Episode 61 – 100 Word Shenanigans
Posted: April 8, 2014 Filed under: Show | Tags: 100 Word Story Contest, April Fool's, archon the wizard, barbarian, BlizzPro, Breja, Carbot Animations, crusader, D3 2.0 Difficulty Chart, demon hunter, DiabLoLs, difficulty chart, Dredscythe, expansion, Forum Warriors: A Love Story, GrindEXP, Happy Reaper, hotfixes, impressions, Jen, lanntonio, Launch, launch party, legendary crafting material list, legendary crafting material locations, legendary items, Melkor, Neinball, Nevik, progression, Reaper of Souls, red team gaming, Scythe and Shield, Sibcoe, song of the show, Westmarch Workshop, witch doctor, wizard Leave a comment »Show notes originally posted by Nevik
In our first post-launch episode, we are all excited about having our souls reaped. After much celebration and frivolity we get down to business by discussing what we’ve been up to in-game: Lanntonio is holy hammering all the things, Jen is shooting all the things, Nevik is freezing and zapping all the things, and Breja is … well … Breja is puking on all the things.
In this episode:
* We read, and respond to, a pair of emails we received from our wonderful listeners. This batch came to us from Rilandune and Frying Tuck. Thank you for the emails and voice mail! Keep them coming, really!
* We received another mountain of tweets from @Foqbupog, @scanline75, @Torrack1714, @grindexp, @JCMonkeyD3, @sadromeo, @Manlow, @FreeFallWoW, @GrandNagus1, @C4ntbestoped, @Rob_pawlak, @shawno, @Kherova, @Cybrwolf0, @KaltonEly, @JustinKHixson, @Hawgeye_CTR, @apsana, @xSyneKx, @HomeTownHero008, @BrewmasterWansu, @Medros, @RoberBobroff, @sastewart111, @Kagerai_Leblue, and @GENERAAL00. Thank you for your tweets. Don’t forget that you, too, can send in your thoughts via social media outlets such as Facebook, Google+, and Twitter.
* We posed the question on Twitter asking if your post-RoS gaming had deviated from your pre-launch plans. We got quite a few responses. Be sure to follow our show account, @ShatteredStone, on Twitter for future Questions of the Show.
* We announced the winners for our 100 Word Story Contest this episode! Our grand-prize winner was @CkRtech for his amazing story; so much said with so little! Runner-ups for our contest included @Rilandune and @JCMonkeyD3 who will both be receiving a copy of Nate Kenyon’s Storm of Light. We decided to put the t-shirt winner in the hands of the community, so be on the look-out for a collection of all of the entries in the very near future!
* With Reaper of Souls officially being in everyone’s hands we discussed our own experiences with the expansion including the number of hotfixes that have come down the pipeline since launch.
* Just before Reaper of Souls launched, Carbot Animations released their parody/tribute of the expansion’s opening cinematic. We LOVED it! And we know you will too! (Wait, you haven’t seen it yet? Rectify that NAO! … with this handy embedded video!)
Links for you to Visit:
If you were not already aware our editor, Shawn, is in-between jobs and could really use some help. If you can spare anything there is a Crowdtilt fund to help make ends meet. We are massively grateful for any help you can send his way. Thank you!
* Friend of the show, Dredscythe from GrindEXP.com sat down with Sibcoe from Red Team Gaming prior to the launch of Reaper of Souls to discuss where the game has been and their impressions on where it is going in the future.
* Reaper of Souls added a lot of new legendary crafting materials scattered all over the game for crafting a bunch of new legendary items. If you’re wondering if someone has compiled a list of all the materials and where to find them, the answer is yes! Check out DiabloFans Legendary Crafting Guide so that you don’t hunt aimlessly.
* Archon the Wizard and Neinball from BlizzPro kicked off a new Diablo III: Reaper of Souls pod/vidcast titled Westmarch Workshop. The pair aim to highlight varying builds for everyone to potentially try out on a weekly basis. They are looking for feedback on their inaugural episode, so let them know what you think! You can catch Westmarch Workshop Wednesday nights at 6pm PDT over on Archon’s Twitch channel.
* If you love running bounties in Adventure Mode and did not realize it, there are specific legendary items that you can only get from the Horadric Caches after completing all of an act’s bounties. Here’s a handy link to DiabloHub that lists all of the cache-specific legendary items you can hope to find.
