteran modes.

There is a new currency that comes from these mob called Iokath Shards which with reputation level, you will be able to buy cosmetic gear, mounts and pets that several folks have fun showing off.

New achievements related to collecting Nerf pets (insert “Who you calling scruffy looking?” here)

A guide is on Dulfy’s website.

http://dulfy....