September 07 Wrapup

Posted by Stropp on October 3, 2007

There’s an old saying that time flies when you’re having fun. In my experience, it also flies when you are busy, have deadlines, or have plans. September has been a bit like that. It doesn’t seem all that long ago I posted my August 07 Wrapup, and the beginning of October seemed to sneak past. Must have been the long weekend.

September the 11th was also the first birthday of Stropp’s World. As an achievement, I reckon it’s not half bad. Some time earlier this year, the number of blogs listed on Technorati passed the 50 million mark. I’m not sure what that number is now, I think I saw in passing that it numbered around 75 million. That’s a lot of blogs. However, not many of them last more than a few months. So reaching a year is pretty good. Now to make it past the next twelve months.

Most Viewed Posts

The three top viewed posts in September were:

• The Politest Spammer Ever. This got hit by a major Stumbleupon effect early in the month which put the post in an unbeatable lead.

• Why World of Warcraft Needs Gold Sellers. This post was probably a little more controversial. Controversy tends to get readers believe it or not.

• First Look At Tabula Rasa. I preordered the game to get a quick look at the Tabula Rasa beta. The post got picked up by a few of the TR fan/news sites.

September Poll Results

The September Poll was How Do You Feel About Wrath of the Lich King? It received 54 votes all up, and the results are as follows.

• 9% think it is the best expansion ever.
• 33% say that they are looking forward to it.
• 39% think, Meh. It’s nothing special.
• 19% are really disappointed.

In a nutshell, the majority of respondents at 58% are negative towards the Wrath of the Lich King. Even though this isn’t a statistically sound polling method, I think it’s a bit of a sign that Blizzard are on the wrong track with the way they are handling their expansions. Simply raising the level cap and adding high level content may not be what players are looking for.

Lord of the Rings Online

This month I decided to get back into Lord of the Rings Online. I have a lifetime subscription which makes it easy to go in and out of LotRO (which can be a disadvantage.) To my surprise I was still guilded, however, the night I played the Guild Leader did a purge of 90+ day members of which I was one. Good timing eh?

I concentrated on my Dwarf Champion and got him up a few levels. He was level one when I started, and now he’s nine. I like the Champion class. I’ve tried a few classes and so far I keep coming back to this class. It just seems to be more fun, and in line with the how I see Middle Earth Dwarves. I think I also identify more with Gimli than I do with Legolas or Aragorn. Comic relief…

Tabula Rasa

A couple of weeks ago I succumbed to the lure and preordered Tabula Rasa from the NCSoft online store. I figured since it only cost US4.99, it was a cheap way to get into the beta, check the game out, and put some info up here for my readers.

Consequently, I spent pretty much all of last weekend between long weekend social engagements, and the weekend before that, playing the beta. My impressions have changed a bit since I put up First Look At Tabula Rasa. Primarily because there was a patch after I posted that fixed some issues I was having, and added a bunch of content. My Specialist has just reached level 15 and has chosen the Sapper branch of the class tree. I also cloned her, and the clone will take the other branch.

So far with Tabula Rasa I’m having fun and I’ll put some more posts up during October.

Single Player Games

Not too much here this month. I finished Bioshock and put a Bioshock Review up. I don’t see too much on the horizon that interests me with the old single player games. The only game coming up that I can see getting is Mass Effect for the XBox 360.

Site Stats

• According to AWStats, Stropp’s World received 9526 unique visitors who visited 12469 times and viewed 29109 pages. This is the best month so far.
• The number of RSS subscribers reached 187.
• The number one search term is still World of Warcraft Addiction.

Blog Experiments

I didn’t really experiment much with the blog layout or promotion during September. I did fiddle with the RSS subscribe button and some accompanying silly text.

October Goals

• Reach 200 RSS subscribers.
• Reach 10000 unique visitors.
• Try and get ranked for search term other than World of Warcraft Addiction.

Popularity: 9%