So, I was poking around the net looking for some ofmy favorite old WoW blogs and much to my surprise the majority was dead or missing entirely. No posts in over a year, or simply replaced by a placeholder site.
Sad days,.
Obviously we all know WoW is on a decline, and it's been a good year and a half since the last expansion, but still. Surely there's some "stuff" worth posting about other than just WoW? I wonder where the shift in writers has gone off to. Surely not Tumblr, since, well... Just looking at it makes your gray matter decrease in size much like reading 2 line Tweets from twitter. It's shit.
I could guess Youtube and perhaps Twitch since there's money to be had there, but what is wrong with some good old classic "writing"? I'm curious to see how many of the people who started around Vanilla or The Burning Crusade are still writing (even if you're not playing anymore).
So, calling all WoW (and related) bloggers, where have you all gone?
Or even, where do you think all the others went to?
I'm planning to write a nice big post sometime later to highlight the WoW related blogs that are still active and running, feel free to drop me a line if you'd like to do a link exchange and get your blog linked from there. Just link to "this" post or blog in the meantime.
35 comments:
World of Warcraft is one of those things that once the magic is gone... it never comes back for long. I left originally with the launch of Rift towards the beginning of Cataclysm, and have never really fully come back. I keep my account active and I am still the leader of a decent sized guild on the Argent Dawn server. I am only really back for a few nights a month. I was active off and on throughout Pandaria, when I even tried to make a return to raiding.
At this point however World of Warcraft is just feeling extremely old as compared to its competition. That said WoW is something that is hard to get entirely out of your system. As a beta Warlords player I have to say some of the changes are really nice, and the folks who are already dedicated to the game will enjoy it. I just am not sure how many of the wayward flock it will bring back, and if it does... for just how long. Without doubt Warlords will be fun for awhile at the very least.
I am still around and reply to people, as well and go check up on my blog and everything, but my life has just been so hectic. I love wow but I haven't played in a while. I got Wildstar and I have barely played that. I haven't been playing anything really aside from bits of animal crossing here and there. I reckon that I will eventually come back to check out the new expansion, and I might stay if my life is stable, but who knows.
Since I just started blogging a few days ago, I think my opinion is less valuable than the opinion of the other two commentors. :P
However, I'm planning on posting at least 4-5 articles a week, mainly because I need something to fill my time. I am really into writing, so I thought I might as well start a WoW blog. What inspired me to do it was TotalBiscuit's old Blue Plz blog.
I think that a lot of people have stopped blogging about WoW because they are kind of done with the game, and in my honest opinion WoD is not going to make it much better. The reason they are (I think) not blogging about other things on their WoW blog is because of the reputation of said blog. Or perhaps because they only liked blogging about WoW, and they see no point in blogging about other stuff. Indeed, the attention has also switched to YouTube and Twitch, I talk TB as an example even though he was a lot more of a radio host (WCradio) than a blogger.
I'm still blogging but I simply didn't have a lot of time for the game, so my post count dropped considerably. I'm slowly getting into a groove of what I can do, but that comes with being in a particular time in one's life.
I don't think I'm alone in that situation either. A number of bloggers and players have obviously aged faster than the game and found ourselves in an altered state compared to even a few years ago. Less playing time can equate to less blogging time. It's hard to write when you're no longer connected.
Also, you're in a period in which there is nothing new going on. Warlords will come out, at the earliest, in December. Most bloggers aren't in the beta, and may not even want to be. This is definitely the time where the game tends to lose the most players and not everyone comes back.
Most people stop writing about WoW because they stopped feeling passionate about the game - whether they stopped playing, cut back their playtime or get too busy with RL - but there are still heaps of active blogs out there. Thanks for visiting my little wow blog though - it's only my teeny corner of the universe but if you're going to list WoW blogs there are TOO MANY to list!
Not that I am any authority on blogging about WoW, but I do it because I still have things to explore about the game, focus of my interest is broad enough to always have something to write about. You cannot really run out of things to write if you write about lore or things about World of Warcraft in general, not when the game is still adding content albeit at a lot slower pace these days.
