9 Traditional WoW Blog Posts (with Examples)

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This post is more catered towards my fellow WoW blogging colleagues who suffer from "Lack-of-Idea" syndrome. Spice up your blogging! Be interesting!

The Gear List Post

Everyone wants to know what kind of gear to strive for. But people are too inherently lazy to do the research themselves. Be a good Samaritan and create a list! More often then not, you already have a general idea of what to go for so you may as well share it. When you’re creating your list, try to apply it for something (IE, what is this list going to help me do?). I wrote my Holy Priest gearlist in mind as the easiest and cost effective (in terms of time) gear to acquire to punt you into Karazhan as soon as possible.

Examples:
Part Time Druid – Fresh 70 Resto Druid: Gear Cheat Sheet
World of Matticus – Gearing Your 70 Holy Priest: My Recommendations

The Rant Post

It’s no secret that blogs are an excellent platform in getting stuff off their chest. Used correctly, it can. The trick is to do it without swearing or insulting (much). A calmly thought out and delivered rant will have a much more powerful effect then a rant that’s literally full of air and no substance. If you’re going to rant about something, drive the point home. Be obvious about why it sucks. Feed your anger and unleash it!

Examples:
Resto4Life – Bornakk: Druids Not to be "Big Green Blogs"
Lady Jess – No Desire to Play… Why?

The Link Love Post

For every blog that goes down, new blogs spring up. It’s impossible to keep track of them all. In fact, I daresay there are more blogs out there then grains of sand in the Sahara desert. Most of my blog fishing comes from a critical examination of comments, inbound links, and other blogs. A big thank you to you, the curious and exploratory blogger, for finding new blogs! The typical link love post involves a (surprise surprise) link to said new blog as well as a post that they like. In case you’ve stumbled upon a plethora of kick-ass blogs, you can go for the list approach.

Bonus points if you can do it in a sonnet.

Examples:
Kestrel’s Aerie – Blogroll Addition: Warcraft and Other Hooha (Batgrl)
Resto4life – Community Spotlight: April 24

The Strategy Guide Post

Guide posts are excellent bread and butter references. The guide can be anything from killing a boss, completing a certain quest, or levelling a profession. Do a quick look around to see what’s covered. If your idea is already taken, try to improve upon the one that you read or approach it from a different perspective.

Examples:
Too Many Annas – Resto Shaman vs. Tidewalker – A Healing Guide
Banana Shoulders – A Guide to Daily Quests V: Shattered Sun

The Addon Review Post

Different UI’s suit different people. Not everyone has the time or the energy to sift through entire addon databases to find out what’s cool and what’s not. The popularity of addons spread via word of mouth. Why not contribute to it?

Examples:
Girl Meets WoW – 6 Mods and Macros to Help You Win in Battlegrounds
Healer LFG – Essential Addons

The Question and Answer Post

Every now and then, bloggers receive an email asking for help or for their opinion on a topic. Go ahead and feature a reader email of the week or two, then open it up for your readers to chime in.

Examples:
Blessing of Kings – Ask Coriel: Pursuit of Justice for a Tank?

The General List Post

Lists are fun to do and they can be used for any topic. A majority of my posts are lists because I have fun writing them. Topics could be anything from 35 Ways to Skin a Tauren to 47 Really Shiny Epics or 14 Up and Coming Bloggers to Watch.

Examples:
Healer LFG – 10 Ways to Speed Up Your Raid
Part Time Druid – Resto Druid: 5 Things You Should Know

The Diary Post

This is the most common type of post which details what the blogger has done recently on WoW. Ranges anywhere from guild affairs to the orgasmic "We Killed This Boss" post.

Examples:
Honor’s Code – Finish Up the Week
Mama Druid – Selenyx Has Been Busy

The How-to Post

These posts are designed to help walk people through the process of doing something. They’re often fairly detailed and have cool step-by-step screenshots of the different stages of your goal.

Examples:
Petaholics Anonymous – Syncing Your WoW Stuff Across Multiple Computers
Pugnacious Priest – How to Make a Quick and Dirty Guild website Banner

Obviously, this is by no means an exhaustive list. Feel free to add your own!

Trying to Avoid Burnout Again

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I picked up 2 games a few days back in order to pace myself in WoW. The adrenaline first kill rush of taking down Bloodboil still feels fresh in my system and I hope I can capitalize upon that on Sunday. Many thanks to the numerous people who have contributed ideas and strategy for RoS in my last post. Rainbow Six Vegas 2 is my latest addiction. I love shooters.

Although according to the media, I’m a threat to society. I might walk into a school campus and start shooting up the place and actually cause serious damage because of my ability to coordinate the actual firing of guns with a mouse and a keyboard.

