What Makes A Good Blog Good?

So, I have been sitting here reading through some blogs while I am waisting my day away at work. Yes I know, what a tough job I have huh? I roll into work and hang out for a few hours getting paid while reading blogs! Hey occassionaly I try to help out a client. Anyway, I read a wide variety of blogs around here and I wanted to give my impressions of what I think a good blog is. You see there are a lot of popular blogs that in my opinion suck. However, if you were to name them, their readers would appear and begin to flog you. So, I am not going to name any names; however, I am going to list some things that I like and dislike (in no certain order).

1. Useful Content - I have an odd view on this one. I consider useful content to be something that I did not know. So if you are wasting my time by telling me to buy low and sell at average, well you are a douchebag who should probably quit writing. I like content that is going to help me understand other classes better that I may not play or be struggling with something. For instance, a blog about Priests that explains the difference between Discipline and Holy is a good read. It let's the readers understand that Holy uses your typical healing type abilities where the Discipline approach has them mitigating damage through the use of bubbles.
2. Clutter Free - I dispise adds on blogs! For one they ruin the look of the blog, but they also clutter the whole place up. I am not the worlds most consistant reader, so I often will be reading several posts on one day versus spread out over several days. I hate when you are scrolling down and have to see these ugly adds in between posts. I just do not like that. Also, if you have a ton of stuff thrown on your blog it will distract people from your content.
3. I hate when other bloggers who have an issue with someone and goes to their blog to insult them on their posts. It is childish and pathetic. Do not get your little heart broken because someone said no to an add to sell your guide or whatever and then decide to go to their blog and attempt to redicule them non-stop. In the end, you will look like the ass and not them. Also, since I hate adds it just aggrevates me that much more.
4. Elitist - Who cares how long you have been blogging or how great you are. Come down off your high horse and take a look at the ass you have become. A lot of blogs start out really good and then they get full of theirselves (or drink the kool-aid) and they just go down hill. Get back to doing what people started liking you for!
5. Be consistant, even if it is consistant in posts. The worse thing you can do is post once in a great while (like yours truly). If you want to sustain readers then you need to let the readers know what they can expect and when they can expect it.
6. Who cares about the number of viewers. I honestly do not track how many visitors I have ever had or post a site counter. To me those are just a waste of time. They realy do nothing to establish your blog as a quality blog.
7. Don't use wild colors. I like to look at sites that do not make me squint at the page. I often times will view blogs early in the morning or late at night (not counting while bored at work) and often times those bright bright bright lights just burn my eyeballs!

Alright, so now that I am off my high horse of complaining about you all is there anything else I wish to talk about? I honestly cannot think of anything. I know several bloggers were posting up stuff about the new LFG system in relationship to their own experiences. In all honesty it is what it is. What do you expect? A bunch of people who will never see each other again, running some heroics to get gear. If you want social graces, then join a golf club. This is a video game and manners (though good to have) are not necessary to play!

Most Embarrasing Moment

So it has been forever and a day since I last dropped a post. Want to know why? I freaking forgot my password! Yeah and then I forgot what the answer to my email secret super duper "oh-shit" question was. End of the story, I finally found my information. Yes, it is not good to leave this information laying around where it could be easily found; however, if you are like me, forget that stuff and write all that shit down somewhere!

So anyway, what is new with me and my misfit army of alts? Well, nothing! I was sad to see that Fish fellow jet out of the blogsphere, at least as an active blogger. I kind of liked his blog. Didn't always agree with him, but isn't that the point of really blogging? I mean I do not want to be the next greedy tiny green guy, but I definitely appreciate the view from the other side of the tracks as it were. Speaking of greedy, I missed the big brawl (or lack of one) between some gold gerus?!? What the hell is up with that? I lock myself out for a while and cannot comment and stir the pot up. Well, that is what you get.

Well, I am back on the scene and firmly gripping it (the password idiot) and shall try to be more regular about posting! As I stated in day one, I want to make my blog a way for me to respond to other blogs. So for my response today, I read over at that little gnome's inn that she posted some questions and feel obliged to the little cutie to respond. So here goes! (Oh and as is the case for me, I do not follow the rules and split some of the things up such as raid and instances. Some folks were doing it half-assed and I do it good when I do it.)

Best Raid - Hands down I like cruise control to easy so I am going with Trial of the Crusader. Sorry, but remember back in the day when they coined the phrase "charity epics", well that place on regular is snooze control. Sorry, do not want to offend anyone but come on, let's go whack some moles and crowd control some mobs? Please!

Best Instance - Okay, again I like to get me some purples for my army of alts so come on down Trial of the Champion! They may be easy, but they still are purple!

Least Successful Raid - Ulduar hands down. I mean how many damn guilds really cleared that place? I check out rankings all the time and a lot of guilds went in guns blazing but they burned out and Blizzard dropped ToC too soon IMO. Blizzard really needs to get a grip and realize who the hell is running the show. If you cator to the morons you will end up with a bad product. If you listen to the more dedicated (aka hardcore) you will put a better game out and all the rest will follow suit because it is the cool thing to do!

Least Successful Instance - Um everything in Northrend. They have to add a looking for group system cross server because people do not want to run that "old" content. Pathetic!

