Tag Archives: Blaugust

The Labors of Blaugust 2022

Blaugust and What to do with a Popular Post

In which I try to pass on some sort of a lesson learned.

Every Blaugust I try to impart some of the wisdom I have acquired over my now long journey in blogging… which can be difficult, because I don’t have a lot new to offer on that front. Fifteen years doesn’t make you a lot wiser than five years doing this, so I don’t have any big revelations stored away anymore. I think I wrote, “be the blog you want to read” back in the first Blaugust, and that was about the peak of my wisdom. Everything else is bickering over details.

Blaugust time is coming to town…

Still, this week’s theme is something about lesson’s learned according to the calendar, and I am not going to get the achievement if I don’t write something at least tangentially related to the topic.

The Blaugust Calendar

I generally save the event summary post for September, so now is the time to try and dig into whatever bits and pieces I have learned over the years. And I think I have something.

Occasionally I will write a post that will gain traction with Google’s algorithm for some reason and will feature on the first page of results for some specific search term that people seem to be drawn to.

This never happens with a post I have worked on diligently or one that necessarily contains a lot of useful information. As I have mentioned in the past, there is almost an inverse relationship between effort put into a post and its popularity.

And even when I do manage that rare feat, it is often a moment of fading glory as other sites and their SEO plans work out how to get the top spot over whatever search term I happen to be the king of at the moment. I had a good streak with “April Fools at Blizzard” for a few years. The high water mark of page views for the site was April 2, 2013.

So most of the posts I write, whether or not Google shows a shine to them, have similar life cycles. They generally get the most single day page views they are ever going to get on either the day they are posted or the day after. Then that traffic fades off, usually pretty sharply on day three, and somewhere between day seven and day thirty that post will stop getting any but the most desultory traffic going forward.

Once in a while though, once in a blue moon on a Tuesday, a post will get stuck on the first page of Google’s search results due to whatever arcane algorithmic rules determine that sort of thing and, hey presto, I have a post that just keeps getting traffic every day for weeks, months, even years.

I have had a variety of posts like that about things from WoW Guild names to finding an agent in EVE Online to Alamo teaching you to play durid.

Some of them, by their very nature, are useful to people. Some, not so much.

For example, one of my current popular posts is about trying to find a warm ocean in Minecraft.

Apparently I was not alone in looking for one and Google has favored me with traffic. Unfortunately, my tale about finding a warm ocean isn’t a “how to” as much as a narrative about my efforts.

However, once it became clear that Google was sending people to it who were seeking help in their search to find a warm ocean, I added a blurb at the top with a link to show them where they might find actual help on their search.

And sometimes my helpful posts… the few that I write… become obsolete. The post above about finding and agent in EVE Online, CCP actually made that much easier by putting in a button that said “Find an Agent.” Later, they moved to The Agency interface. So I have a note at the top of that post as well.

I don’t feel like I have to go back and re-write everything as the world changes, but if I see something gets traffic and is out of date, I try to direct people to something more in line with their needs.

Anyway, here it is, the last few days of Blaugust. This is likely my penultimate Blaugust post for 2022. So I will, once more, link out to all the participants.

Take some time and visit a few of them.

Staying Motivated Going into Blaugust Week Four

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Here we are, into the fourth week of Blaugust and people are still posting away.

Blaugust time is coming to town…

As always, you can join in on Blaugust, even here in the waning days of the month, if you so desire. All the information is available at these links:

This week of the event has the theme “Staying Motivated” according to the Blaugust calendar.

The Blaugust Calendar

And believe me, I can feel the strain on my motivation. I was sitting at my desk on Saturday night and literally had nothing planned to write about this week. Nothing. Five days of blanks on my topics list.

That can be a bit demoralizing.

But it isn’t an uncommon situation either… especially in August, which has traditionally been a slow season for news. As I recall, part of the reason for Blaugust was to liven up the dreary end of the season, the back end of August being the Sunday afternoon of summer.

I feel better when I have, if not a few posts already done by Sunday afternoon, at least some ideas sketched out with a few notes and a bit of structure. Sometimes though, you’re just there with some free space and a desire to get words on the page.

