One year of blogging done, and what a year it has been!

It’s been a year already?

I initially started blogging for what I believe is the most common reason: to have a place to keep all my thoughts and ideas about gaming in one place. What originally started as just ‘something to do’ has slowly grown into a very enjoyable hobby and craft. Over the course of the last year, I’ve been rather heavily involved in the MMO blogosphere, be it commenting, linking, or podcasting. Through it all, I’ve had a great time and gained a huge amount of insight into not only MMO games, but my own approach to them as well. Not to mention all the great bloggers and podcasters I’ve gone back and forth with, something that would likely not have happened without the blog.

I figured the best (easiest?) way to break down my first year as a blogger was just to go over the great statistics that WordPress provides, and comment on anything I found interesting or surprising.

First up, the very top-level stuff.

Blog Stats

Total views: 104,123

Busiest day: 11,852 - Thursday, September 6, 2007

Posts: 253

Comments: 1,658

As I recently posted here, the blog hit 100k views not too long ago, a nice round number. I never gave traffic much thought when I started, but I must say I’m very happy hitting 100k in my first year.

The busiest day, way back in September, is the result of getting linked by the BBC tech page, a quote from a somewhat random post I made about WoW and the future expansion. That was an exciting day, especially since it came so early in this blog’s life. Sadly the retention rate from all that traffic was rather low, although it certainly helped. As the stats below will show, no other day/post has really come close to that huge, single hit boost from the BBC, although if the current traffic trend continues, it will happen eventually.

The total posts number, 253, is overall rather decent considering I generally don’t post on Saturday or Sunday. If my math is correct (odds are low), that means out of the remaining 261 days, I posted on average almost every single day. Clearly days with multiple posts help offset days I posted nothing, but even so, a near post-a-day average not counting the weekend is fine by me. Now to keep it up in year two!

The 1658 comments stat is what I think I’m most proud of, as to me it means people actually cared enough about what was posted here to say something about it. Comments are what really drive a blogger to continue and to stay active, and they are a great source of motivation, so thank you to everyone who has taken the time to write something. (yes, even you random troll)

Top Posts for all days ending 2008-06-25

The love and hate game, WoW style. - 16,875

Screen shot comparison. - 2,636

Looking in the mirror; the sickness that was WoW raiding - 1,918

EQ2, trial of the never-ending download. - 1,632

Throwing down the gauntlet, the great MMO challenge - 1,414

Ebolt anyone? - 1,230

Funcom to AoC players, GTFO! - 1,176

Can my toaster run AoC? - Concerned Walmart Shopper -1,143

Stuck in easy mode. - 1,059

Ghost town, population you. - 704

As mentioned above, the first post is the one linked by the BBC, and as you can see, it’s far and away the top post. The next post is somewhat interesting, in that the concept was rather simple, and it was also one of the few posts with pictures. Also of interest is that the post was about EQ2, a game that I overall spent a limited amount of time with. This trend continues in a few more examples, showing that the EQ2 community is very active, and that EQ2 itself drives a lot of MMO traffic. Top post three is one of my favorites, as it was a very personal retrospective look of my time in WoW, and in particular the endgame raiding grind. In addition to the post itself, a lot of really great comments have been left by others sharing their own experiences and methods of escaping that trap. I won’t go into detail about the rest, other than to say a few more recent posts have snuck into the top ten, and that my original post, ‘Ebolt anyone?’, is holding on strong despite originally getting very little traffic due to the blog being new. UO reminiscing still gets peoples attention, a clear sign that you never really forget your first MMO, as UO was for so many.

Referrers for all days ending 2008-06-25

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/default - 11,015

news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/default - 3,159

wowinsider.com - 2,922

virginworlds.com/home.php - 1,831

google.com/reader/view - 1,288

tobolds.blogspot.com - 1,055

eq2-daily.com - 838

keenandgraev.com - 650

killtenrats.com - 499

crazykinux.com - 398

Again the BBC dominates the top spot, and even spot number two, despite that link being on the back page. WoWInsider, being the huge a site that it is, is not a very surprising number three, followed by the ever awesome VirginWorlds news feed. Tobold, the blog overlord himself, is not surprisingly the first blog on the list, along with Keen and Graev, KTR and the link-happy man himself, Crazy Kinux. Thank you to everyone who has linked me, it drives traffic, which leads to comments, which leads to happy blogging!

