Prolonged vacation

So I lost my job yesterday. For me, that means it’s time to scramble and find a new job, for you (the reader) that means possibly more/less posting. I’m not sure which just yet, but we will see. While being unemployed means I have a lot of time, nothing motivates to write like sitting in a cube with nothing to do.

Oh, and if anyone is hiring in the Boston MA area, let me know.

The man of a thousand links, Syp!

A long overdue mention of waaagh.wordpress.com is needed today.

Syp does an amazing job with his blog, not the least of which is his weekly ‘da-newz’ post, quite possibly the most link-filled post on any blog, ever. If you ever miss a single Warhammer Online related post, Syp has you covered. Great job man, you are a valuable part of the WAR community, and a blog that is now on my daily hit list.

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!

100k views, plus some rambling.

100,000 views, ding!

At some point over the weekend that ‘milestone’ was reached, just before the one year anniversary of the blog. I think that’s a lot… is it? I mean I know major sites get like millions of views a day, and I know Tobold gets half the internet to swing by daily, but still, I think 100,000 in a year for a new blog is decent enough. More overall thoughts on my blog will be made during the wrap-up post, so I won’t go into it here.

Moving on from patting myself on the back, the weekend was overall quality in terms of gaming. Played a bit more Civ4 multiplayer with my buddy Nick. We found out the ‘unofficial’ 3.13 patch, which fixes a ton of really silly errors that the official 3.13 BTS patch introduced (no culture displayed when viewing a building, wtf?) does not work for multiplayer. That whole ‘create a backup file before patching’ is good advice, I wish I had followed it. Instead I had to re-install BTS, which luckily was quick due to the file still being in my downloads folder when I got it off Direct2Drive. So while silly, the whole ordeal was not terribly painful. Shame on Firaxis for not patching Civ4 more though, especially with such obvious bugs. Hopefully the rumor that a patch IS coming are true, Civ4 is way too good to be left in such a bugged state.

In EVE news, I did actually log in and fly around a bit, although most of the time was spent getting my mining pilot organized and a bit up-to-date. He had a ton of ammo scattered all over from his buy orders, and it took a decent amount of time to round it all up and get it in one station. I set a more aggressive sell price on it all, and due to the last patch making Ghesis a bit more populated, hopefully it all sells quickly. I need a solid chunk of game time to figure out what I’m going to do with my combat pilot and factional warfare, and that has yet to happen.

More reasons we need Warhammer Online.

Is it just me, or is most of the blog-o-sphere just killing time until Warhammer Online goes live, or at least starts open beta? I just can’t help but get the feeling that a lot of people are just searching for filler until we can openly talk about one common MMO.

‘Rumor’ has it those in closed beta (DIAF you bastards) are just itching to talk about it, and clearly those who are not in (hi) can’t wait for the chance to play. We have had a few MMO’s come out somewhat recently, yet no game has the clear potential of WAR, or the enormous buzz surrounding it.

Out of the dozen or so blogs I visit daily, most are revisiting past games or slowly playing through something with friends. Everyone has that ‘come November’ deadline. On top of that, our little corner of the Internet should come alive with discussion once we have a common theme and topic. People will no doubt love/hate the same class/race/gameplay, and I’m very much looking forward to the heated debates.

In short, we need WAR, and not just for the great gameplay. ‘Unite the Clans!’

Spam milestone!

Yesterday this blog cracked 5,000 spam comments. Truly amazing how much of that crap gets put out each day. The latest trend seems to be Poker sites, along with the usual spam suspects.

In other news, the one year anniversary of this blog is coming up at the end of June. Guess I should do some kind of ‘look back’ post or something. Thanks to all the stats WordPress provides, I don’t think that should be too difficult.

Logged on to EVE and noticed that my formerly remote area, Ghesis, had 20+ pilots in local. I’m guessing this is due to factional warfare? I still need to get on my combat pilot and figure out exactly what I’m going to do, and if that Corp I was interested in has a plan for factional warfare.

Monday Update, keeping it short.

Stupid busy Monday = no blog time.

Not much to report over the weekend really, just some more quality time with LoTRO, finished up the Greater Barrows with the help of our Kin. We made two trips with a level 50, so they were a cakewalk, but still really fun to see the place and the encounters. Hopefully before we out-level it too much a kin will need help and we will get into a full group with correct levels. GB is a fun challenge, and I would hate to miss out.