I also write about other things beside World of Warcraft. I try not to corner myself with writing only about World of Warcraft. I vary things up. As for the others, things happen, people lose interest, or outgrow the medium of their choice. There is not much any of us can do about it. As much as we like to imagine we are community, at the end of the day we are every man for himself, and only do it for ourselves. If we find no interest in doing it, then we leave it behind like some sort of a failed experiment, or in best case scenario, like a fond memory that we outgrew.
A lot of the well-known bloggers that still play the game went to Twitter. You can find a bunch of familiar names - along with WoW devs and Blizzard CS folks - all conversing in the Twitterverse.
I stopped blogging when I ran out of things to talk about. There is so little in the game now that is rogue-specific that there was very little reason for a rogue blog. All the theorycrafting was done effectively by WoW Insider, Elitist Jerks, and Shadowcraft.
I never consciously made a choice to stop. I just found myself with nothing worth writing about. I tried Twitter but the format doesn't fit my thoughts.
Most have "cut down" on blogging time, less posts etc.
I can't really figure out why twitter would be interesting. Or twitch/youtube for that matter - it seems a ton of work to get a "good" video up and running, and evne then you'd need people to view the entire thing to get anything of use from that. Pictures and words, with the occassional embedded video is my medium. It's just easier.
I'm curious whether there's a few that actually stopped playing but are still blogging, or stopped playing, but are still paying for the game.
What blogs do you read yourself?
@Astalnar: Even if you've just been on it for a month, I'm sure you've seen some wow blogs around. Indeed if you are using blogger or wordpress with no personal domain, then your words will remain to be seen for all on the internet for a long time.
As such, all imput is welcome, don't feel like your words have no value just because others have been writing longer ;)
I'm still here! I try to post at least once per week. I'm also very active on Twitter (@VelOfSkywall).
I think the problem is that a lot of people have taken breaks, especially since Warlords of Draenor doesn't even have a release date yet. I know a lot of people I follow have been playing other game in the meantime. I expect the WoW blogging community to be back up once the expansion drops.
I'm not as active in the game anymore, so I don't have a lot of new stuff to talk about anymore. If all you're doing is killing things on Timeless Isle and leveling characters out of boredom, it's just not as exciting to me as, say, the best raid resto druid build. But now and then I slap down a post.
Still here. Took a break from blogging for a while, but more for for personal reasons than anything. (Baby getting very active, job change, etc.) I'm playing beta now and will be posting regularly again.
I have a twitter account, but don't use it a whole lot. It's just too....fast for me I guess. Comments fly by and things get lost in the sauce.
I know a lot of other bloggers are still around and active (as I can be quite the blog lurker). Those that aren't posting though are probably just burnt out at the moment. I have a feeling we'll see more and more new posts from people who haven't been posting as Warlords draws closer. :)
I've only been blogging for about a week, but I know what you mean; I've been following WoW blogs for some time, and they all seem to be disappearing. I know that I will still be around for a while, even though my updating might be sporadic. My opinion probably isn't as valuable as the "veteran" bloggers, however. :)
Still blogging, but sporadically. As a mostly casual player, by the time I experience things it's been said too many times, and I hate to be the one digging up the old and dead! Digging up the long forgotten is great, but the recently eulogized topics need to stay buried a little longer :D
I don't post as much as I'd like as there's not that much to write about on live but the beta has been giving me more material at least.
There are a lot of active bloggers still around and it's true - a lot converse on Twitter too.
I haven't really blogged since May of 2012. I was a MMO-Champ supermod so most of my time was spent on guides and the druid forums but I even quit doing that mid last year and fully stopped visiting the forums about Nov 2013.
I haven't even looked at the backend of my blog since October 2012, I'm shocked to see the hits I get on 2+ year old posts a day. Shows how inactive the WoW blogging community must be.
