1000 posts. Heck

This is the blogs 1000th post. I do not know really where that compares with other wow bloggers, except my hunch is that many newer blogs whooshed past 1000 a while back because their authors are prolific writers. Good on them. Something to aspire to for me as a hobbyist.

I’ve obviously known that I was getting close to that number for a while, and I’m happy to have stayed with blogging.

The process of writing a post a week or so has helped with accepting and understanding the disciplines involved with regular writing. Distraction, anger, and fatigue can be huge barriers to writing and if it wasn’t for the gravity of work already done I might have stopped a few times along the way.

When it started the blog was about other non-game things like films and books as well; but over time I think a focus improved what was written. This is because I think the reading audience tends to expect a focused set of topics, and those who follow a blog look for material to match what brought them to the blog in the first place. It is a risk to dilute the topic too much.

Because of the computer gamer focus left me without a platform for all my other silly posts, there are two other blogs I write as well. One on nerd and more professional topics and the other for pen and paper role playing games. So I really was past 1000 posts a whole back, but it didn’t feel like 1000 until this blog got there.

So where to for the next few hundred or thousand? Well games for sure. Apart from that I’d expect world if Warcraft to continue to feature heavily, but I can’t help looking at other stuff from time to time.

In fact I hope that stays true forever.

Happy writing, TyphoonAndrew

Panoramas and Banners for fantasy themed blogs

As a blogger I never seem to have the “right” image, and get tempted to hike images from anywhere. Well, shamefully I do admittedly hike them, but I try to grab my own, or take them from folk who are willing to give freely.

I found that “The Other Tank” Blog has compiled a batch of images which are perfect for bloggers to use for wow-related banners and panoramas. Even better he has supplied a batch of these in zip file shared via DropBox for anyone to grab. Darn fine work sir!

Happy Killing, TyphoonAndrew.

WoW Hammer launches, go have fun, share, party

There is a new wow site launched, with a slightly different bend to the typical wow blog/info site – named WoW Hammer. Instead of straight patch notes or official news WoW Hammer focuses on content related to World of Warcraft stories, screenshots, the experiences of players, and any funny events.

WoW Hammer – Where the joy of play meets the joy of life.

It is a less serious place to share WoW related stuff.

The editors are keen to engage the World of Warcraft community as the source for the material, and are taking contributions. So if you are interested in contributing and sharing interesting stories I can heartily recommend chatting to the eds. They’re friendly folk.

The post rate will likely be daily updates from material already sourced from some contributors, and (for the sake of openness) I’ve happily already contributed an article which I am hoping to see published shortly.

Go have a read, it could be something great. TyphoonAndrew.

Just pruned the front page blog links

I’ve pruned dead, gone, missing, or content changed links and blogs from the my warcraft & pc gaming blog’s homepage (ya, this one you’re reading); and thought it might also serve as an invite to readers and subscribers to tell me about things that should be there. So many of the resources from 2007 through 2011 are gone.

So allowing that it is WoW or gaming related – what do you visit that’s worth linking, or should I link to you?

Maintenance is fun. TyphoonAndrew

A few years ago I blogged…

As a navel dazing distraction, here are a few posts from this blog over the years at or just around mid-October. Blog has been going since late 2006.

That’s a lot of ranting, even for me.

Awesome MoP prep blogpost by Mr Robot

Mr Robot team have prep’ed a great post for what to do first. It’s so good I was thinking of not sharing it so I had a slight edge. Even a quick scan told me things I didn’t know – like the goggles that Engineers can craft that allow others to see extra nodes and herbs!

Random Wanderings

Here are a few of the blogs I read over the past week or so. All worth a read.

• Blessing of Kings, on GW2 expectations and SWToR hater behaviour.
• They Call Me Sal, screenie of a world boss kill.
• Tobold, Levels and Economy.
• Armaggedon’s coming, on playing Warlocks and killing Mages.
• Penny Arcade on the Universal Worm

Great things in the wow blogger community

Meeting up with friends is a big part of why I play MMO games, and on a lazy Sunday afternoon I had a new experience within the blogging community, where fellow bloggers reached out and said hello.

It started when an odd whisper arrived from a toon named Miniices. For the most part I don’t mind odd whispers, but I am wary of the gold beggars and time wasters who frequent the mailboxes and dancing poles. Sometimes I’m short with people because the waste time.