* Reddit user D3agl3uk put together and posted a chart on the /r/Diablo sub-reddit detailing the nuances of each of the new difficulty settings added in the 2.0 patch.
* Blizzard traditionally puts together some pretty amusing April Fool’s Day jokes and this year kept that tradition alive. Be sure to check out Blizzard’s Happy Reaper, a Diablo-themed homage to Flappy Bird. Nevik managed to get a high score of TWO … BEAT THAT … if you dare.
Song of the Show:
Melkor is back at it with another Diablo/Wizard themed rap/love-story. Forum Warriors pays tribute to many of the amazing folks contributing in the official Diablo III Wizard forums. Check out more from Melkor over on his YouTube channel.
Have a Diablo III related comment, question, story, or rant that you’d like to share with all of us? Send your email, or short audio comment, to Show@ShatteredSoulstone.com.
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Episode 54 – The Grindstone
Posted: December 14, 2013 Filed under: Show | Tags: Betta, crusader, Diablo 2 Remix, difficulty 2.0, Dredscythe, DrJDredscythe, experiences, friends and family beta, GrindEXP, lanntonio, necromancer, Nevik, noi1989, Reaper of Souls, shots fired, torment, wizard, wizard builds, Zisspire Leave a comment »Show notes originally posted by Nevik
In this episode, we are down two co-hosts as both Jen and Breja were indisposed. Not to worry, we pulled in our good friends Dred and Betta from GrindEXP.com to fill in. We then get down to business by discussing what we’ve been up to in-game: Lanntonio is on a crusade, Nevik is loving the wizard changes in Reaper of Souls and our guests are knee-deep in streaming their exploits in the beta.
In this episode:
* We unfortunately had one of those blue moon shows in that we did not receive a single email from our dear listeners. We love hearing from you, so keep those emails coming!
* We received tweets from @HomeTownHero008, @pergosmaster, @CM_Nevalistis, @Jaetch, @grindexp, @JCMonkeyD3, and @Foqbupog. Thank you for your tweets. Don’t forget that you, too, can send in your thoughts via social media outlets such as Facebook, Google+, and Twitter.
* We posed the question on Twitter seeking your feedback on the liberal use of BoA (bind on account) items present in the Reaper of Souls beta. Be sure to follow our show account, @ShatteredStone, on Twitter for future Questions of the Show.
* With the Reaper of Souls friends and family beta now two weeks old we share our fairly extensive experiences in progression in Torment difficulty. From the good to the bad, we cover mostly every nuance as it exists presently in the beta. Warning: There’s a ton of wizard talk. You wouldn’t expect any less now would you?
* This episode marks a very special Official Forum Thread Masterpiece Theater as we have our very first listener submission for the segment! As always we are looking for your participation with this fun segment, send your Official Forum Thread Masterpiece Theater audio segments (or humorous forum threads) to Show@ShatteredSoulstone.com.
This episode’s Official Forum Thread Masterpiece Theater segment bed music included Rondeau from Sinfonie de Fanfares by Jean-Joseph Mouret and Pannonia Boundless by Alexandra Vrebalov.
Links for you to Visit:
* Community manager Nevalistis has been collecting all of the Reaper of Souls Friends and Family Beta sources in a handy-dandy round-up blog. If you can’t get enough, be sure to check it out to hopefully satiate your hunger.
* If the new difficulty system has you all confoozled YouTube user GamebyNumber has you covered with his early analysis of each difficulty setting in Reaper of Souls.
* DiabloFans recently took the time to do something different other than report on the news and put together a compilation of three well thought-out suggestions from Mr. Monstrous, DamienJohn and forum member Ropp. While there’s very little chance for these suggestions to be implemented by launch, it does serve as brain-food for what could potentially come post-launch!
* Twitch.tv broadcaster Zisspire put together a video on YouTube highlight an extremely effective (dare we say too effective?) wizard build lovingly coined “The Need 4 Speed” that works on the Reaper of Souls beta.
* Although Nevik made it abundantly clear that he isn’t a fan of the necromancer, that didn’t cloud his judgement on an amazing piece of concept art by Sammael for what the necromancer might look like in Diablo III.
* Finally we would like to remind teh internets that beta is beta and to not get too worked up over what we are seeing out of the Reaper of Souls friends and family beta. Things are still very much in development and will change before and after Reaper of Souls is launched.