My core response to that is generally to remind myself what the blog is about… you can read the About page (which I haven’t updated in about eight years), but in short it is about me and what I have been up to in online gaming… and to see if there isn’t something that fits into that I can write about. You would be surprised as to what tiny bit of news or play time can be examined and turned into a thousand words with a few screen shots tossed in.

If I come up short there, the gaming press often has something to provoke some ideas for a post, as do my fellow bloggers. What topics are in the meta right now? What is the staff at Massively OP complaining about? There was a time when we used to riff off of one and other’s posts much more than we seem to do these days. Or maybe that is just me.

Then there is always whatever is going on over in the land of Twitter or revisiting some issue I have written about previously… digging through old posts for the month in review is always some decent fertilizer to sprout an idea or two… or there is often a quiz or other blogging meme on can jump on for an idea. There was one of those just the other day over at Contains Moderate Peril.

There is always Nick Yee’s Gamer Motivation Profile or the Bartle Test to spur a post.

And if I am really desperate, I can actually open up my drafts folder, currently 109 posts deep, and actually finish up something I started previously.

Finally, I can always just write about how I don’t have anything to write about and turn it into some sort of post about staying motivated for Blaugust.

That is my cue to roll out the list of Blaugust participants. If you haven’t visited some of their sites yet, now would be a good week, here in the doldrums of the month.

And so it goes, another Blaugust post.

Blaugust and What is Content Anyway?

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We are into the third week of Blaugust now. This is the 16th day of the month and my 16th post, so we’re past the half way point and into the back half of the event. Is everybody hanging on okay?

Blaugust time is coming to town…

It is still not too late to get involved. I mean, we’d like to have you. All the information is here:

I’ll probably decide by week five that it is finally too late to join in. But you’re good until then.

Looking at the Blaugust calendar, this week is… um… creative appreciation week?

The Blaugust Calendar

Are we to be creative in our appreciation or appreciate creativity? We might need to workshop that one a bit before next year.

But I know what it means, because this used to be developer appreciation week in older iterations of the event, back when it was a little more focused on video games. But we’ve grown beyond that so the week is now a time to focus on the creative people… authors, musicians, developers, artists… whom we enjoy.

What do creatives create? Content.

And what is content? Hell if I know.

Seriously, I know it when I see it, but I am not sure I could write a definition of content that would survive any serious testing. And I am just going to dive into content and video games for the purpose of this post, because it only gets more complex if I try to devise some universal definition for content.

Plus, we’ve had this discussion before, and I am always a sucker for the oldies.

I can tell you positively that when EverQuest or WoW drop an expansion, that is content. If you you stream or make a video about your first day playing in the new expansion, that is content. If somebody makes a reaction video to your video, that is probably content too, even though I find them mostly tiresome. And if I write a blog post about a reaction video, probably complaining that nobody ever does reaction videos about my posts, that too is content.

And so is the expansion guide on the commercial fan site and the stories on the gaming news site and summary item somebody does to tie together all the content surrounding the expansion. It is a content ecosystem.

But what about a more sandbox style game, like EVE Online? I was just bitching about them yesterday, and a lot of that had to do with content… but what sort of content?

I mean sure, they do create content. There was the Doctor Who event earlier this year which people enjoyed. And there is a content ecosystem around the game well beyond what its player population might suggest.

The question comes up around mechanics, or changes to the rules, or ships. You can certainly create content around those things, but are they content in and of themselves?

Furthermore, if CCP releases a new ship and we all buy one and fit it out and have a big fight, who really created that content. The fight would be content, after all. But CCP had little influence on when or where it happened or who might participate in the fight.

So in New Eden we sometimes get into a row about people who claim to be content creators because they make things happen in the game… or think they do. And what of the other fleet commander, are they a co-creator? How do we apportion levels creation-ness or whatever? How about the members of the fleet, all of those who participated in the battle? If you just flew a ship of the line and shot targets, maybe you didn’t create content. But what if you were in logi, or were the logi anchor, or maybe one of the fleet boosters? You helped enable or sustain content.

The philosophy once espoused by Goonswarm was that every ship mattered.

Every Ship Counts – World War Bee version

How much credit does the person who shot that cyno jammer get as a content creator? Sure, somebody in the command channel got to shout “free fire on titans” which led to an exchange that set Guinness Book world records.

