For the Bloggers

Today I think I will talk about blogging. So if you only read my blog (and let’s face it...no one reads my blog) for only WoW stuff you may want to amuse yourself in other ways which I may or may not want to know about. Hmm dirty humor in the second sentence of a post...right on schedule. I think this will be the first in a series of helpful blogging tips so enjoy the first post and eventually I’ll get around to posting more.

So how do you rise to levels of blog fame where people flock to your blog posts in the thousands and hang on your every word? Well the first step is the easiest: start a blog! Once you have a blog you need to do three things: Find a subject to write about, write something, and get your name out there.

Projects and testing

Normally I try to push out at least two blog posts a month but this month has been a busy month for me. I've got a few projects that I've been working on and on Friday one of them together at last. What is this project you may be wondering to yourself. Well wonder no more for the curtain has been pulled away to reveal a brand new podcast! Aero, Orvillius, Nymphy, and I have decided to team up and do a podcast titled "Follow the Leader," which is focused on Guild Leadership, Raid leading, and other management issues in WoW and other games.

Our first episode went live on Friday and so far most people seem to like it. At least no one seems to hate it enough to tell us so, which I will gladly take as a sign that we are doing a decent job. Self delusion is a wonderful thing after all.

Another project that I am working on is the Mists of Pandaria Beta! I've copied my Mage over to the beta server and have been slowly working my way through the questing areas. So far Frost Mages seem more awesome than they are now. My only gripe so far is that Deep Freeze no longer does damage to mobs that are immune to it, which means its no longer a big damage dealer on bosses like it is now. =( I'll probably make a post with a ton of cool screenshots of the Panda Island because it is really pretty looking.

I've also been running Dragon Soul with the Guild and I am proud to say that we not only clear it in one night, we can clear it in an hour and a half! At least last week we did. I know we can def keep that up but I think we might be dipping our toe into a heroic mode or two this week. Hopefully it'll go just as well and if it does, I'll be sure to let you all know because I know you are all super interested.

Finally I've been helping many new guildees level up by running them through instances,  giving them crafting mats, and generally being a nice GM to them. We've had a nice influx of cool people join the guild from the twitterverse. If you are 18 years of age or older and are suffering from burnout due to end of expansion blues, are looking for a nice place to hang out, or are looking for a permanent home for the upcoming expansion, you should definitely check out my guild the Avengers of Azeroth. We're a nice group of adults who enjoy playing the game together and are always looking for more cool people to join us.

So that's what's been keeping me from posting more stuff...this time. I know I know, I'm full of excuses and Redbull. Clearly you nice readers will forgive me since you've stuck with me so far. <3 to you all.

Quality Control

Every day I log into my GM character and I go through a list of things before I start playing the game. First I check to see who is online so that when I say hello and I won’t wonder why I haven’t gotten a response back if it’s only me online. Next I check the guild info panel to see if anyone has joined the guild while I was offline or to make sure no one has mysteriously gquit in the middle of the night when no one was online. The last thing I do is check the Guild Finder to see if we have had any anyone try applying to the guild through it.

What is the Guild Finder you may be asking yourselves? Well Blizzard added in a Looking For Guild feature a few patches ago, that allowed guilds to list themselves as recruiting. If you are looking for a guild you’d type /gf, enter in your information in the screen that pops up, and you are presented with a list of guilds that are listed as recruiting. It shows you a guild’s level, achievement points, whether they are looking for in more people for PvE, RP, or PvP as well as a comment box with information about the guild.

To the winners

When I saw that my blog was going to hit the 2 year mark I thought that I should do something for my readers who have stuck around through so much of my random rambling and ranting. I figured that since you readers have stuck around with me this far I should do a giveaway as a way to show that I appreciate each and every one of you. I decided that instead of just giving one thing away I would do three so that more than one person could win. I enlisted the services of the amazing and awesome Liala to create a reward for whoever won the giveaway. I figured that her custom icons were so cool that they would be the perfect reward for whoever won.

When the contest closed I had 17 comment entries and of those 17, three were chosen to receive their very own icon. The winners were: Windsoar, Angelya, and Selly. I wish I could have given an icon to each person who entered the giveaway but sadly I could not. Also I think Liala would have killed me if I had tried commission her to create 17 icons. She does have a temper after all! (Please don't beat me anymore Liala, I'll be good I swear!)

Jedem: Through the years

The very nice and friendly Vidyala over at Manalicious wrote about a cool meme that involved posting a screenshot of your main from many levels ago along with a screenshot of it now to show how far you've come along. I meant to do this post the other day when Vid actually posted about it but of course doing things when they are relevant just isn't my style. So I dug through seven years worth of screenshots and eventually I found screenshots that made me both laugh and cry. Seven years of visual reminders of things that you've gone through tend to do that.

Anyway on with the show! I decided that I would tweak the premise of the meme and instead of posting a comparison of a character then and now, I am posting a visual timeline for my mage. Step back into the way back machine with me as we travel back to the year 2005. It was a good year: Facebook was still only for the cool kids in college, the White Sox won the World Series, Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith was released, and a young man who would go on to be known world wide as Jed, began to play the World of Warcraft.

Community Fun

Back in July 2011 Blizzard announced that they were activating the much talked about Real ID grouping feature that would allow you to group with your Real ID friends for random instance fun. When I heard about this feature I instantly though "Sweet I can run randoms with twitter friends so they can see how awesome I really am and want to be my friends forever!" Blizzard then decided that they would make the Real ID system use your real name and verily the twitter community took up arms against this invasion of privacy. Some of my readers will remember that I posted about the Real ID feature when it was first announced, along with the huge controversy that came along with it. I honestly didn't have a problem with it but I also don't have a one of a kind super unique name like some people out there.

Well the Real ID announcement was pretty cool but you could only run random 5mans with Real ID friends, which was nice and all but the system was a little lacking. Yes you could get a full group of RID friends and not worry about having to pug in randoms but you couldn't run a raid with them or even run a battleground with them. As someone who grew up in one city in one state and then moved to a different city for college and finally moved out of that state, I tend to have a few friends that I am too far from seeing without much planning and travel. Real ID allowed me to be able to talk to my WoW playing friends regardless of the faction that they were playing. This alone was a pretty sweet feature.

You can keep your Flowers

In 2011 Blizzard auctioned off several old server blades on ebay for charity and in November the Ursin server blades were posted. Now being a day one Ursinite, I knew that I had to have one. Well I got lucky and was able to win one and when it arrived, it was glorious. Well my lovely lady was very happy with the purchase and she even offered to write something for me about the whole event and I took her up on the offer. She emailed me the following and now submitted for the approval of the midnight society I now present you, my lovely readers with this:

KEEP YOUR STUPID FLOWERS!!!

 

*Ring

Me: “Hello?”

Jed: “Hunny the Ursin server blades are for sale!”

That was the beginning.  Here we were just over a month into marriage and he wasn’t calling to hear my voice, he wasn’t calling because he missed me or because he thought he would check on my day.  He was calling to tell me a piece of hardware was on EBay.