Bloodboil Down and Notes

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Bloodboil got taken down last night with relative ease on the second shot.

Loot

Staff of Immaculate Recovery – I passed the staff off to a different Priest. I only wish that he were able to play more often. But I’m sure the staff will drop again. When Archimonde dropped his, I got mine the week after we killed him again.

Shroud of Forgiveness – Nice cape for me.

Notes

  • 3 Holy Priests: One in each Bloodboil group spamming Rank 3 Prayer of Healing. At our level, it heals for about 1800 and the bloodboil damage is about 600+ /tick.
  • Inner Fire helps a lot.
  • Stack an extra healer in the 3rd bloodboil group as that group will have 2 seconds of bloodboil during the Fel Rage phase. This frees them up to help with the Fel Raged player.
  • Chain potting is a must.
  • 4 Paladins were healing the tanks.

Sunday’s going to be progression night. 6 hours of wiping on Reliquary of Souls. I’m going to see how we do and take some notes.

20 Things I Know at Level 70 that I Didn’t Know at Level 1

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No long drawn out post today. But there are a few things I wanted to share to potential new WoW players. Post was inspired by What I Know at 64 that I Didn’t Know at 24.

  1. Leveling as Holy is both a blessing and a curse. You can’t really kill anything but you will be the most sought after person during instance runs.
  2. Your spells go as fast as your mana regen. Pack lots of water.
  3. Players have long memories. Don’t be an ass or you might regret it when you finish leveling.
  4. Make friends along the way. It makes the experience much more enjoyable and your survivability goes up.
  5. Assume the person you’re interacting with is the real deal. The game’s anonymity aspect allows people to show their real personalities without fear of retribution.
  6. Be smart with your virtual money. Don’t spend it on crap you don’t need.
  7. Agility and strength aren’t important stats for Priests.
  8. The achievements you accomplish in game are what you make of them not what anyone else says.
  9. Take a moment and appreciate the detail and beauty of the area you’re in. Once you get to 70, you won’t ever go back there.
  10. Just because it’s a game doesn’t mean you don’t have to try.
  11. Keep your friends close. Keep your enemies on your ignore list.
  12. The game’s loot is not worth getting emotional over. The people are. Don’t get the two confused.
  13. Time is important. When you waste a minute of time in a 25 man raid, you’ve wasted 25 minutes.
  14. Just like in the real world, you don’t have to be best friends with a someone to work with them. There are a fair number of people in my Guild who I wouldn’t have drinks with.
  15. Your character is measured by the amount of gold you borrow and pay back.
  16. Raid leaders are often incompetent and misinformed. But they’re people like you and I.
  17. Read what your critics say but know when they’re full of crap.
  18. When things aren’t going your way in a group, outline the goal that needs to be done as opposed to how it needs to be done to individual players.
  19. Even though you don’t want to admit it, there really is someone out there that knows more than you do. Recognize them and learn from them.
  20. The only thing constant about the game is change. There’s nothing you can do about it other than to learn and to adapt without complaint.

If you had a friend or relative that just bought the game, what piece of advice would you give them?

Guildmate Circumvents Guild Leader, Goes Straight to Blizz GM’s

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Boy what an eventful week this has been so far. There seems to be an increase in epic stories happening across the WoW blogosphere. I’ve got an interesting story of my own to share.

There’s this Guild that I have vested interest in. Let’s refer to them as "Raised Villains".

The other day, one of their members was having a lively discussion with another player within the Guild. A miniature exchange broke out and everyone had a big giant hissy fit. Words were said, insults were flung, until eventually one member called the other member a "British cigarette".

He huffed and oh did he puff. He got so angry he wanted to tell mommy that Tommy called him a word that rhymes with "sag".

Unfortunately, mommy Guildleader wasn’t around to discipline Tommy. So Steve McQueen decided to take it upon himself and go past mommy and straight to daddy GM.

Sure enough, daddy GM came flying into the room and banned Tommy for 2 days without video games.

I don’t know about you, but I found that absolutely outrageous. Sure calling someone "jet lag without the jet or the lag" goes against the TOS. But there’s an unwritten code out there somewhere that says you don’t tattle on people like that to GM. However, I do have a twisted sense of ethics. Most guys I know would take their lumps and fight back. Going straight to a GM would be an unfair advantage. Personally I think it’s quite cowardly.

Yeesh. Kids these days. If everyone got banned for saying things against the TOS, there would be no one to play with. Quite frankly, that’s why the ESRB gave this game a variable rating (Game experience may change with online play).

So here’s the lesson: If you’re going to diss someone, diss someone over a medium where it can’t be tracked like on vent.