Conference Call

GWJ Conference Call Episode 391

Age of Wonders III, Elder Scrolls Online, Burial at Sea Episode 2, FTL iPad, LoL April Fools, Your Emails and More!

This week Shawn, Elysium and Julian get caught up on emails!

To contact us, email [email protected]! Send us your thoughts on the show, pressing issues you want to talk about or whatever else is on your mind. You can even send a 30 second audio question or comment (MP3 format please) if you're so inclined.

Chairman_Mao's Timestamps
00.07.02 Age of Wonders III
00.15.35 Elder Scrolls Online
00.23.24 FTL iPad
00.28.08 Kerbal Space Program update
00.30.54 League of Legends April Fools
00.35.39 Your emails!

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Show credits

Music credits: 

Intro/Outtro Music - Ian Dorsch, Willowtree Audioworks

Blown Out - Broke for Free - http://brokeforfree.com/ - 35:08

Comments

I love scary movies, but have yet to get into scary games. I have just bought Outlast after watching a few lets play videos, so am looking forwards to some good scares.
As far as mentally draining games...I am a massive Halo fan, but playing online, as with COD, is just too much for me now I am approaching 40.
A couple of matches in a row are fine, but my heart is not able to take much more, as I find repeated bouts increasingly stressful and aggressive.
Julian, should we start the Gamers with Gout podcast ?
I can imagine performing the podcast, sitting with our feet in an elevated position, the gentle popping sound of painkillers being released from their packaging, the occasional moan of pain from the commentators....

pinkdino99 wrote:

Julian, should we start the Gamers with Gout podcast ?
I can imagine performing the podcast, sitting with our feet in an elevated position, the gentle popping sound of painkillers being released from their packaging, the occasional moan of pain from the commentators....

It's like a secret disease it turns out 15% of men I know have. Strange that.

I thought Heroes IV was where the series started to get weird. With Heroes V Ubi and Nival tried to drag the mechanics back to the style of III, but they did so while shoe-horning their own mythos into the franchise which didn't sit well with a lot of the fans. Never mind the fact that Heroes IV and M&M IX were essentially a reboot of the franchise continuity too.

Also Heroes III turned 15 years old last month. Raise your hand if this makes you feel old.

Ahhh! They responded to my e-mail on the podcast. I'm so happy that I just may cry. Seriously awesome. So nerding out right now. How can I go back to work now? Totally made my day!!!

Edit: Oh, and a few of the wedding guests (myself included) play werewolf/mafia via e-mail...so that would be fun. Little nervous about running it with 80 people. You are welcome to come run it!

rabbit wrote:
pinkdino99 wrote:

Julian, should we start the Gamers with Gout podcast ?
I can imagine performing the podcast, sitting with our feet in an elevated position, the gentle popping sound of painkillers being released from their packaging, the occasional moan of pain from the commentators....

It's like a secret disease it turns out 15% of men I know have. Strange that.

Nailed my mother-in-law for a while, too. Welcome to the (mostly) beer-free club! (I mean, I can still drink GF beers, but why bother?)

Opicana wrote:

Ahhh! They responded to my e-mail on the podcast. I'm so happy that I just may cry. Seriously awesome. So nerding out right now. How can I go back to work now? Totally made my day!!!

Edit: Oh, and a few of the wedding guests (myself included) play werewolf/mafia via e-mail...so that would be fun. Little nervous about running it with 80 people. You are welcome to come run it! :)

I really liked your save the date design too! Wish I could teleport there from Canada.

I think the developers did a great job with the interface for FTL's iPad port, but I respectfully disagree with the assessment that it's better than the PC's controls. I've definitely run into issues a few times now where some brawls ended badly because my crew didn't move where I thought I was moving them to, and weapon targeting isn't as smooth as using hot keys. If you have a PC and an iPad it's absolutely worth getting it for both platforms in my opinion. After spending an evening with the iPad version I jumped back to playing it on PC, but now I can play it anytime I'm flying or have a long train ride.

rabbit wrote:
pinkdino99 wrote:

Julian, should we start the Gamers with Gout podcast ?
I can imagine performing the podcast, sitting with our feet in an elevated position, the gentle popping sound of painkillers being released from their packaging, the occasional moan of pain from the commentators....

It's like a secret disease it turns out 15% of men I know have. Strange that.

