On this episode of The AIE Podcast…

Are you ready to patch?
The next ToT tournament starts tomorrow
Are Dilithum crystals the traditional gift for 15th anniversary?
64 is the new 32
Our friends Lars and Grebog are here to talk about WoW and STO and Live Service games

All that and more coming up right now…

Podcast Audio

Raw Video

http://youtu.be/x1gUF5wLWl8

Open
Welcome to episode #433 of the podcast celebrating you, the Alea Iacta Est gaming community, the die has been podcast. This is Mkallah: To my left is Tetsemi: – (catch phrase here). And to my right is Mewkow: (catch phrase here). This week we are joined by special guests Lars and Grebog! Welcome!

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

AIE News

Community
Mandatory Fun Nights

Where the fun is mandatory but the attendance is not.

Sunday – Destiny 2 8:30 pm Eastern
Monday – GW2 9:30 pm Eastern
Monday – STO 10:00 pm Eastern
Tuesday – SWTOR 9:00 pm Eastern
Wednesday – HFO Mythic+ Mayhem (WoW) 8:00 pm Eastern
Thursday- Board Game Night (1st and 3rd Thursdays) 7:00 pm Eastern/6:00 pm Central
Friday – ESO 9:00 pm Eastern
Saturday – LotRO 8:30 pm Eastern
Saturday – FFXIV (Maps) 9:30 pm Eastern
Saturday – Noob Raid (WoW) 11:00 pm Eastern

Streaming and Guild Podcast News
We have a ton of AIE member podcasts! Want to know where to find them? Look no further than here-

New Overlords Podcast (Max and Sema)
https://www.newoverlords.com

Working Class Nerds (Marcus and Nick) – NSFL
https://workingclassnerdscom.wordpress.com

Boards and Swords (Chris and Philip)
https://boardsandswords.com/blog?category=Boards%20%26%20Swords

Dr. Gameology ( Dr. Daniel Kaufmann )
https://drgameology.com/

STO – Fleet Action Report (Grebog and Nikodas)
https://www.youtube.com/@fleetactionreport

A Podcast Reborn: A FFXIV Community Podcast (Brandon aka Old Man Franks, Meagan, and Rho) – NSFL
https://www.bonusroll.gg/directory/a-podcast-reborn/

NOMADS
Fez has a Valheim server. ARK servers are still running for anyone that wants to jump in. No Man Sky is having a little chatter.

Dune Awakening – May 20th for Dune Awakening.There will be AIE in there and at least one non-officer has asked about AIE groups.

Ashes of Creation – Beta is in progress. Bhock is playing and I’m sure there are some others. Still a ways out for official release.

WoW
Patch 11.1 releases this Tuesday Feb 25th, and Season 2 begins the following week on March 4th!

Per usual, many class and system changes will come with the patch, and the season brings a new raid and mythic+ dungeon pool

WoW Classic
Quiet in Cataclysm Classic. The word is the pre-patch for Mists of Pandaria classic will drop before July 31 and full release before August 31.

Still some action in the 20th anniversary classic. @redrum is nudging me to run dungeons with a group (Horde side). AIE guild exists on DreamScythe Horde side. I am also working on

Hardcore solo self-found on the 20th anniversary Doomhowl server and publishing my progress via my YT channel.

The raid team stopped playing cata classic last summer, it looks like there’s still a handful of players logging in though

The final cata raid Dragon Soul was released yesterday, and heroic was cleared in an hour by the world first team

Season of Discovery is in Phase 7. We had folks in there in early phases but no recent participation. Brand new content like Karazhan Crypts (5-person) and upcoming Scarlet Enclave Raid. Apparently catch-up mechanics are good so perhaps some of us may jump back in to check it out.

SWTOR
Live stream next week, new content coming, cleared new Lair boss, won another planet.

ESO
Kraemer will be hosting the next ToT tournament which will run from 02/24 – 03/31. The prizes include houses from the crown store and piles of gold. Let Kraemer know if you’d like to join in the fun.