Exchange of fire as the battle began

But who “created” that content? CCP? The titan fleet commander? The line members who broke tether and opened fire knowing it would likely be a bloodbath? That PAPI titan pilots that formed up on grid with us not knowing how things would play out? That person who shot the cyno jammer? Me in my boosting ship?

My Damnation in the middle of the fight helping create that content

And that is an extreme example as hundreds of small battles pop up every day.

These are, of course, silly questions, pushing into absurdity to prove a point that there is no hard line, no velvet rope that separates the content providers from the unwashed consuming masses.

There is, of course, a line between good content and bad, but that is another subject altogether.

These people, who are participating in Blaugust however, they all produce nothing but the finest content. You should take some time out of your day to visit their sites.

Another day in Blaugust.

Blaugust and Introductions

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We are now into the second week of Blaugust and not only haven’t we lost anybody yet… that I know of in any case… the total number of people signing on for the event actually grew. I believe we are up to 67 participants. Not bad for 2022.

Blaugust time is coming to town…

Especially encouraging for the hobby aspect is that we have two dozen blogs that have signed up for the event for the first time. Rather than posting the whole participant list this time around, I’ll post just them… since Belghast has been good enough to call them out on their own tab on the participants list spreadsheet. Please find a moment to visit them.

It is still not too late to join in. You can find all of the Blaugust information at these helpful links:

Each week of Blaugust has a theme that participants can join in on should they wish.

The Blaugust Calendar

This is introducing yourself week, and I suppose I can manage that in any number of ways.

The easy and obvious introduction is me, Wilhelm Arcturus, and the fact that I have been blogging here at this URL for going on 16 years. In that time I have written and hit “publish” on more than six thousand posts which add up to about as many words as Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series.

The general theme of the blog is video games, with a focus on online games, especially those that we used to call MMORPGs.

More specifically, while I write about other games now and then, I tend to write about the same half dozen titles pretty consistently. If take a peek at the categories drop down on the side bar, you will see my most written about titles are:

EVE Online
World of Warcraft
EverQuest II
EverQuest
Lord of the Rings Online

They all have the classic MMORPG vibe. I don’t play all of them at the same time… I am generally playing EVE Online and one of the other titles at any given moment… but I do tend to keep an eye on all of them and will write about news and changes about them even if I am not currently subscribed and playing.

There are some other titles that come up fairly often, like Minecraft and Valheim, but it is pretty much those five that tend to dominate.

And while I keep up with the news and expansions and such, this isn’t really a news site. And it certainly isn’t a theory crafting or strategies site.

It is more of a recounting of my adventures in these titles, opinions and reactions to changes, and a long term tracking project. Towards that latter item, I am always that person who comes back with a post they wrote five years ago when the company said they were doing something and now they say they are not doing that at all and reminds readers of the history of things.

I don’t like facts without context, so I try to add context… and opinion. I have opinions.

A co-worker once described my style as “strong opinions, loosely held.”

That is to say that I often grab onto an idea or hypothesis and run with it… but that when evidence disproves it I will change my mind with the evidence. For example, I am of the opinion that CCP’s restructuring of the economy in EVE Online has been bad for the game, that it was based on a flawed philosophy that might best be described as wishful thinking, and that the evidence to support my view is there in the monthly economic report and the online player count numbers that CCP provides as well as the Pearl Abyss quarterly financials.

If CCP came out with some evidence that tended to disprove my opinion, I would certainly listen. However, the company has mostly offered more unsupported philosophical statements and hand waving generalizations about the future of the game. As such, I remain unmoved.

On the other hand, I have conceded points to many I have argued with over the years, including Gevlon, who ended up being right about the whole player run market in EVE Online. CCP “fixed” that as well with their economic revamp.

That doesn’t mean I roll over whenever somebody has a counter argument. People often think their opinion counts as fact. Anybody who has been around the blog neighborhood for a while knows one or two bloggers who have decided their opinions are fact. So when somebody come around in the comments and argues, for example, that WoW Classic was not worth the resources expended by Blizzard or that CCP should turn EVE Online into a completely different game, I am generally unconvinced as the evidence is not on their side. So I will push back on that sort of thing.

Does that tell you enough about me?