I am having an eruption this week. You are right about it being the most painful thing. I have broken a lot of bones, torn ligaments, muscles, and rotator cuffs. I've been stabbed. I've had a heart attack. None of those is in the same ballpark with gout.

It's the worst thing. Well, there are worse things, but it is pretty damn bad.

Tanglebones wrote:

Nailed my mother-in-law for a while, too.

OOCT strikes again!

MeatMan wrote:
Tanglebones wrote:

Nailed my mother-in-law for a while, too.

OOCT strikes again!

Giggity

What's with these short shows, gimme 90 minutes minimum.

RolandofGilead wrote:

What's with these short shows, gimme 90 minutes minimum.

Entitled much? IMAGE(http://www.skype-emoticons.com/images/emoticon-00114-dull.png)

Nothing wrong with wanting more of something you enjoy. I appreciate the sentiment.

There's still going to be plenty of "short" shows none the less. We don't try to artificially extend or limit shows unless we're under some kind of constraint. Most of them are on Wizard time, precisely as long as they need to be.

Are we really at 391 shows? Dang man.

We used to definitely thing/worry about show length more in the past. The sweet spot is of course always Wizard Time, but I think we generally think "under an hour is too short, two hours is WAY too long" and end up somewhere in the middle. It's also definitely the case we run longer when we have guests, well developed meaty topics, or spoiler sections. Given prep for PAX, we had none of those three this week (although we're SO going to do a full Bioshock Infinite, main through BAS2 spoiler section soon).

Not a big time poster here but have listened to the cast for years. 90 minutes seems to be the sweet spot for me. But of course it is impossible for a consensus with the length of the cast. Trying to hit a certain time limit would certainly seemed forced.

In the last week, I've put in 12 or so hours of FTL on my iPad. And while I agree there's things I miss (like keyboard shortcuts), it means I can get my FTL on during my train ride to and from work.

I'm just glad that I go end-to-end, otherwise I would certainly have missed a stop or two at some point while trying to gather scrap.

Wait wait wait!

Kerbal space program is a tech tree game?

IMAGE(http://ts1.mm.bing.net/th?id=HN.607993612025990928&w=276&h=173&c=7&rs=1&p=0&pid=1.7)

Opicana wrote:

Ahhh! They responded to my e-mail on the podcast. I'm so happy that I just may cry. Seriously awesome. So nerding out right now. How can I go back to work now? Totally made my day!!!

Edit: Oh, and a few of the wedding guests (myself included) play werewolf/mafia via e-mail...so that would be fun. Little nervous about running it with 80 people. You are welcome to come run it! :)

I'm horribly offended (not really) that Fluxx wasn't mentioned. I don't know if I've ever met anyone who didn't like it. Although it says it's for up to 4, I've played with tables of 6-8 and had a blast.

Kerbal space program is a tech tree game?

Increasingly one of my favorites. Your resource is, literally, Science!

Elysium wrote:
Kerbal space program is a tech tree game?

Increasingly one of my favorites. Your resource is, literally, Science!

Awesome; I'd been holding off reinstalling the game until it had a campaign mode! The sandbox was just too overwhelming for my little brain.

Squeegee_Joe wrote:

I'm horribly offended (not really) that Fluxx wasn't mentioned. I don't know if I've ever met anyone who didn't like it. Although it says it's for up to 4, I've played with tables of 6-8 and had a blast.

Good one. I'll add that to the list. Thanks

Opicana wrote:

Ahhh! They responded to my e-mail on the podcast. I'm so happy that I just may cry. Seriously awesome. So nerding out right now. How can I go back to work now? Totally made my day!!!

Edit: Oh, and a few of the wedding guests (myself included) play werewolf/mafia via e-mail...so that would be fun. Little nervous about running it with 80 people. You are welcome to come run it! :)

I haven't played it but from what I heard on the Shut Up & Sit Down podcast Two Rooms and a Boom would be a blast to play with a large group. Although the terrorism theme may be uncomfortable and I would guess 80 people at once would be too much.

shoptroll wrote:

I thought Heroes IV was where the series started to get weird. With Heroes V Ubi and Nival tried to drag the mechanics back to the style of III, but they did so while shoe-horning their own mythos into the franchise which didn't sit well with a lot of the fans. Never mind the fact that Heroes IV and M&M IX were essentially a reboot of the franchise continuity too.
Also Heroes III turned 15 years old last month. Raise your hand if this makes you feel old.

