A look at January

I was thinking, dangerous I know, and realized that this January marked the 3rd anniversary of my blog.

For three years I have been pouring myself out on digital paper for the masses to read and respond or ignore as they see fit.

I’ve covered a lot of ground in those three years so I thought it would be neat each month this year to recap where we’ve been. I’m one of those freaks that won’t start commenting on a blog or even really reading current posts until I’ve devoured their archives, but I recognize that most people won’t do that. This may come in handy for people looking for a little insight into where the blog has been.

January 2009

Only 5 posts this first month and 3 were about arena. Huh, wonder what happened there?

My first post, Why, introduced me and sort of laid out why I was blogging. (Hence the name, ‘cuz I’m clever like that.) I have gone back and updated this post just to keep things current.

I would like to add another reason to why I blog: it’s as the closest socially accepted thing to talking to myself. And I do plenty of that anyway.

My other non-arena post from this month was celebrating looting a PvP chest from VoA. Deadly Gladiator’s Silk Raiment has, get this, 50 Intellect. And I was fucking thrilled to have it, lol.

I started the blog out with 24 views that month.

January 2010

By January 2010 we apparently exploded over here with 13,851 views and 20 new posts. In game play, this was the month I was made guild master of Shadow Rising (which intimidated at least one player and he left the guild). We were in ICC and floundering on killing the dogs and Festergut.

This is when I wrote my “WoW: The [noun]” post series. The post that started it all (WoW: The Game) is still relevant in today’s raiding environment – perhaps even more so with the introduction of LFR. This is where I laid out my ground work of WoW as a GAME, versus a HOBBY, versus a JOB.

In WoW: The Community I laid it all out in a graph (graphs are sexy, yo) and added the value of skill to our game/hobby/job factors.

Tir interrupted my series with his guest post, Another Voice, where I think the only thing we disagreed on was the flavor of the cake being frosted (yellow cake or GTFO).

We continued to what I can rightfully DEMAND, EXPECT, and WANT from others playing the game in WoW: The Expectations. Again, this was one where you can replace all instances of “heroic” with “LFR” and it’s completely current. (Apparently I had plans to roll a worgen and run around /biting people. I never did that. /sadface) At the end, we even saw the reformation of an elitist into a more gentle, caring player. Not that Dark/Soth plays anymore, but he saw the light before his computer blew up.

Probably the most amusing in the series was WoW: The Numbers where I gave a value of the DPS I was considering to be non-fail in a heroic: 1k. That’s right, back in 2010 if you were in a heroic with me and pulling at least 1k I was totally fine with it. How soon, Blizzard, until we’re at “MEGA DAMAGE!!!!!”?

I also have a post that compares end game gearing to the exception strength percentile roll in D&D. No, seriously, it makes sense.

January 2011

We slowed back down a bit in 2011 and only had 8 posts with 3,093 views. By this point we were in BoT and triumphant of our kill of Atra-fucking-medes. Arioch was sitting in the Filthy Animal, flirting outrageously with the waitstaff, and relaxing while it was Selwyn’s turn to save the world.

It was here that I fell in love with Atonement healing, spent an entire post bemoaning the expense of buff spells (thankfully fixed now),  whined some more about how disc healers were undervalued, exploring the wonky playstyle of disc,  and closed the month with a discussion of what healing as disc *feels* like.

January 2012

Picking up some steam again! This year I published 17 posts in January and had 3,316 of you lovely people read them. Or one really bored person refreshing the page all day.

I had transferred to an Alliance guild and was hating it so posted a reverse-recruitment. Although the post didn’t pan out in finding me a new home, a networking tool at work found me a guy in a guild that turned out to not be recruiting, but put me on the server that I now call home.

I gave the “state of the mage” address and interviewed Selwyn about his recent experiences on the Alliance side. I had another guest post from Tir (since he can’t get in to his blog anymore) about the 5% nerf to the Dragon Soul raid.

The tanking adventures of my baby warrior started this month – or more accurately, did NOT start due to a lack of a shield.

TITTIES IN VENT!

And don’t forget raiding compared to bra cup sizes. With pictures!

Last, but not least, I finally got my Horde/MLP crossover T-shirt design up for sale.

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So that’s been January over the years in a nutshell. WordPress sucks when it comes to being able to pull information about specific time frames for search parameters and stuff like that, but we’ll see what I can do next month.