If you want to know what sort of gamer I am, there is always the Quantic Foundry gamer profile quiz. I’ve done that a few times before… and I have opinions… and I will probably do it again. Maybe even this week. There has probably been something new added since last I took it, and it is always good for a blog post. But here are past results:

Jan 2021 – Returning Again to My Gamer Profile
May 2020 – A Flawed Profile in Gamer Motivation
Aug 2019 – My Gamer Motivation Profile Once Again
Jun 2015 – Who Says I am Calm, Spontaneous, and Grounded?

If that isn’t helping you, I have also written a series of posts… usually under the “In Person” category… about myself and my experiences outside of video games and the blog.

Or, perhaps you can find some element of me in how I write. I write in something of a casual tone, closer to the way I speak than the way I write formal documents at work or did back in school. This leads to some quirks of its own, like my having to go back and remove the word “and” from six consecutive paragraphs. That is something that isn’t as noticeable in conversation as it is on the page.

I am also not particularly prone to use exclamation points, all capital letters, or obscenity haphazardly. I generally reserve those for special occasions so they will stand out and provide the emphasis I am going for with their usage.

I am also reluctant to say I “love” or “hate” something here, if only because we’re talking about video games most of the time here and from time to time I feel like those words are used a little more frivolously than they should be. I have noticed this leading me into an odd situation where I will sometimes say, “I do not love this idea” or “I do not hate this feature,” which sort of backs myself into something adjacent or a notch removed. Of maybe I just overthink things.

Anyway, a throw away word I use to change topics or indicate I am wrapping something up, those are at least some clues to who I am. You can take from that what you will.

Blaugust Begins 2022

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We are live and off to the races with Blaugust. It isn’t too late to join in, but we have officially started.

Blaugust time is coming to town…

Of course, now that we have started, the question is “What now?”

Often times, when it comes to Blaugust, I have a plan of sorts, a sketch of posts for the month, that I know will get me through the 31 days with a post a day. I used to be able to build up some structure around a few regular monthly posts. If you click on the Blaugust tag at the bottom of the post and scroll through past years, I have a couple of posts where I talk about those anchor topics I could rely on in any given month.

And I still have a few of those… there is always that month in review post to cap things off, and the EVE Online monthly economic report will give me a post. But some of them, regular patch days or things like the now gone monthly SuperData Research chart, have fallen by the wayside. Even a stalemated war in New Eden gave me something to write about weekly. And it is August, I cannot even depend on patch notes from some companies.

So I sit here, looking at the calendar, wondering how to fill it with posts… like it is some new challenge as opposed to something I have done literally every month since April of 2020. This is my 856 daily consecutive post. And yet, I fret. You might suspect it is just going to happen. But I know that I didn’t get that many days in a row without a bit of planning. So I look at the event calendar and consider how it can help me.

The Blaugust 2022 Calendar

I am sure I can come up with something related to the theme of each week. Hell, this counts as a “Welcome to Blaugust” post in my book. I am sure I can come up with some anecdote for “Introduce Yourself” week… or I can just take another run at that Nick Yee gamer motivation profile quiz again. That is always good for a bit of self-reflection.

I have something in the drafts folder I’ve been meaning to finish up that I think will serve for “Creative Appreciation” week.

As for “Staying Motivated,” I am sure some reflection on how many posts I’ve managed to get in for the month will serve, how I came up with them and what I have setup for the balance of the month.

Finally, there is “Lessons Learned.” After this many runs through Blaugust, will I have any new lessons to write about? Or will I drag out my past philosophical reflections? I am going to guess the latter.

Then we’ll be at the end of the month and that will be that. Another Blaugust on the books.

So I am pretty sure I can fill out the calendar. I have a couple of posts in the can for this week already and there are at least a few news items I expect to pop up… the Activision Blizzard financials, ongoing updates about Wrath of the Lich King Classic, and maybe even the war in EVE Online. But one can never be sure, so I am always trying to fill in the blanks in the calendar.

But now I have one post down, so there are only 30 more to go.

For anybody interested in joining in on Blaugust, and as I said at the top of the post, it isn’t too late, the following links will bring you up to speed.