Search Terms for all days ending 2008-06-25

Syncaine - 334

vanguard trial - 312

hardcore casual - 267

eq2 - 259

wow progress - 219

hardcore - 195

warhammer podcast - 132

eq2 trial - 119

sotnw - 92

switch mmo - 77

shadowbane reset - 70

This list is a little surprising. Spots one and three are all about me, and you know, I’m kind of a big deal on Google (clearly kidding). The big surprise is spot number two, people looking for a Vanguard trial. How does that game NOT have a trial? Seriously, I’ve been looking to try Vanguard for a long time now, if just to see what all the fuss is about, and yet without a trial it’s never going to happen. It’s silly that SOE has not gotten around to this yet. Another random surprise is the amount of searches that lead people here about Sword of the New World (sotnw). I only briefly posted about the game, and generally concluded that while pretty, the game was an afk-grind with little point. Maybe that’s what people are looking for though, who knows…

Finally here are two charts (remember, people like pictures) showing overall traffic flow. On the monthly chart, you can clearly see the spike from the BBC link, followed by a return to the more normal, steady growth. Hopefully the trend continues, and one day that BBC spike won’t look quite as dominant.

The weekly chart shows that while monthly traffic might be fairly steady, week to week traffic is very sporadic. This is due no doubt to a combination of who linked me, what exactly I posted that week, and how active I was commenting on other blogs and generating hits from that. The one thing I have learned after a year of blogging is you can never really predict what will drive traffic. A well-crafted post (imo of course) may get little attention, while a quick post about something random will start a firestorm. The important thing to remember is to post about what YOU want to talk about, and not worry about posting the next ‘major hit’ blog post. If you write honestly and with passion, people will pick up on it and drop by.

To sum it all up, it’s been a crazy first year for me in regards to this blog. It’s been a huge learning experience, and hopefully I continue to improve and provide interesting reading for everyone. I’m very much looking forward to year two, especially since the ‘next big think’ in Warhammer will hit, and no doubt spur some good debate in our corner of the Internet. I can’t wait!

Thanks again to all the reader!

The value of the blogging community.

Darren made a nice plea over at his site for bloggers to get into the WAR beta, or at the very least Keen. I support that (both the bloggers part and the Keen part), and can’t really come up with a great reason to keep bloggers out.

One reason that does come up whenever the whole ‘are bloggers press’ issue comes up is that the company does not want negative publicity about a game still in beta. Just like certain companies refuse to send PCGamer or other magazines pre-release copies of their games for review, some people think MMO developers apply the same reasoning to bloggers. The reason I have trouble accepting this is that MMO blogs reach a relatively small audience, and a very hardcore one at that. Regardless of your play style or game time per week, anyone who goes out and finds an MMO blog has long since crossed the threshold of casual and into hardcore status. True casual players are not even aware of official forums, let alone fan sites or blogs.

But let’s assume a developer wants to grab even the small hardcore population that does read blogs and listens to podcasts, is keeping the bloggers themselves out going to help? For one thing, bloggers tend to be a close knit community that respect each others opinion (for the most part), and take what is said into consideration. Unlike when I read a PCGamer preview and take everything said with a grain of salt, if I read something positive on a blog that I respect I take it as truth. When I read that Tabula Rasa ‘turned a corner’ and was actually fun, it put the game on my list. Based almost exclusively on Tipa’s writing, I went out and bought two copies of EQ2 to give it a try. Sure it did not work out, but it was two copies and three months of subs I would have never bought had it not been for her blog. On the other hand, while I was in the PotBS beta, my decision to see what the game was like in release was put on hold based on Keen’s PvP write ups, showing me that game was not yet ready for prime time. Of course, if in two months Keen makes a post saying all is well and PvP in Pirates is a blast, that could sway my opinion right back.

My point is that while bloggers do influence buying decisions among our small community, they do so with honesty. No one here gets paid to write glowing reviews or previews. If you have a solid product, bloggers will write that. If your game has issues, we will write that as well. Ultimately it comes down to the buyer; it just so happens bloggers and our readers tend to be better informed than the average gamer, able to see past the bullet point fluff and analyze the details. If everything checks out, you get our money. If you have some skeletons that you tried to hide, you likely won’t see many of us subscribe until you straighten those issues out.