One year in Exile

So, I guess today is my 1 year blogging anniversary.  It is a bit anti-climatic since I have fizzled out lately.

So this is kind of a half-hearted year-in-review post.

It started with this kick-off:  Not all those who wander are lost.  Kind of funny since there was just a dev blog out about “All that is gold does not glitter.”  I’ll be getting to that shortly.

Not too long after that I wrote a review of the Astero.  The title was “Say hello to my little friend.”  It was an inside joke because I published the post a few hours after my daughter was born.  She turns 1 in a few days.

In January, I published my (now severely outdated) New Player Exploration Guide.  It has been my most viewed post.

Later in January, I kicked off my first poetry contest called “PLEX for Parody“.  It was a lot of fun and led to some great EVE poems.

In February, I hit 10,000 page views and I felt like I actually had people reading the blog.  It was pretty exciting.

I did a Limerick contest in March, it did ok , but wasn’t as good as the parody contest.

In May, I attempted my first “In-character” blog post.  May was also the first month I received more than 10,000 page views in a single month.

In July, I tried my UNDOCK project.  It lasted less than 2 months when I died ingloriously.

In August, I launched a treasure hunt.  It was way too much work.

September was where I fizzled and I haven’t done much since then.

The blog continues to get quite a few page views.  I came up just short of 100,000 views in my first year.  I am sitting at 91,977 at this moment.  That is actually quite a bit better than I was expecting.  Thank you to all that read and commented and sent traffic my way.

There is actually a bit of interesting exploration news coming up.  I like some of the changes and will be writing about them eventually.

 

 

 

Returning from Exile

It has been about a month since I posted and about a month since I played Eve.  I bought a couple of PLEX and added 60 days of game time.  I queued up a couple of long trains (Advanced Weapons Upgrades V , Heavy Missile Specialization V, Gallente Cruiser V) and logged in just twice to update my queue.  I mentioned earlier that I just hadn’t been “feeling” Eve.  I’m still not, but I am getting closer.

I have been reading some of the blogs and dev posts and started to experiment with ship fits again.  That is usually a good sign of upcoming activity.  Also, winter is coming and I tend to spend more time indoors and gaming during the winter.  So I will probably be returning to the game and playing a bit in the coming weeks.  Returning to blogging is a bit harder.  Once you get out of the habit, it takes more discipline to get back into it again.  But with expansion news and my 1 year blogging anniversary coming up, I should have more to muse and ramble about.

Malaise

I haven’t really been feeling like EVE lately.  There is stuff on my list to do, but when I have time to play, I end up doing something else.

Is it EVE?  Is it just me?  That time of year?  Not sure.  The lack of posting will continue until morale improves.

10 Years, 10 Questions (WoW)

I am not sure if I will ever go back to playing WoW, but I did play for awhile so I am going to answer the questions.  Its for a worthy cause. Here it is:

1. Why did you start playing Warcraft?

I  had played Diablo and Starcraft so when this came out, I investigated.  It sounded pretty interesting.  I am not really an early adopter so I didn’t actually get into the game until it was well established (but still pre Burning Crusade).

2. What was the first ever character you rolled?

A Dwarf Hunter.  I liked the hunter class, but felt like Night Elf was way too cliché.  I rolled him on a PVE server.  He only made it to about level 30.

 3. Which factors determined your faction choice in game?

After playing the hunter for awhile, I got a bit bored and wanted to try something else.  I re-rolled on a PVP server and chose a druid.  The only choices were Night Elf and Tauren, and I wanted to try the other faction.  The Tauren druid was my first level 60 character.

4. What has been your most memorable moment in Warcraft and why?

The awe of the game at the very beginning.  I remember as a lowly dwarf hunter finishing the starter area and seeing Ironforge for the first time.  My first griffin ride into Ironforge was pretty amazing too.  Playwise, most of my memorable moments were PVP related.  Capping my first flag in Warsong Gulch.  Squeaking out an Arathi Basin win at the last second.  Playing arena for the first time with a friend from work (we were horrible!)

5. What is your favourite aspect of the game and has this always been the case?

So many things!  I loved the huge world and seeing the art design decisions come together for each area.  The classes all had a unique feel to them.  I loved the rhythm of hunter and pet.  I loved the burst damage of an assassin rogue coming out of stealth.  I liked the creative gadgets in Engineering and the various utility spells.  Probably my favorite was the synergy of the early groups for running dungeons.  Back when threat, healing, crowd control and communication all really mattered.  The tank would pick up 2 primary targets and the dps/cc would all disable their targets and then focus fire the primaries.  I really enjoyed that.

6. Do you have an area in-game that you always return to?

Not really.  I haven’t played for a couple of years now.  Ironforge will probably always be my favorite city.

7. How long have you /played and has that been continuous?

I played for about 5 years from Vanilla through Wrath of the Lich King.  I played just a bit on and off in Cataclysm and never saw Pandera.

8. Admit it: do you read quest text or not?

Yes.  Most of the time.  I liked quests where reading the text meant something.  If I just needed to kill 10 rats then quest text was kind of a waste.

9. Are there any regrets from your time in game?

On one hand, I regret playing so much.  I wasted a lot of time doing it.  Also, it pissed my wife off.  On the other, I wish I could have raided more in Burning Crusade.  I was playing mostly with a friend then and he wasn’t into raiding.

10. What effect has Warcraft had on your life outside gaming?

For awhile it was one of my main hobbies.  But I was too busy overall to commit the required schedule to raid and enjoy all those aspects of raiding.  Other than, I read a lot my blogs now!

If you want to read some of the other responses, please do so here.

How I feel about CAPTCHA’s

I am exceedingly bad a CAPTCHA’s.  Especially if I try to do them on my phone, which is were I read most of my EVE blogs.  I have failed so many comments to Blogspot’s CAPTCHA, that I have pretty much given up commenting there.

For my site, there is no CAPTCHA, no login, no email required.  And WordPress still manages to filter all the spam very nicely.  (Maybe too well – I don’t check the spam folder to see if anything legitimate has been stuck there).

Anyway – this made me laugh and pretty much sums up how I feel about CAPTCHA’s.

 

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