And, of course, this is my first chance to link out to the other participants in the event. We have 56 60 63 65 67 blogs that have opted in so far. There are some old familiar blogs on that list, but some new ones as well. Take some time to visit these sites as we all begin our journey to the other end of August:

Blaugust 2022 Commences in One Week

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So you still have plenty of time to get ready and join in.

Blaugust time is coming to town…

Belghast announced Blaugust 2022… more than a week ago now… and I am sure most of you have seen a post somewhere about it already. But here I am to add my blog to the news cycle. Maybe somebody will see it here first.

The pattern of the event is familiar, drawing once more on the relaxed format of later years of the event. It is no longer a challenge to post every single day in August. But if you want to, you can… and there are the usual awards for posting.

Newbie Blogger Award – You did it! You joined Blaugust for the very first time and we are extremely happy to welcome you into this raucous community. As a result, we are going to recognize your efforts just for signing up.
Bronze Award – You made at least 5 posts during the month of August 2022.
Silver Award – You made at least 15 posts during the month of August 2022.
Gold Award – You made at least 25 posts during the month of August 2022.
Rainbow Diamond Award – You beat the challenge and posted 31 times or more during the month of August 2022.

There is also the usual schedule of events, with each week having a theme. August

The Blaugust Calendar

August nicely starts on a Monday this year, so we can get right to it in the first week. There are more detailed descriptions about what each week’s theme means in Belghast’s post.

New for Blaugust 2022 are Blaugchievements. There is a series of badges you can unlock and display by participating in various aspects of Blaugust 2022. You can find the full list of them here. I unlocked “spreading the madness” with this post.

And so it goes, we’ll be off to another Blaugust soon. So it is time to get your act together and get your blogging persona ready to go.

Blaugust 2022 information:

The Labors of Blaugust 2021

On Blogging, Motivation, and Passion

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It is “staying motivated” week in the Blaugust event and I figured it was about time for me to post something Blaugust related. I have not been very attentive to the event, wandering off in whatever direction takes me, as is my usual pattern.

On the topic of motivation I have a little story.

When my daughter got to middle-school (which for some reason is 5th through 7th grade in our local district, it used to be junior high school when I was that age, and was mostly just 7th and 8th grades), she was able to pick an elective class and she wanted to take band.

It wasn’t an easy choice. She also wanted to take art, something she enjoyed and was already into. But band won out because it was new and different. She went with flute as an instrument, and we went down to the music store and rented her a flute.

She did well enough in band I suppose. She practiced at home. She went to all of the events. She seemed to enjoy it well enough. She took band for a second year, sticking with the flute.

For the third year of band she switched to the baritone saxophone. The flute, which was a rent-to-own deal, was paid off just about the time she made the switch. A baritone sax is a much more expensive instrument, but the school had one for her to use. She went with the sax both because it was kind of cool… we were watching Bojack Horseman around then, and the opening theme is heavy on the sax… and because the band needed somebody to play it as the person who had been playing moved on to high school.

So we had the bari sax around the house.

Our cat Rigby making himself at home with the sax

She did that for a year, though I think she enjoyed posing with the sax more than she liked playing it. She borrowed my sunglasses for performances.

Then came eight grade and when she was signing up for classes she asked me, rather hesitantly, if she could not take band. She wanted to take art.

Her tone said to me that she was afraid we would be disappointed in her choice, but I told her right away that it was fine, she should take art if that was what she wanted.

I explained to her that I could see she wasn’t really into band. While she practiced as often as was recommended and took things seriously, I had never once seen her play her instrument… flute or sax… just because she wanted to. She did her time, then moved on to what she really wanted to do, which was often art.

She had no passion for music. People I know who do will play just to play, will figure out how to play something they heard just from listening to it. My step-brother used to sit in his room with his headphones on just figuring out a song for hours on end.

Meanwhile, she clearly had a passion for art. She had a drawing tablet hooked up to her computer, a copy of PhotoShop Elements along with a few other art and design titles, and would sit for hours just trying to get something right… not because she had to but because she wanted to.

I never had to tell her to put down the flute or the sax and go to bed, but I got up a number of times in the middle of the night to tell her to put down her sketch pad and go to sleep.

If you have a passion for something then motivation will come. And if motivation does not come… well, maybe blogging or band or whatever isn’t really your thing.