Siliest Gold Sink - Hmmmm...... I guess I have to go with some of the extravagant mounts in the game. Sure they are nice but not necessary.

Most Longed For Instance - Heroic Shadow Fang Keep! Hey I know it is months away, but the thought of that place on heroic just does something to me...

Most Juicy Guild Drama - Our GM going spastic every time someone quits. It gets old, but it is funny as hell to see the dude go apeshit. Now everyone who has a guild leader who blogs is wondering if I am in your guild. Well, you may never know!

Biggest Addition To The Game - Without a doubt, me!

Best Quest - I like the old lore quests. Someone mentioned the Sceptor quest where you go beat on some dragons. If anyone really remembers that thing, they have been around for a long time, cause opening those damn gates makes waiting for ICC look like childs play. Hell, just getting 40 people in a raid should of been an achievement, but then having a whole damn server work together to guarantee they opened it up. It was epic and Normal servers cannot begin to understand the epicness that it took for PVP servers to pull their shit together to accomplish that.

Ugliest Tabbard - My guild tabard. Oooooo how many of you are wondering if I am in your guild now?

Favorite Non Combat Pet - Sleepy Willy, that guy is my hero, just fall asleep anywhere.

Most Charming Blizzard Employee - John was really nice when my account was hacked to hell and back. The guy went above and beyond to tell me he couldn't do anything. Great guy, I bet he worked for companies like Enron and AIG during his esteemed career.

Best Podcast - WTF?? I do not have time for that shit. Hell, I barely was able to get back into my own damn blog.

Biggest Blog Facelift - I honestly do not know. I really do not pay that much attention. Didn't the little greedy guy change his picture recently?

Most Memorable Blog Post - I really do not know on this one. In all seriousness there is a lot of good stuff out there.

Most Noticed Blogger Breakthrough - I am not on that list am I? Hahahaha I think that it could go to quite a few folks, but I do not know who was in the know versus who was not. I just had a list of folks I read and expanded from commenters on their sites or from google searches.

Most Solid Content Provider - WoW Insider?

Most Hugged Blogger - How does a blogger get hugged? Maybe that is why I seem so angry?

What The Hell?

So I am just sitting here bored silly listing stuff on the auction house and I was thinking back to some of the weirdest moments that I have seen in the game that just made me say, what the hell? The reason that this has occurred is because I always set my stuff up to just start listing and then I sit and browse the auction house. I am typically looking for a good buy or perhaps something more specific if I am wanting to craft something for one of my toons. So while browsing the auction house I see this guy who is listing thousands of glyphs, which is cool. To each their own. However, the chump is listing them for such rediculously low prices I feeled compelled to buy him out and then just relist them. I mean honestly, people read articles on blogs and jump right in not even thinking about what they should be doing or if it is smart to try to jump on the bandwagon. This guy obviously did not just jump, but did a big old belly flop onto it. First thing he should of done was limitted how many of each glyph he was listing. He has actually flooded the market and prices are dropping quick then a blimp with a hole.

I see stuff like this all the time, but not just with the auction house. For instance, I was in a battleground and this guy was in there running around just getting destroyed. I whispered him and asked him what the hell? He tells me is just after some marks and honor. I was like ummm k? I wanted to ask him if he didn't understand the concept that a win nets more honor and more marks, but I realized that looking at his gear and his spec that he was just a moron. I refuse to waste my time on someone who clearly does not care about improving their game play. This guy will probably pick up his epic charities and then get into a raid because his gear score is so high. That reminds me, what the hell is up with gear score?

Honestly, I could turn 80 and spend one week running heroics every day and gather all of the gear from badges and probably get a couple of drops to go my way, which means that my gear score is naturally going to be higher. Does that mean that I have clue one of what I am doing in a raid? Nope, I would probably run around in circles chasing my own rear. I know that I am not the world's greatest player but still even I can see that gear score shows some work goes into your characters, but it is not the end all be all of inviting someone to a raid. I have seen folks show up in blues and greens to a raid and outperform someone who is wearing full epics. How does this happen? Well, because Mr Purple may have gathered gear, probably was carried through content, and has not clue what the hell they are doing. Yet the poor bum who has worked to get his own gear and learned his class will understand his own abilities and know where his limits are.

I don't know! The more I think about this stuff, the more I ask myself what the hell am I doing?

It's My Blog So...Nah!!

So while sitting here reading down through some folks blogs, I noticed that both Tobold and Gevlin wrote posts about commenters and their view points on this subject. I respect both of these individuals and their respective thoughts. It got me to wondering about the whole concept of blogging. Now I am new to this and I will freely admit this, but why do we write blogs? For me, I started writing so that I could respond to people's posts without critting the comment section; or in the case of people who may want to moderate a comment, then I can use my own blog to preach my own sermon. I also chose to start blogging because I felt that I have my own story to tell about how I see the World of Warcraft and the world as a whole.

