It feels a little insane to be saying that we recorded episode 40 last night of our podcast. It just doesn’t seem like we have been running that long, but quite honestly at this point we have outlasted a large number of podcasts so I guess that’s a thing. We still manage to meet up each week to record a conversation about games… and then manage to like each other enough to do the same thing almost every night throughout the week. So I guess that in itself is an accomplishment. Last night was an absolute insane show, that in it’s content but in the fact that we recorded two shows back to back. So yes we are going to be perpetrating a dirty dirty lie, and releasing the shows a week a part as though it were fresh content.

Next week Kodra was going to be out anyways, and Ash, Rae and myself are going to Pax South and as such won’t have any of our normal recording style equipment. So the first episode we recorded last night follows the normal format, but the second episode is going to be announcing a new thing we are doing. However unfortunately I am going to make you all wait until next week to find out what it is. As far as the show proper yesterday we uncovered a recent addiction to a game called Hex Cells which if I am to believe Tam, Kodra and Rae is this super chill minesweeper like game. The fact that they mentioned minesweeper pretty much flagged me as not interested at all. Additionally we talk about the upcoming 2.5 patch in Final Fantasy XIV and finally I talk about my experiences playing H1Z1 in Early Release. Then I descend into my frustrations about the Early Access model and why if you are taking money for a game… your game is “Release” but you just released a broken game.

Last night we recorded the latest episode of AggroChat actually getting an earlier start than normal. Problem being that we were down two people. Rae had apparently fallen asleep on the couch and was not around, and Tam after moving three timezones apparently forgot how they work. We might have to sort out a better time to record in the coming weeks since there is now a three hour difference between various members of our cast. Something that I think is only going to get worse when another individual that seems likely to move out to Seatle does so. Last night it felt like one of those episodes where we didn’t have much to talk about going into it, but as the night went on we managed to gather up enough words and phrases to build a show out of it.

We covered a lot of topics from Steam being an excellent source for games that would have never likely seen the light of day, like the Japanese indie game scene, to discussing the raid fight style in FFXIV and contrasting it against World of Warcraft raiding. It always feels like we don’t talk about a lot of individual games but as I edited the podcast I kept a list jotting down the titles. Over the course of the evening we talked about Final Fantasy XIV, Pokemon Alpha Sapphire and Omega Ruby, Rogue Legacy, Valdis Story, ittle Dew, World of Warcraft, Aquasphere and Adventure of Link and probably a handful mixed inbetween. It ended up being a good show, albeit a significantly shorter one considering we only had three people to discuss with rather than our normal five. This is the first show in a long time we have actually managed to constrain to roughly an hour.

I have to say it has felt a little strange to take an entire week off from recording AggroChat. Before Christmas we recorded roughly three hours of audio, that then got edited down into two episodes. As such we took last Saturday off, and it felt a bit odd coming back and recording this week. When you are on break you live in this strange time where the days don’t really have the same meaning that they do normally. I found it funny that mid day yesterday Tam asked what we were going to talk about last night… because we never really have a plan. In truth since he has been moving across country over the break, he didn’t get in much play time at anything… so questioned if he had anything to add to the conversation. However like always once the conversation started we seemed to be able to come up with plenty to talk about.

The funniest theme of last night was that apparently Kodra played nothing but sad games over the break. So each game he talked about… Tam gave it a rating of like 6 Sads out of 10. Not unsurprising Ashgar played a lot of Pokemon as did Tam and I. There was much Final Fantasy XIV to be had, and I talked about my conversion to a semi serious raider again in World of Warcraft. Once again we ran significantly longer than normal, but I think in part that is because the mega 3 hour show threw our timing off. After editing it clocks in around an hour and a half, and I think there is some really good conversation in there. Of course there are still some references that no one but the five of us will ever really get… but when I realize one of these has happened I try and make some measure of explanation. This is what happens when you get long time friends in a room and have a conversation.