From Kraemer – Greetings to all our Elder Scrolls Online players! We are about to host our 6th Tales of Tribute guild only tournament, and you may wish to play after seeing the prize list this time. In order to participate you need to have the high isle chapter and the ability to play the game tales of tribute if you need help getting the start quest done please ask for help and one of us will be happy to help, The tournament will run the last week of February until the end of March from Feb 24th till Mar 31 the number of games per week will be determined after we see how many sign up.:

Sign ups are now open please respond in the tales of tribute channel or DM Kraemer29,
Good luck to all players,

FFXIV
Multiple events getting ready to start in game to prepare for the big 7.2 patch. The moogle tome event which gets you trial mounts, emotes, and glam items starts 2/26 and will run until the patch. Little ladies day starts on Mar 3 and will run for two weeks, featuring a new glam outfit.

The patch itself which contains a new 8-man raid tier, a new “Exploration Zone” for crafters and gatherers to build outposts (in space!), and the start of the endgame Dawntrail relic weapons, will be releasing at the end of March, with a final date TBA in the next live letter. At said live letter we will also be receiving new information on Dawntrail’s take at Bozja/Eureka- the Occult Crescent.

STO
Star Trek Online’s 15th Anniversary event is going on now with Garrett Command Alliance Dreadnought Cruiser as the reward. This is being said to be one of the better ships in game and you just need to get 40 points, 2 possible points every 20 hours. And the Ark Royal, from the game Starfleet Command, has been confirmed as being part of the 15th anniversary ship bundle, with some potential hints to other ships.

The KDF fleet has been progressing along nicely. We just completed Tier I of the Colony, which allows for the coffers to autofill a little each day, which will speed up future progress at the Colony. The Spire is closing in on Tier III, which will unlock the elite tactical consoles. And the Research Lab is pushing the projects to complete Tier II, opening up some nice science consoles for doing space magic.

The Fed fleet is still just stacking provisions to allow folks to earn their fleet credits for use in the fleet stores.

Fleet Action Report has just passed 240 episodes and started a new series on helping players new and returning from a long hiatus in relearning the game. We are not sure how many episodes this will take, but the goal is to try and cover the things people struggle with the most.

We are still doing Fun Nights on Monday at 10pm Eastern and all are welcome. You can bring KDF or Federation captains. And it is a great time if you are struggling to ask for some help.

LOTRO
The Lord of the Rings Online is excited to announce that four new 64-bit servers will make their debut on March 5th, 2025!

Get all of the information about our 64-bit servers, free transfers, and other related topics on LOTRO.com: https://www.lotro.com/guides/lotro-64-bit-transfer-faq-en

Here are the details:

Monday, March 3rd 12:00 PM Eastern (-5 GMT): VIP subscribers will be able to log into the game world to access the character creation screen on their destination world and secure up to three names per 64-bit world of their choice. VIPs will not be able to log into the game world to play, or be able to transfer their existing characters, but they can create characters with their desired names and then later rename their transferred character to their preferred name after deleting the placeholder character.

Tuesday, March 4th 12:00 PM Eastern (-5 GMT): Free transfers from 32-bit to 64-bit worlds will be available to all players. The new game worlds themselves will remain closed, but the transfer tool will be enabled to allow for transfers to these worlds.

Wednesday, March 5th 1:00 PM Eastern (-5 GMT): Our new game worlds open! Free transfers from 32-bit to 64-bit game worlds will continue through August 31st, 2025. Free transfers between the new 64 bit worlds will operate on a rotating weekly basis and continue through April 30th 2025.

Wednesday, March 12th: We will begin offering free transfers from many previously-closed game worlds to these new 64-bit worlds. See our table in the FAQ for specific server order and timing on LOTRO.com. After this final transfer period these previously-closed worlds will be permanently closed, and no future character transfers will be possible.

And with that, let’s get back to Lars and Grebog.

GAME NEWS
Mkallah- What keeps a live service game going?

Tetsemi- How do you keep up with all the content coming out?

Mewkow- How to avoid burning out with the need to play all of the content and fo...