This was absolutely nothing like that, in fact it was the total opposite. There is a great blogger named Navimie, from The Daily Frostwolf and she collects bloggers by way of NaviSpam. Her style is to contact a blogger and get screen-caps and have discussion with them. I am honored that she wished to chat and get some screenshots with me.

How awesome is that! I am very chuffed.

Apparently because I’m hopping around between too many alts, I was a little tricky to find (heh 6x85s). Clever Navi send a message to our GM named Genowen (who is aka The Untamed Hellcat) and Gen assisted her by pointing out that I was fooling around on my Paladin named Diamon at the time; and then joined us for the meetup too.

We met, chatted, and then the obligatory screenshots began, and it was all dancing fun from there on. I can’t say I didn’t laugh seeing a Tauren, Blood Elf, Night Elf and Draenei /bow’ing, /cheer’ing and generally being silly with each other.

As we chatted and flew around we were joined by Dragonray from Azerothian Life which is another blog that I really enjoy. So there were four keen wow’ers having a catch-up beneath the warm glow of the Shattrath crystals-guys.

The girls got to chatting, but having a four month old child meant that I could not stay and banter with them. The experience has left me feeling impressed and happy. Meeting new folks is good, meeting new people where the respect and admiration is mutual is fantastic.

Refs:

• The Daily Frostwolf
• Untamed Hell Cat (Genowen)’s post
• Azerothian Life

Ramifications of Guildie Blogs

Sal is a guildie of mine and she’s started a blog – They Call Me Sal. It is a very personal and honest set of observations about being a wow’er, and also peripheral life stuff.

Her current topic is How do you name your wow toon? I’ve ranted a bit on that many years ago, but I’ll post again now too. See further down.

Gen is a guildie, and the current GM no less (ah the endless joys of being in leadership). Her blog – Untamed Hell Cat. Gen is a tad more ranty than Sal outwardly, and loves a good joke at the expense of all of us, a meme or two, or idiots in trade chat and LFR. Like Sal’s blog it is also worth a read.

Hellcat’s post is almost too much Drood-speek for me to type – oh flame kitteh how i miss choo! Don’t take that as theme for all the content, it is a hat tip to Alamo (?name?)  and is contextual to the post topic.

So what happens when guildies blog?

As a guild we’ve gone from strength to strength, even though there have been hiccups, arguments, and dummy spits. I’m interested in how many people within the guild have blogs, and what that might say about our age and demographics. If I get some stats and evidence to assert a theory I’ll certainly post here. It is easy however for me to say that I’m opinionated and the blog helps with that.

For many years I was the only regular blogger, and that gave me some capacity to write about events, or capacity to control when I did not to write about events. As a guild member though I do not expect to see incidents of the guild posted in public (or certainly not without compassionate consideration), and now that more of my guild are writing their own blogs I feel that the shoe is on the other foot. It is an interesting change in the balance.

A blog can be a soapbox, therapy, and all sorts of things. It may spark discussion, or cause issues of it’s own.

In our guild’s case I’ve not see any drama from bloggers, and I’ve hopefully not caused offense to those we care about. So for us there have yet to be any poor ramifications of guildie blogs. I know for certain that this is not always the case, and sometimes regular posts of that style can garner huge feedback. DramaMamas on WoW Insider is such a blog. I don’t blog for feedback, I do it for the joy of writing the blog. Frankly that is reflected in the small readership, and in a strange way having a small readership means that I can also say what I wish.

So there it all is – a set of wow bloggers virtually standing on our soapboxes, talking to the masses that pass by on the internet (I was going to say, “that pass by on the information superhighway”, but I think that term is as dead as floppy disks).

blogroll updated

Quickie – Finally got around to updating the Blogroll page, with all the stuff in my WoW list. Hopefully all my reader’s blogs are there – and if not tell me and I’ll add you.

Oh, and if you want to know the Googlereader export script things is a pain to add, but instead I copied and pasted the sample in creates. Cheating, but it worked.

Five Year Anniversary

This month is the five year anniversary of this blog. November 9th 2006 to November 9th 2011 is a long time to be standing in the corner of the web, foghorn in hand, prognosticating the future.

Its been a great experience, and there have been some fantastic and bloody frustrating events over the years. Over 400,000 views…whew, no pressure. I’m sure WoW Insider get that in a day or so.

