Archive for the ‘Wrapups’ Category
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.
- 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%
Posted by Stropp on
September 2, 2007
I started to get my blogging groove back during August, and had one of my more productive months on the blog. I still didn’t get a lot of gaming in though. However, there was quite a lot of MMO news to make up for it, with the biggest news being Blizzards announcement of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion.
On the beta front, even though I’ve signed up for a few, I haven’t had any notifications that I’ve got in. That’s probably not a bad thing at this point in time seeing as I have been and will continue to be pretty busy.
I was hit a bit with the flu in the middle of the month, but not hard enough to keep me out of work for more than a day. A good thing since contractors don’t get sick leave. Unfortunately, working all day with a bug took a lot out of me so I didn’t get much done when I got home at night. Happily, it’s all better now. Just hope I don’t catch the Horse Flu that’s shut down the Aussie racing industry.
Most Viewed Post
The most viewed post during August was The Politest Spammer Ever with 2948 views. I was somewhat surprised at this since it was a spur of the moment post inspired by a request by a spammer to post comment spam on my blog and telling me he was just doing his job. The reason for the number of views was that it got picked up by one of the social websites and recieved over a thousand hits in one day, the 24th.
Most Woo Hoo Moment
The discovery of not just one, but two of my articles had been syndicated by two major news portals put a bit of spring in my step. It was certainly something that I wasn’t expecting to happen. Hmmm. Maybe I should go out and buy a Fedora and a reporters notebook. That’s probably more something to do in the City of Heroes.
August Poll Results
The question I asked for the August Poll was Do you PvP?
There were 78 responses to the question with the following results:
- 21 responses for I only play PvP Servers - 27%
- 2 responses for I play PvE sometimes - 3%
- 16 responses for I’m a PvP regular - 21%
- 26 responses for I rarely do PvP - 33%
- 13 responses for I never do PvP - 17%
The most common result from the poll respondants was they they rarely do PvP at 33% of all responses. However, if you break up the poll into two parts, those who PvP and those who don’t PvP or do much of it, you get an exact 50/50 split. I expected the non-PvPers to take a resounding lead, but for the whole month it was neck and neck.
World of Warcraft
After a good start in July, I haven’t done much more with the Rogue, or with World of Warcraft. It’s not that I don’t want to. I’ve simply been more into the single player games lately (see below.)
Single Player Games
I gravitated towards the single player this month. With the release of Bioshock ten days ago, I’ve spent most of my gaming time immersed in this excellent and somewhat ethically challenging game. I’m thinking of putting a review up, even though Bioshock isn’t a MMO. I also spent a few hours earlier in the month with C&C Tiberium Wars.
Stropp’s World Banner
One of the things I was going to look into in August was getting an appropriate banner for the blog. I’ve only looked at a couple of options at this stage. Both are going to cost a reasonable amount of money. I’ve not yet decided wether I’ll go ahead with this idea.
Site Stats
- According to AWStats, Stropp’s World received 9247 unique visitors who visited a total of 12388 times and viewed 27059 pages.
- The number of RSS subscribers reached 173.
- World of Warcraft Addiction is still the top search term.
Blog Experiments
I mentioned in the wrapup for July that I’d been experimenting with Stumbleupon as a tool to get more traffic. Well as you can see by the stats above, it worked. A good portion of those numbers were referred by SU. Of course the trick now is to see if there is a permanent effect on traffic, or if my stats will return to pre-stumble numbers.
Goals for September
- Continue working on regular posts. I got back into regular posting in August. I’d like to keep this up during September.
- Regular Gaming. As with last month, I’d like to become a bit more regular with my gaming (particularly MMO) so that I can increase my game reports. But as also with last month, I’m still pretty busy.
- Experiment with other social networks to build traffic. Stumbleupon appears to have been reasonable successful, so I’ll have a look at some of the other social networking sites like Digg and Redit to see how I can use them to increase traffic.
- Achieve 200 RSS subscribers. I got quite a lot closer to this goal in August, but there is still quite a way to go.
Popularity: 9%
Posted by Stropp on
August 1, 2007
July has been something of a transitional month for me. I quit my job in June and finished up there right at the end of the month. I’ve now gone back into contracting and started a six month contract about ten days ago. I was at my old employer for over seven years and it does feel a little odd adjusting to a new place and new people. But the work is interesting and the money is good.
