Guide to Healing, Leading, and Progressing in WoW Raids
Updates about the world or the blog at large.
Zath, a blogging colleague, is giving away a free World of Warcraft mouse on his blog to anyone that comments. Be sure to check out his review of it while you’re there. Although Zath’s based in the UK, he’s decided to make a generous exception and allow anyone around the world to qualify. All you have to do is comment on the blog and say you want in. The final eligibility date is April 26th. Yes, it’s one entry per person.
Good luck!
Yesterday’s task via Problogger was on list writing. Readers who have followed me know that I have a personal affinity for list writing. I’m currently fighting off an end of semester flu. It’s a constant occurrence. It always seems to happen during exam periods. As a result, I decided to skip out on that particular task since I love writing lists anyway.
Today’s task is on blog post promotion! It’s a topic I’m also extremely familiar with. In the Blog Azeroth chatroom, something I frequently advise to bloggers new to the scene is to not necessarily link to their blog. Assuming I’m a first time reader of their blog, I wouldn’t know where to start. I wouldn’t know where to begin. Instead, what I tell them to do is to link a blog post or two that they’ve written that they’re really proud of.
Of course, a common response I get back is:
“But I’ve never written a blog post I’ve been proud of!â€Â
Even now I still don’t quite know what to say to that except:
“Then write one that you are proud of!â€Â
Here’s a few that have appeared on the blog recently.
But I can’t hog the entire spotlight. Here’s some other posts from off the blog.
There’s a new blog that’s stirring that’s targeting players with a more casual mindset or those that are actively seeking balance between their lives in the virtual world and the real world. They are here to offer a sense of WoW Relief.
A sudden rash of interviews have been requested recently. I’m quite flattered. I just hope that the questions aren’t too repetitive.
Some of the questions asked:
Referencing your site and posts on Wow Insider, you sound like a natural leader, does that leadership in game also come out in real life?
Every once in a while it does, I play a lot of hockey and volleyball now, being the goalie I don’t really direct people but I will tell them what I’m going to do when they are by my side of the rink. It helps a lot when you tell other players what you’re doing so they can adjust and react to your actions. I notice a lot of skills are transferable since I’m always the one organizing events and get togethers with friends.
Lastly, for anyone who is looking to start a blog about WoW or their toons, what is the best advice you can give them?
There is so much I could say to help but pretty much the best advice I could give is just go ahead and do it already! You don’t have to be a nut like me and grind out posts day in and day out, but start a schedule of setting time aside for writing and stick with it. Otherwise you will lose the habit and it’ll just disappear.
Here’s the link to the full interview on WoW Relief.
I do believe I’ll have another shorter interview tomorrow that I will link to.
I like to link to various websites or posts that I find onto my Twitter. One of the built in services of TweetDeck (a Twitter client I prefer) is that it can compress URLs. The service I like to use is from http://www.is.gd/. Another popular URL shortener used is TinyURL.
Does it matter which service you use?
In a sense, it does. Twitter has a character limit of 140. Every space and character counts.
https://worldofmatticus.com/2009/04/08/my-newfound-respect-for-melee/ – That is today’s post by Syd. It takes up many characters.
http://tinyurl.com/cggf77 – The same post shortened again. 25 characters.
http://is.gd/rtNf – The same post shortened. 17 characters.
That’s another 8 more characters I can use in a Tweet. Some people won’t really care too much about that sort of thing. But 8 characters is the difference between having one tweet vs having two tweets in order to clarify a URL. Do keep that in mind especially when promoting your own or other blog posts.
I’d like to take a moment and talk about account security with you. Recently instances of key loggers, dictionary hacks and the like related to WoW account jacking have been popping up more and more (my guild felt the bite of this a bit ago but has since recovered the pilfered goods). I work for a major ISP so account security is a topic I deal with daily. I posted something for my guild regarding this topic and would like to share it with you guys as well.
Lodur’s Tips to avoiding compromising your account
These are the most commonly used passwords, poled from a sample of several thousand people worldwide. Don’t use any of them. Also, try not to use just a word. Dictionary hacks run your password against a database of all words it can possibly find. This is called a ‘brute force’ attack. For example, if your password is “bananas”, chances are that someone with a dictionary hack will rip right through it. It’s best to include special characters and numbers; here is where “leet speak” comes in handy. For example, “S1mpl3” is better then “simple”. A recent rule of thumb is to make it 8 characters long or more. The longer it is, the more likely someone will get bored of trying to force it and move on. Overall, pick something difficult to guess, avoid choosing from the top 14 list, and add in some numbers throughout the password and not just at the end of it. While brute force attacks usually work, given enough time, using these tips can change the time it takes to discover your password from a few hours to a few YEARS.
Till next time, Happy Healing.
~Lodur
As always feel free to follow on twitter http://twitter.com/LodurZJ And don’t be afraid to ask questions using direct message there or the contact form here on the site!
On Saturday, I made a quick note that I would be participating in this year’s 31 days to building a better blog.
Earlier readers will remember the previous tagline I use was Knowledge through Logic and Reason. That wasn’t the best of taglines to use on a healing related blog.
Anna suggested World of Matticus – Where Leadership and Healing Collide (without the train wreck). I know if I the blog had a business card of some sort it would read something like: "Problems with healing? Guild issues got you down? Matt can help!â€Â
For most WoW bloggers, I suspect their elevator pitch would be something related to their character (The adventures of ____ or the musings of a <race> <class>). I have yet to think of the perfect pitch. This blog isn’t just mine anymore. It’s Wyns, Syds, Lodurs and everyone that’s ever contributed via comments or guest posts or emails.
When people discover that I’m a blogger, they always ask “Oh, what do you write about?â€Â. I admit that it’s a bit frustrating to come up with an answer. I usually have different ones on standby depending on the what I know about the person. If they’re my age, they’ve heard of World of Warcraft. If they’re of a different generation or not as fluent with video games, I’ll tell them I write about gaming strategy and advice.
So here’s the short form of what I would use across the network.
World of Matticus: Improving Today’s Healers and Tomorrow’s Leaders
PlusHeal: The Universal Healing Community for all Specs and Skills
No Stock UI: A Different Playing Experience
The elevator pitch is a great way for you to really buckle down and figure out who you are and what you want to do.
This works the same way. When you’re applying for a guild and you’re speaking to an officer or a GM, most of them get a good handle on the type of player they’re dealing with in a few minutes. So you should take the time to develop a small pitch for yourself if you’re in between guilds.
Example – I’m a progression raiding oriented Discipline Priest
I’m about to head out and do some progression oriented studying and then some more volleyball!
For the bloggers out there, what would your tagline be and what is your blog about?
During the summer of 2007, I started World of Matticus. In the summer of 2008, I opened the PlusHeal discussion community for healers to take part and actively contribute their ideas for other players to learn from.
It is now spring of 2009.
Enter No Stock UI.
This will be a magazine style blog with a few notable bloggers around the community:
You can find out more about us if you’re interested! You’re also certainly welcome to contribute! We’re all UI enthusiasts at heart.
No doubt some of you are wondering what’s the point in a UI blog. But some of the most passionate and heated blog posts stem from bloggers who write about their UI and different addons. Often times these useful posts are scattered, buried and tossed aside never to be read again.
Here at No Stock UI, our goal is to deliver compelling and quality content centering around your gaming experience. Topics will range from:
To start with, the blog will be updated every Tuesday and Thursday. Hopefully we can pick up the pace as time goes on. Eventually, I’d like to see it get to the point where readers can get a new post everyday. One step at a time, right?
Hope you’ll enjoy reading our posts as much as we loved writing them!