My first post was “A Presence in Warcraft” where I declared who my toons were and just pondered how I’d get better at the game. Now most of the posts are written with a tone which sounds like I know what I’m doing, and I’m better, but still learning.

Happy blogging, reading, and killing.

Mortigen on Son of a Lich

Son of a Lich has posted my response to the DK intro called Circle of Killing.

For those new to the concept the Circle of Killing is a featured Death Knight answering a series of similar questions about the class; akin to the Circle of Healing posts. And Son of  Lich is a great DK blog and resource.

Happy killing.

DMF adds new Heirlooms?

Ah what a good rumor – so much so I hope its true. Psynister Notebook is blogging that their will be new heirloom rings and legs added as part of the Darkmoon Fair. He has already written a comprehensive guide to heirloom items, and with these our alts and twinks should be even better geared. Or is that overgeared?

New Rings and Legs for 1-85 are most welcome. I couldn’t see the declaration specifically in the Wowhead post he’s referenced, but there are links to Rings and Legs within Wowhead, so it is not beyond the call at all (eg. New Tanking Legs). Far more likely than the next expansion being based upon Pandas at the very least.

Do we have enough Heirloom gear now though?

A typical character can be outfitted already in a brutally powerful set of items, to the point where they are typically well above the power of a character not using them. Now I don’t have an issue with this at all, but wonder if the plan is to eventually give us a full Heirloom set that is a matched style and function. Boots, bracers, added in, and then revise (or upgrade / trade-in) the older heirlooms to function from 1 to Max level.

I’d personally love to see it, and think that the slow addition of extra gear is another way we’re being encouraged to stay in the game. It is not a bad strategy – don’t over nurf the content or XP too much, but instead offer players a tool to accelerate through the content should they choose to. No free levels, but certainly fast levels.

It just remains to question what the currency for the heirlooms will be. I hope it stays as Justice points, but could see those pesky darkmoon tokens being used too.

I’ll be reading the patch notes specifically for that now.

Cartoon + blog = D3 AH perfection

If you’re after a good short summary of the debate around Diablo 3 AH, the always online requirement, and the gamer culture of overreaction; just do this:

1. Read Tobold’s blog post – Not separate features
2. Read the Penny Arcade cartoon – Sound and the Fury
3. Smile

Its like comparing apples to elephants to think that wow will be like the D3 implementation; and its even more like getting a chicken with ADD to do the comparison.

Happy gaming

implications of a blog list clean-out

Nasty little thought occurred to me as I was updating my rss feeds last week, follow me through the logic of why I’m a tad sad for a (short) moment:

• We know that account subscriptions are on the way down, but still not to the point of risking world of warcraft as a huge game, or as a positive money generator.
• We know that several new offers have been made to entice new players (quasi-F2P and recruit a friend to 80) into the game, or get people to return.
• There are far more players than readers of blogs, and far more readers than people actually blogging. I don’t know the number, but at least 1000:100:1 would be a minimum (a total guess).
• When I went through the massive list of rss subscriptions I have for WoW blogs, I had to remove over 30 blogs, as they had officially retired or not posted in 2011 at all.
• Some of those blogs were the cornerstone of small community of readers, with specialised focus, who contributed daily content, instead of the weekly and monthly blogs that are around.
• There is no way that my blog list was exhaustive, in fact it pertained to New, Announcements, Death Knights, and the few other classes I play. Sometimes added were the huge profile bloggers like BBB, who create content that is basically best of breed.
• Not posting for 6 months is a reasonable indicator that the person has a much lower interest in the game.

It was depressing, and while I’m a little sad by the passing of so many good contributors (stealing ideas was great) I hope it is ok. I think this withdrawl is only making the remaining blogs stronger and it opens opportunities for new bloggers too. It certainly helps the aggregator services garner good content, and it also has a flow on affect of making it easier to find those folks who have been at it for a while.

When I stated raving on this small digital soapbox there were a small number of people really doing solid work. Starting was intimidating. Then the community exploded and we saw 20 new blog sites each week. Now we’re back to smaller numbers but a more specialised group.

I still see a ton of Hunter blogs, Warrior blogs, and general toon & personality blogs. There are also heaps of gold generation blogs, if you like that kind of thing. And guys like Tobold will be writing about games until they turn off the sun – so all is not lost for us as an audience and community.

