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.

When to cancel a raid?

Its the slow summer time of Warcraft, and many players are taking extended breaks, fooling around with partners, and generally not logging in. Some folks might have had lives in the first place. Lucky sods. So it falls to the folks who are still raiding to try to recruit, pug, or beg for characters to fill the ranks.

In these troubling times the Friends list gets a workout, and good players or even average players who are online, but only known in passing get a whisper.

(As an aside I’d like to think that the Trade Chat putrific swill had dropped off, but it looks about the same. Go figure that all the people who are taking breaks are not those in Trade presenting their lack of social skills…yup.)

This got me thinking that there must be somesort of threshold of pain, time, or frustration which causes the leadership (or which in my Guild I just recently because a participant officer) to just say, “screw this, lets raid hogger instead. Good night guys”.

But when and based on what type of scenarios? I dont have answers, I’m asking the question. When do you call it, and go fishing in Darkshire?

My suss is:

• I think missing more than 2 is a total non-start, and having 2 missing at any point after is just frustrating and the beginnning of the end. At best tell the ones you have to look around, give them all assist to invite, and say that you’ll look again at a kick-off in 15 minutes.
• Having low gear is as bad as no player at all, especially so when you get deeper into ICC.
• Having screen-lickers (see below) is a non-start too. ICC cannot carry any.

Could be cused by some of these factors:

Low toon numbers – make for bad runs, especially if you have no players with alt toons. So low toon numbers really means a lack of players. recruitment might help, but you need to keep the old ones, while the new ones get broken in. And adding any number of new players into a group is a mess.

Like adding a new cock in the hen house. Bloody, messy, and sometimes not worth the effort.

Poorly geared players – basically make a run with slightly less fail, but still fail when the challenge can’t be beaten by skill alone.

Which assumes you can get skill…

Screen-lickers instead of raiders – will make the GM and officers scxream murder, but hope they learm. This is probably worse than no numbers at all. Either way I think recruitment might help.

Lend me your thoughts on what measure you folks use.