Which I guess isn’t a very motivational message. But maybe it can be a guide to help find motivation. We all seem to be able to find the time to do the things we really want to do, so if blogging is feeling like a chore, perhaps it isn’t for you. Or maybe you just haven’t found an aspect of blogging that works for you.

I like writing long winded narratives about what I did in this game or that. I enjoy telling a story. I almost always feel I have to establish my relationship with a topic to write about it.

But that is just my style. There are lots of options. Some people like to do reviews or game guides or write in the voice of their in-game character or track statistics or complain loudly and make up irrational conspiracies. There is room for all of that and more.

When you find your niche, motivation will follow. And if blogging isn’t it at all, then maybe videos or streaming or screen shots or something else is.

Or maybe just cute cat pictures.

Anyway, if you haven’t found motivation here… and I’ll admit that I didn’t have much to offer in that regard… maybe one of the other Blaugust participants can help you along. There are 46 others from which to choose:

Adelle – Pixel Fairy
Alli – The Parent Trope
Ashgar – Ashs Adventures
Aywren Sojourner – Spot of Mummery
Belghast – Tales of the Aggronaut
Bhagpuss – Inventory Full
Blockade85 – A Page Where My Brain Leaks Onto
Chestnut – Gamer Girl Confessions
Easha and Poppy – Glittering Girly Gwent Gaming
Endalia – Narratess
everwake – Everwakes Adventures
Jaedia – Dragons and Whimsy
jamesmcrosby – MMO Folklorist
Jen – Book of Jen
Kaylriene – Kaylriene
Kluwes – Many Welps
Knifesedge Games – Knifesedge Blogs
Krikket – Nerd Girl Thoughts
Magi – Indiecator
Mailvaltar – Mailvaltar – MMOs and other stuff
Mike Azariah – A Missioneer in Eve
MMOJuggler – MMOJuggler
Naithin – Time to Loot
Nimgimli – Dragonchasers
Nogamara – Battle Stance
Rakuno – Shards of Imagination
Rambling Redshirt – Beyond Tannhauser Gate
Roger Edwards – Contains Moderate Peril
Rowan – I Have Touched the Sky
SDWeasel – Unidentified Signal Source
Shadowz – Shadowz Abstract Gaming
Shintar – Going Commando
Shintar – Neverwinter Thoughts
Shintar – Priest with a Cause
Solarayo – Ace Asunder
Stargrace – Nomadic Gamers Eh
Stingite / Tom – The Friendly Necromancer
Syp – Bio Break
Telwyn – Gaming SF
Thyanel – Thyanel Plays
Tipa – Chasing Dings!
UltrViolet – Endgame Viable
UnwiseOwl – Leaflocker
WelshFox – Whats Occuring
Wilhelm – The Ancient Gaming Noob
Wolfyseyes – Through Wolfys Eyes
Zapp – Leeterati

One Blog or Multiple?

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Aywren Sojourner brought the idea of multiple blogs back into my brain with their new blog Spot of Mummery; is it better to have multiple, topic focused blogs or one sprawling somewhat generalist blog? This seems like a Blaugust aligned post, so let’s at least pretend it is part of that theme.

I must admit, as somebody who gets turned on in the organizer section of office supply stores, the idea of having nice, neat little silos of content segregated out by topic does have some appeal to me.

I have, over the years, experimented with multiple blogs. This was actually blog number two for me, after I did a test blog elsewhere. And since the founding of this blog I have spun up a number of others, including:

EVE Online Pictures
Star Trek Online Pictures
Stuff MMO Bloggers Like
Stuff MMO Gamers Like (never even got a post)
The Many Faces of Downfall

There were a couple others I have since deleted, including an RP tell all of what really happened with Vanguard and SOE. That whole “Stuff” topic was a meme about a decade back. I think “Stuff MMO Gamers Like” could still be a decent group blogging project, or a weekly column at Massively or some such.

Of those, only EVE Online Pictures is still active, and that is largely due to it being just a screen shot blog.

There are certainly benefits to the idea of having a blog with a single focus. Being a one topic blog helps you cater to your audience because they know what they’re going to get, at least in some general way, with each blog post. If you have a WoW blog, they can safely assume that your next post and the post after that and so on is going to be in some way tied up with WoW.