* Tatasinke is back with another edition of his Paper.li newspaper, the New Tristram News. Check it out and subscribe!
Song of the Show:
Feeling a little bit nostalgic? Well we have you covered with this episode’s Song of the Show. Diablo 2 Remix by noi1989 takes the sound effects out of Diablo II and combines them resulting in a piece of music that is almost gothic industrial in its tone.
Have a Diablo III related comment, question, story, or rant that you’d like to share with all of us? Send your email, or short audio comment, to Show@ShatteredSoulstone.com.
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Episode 52 – Live From Anaheim
Posted: November 13, 2013 Filed under: Show | Tags: adventure mode, blizzcon 2013, bounties, Breja, campaign, crusader, developer interviews, difficulty 2.0, difficulty mode removal, Dredscythe, GrindEXP, jaetch, Jen, Jesse, lanntonio, loot 2.0, Melkor, nephalem rifts, Nevik, PDawg, Reaper of Souls, Shawno, system changes 1 Comment »Show notes originally posted by Nevik
BLIZZCON IS HERE! Errr, well it was, IT CAME! And WE WERE THERE! And we got together with a bunch of friends from the community to discuss everything that we learned while down in Anaheim. Listen on as we discuss our experiences with playing Reaper of Souls and meeting the vastly approachable development and community teams.
In this episode:
* We were joined by a number of special guests for our special LIVE FROM ANAHEIM POST-BLIZZCON ROUND-UP including Breja’s son PDawg, Jesse aka @HomeTownHero008, Beta and Dr J Dredscythe from GrindEXP.com, everybody’s favorite ninja wizard Jaetch, Critical Mass rapper Melkor, and the Magic Man himself, Shawno!
* We discuss our hands-on experiences with both the Act V campaign and Adventure Mode demos on both PC and Playstation 4. You may be a little surprised to hear what everyone decided to give a spin on the demos.
* While it wasn’t outrightly stated, we did discuss the ramifications of the change in the difficulty system and the removal of the four difficulty modes: Normal, Nightmare, Hell and Inferno.
* We share our thoughts on other various details that we learned during the panels and/or slightly more private interviews with the developers including some details about some systems coming to the Playstation 4 version that wasn’t mentioned on stage!
Links for you to Visit:
* Beta and Dr J Dredscythe will be publishing numerous articles containing a wide-range of information on everything announced and shared at Blizzcon over at GrindEXP.com, we suggest you visit their site to get their juicy details.
* Everyone loves ninjas and wizards right? Well make sure to check out Jaetch’s YouTube channel for all of his wizard hijinks!
* In case you didn’t already know, Nevik loves wizards, so it would only make sense that with Melkor in the house that we would promote Melkor’s series proclaiming his love for Critical Mass.
* With Shawno finally stepping from behind the editor’s desk, it’s about time we promoted NoMarket.org, a site where you can find everything that Shawn and Jen publish on the net.
Have a Diablo III related comment, question, story, or rant that you’d like to share with all of us? Send your email, or short audio comment, to Show@ShatteredSoulstone.com.
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Interview with Red Team Gaming
Posted: March 5, 2013 Filed under: Show | Tags: diablo expressions, dred, Dredscythe, interview, lanntonio, Nevik, red team gaming, Sibcoe, state of diablo 3, youtube Leave a comment »Show notes originally posted by Nevik
It’s been awhile since we last had an interview on the show so we decided to pull in the two fine gents, Sibcoe and Dred. This dynamic duo has been responsible for the latest in the on-going series State of Diablo 3 by Red Team Gaming. Unsurprisingly the interview went far longer than we would include in a regular show so we are releasing it separately from the soon-to-be recorded episode 35.
Unfortunately Breja and Jen were unable to make it for the interview but Lanntonio and Nevik held down the fort and had an absolute blast talking with Sibcoe and Dred. Again, unsurprisingly, we meandered slightly off the “interview” and had some fantastic discussions about the game itself and the state that it is in. I know, crazy, right?
Be sure to check out Red Team Gaming and Sibcoe’s RTG YouTube channel for everything he amazingly has time to produce. Also don’t forget to check out Diablo Expressions as well as Dred’s YouTube channel for his own podcasts. We’re not joking, GO CHECK THEIR STUFF OUT. It’s really great and that’s why we just had to interview them.
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