Gaming and blogging burnout has been a bit of an issue for me this year. The year started well with lots of enthusiasm, but from April through June it has been a real struggle just to get in and do any of it. There were a few times when I strongly considered shutting down the blog. I think a big part of this was the issues that were occuring at work at the time.
I think I started to feel a turn around during July. Even though my new job is pretty busy (I’m coming in late on a large long term project) and has a steep learning curve, I’ve been feeling more relaxed. I’ve also decided to play what I want, when I want. No more feeling obligated to play a certain amount.
New Blog Theme
July also saw the introduction of the new Stropp’s World theme. That took a lot longer than I expected. I first started by trying to build a Wordpress theme from scratch myself, but it was a lot more work than I expected. I then decided to get someone else to do it for me. Unfortunately that didn’t work out too well. After a lot of emails and waiting for results it became apparent that it wasn’t going to happen. At that point I selected the theme you see now, made a couple of mods to the banner for the title and installed it, after upgrading to the latest Wordpress version.
Poll Results
The July Poll question was: The New Look is:
All up nine people voted with the following result; 44% (4) think it is Absolutely Brilliant, 33% (3) think it Is a Reasonable Effort, 11% (1) think their Grandmother could do better, and 11% (1) couldn’t get it to work in their browser.
World of Warcraft
After several months where I haven’t touched World of Warcraft, I decided to see if I could revive my flagging interest by doing something different. I’d never really played on a PvP server before so I decided to create a Rogue on a PvP server. I also bought Joana’s 1- 70 Horde Guide. That’s also something I haven’t done before.
So far so good. Stropp the Rogue has reached level 10 and has done the Rogue quest which earned him a nice dagger. No PvP interaction yet though. I guess that will happen big time when he reaches the Barrens.
Lord of the Rings Online
Lord of the Rings Online is on the backburner at the moment. It’s one of the downsides of the Lifetime Subscription payment model that there is less imperative to play the game since there is no monthly fee to be justified. That’s an upside too. I can put it on the backburner without worry about wasting the monthly fee. I’m not done with this game yet.
Everquest 2
My chronic altaholism manifested itself with the creation of several Everquest 2 during July. Nothing spectacular. I created a few Arasi (evil fairies) and played them up to around level 11.
XBox 360
Some friends gave me a gift voucher for my birthday and I bought Forza Motorsport 2. I also went out and splurged on a Logitech Steering Wheel and Pedals to give me that authentic behind-the-wheel feeling. My easy chair is now the cockpit of a racecar! Very cool game. I’ve never really been a sports game fan, but Forza is a lot of fun. However, I’m no way near ready for the PvP tournaments yet.
Site Stats
- According to AWStats, Stropp’s World received 3508 unique visitors who visited 6003 times and viewed 18597 pages.
- The number of RSS subscribers exceeded 150 for the first time.
- Akismet blocked 15000 pieces of spam for the first time. Can you imagine a blog with 15000 spam comments? It would be unreadable.
- World of Warcraft Addiction was the top search term used to find my site. A blog post made last year still gets results in the search rankings.
Blog Experiments
You probably noticed the removal of all of the Google advertisements and the other advertising banners. The blog looks much nicer now. I did put some affiliate links to some WoW guides on the sidebar. I didn’t expect to see any earnings come out of them, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised.
I also did an experiment with Stumbleupon over a few days last month to see if I could increase my blog traffic. While traffic increased while the SU campaign was running, it dropped back to normal levels when it finished.
Goals for August
- Get back to posting more regularly. There’s a few tricks I want to try to get this happening.
- Get back into a more regular gaming schedule. This is a bit trickier. I’ve got a few things on the burners at the moment. Coupled with a busy work schedule my time is tight.
- Look into a banner or logo for the blog. I’m essentially using a slightly modified version of the Dark Alley theme banner. I’d like to get something more suitable for a MMO blog.
- Continue experimenting with Stumbleupon to increase blog traffic. Even though the small experiment I conducted in July didn’t achieve spectactular results, I have a feeling it’s still worth continuing the experiment.
- Achieve 200 RSS subscribers. This would be really cool.
Popularity: 9%