*raises hand* I'll one-up you though: Heroes 1 will turn 20 years old next year.
Thought your analysis of the series was spot on. I was with them right up til HoMM4 (I loved those different campaigns and storyline, didn't care that it was a bit of a reboot), and they started losing me with HoMM5's expansions. I was eager to play HoMM6, played it for 20 min and then went "nope" for some weird reason I can't seem to pinpoint. Ever since then, I haven't played a game in a similar vein. Like Certis, I tried the King's Bounty games, but they never clicked. Ah well.

Tanglebones wrote:
Elysium wrote:
Kerbal space program is a tech tree game?

Increasingly one of my favorites. Your resource is, literally, Science!

Awesome; I'd been holding off reinstalling the game until it had a campaign mode! The sandbox was just too overwhelming for my little brain.

You're not alone. I tried it months back and my brain just shut down and went into "overload" mode.

Hope everyone has fun at PAX, I'm kinda jealous!!

Roke wrote:

I haven't played it but from what I heard on the Shut Up & Sit Down podcast Two Rooms and a Boom would be a blast to play with a large group. Although the terrorism theme may be uncomfortable and I would guess 80 people at once would be too much.

Never heard of it, but I'll check it out. Thanks! Off-color topics are okay later in the evening when it's just the gamers left.

Oh and I forgot: totally in agreement with the crew on FTL on the iPad. It's truly a thing of beauty, and I can't seem to stop playing. (even though I'm absolutely *terrible*)

Trying to work out what the Norwegian name you were struggling with actually was....

Eleima wrote:
shoptroll wrote:

I thought Heroes IV was where the series started to get weird. With Heroes V Ubi and Nival tried to drag the mechanics back to the style of III, but they did so while shoe-horning their own mythos into the franchise which didn't sit well with a lot of the fans. Never mind the fact that Heroes IV and M&M IX were essentially a reboot of the franchise continuity too.
Also Heroes III turned 15 years old last month. Raise your hand if this makes you feel old.

*raises hand* I'll one-up you though: Heroes 1 will turn 20 years old next year.

Tangentially, King's Quest is 30 in June since most people don't know the game launched in '83 on the PCjr.

shoptroll wrote:
Eleima wrote:
shoptroll wrote:

I thought Heroes IV was where the series started to get weird. With Heroes V Ubi and Nival tried to drag the mechanics back to the style of III, but they did so while shoe-horning their own mythos into the franchise which didn't sit well with a lot of the fans. Never mind the fact that Heroes IV and M&M IX were essentially a reboot of the franchise continuity too.
Also Heroes III turned 15 years old last month. Raise your hand if this makes you feel old.

*raises hand* I'll one-up you though: Heroes 1 will turn 20 years old next year.

Tangentially, King's Quest is 30 in June since most people don't know the game launched in '83 on the PCjr.

g

Ugh. I had a PCjr but don't think I played Sierra games until my super powerful Epson 286. It had the precursor to VGA graphics... CGA maybe? I seem to recall it rendered everything in cyan, magenta and white.

Thieves! Brigands! Brethren of the Coast! 'The Cloak and Dagger' is a loose association of rogues bound by our love for coin. Counter the Thieve's Guild absence in Tamriel, and take advantage of our website, Mumble server & black market. Join our company today!

I know the GWJ community typically coagulates into its own Guild in each MMO it plays, but with a choice of five, I'd love it if I could afford some fans of the show like myself a place to call home in The Elder Scrolls Online. Find me in-game on the North American cluster @Narathen.

Thanks!

CPLWeeks wrote:

Thieves! Brigands! Brethren of the Coast! 'The Cloak and Dagger' is a loose association of rogues bound by our love for coin. Counter the Thieve's Guild absence in Tamriel, and take advantage of our website, Mumble server & black market. Join our company today!

I know the GWJ community typically coagulates into its own Guild in each MMO it plays, but with a choice of five, I'd love it if I could afford some fans of the show like myself a place to call home in The Elder Scrolls Online. Find me in-game on the North American cluster @Narathen.

Thanks!

I like this idea quite a lot. Emergent factions FTW!