I find it funny that some of the people who I consider to be good bloggers choose to shut down their comments or moderate their comments. Now it is completely their decision and I respect that, but I would like to ask why? Well, actually I do not need to ask why as they both kindly explained their own reasons and thoughts, but it was more of a metaphorical why. Perhaps even rhetorical? I may have even made up my own words there, but it is my blog so I can pretty much do whatever I want to, correct? I mean isn't that what we are really saying when we start to restrict comments or "moderate" them? Moderate is such a nice way of saying that we do not like what you have to say. Now if I were a lesser person I could ask if the Nazi's used the word moderate when they decided to moderate most of Europe, but we will not go there. Oh wait, we can. That's right! Why? Because this is my blog and I have complete control over this thing.

Sure I was being silly just then, but I was trying to stress a point at the same time. While we may not all agree, each of us (the blogging community) have the right to decide how and what we want to allow on our site, whether it is via what we post or what we allow to be commented on. I prefer to have an open blog where I do not restrict anyone from saying anything. Will this take away from the blog? I can absolutely see where it could take away from the blog, but it is a risk I am willing to take. I often times read every last comment on every blog I go to. I often times will return to a blog to read new comments on the blog. Why? Because I believe every person has something to say, even if it is something that is incredibly stupid or meant to create a buzz (either negative or positive). Do you have to agree with me? Nah, you can actually do whatever you want but that does not change the fact that this is my blog and I can do whatever I want to with it.

The Rise And Fall of Guilds

I was sitting here tonight minding my own business when I happened to notice several rather popular trolls (I prefer to think of them more as village idiots) who seemed to be bouncing from guild to guild. It got me thinking of my own situations. I have been with the same guild for nearly three years now. In WoW terms, I am an old grandpa who has been married to the same woman for fifty plus years. That is a long, long, long commitment by todays guild standards. It got me wondering what exactly do we consider a good guild? I mean some folks will go on talking about the guild as a body/soul, but who cares about all that pretty fluff? I want to know what makes a guild good?

So I thought about my own guild. We probably have around 130 individual people within our guild. That is not a lot, but it is better than most guilds. Now if we look at active players we are probably running around 30-40 folks during the course of a week. We actually have never ran a guild 25 man anything, unless you count ransacking Tarren Mill a raid? Which I have to tell you, it gets old after a while. So anyway, back to the guild. We run the usual ten man stuff, but we are never the first to run anything and we are so lazy we typically try only to clear the raid and not really try to achieve anything. Now do not get me wrong, there are some great people are geared out their.....well, you get the point right?We are currently in Ulduar like so many other guilds and we are working on the Trial of the Crusader. So you could say we are right there with most average guilds. We have been together for what seems an eternity. Some of the folks around here have been raiding together since Vanilla. I wonder though, does that constitute a good guild?

I mean, sure there are folks with shiny epics and all the latest and greatest gear, but is that really a good guild? I have read some blogs where they talk very openly about how they struggle with raiding and people leave their guilds in order to find another raiding guild, and I wonder are their guilds bad or what? You see it from some of the most famous of the bloggers to the wee little bloggers that hardly anyone reads, or at leas they think no one reads. So what is it that causes folks to run from guild to guild looking for the best guild ever? I mean if you are clearing content with your mates, then why leave them? So you can see some content before they do? It doesn't make sense to me. I guess at the end of this I can consider myself to be in a pretty good guild. We have a group of folks who have been together for a while and we are always happy to see new faces, but the best part is we experience the game together. I mean isn't that what a game is supposed to be about? Having a fun experience with your friends?

So what do you consider to be a good guild? Or even better, what is a great guild? Is it all about the achievements? Is it about trying to be the best? Is it about server firsts? Or is it about having fun and playing the game the way you want to with a group of like minded people? I hope to hear back from some of you on this?

Very First Post

Hello and welcome to my blog about the World of Warcraft! I have debated for a very long time on if I should or should not blog. I have started to create several different blogs and then stopped short of publishing them. I have been an avid reader of blogs for quite some time now and enjoy the fresh (and not so fresh) perespectives that a lot of people bring to the table. I cannot guarantee that I will shed any new light on anything nor will I boast of ways to improve your overall game play. I simply want to talk about the things that I find of interet in this game.

As the title says I have a lot of alts scattered across three accounts and multiple servers. I am actually going to refrain from listing the names and even the servers I am on simply because I want to be able to be real and honest, which sadly I do not feel I could accomplish with listing that information. I will tell you that I have several level eighty characters. I consider myself somewhere between casual and hardcore in regards to my playstyle. I like to think of myself as an avid player. You know the type who shows up prepared, understands how to raid but just does not have the time to dedicate to playing as often as others. I get mad when people do stupid things. I do not like running with groups that speak in "leet" and I abore stupidity and ignorance.

If you think you like me so far then hang on, we will see if I can find something that you may not like. I am extremely moody and opinionated. So if you do not like that, you may want to find someone else's blog to read where they cator to good feelings and want you to feel nice and cozy, as if you were sitting next to a fire. If you wanted a visual of my blog, it would be like the old mansion at the end of the road where you see a lot of activity but have heard horrible stories about the old cranky man who lives there. Yeah, I am the old cranky man and this is my old rustic mansion. So if you think you can handle me, then come on in, dust of a spot somewhere and sit down and let's see where this goes to.