I don’t see a huge number of Death Knight blogs, and I miss the contribution from folks like Skeleton Jack and the DeathKnight.info community. The stable EJ forums still pelt out the theory-craft too, but only if you want that core knowledge – banter on lore and stories are not received well there. Perhaps the up-swell of Twitter has moved some of the general DK banter to there too, which replaces the need for casual bloggers? I didn’t see anything cohesive there though.

There is no real message on this post; just a wish that more folks would blog, comment, and cross-link. I feel that the retirement of blog writers reflects a slow down in the tempo of the community, which is sad. There are so many more things to be gained by sharing than just listening and nodding.

So in closing if you’ve thought about it, or stopped – consider a return to chatter. Happy blogging, reading, and as always, killing. TyphoonAndrew.

Remember the Fallen

An odd but very interesting Blog Azeroth – Shared Topic today:

“Your character has been chosen to be published in the revered guest column section of a major publication (Ironforge Times, The Steamwheedle Port Journal, The Orgrimmar Post, etc). Share a clipping of their editorial, guide, meandering nostalgia piece, impassioned call to action, scathing political takedown, or shameless self-advertisement on your blog.”

For this topic I did not choose a regular character I have, but instead took the personality of one of my alts. As a Priest of the light, Yierah is devoted to all ways that the holy can be experienced in the world. The material below would be a short statement of remembrance.

Remember the Fallen by Brother Yierah

As we turn our steel toward the nemesis of Deathwing we must remember the fallen who have been left behind.

Recall the brave army which marched into the Molten Core, eight ranks deep, their bones burnt into dust by that unhallowed fire. What a disgrace of fortune that soon we must again vanquish Ragnaros from our plane.

Do not forget those who fell as we took our first handholds in Outland. Those lost souls reside forever amongst the twisted energy of the nether.

Praise those who fell against the Lich King, and pity those fallen knights who were raised as abominations to serve that cruel oppressor again in unlife. My they all find the peace of the light.

Remember that we will fight for all those heroes who’s glory has been lost. We ensure that the midnight dragon’s reign of fire is quenched once and forever, and the light of dawn returns to our lands.

Peace be to Azeroth.

Happy gaming.

How the blog was named

Here is an odd distraction, formed into a blog post: How and why did you pick the blog’s name?

Typhoon was a nickname I was given at work about 10 or so years ago. I was a tech guy back then doing system admin and system engineer type work for a specialist software developer. The accounting team were initially thinking of calling me the Hurricane, but that was taken by the famous boxer – so Typhoon was the next best thing, or so they said.

I know it was probably meant to be a back handed complement, but I like it.

Many years later I was hunting for a blog name and thought that it would be easier to have a blog with a nickname than something tied to a specific topic; as I didn’t know where the blog would focus. I added the Eye of the Storm sub-title as a way to link the blog to the idea of a typhoon, but also to imply that the posts might be coming from within all the hub-bub.

It was strange when I started blogging that Blizzard announced the Eye of the Storm battleground about a week later, and they more than stole the thunder from the blog in favour of PvP. Such is life.

I saw this on the WOW Debutante blog, and thought it would be a good idea for a post which explains more about my perspective rather than a rant about gear, toons, spec, or updates.

Happy blogging.

Google results are a tad stale sometimes

The search for a Warcraft Blog turns up with some known names, but their content is old and not regularly updated.

e.g. Search for “Warcraft blog”

I’d rate that over 1000 easily findable blogs should be above blogs that are infrequently updated or been retired. Top three have stopped posting a long while back.

That Google Search algorithm is something that evolves, and I don’t think it is walking on two legs just yet. I love Google products, but that search is so basic, it should be far better, such as including a measure of the date of the most recent posts as a highly regarded component of the ranking.

Three years of blog banners

If Warcraft has one thing apart from highly addictive games, it also has some fantastic artwork. And over the years I’ve cropped and copied a few to use as the header for this blog, or snapped screenshots in-game. Below is the 12 or so header art that I’ve used on the blog over the past 3 years of blogging.

Update: A few more, now over 4 years.

Kris Kringle shared topic on BattleChicken

As part of the shared topic by Blog Azeroth community, I was lucky enough to get a guest post on a very story based blog called BattleChicken by  Ambermist. My first world of warcraft fictional snippet-story, and about my main toon: Mortigen, the Death Knight.

Damn fine idea Gnomer!