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!

Awesome new WoW podcast!

The sad part is 75% of the WoW population would consider this a legit WoW podcast. Also sad is that about 50% of what was said, while meant to be funny, is actually true.

“If I want good PvP, is WoW for me?”

“You know, it really is.”
“You see people in Arena epics, and you think ‘wow that person must be really good at Arena’ and they really are!”

Haha, that whole bit killed me.

Great stuff guys.

Urge…to…play…EVE…rising…

The lack of EVE-related posts here is mostly due to one factor; I haven’t been playing EVE much lately. I blame WoW mostly, along with The Witcher whenever the WoW bug has subdued long enough to play something else. I’m also not happy with this, as I really WANT to play EVE.

Granted my two accounts are still active (1 year subs ftw?), and I’ve been keeping up with skill training. The downtime has even helped in training those long skills that I know I needed, but hated to train while playing. I also quickly manage my industrial pilot once a week, updating his market orders and putting more items up for sale. The fact that I don’t have a huge need for the ISK right away lets me put up higher prices and deal with the longer timeframe to make a sale. Oddly enough in EVE, everything sells eventually, even if you price something 50% or more above the market average. Patience pays.

The reason I’m making this post now is because I’ve continued to listen to Warp Drive Active, and now also listen to The Drone Bay. Both are excellent podcasts focused on EVE, and are part of my ‘required listening’ for each week. Each time I listen, it drives up the urge to actually play EVE, which is saying something. I have no doubts that I will eventually return in a more active role, and when I do I will have two nicely trained pilots and a good stash of ISK to play with. At that time I will need to get serious about finding an active Corp, hopefully one that caters to both industry and combat. Given the size of the EVE universe, I’m not too worried about finding a good one.

So to my EVE readers, sorry for the lack of updates and discussion, but know that soon enough I’ll be back flying my internet spaceship, and will no doubt have plenty to say about it when it happens.

edit: I forgot to mention that in contrast to EVE, WoW podcasts do very little to raise the appeal of WoW for me. As excellent as The Instance is, I listen to it purely for entertainment value. It never makes me go ‘hmm thats interesting, I need to go log on and try that’, while basically every EVE podcasts has a moment or three like that in it. Just another example of how truly different MMOs can be, even in something as abstract as podcasts.

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.

Podcasts for all!

Both Witty Banter 2 (not to be confused with Witty Ranter, as some are known to do…) and SUWT 19 are up.

Witty Banter is the previously mentioned podcast that I was a part of. SUWT 19 talks about two topics found on this blog.

Enjoy both everyone!

Virgin Worlds Podcast 100!

Congrats to Brent on show 100. A huge achievement for an awesome site. Go check it out!

edit: That “I love that” clip has to be one of the better sound bites ever, right along with the whole Archlord praise piece, great stuff.

Don’t put your PvE in my PvP, and vice versa.

SUWT 17 is out, and as always, it’s high quality podcast goodness, go check it out.

Near the end of the podcast a post of mine is linked and discussed, with the hosts talking a bit about PvP. I could be wrong, but I’m fairly sure none of the participants are particularly huge fans of PvP, which made the discussion a bit more interesting for me, someone who has long since declared PvP gameplay the cream-of-the-crop in an MMO game if done right.

I think the best point made on the podcast on that topic was the comparison between WoW PvP and a first person shooter, and how FPS fans play their game for the simple fact of playing it, while WoW PvP players seem to play only for the end reward, or however many points they earn towards some reward. This brings up a very important point; WoW players are not PvP players. The appeal of WoW was never an amazing PvP experience (somewhat funny considering the lore WoW is based on, but yea), the appeal has always been a superb leveling game, one which is very solo friendly and accessible to the ‘common’ gamer, both in hardware requirements and game difficulty. Players played to grow a character, gaining levels and get new, better gear. Once you hit the level cap, you are left with only items to grow, and at some point, PvP became the best/easiest source of items, funneling the PvE community into battlegrounds in further pursuit of growth. You can’t blame the players, they are only doing what is available to them in order to play the game they want to play, that being the PvE game. PvP is currently a minor inconvenience, or grind, before they return to PvE.

The major problem with PvE-based players is that they bring the PvE mentality into PvP, and when the rules of PvP are placed upon them, they are not happy. In a raid or quest, if you kill something, you get rewarded. You don’t get rewarded sometimes, and rarely does something kill you without you expecting it. Monsters don’t gank you, quest givers don’t scam you, and quest items don’t run and hide to keep you from finding them. PvE has a defined time=reward ratio. You put your time in, you get the reward, guaranteed.

PvP does not work like that, or at least should not. Even the best plans fail, a ‘sure thing’ could be a trap, and that ever helpful player might be setting you up for the kill. In comparison to PvE, PvP is far more open in terms of possibilities and consequences. It’s not ‘point A to point B’ gameplay. Some days you win, some days you lose, and the separation between a good and bad player is in the ratio. Win 90/10, you are good; go 20/80 and you might need some work. But even that 90/10 player has bad days, days were you get constantly ganked, or a bad disconnect hits you at the wrong moment and proves very costly. It happens to everyone at one point or another. The PvP player knows and accepts this; the PvE player will find it unfair and harsh.

Now I’m not saying all PvE players should avoid PvP like the plague, if anything they should give it a shot, many might like it. But it has to be quality PvP, in a game build with PvP in mind, not an afterthought. If you base all PvP perceptions on a few ganks in UO and WoW’s battleground, I would agree with you that PvP does indeed suck. Base it on a relic raid done right in DAoC, an EVE tourney, or Asherons Call Darktide, and your opinion might change. And if it does not, that’s cool too, you are simply not a PvP fan, and no one is going to force you. Just like the best raid instances don’t convert everyone into a PvE fan, no matter the quality of the zone/instance.

At the same time, you should not force your PvE-based view on a PvP focused game. Don’t expect quest focused, item based, ‘play without interference’ gameplay, just like PvP fans should not expect much when they queue up for a BG.

That is really my biggest fear for Warhammer, that the PvE community will over-influence it, and what was once a PvP based game will instead be WoW 1.5. The greatest unknown right now is whether PvP can be the base for a mass market MMO. History will tell us ‘no’ if we focus on games like Shadowbane or Fury, but that would be like arguing that PvE is not mass market because of games like Vanguard or Asherons Call 2. The truth is in all of the above, it was not the type of game that made it a failure, but the simple fact that those games were not very good to start with. If Warhammer has WoW-like polish and execution, I see no reason why it can’t hit that magic ‘mass market’ level, even if it is based on PvP gameplay.

If WAR delivers on all those PvP promises (a big if at this point), I get a bit worried when I hear PvE people talking about WAR, and how they hope it will be the next ‘it’ thing for them. If done right, it won’t be 100% safe, bad days will happen, and more often then not your gameplay will be based on the players around you. The ups and down in a PvP world are more extreme than those in a PvE world, and it’s those extremes that make it enjoyable for those that enjoy that style of gaming. It will be those same extremes that turn off others. I just hope the message is clear enough on day one for expectations to be set properly.

Maelstrom Podcast

Posting this a bit late, but go check out the newest Maelstrom Podcast here. I was lucky enough to jump on Skype and join in on the round table. Enjoy everyone!

Podcast goodness!

I’ve finally popped my Podcast cherry over at VirginWorlds. (yay wordplay jokes)

Darren was nice enough to have me as a guest on “Shut Up Were Talking” 14, along with Aaron and Adam. I think everyone had a great time, and some interesting topics came up. Head on over and have a listen, and don’t forget to support VirginWorlds if you enjoy what Brent and Co. do over there, it’s a great site.