And, in some ways, I think having a single focus blog is a bit of an enabler to really go deep on various aspects of your game of choice, from lore to fashion to mechanics to all the various peripheral topics that add up around a title. You can do that because your audience has self-selected itself to be attuned to all of that.

Meanwhile, not having a single focus has caused me a bit of bother over the years. I have missed out on being “in the club” on a few fronts. I have been refused links from WoW blogs and was kicked out of the EVE Blog Pack due to my lack of purity. WoW players come here and tell me this really and EVE Online blog and EVE Online players tell me it is actually a WoW blog. (And occasionally an EVE player will say this is an EVE blog, but then will complain it is a null sec blog and they only like wormhole blogs or whatever.)

They’re not right… but they’re not totally wrong either.

TAGN isn’t WoW or EVE or EQ or LOTRO or whatever MMO title you care to mention blog. It isn’t even a genre blog anymore, as I have strayed off the MMORPG path more than a few times. Look at all the posts about Valheim and Minecraft. Think of all the Pokemon posts!

Given the amount of stuff I have written about movies, TV, and other topics I suspect that you could make the case that this isn’t really even a video game blog. Should I change TAGN to mean “Tales About General News” already?

If you come here you think you might know what I am going to write about, and you’ll probably be right a few days out of the week, but at times if will be a surprise.

And, because I can go off on various games and other topics, I do have to be a little opaque in my writing. I cannot assume that everybody knows the jargon of whatever game I am writing about. I often spend a bit of time explaining what I mean rather than just diving into things. That isn’t a bad thing, and I am sure some of my EVE Online posts could use more explanation at times, it being a title rife with jargon, but I do have to write for a more general audience.

On the flip side, the minor problems that arise from my lack of focus aside, my generalist approach to blogging has a few advantages.

Being a bit more explanatory also makes for easier comprehension on my part when I go back and read old posts. This I knew or which were current in that moment do not always last.

I am also less constrained on topics. I write about video games in general and MMORPGs specifically most of the time, but if I get the urge to write about old computer hardware or a typewriter I still have or a road trip to LA, I can take a detour and go down that path. I used to feel a little self-conscious about that back in the early days.

That and there are times when I don’t have a lot to say about a given game. If this were and EVE Online or a WoW focused blog I am not sure I could manage more than three or four posts a week. Maybe. Or I would have to drop into more detail, get more into the nuts and bolts. My posts now tend to be general sweeps and tales of my own misadventures.

And, of course, given the number of times I have changed games, having a game focused blog would inevitably lead to long dead periods when I was off playing something else. Over the last ten years I have only remained subscribed to EVE Online the whole time. Other titles tend to come and go.

Then there is the number of blogs I would need to keep going. Look at the category list on the side bar. If I had the foresight to roll up a fresh blog just for the titles about which I have posted 200 or more times, I would need an easy half dozen blogs.

Being honest, I would have no doubt lacked that level of foresight, so would have ended up with at least a couple dozen blogs, most languishing without updates, focused on titles from Warhammer Online to Neverwinter to Vanguard to EverQuest Next. Pretty much assume that any game that is a category that has a dozen or more posts would have ended up being a blog.

Not a viable path for me, though that says more about me than about blogging I am sure.

That doesn’t even begin to explore what happens if the company that develops your game of choice turns out to be run by horrible people. That was the case for Riot previously and Blizzard currently.

Finally, it has been my experience that readers of this blog at least tend to be as much creatures of habit as I am, so jumping around between multiple sites or starting up new ones would break their routine as much as my own. Better to just let everything land here.

I do admire the focus of single game blogs. Sometimes I think it would have been nice to have gone deeper on one game or another, to have been able to maintain that level of focus. What if I had gone all in on EQII at launch or something like that? But it just isn’t in me.

So I carry on with a single blog for words, where all my posts are collected. It is a bit chaotic and finding what you’re looking for depends on me correctly and consistently categorizing and tagging my posts. (I do the former fairly well, but the latter can be a bit of a crap shoot.)

But this is Blaugust, so I wonder what others think about having multiple blogs or blogs that manage to focus on a single game.

And since this is a Blaugust related post, here is the list of those participating in the event.