Other than that, a lot of time was spent playing DoTA on B.net in the TDA channel. It’s really amazing how deep that game is, and how much more enjoyable it continues to get. How no one has taken that game and made it into a full retail product like CS is beyond me, as it’s a gold mine just waiting for someone to tap.

Hopefully more tomorrow, till then, happy gaming.

Finally, Syncaine has come BACK to blogging!

Ah finally back. After so many days off, the ‘blogging itch’ has certainly hit me hard, especially with MMO land finally seeing some activity with the AoC release. I’m still not sold on the idea that AoC will become a major MMO hit, despite its somewhat promising release. I think the relative strength of the release can be credited more towards WoW burnout than anything AoC actually does. We will find out when it’s time to start paying for more than just the box if people hang around once the ‘new and shiny’ has worn off.

Speaking of WoW, I cancelled my account. Paying a monthly fee to raid Kara once a week just did not make sense, especially considering how enjoyable our return to LoTRO has been. Overall I was fairly impressed with TBC, although it does have a ton of ‘more of the same’ to it, which is good at first but does not last very long. Quitting also makes me even less excited about WotLK, as so far that just seems like more of the same with some gimmicks tossed in. I’m not sure what I WOULD like to see in WotLK, but I do know the stuff announced so far does not leave me anticipating its release. WoW also starts looking very long in the tooth (for a graphics whore anyway) when compared to other MMOs now. The low res textures, the lack of complex shadows/lighting, the low poly count, it has all started to add up. That ‘charm and style’ is still there, but now with a blurry and muddy overtone. If WAR and WotLK come out at similar times, I think the major graphic difference between the two will be very apparent, as everyone will be making direct comparisons.

As for WAR, I’m still waiting for my beta invite on that one. Over my little break I took some time to look over some screen shots, and I really don’t understand the whole ‘it looks like WoW’ argument. To me it looks almost nothing like WoW in terms of style and feel. I made a comment to Aria when looking at one shot that if this was a WoW screen shot, the trees would be pink and impossibly shaped, while in WAR they are dark and almost real, with just a bit of fantasy/cartoon to them. It’s a minor example, but I think sums up the overall feel WAR is going for. Yes its fantasy, yes it has humor and some over-exaggeration, but it’s not the neon lovefest that WoW has become, where literally everything has to be big and glowing. It’s a style that makes WoW what it is, but it’s not the style WAR is going for. Just based on SS and video, WAR certainly has that dark and ‘war is everywhere’ aspect to it, and I think the art style goes a long way in setting the mood. Plus 8 pointed snowflakes in the symbol of chaos are awesome…

*bonus points to the first person to get the title reference and post it in the comments.

Out for a few, and a quick AoC update.

I’ll be out of the country for a few days, which means no blog posts for a bit.

In other news (is me not posting news…?) it sounds like AoC is improving rapidly, which is good to hear. As an MMO gamer, having more options is always a good thing right? I’m still not going to pre-order or buy it anytime soon. If anything I’ll wait for a trail account to be offered and perhaps try it then, depending on what else is going on (WAR basically). Should still be an interesting launch to watch however.

LoTRO progress update.

A quick LoTRO update today to end the week.

Aria and I hit level 18 after wrapping up our first trip into the Barrows. Since most of the quests in that place are multi-part, we will be making another trip shortly. I really like the Barrows area, the whole ‘giant graveyard’ with undead all over the place just works for me. Once tiny detail that I noticed during the little girl escort quest (too lazy to look up the name, sorry) is that her missing cloak is now visible on the ground. Either I missed it before, or that was added in some patch, but it was cool to actually see her find it before going off to meet the prince, who tries to kill her of course. Good stuff.

We also did a bit of questing in the Great Forest, which thankfully now has a map built into the game. No more getting lost FTW!

Our Captain/Minstrel combo is working really well so far, as we have plenty of healing/buffs with decent damage output, plus the Captains ‘run away fast’ ability to save ourselves. Hopefully this weekend we do our first run of the Greater Barrows instance, and see how we fare in a full group. So far even group quests near our level we have been able to tackle with just the two of us, so we have yet to play in a full group.