I think realistically, most people who were big bloggers/quide writers/theorycrafters have all grown up and kind of moved on. I was 16 when WoW came out, 18/19 when I hardcore raided in BC, 19/20 when I really started blogging in Wrath. The end of Uni was when I quit blogging since I wasn't hardcore raiding anymore. Graduating Uni is when I quit MMO-C and started playing WoW just on and off and/or extremely casually.
Really I think it just comes down to: WoW is an old game. The big bloggers and people who were overly active in the class forums have moved on. When you go from being in a top guild, or at least rocking hard modes to playing casually it takes all the interest in real blogging away. Since there are SO many resources that weren't there when blogging was super popular the need just isn't there as much anymore. Iceyveins, better forums guides/posts, askmrrobot, and so on have kind of killed that niche.
I loved blogging though. I did it for years and met a lot of amazing people through it. It led me to the MMOC forums which led me to writing guides to it which led me to be a mod then supermod. My blog and WoW was a huge part of my life from high school all the way through college and it will always have a special place in my heart.
I blog mostly about Wildstar now, but I only post 2 to 3 times a month. I've got so many new things pulling at my time.
http://honorscode.blogspot.com/
I am working on a few posts right now but with my current schedule taking up so much of my time I haven't been able to really sit down and get much done. I plan to continue blogging though, just fewer 'large' posts or series, etc. I would love to get more in touch with the blogging community so this idea sounded great to me.
Thanks for stopping by my blog :)
I started playing WoW in TBC and started my blog late in WotLK. I'm still playing WoW but not as often as before. I used to play more and raid 3 night a week but my guild disbanded and I didn't find a new one so I started playing less and less. Now I'm quite busy in real life with work, summer and moving, but I would play more if there was any new content and I had a guild to call home. I would also write more about WoW if I played more.
I think many players and bloggers have stopped playing or they're on a break until the expansion. Some might have stopped blogging because they're using Twitch instead. I hope most will come back to WoW and blogging when the expansion is released. I know I will play and write more then.
Hello! I'll be happy to add your site to my blog links. The more the merrier! As for your question I imagine a majority of the WoW bloggers(alike myself) are taking a short hiatus until more content from Warlords of Draenor comes to light. The dry spell of new information was affecting the topics we could write about. There is only so much you can rehash about the same topics over and over again. Now we at least have the beta to write about but I'm certain the blogging community will come together once again as the new expansion is properly released.
I started my blog back at the end of 2011 and like many others it was going to be almost exclusively focused on World of Warcraft and Blizzard. At the time I bought into the year long subscription contract/deal they had going so I already knew I was a going to be writing A LOT about the Beta of Mists of Pandaria because I bought into the beta (hence the name Be M.O.P.)
And I had fun with it, this was my first real blogging experience so I had a field day writing about my past wow experiences and predictions on the newest mounts/zones/raids in the next (current) expansion every Monday Wednesday and Friday. I was able to keep that up for 250 consecutive posts. But like other WoW bloggers and the countless more players, I got burned out on World of Warcraft (at the end of July 2013).
I distinctly remember constantly struggling to find more WoW related topics to write about and finding the motivation to not only write about Azeroth but also log in each week to do anything in-game. This was the point were I was not in a raiding guild and I saw how much money I, a college student, was paying Blizzard each month for the option to play a game that I was playing less and less over the weeks to come. In real life I was preparing myself for a post-college life and it was in the middle of Steam's yearly summer sales and I saw how much more varied game time I could get with other full PC games currently marks down to 50%-75% off.
I knew I was going to be cancelling my WoW subscription soon but I still had and wanted to write about the other part of videogaming so without skipping a beat and over night I transformed my WoW blog into a general videogame blog.
While I have stopped writing about WoW for about I year now, I am still pumping out Be MOP posts and it is only because of the hundreds of WoW-related blogs posts under my belt that I found the confidence and motivation to move forward and write about general video game news and topics.
I'm posting regularly on my roleplaying related blog, but not on the PC gaming and WoW one; because I'm not doing much in that space at present.
When I return to wow, I'll likely have plenty to say about Warlords, but till then I don't want to comment about hings which I've not seen first hand.
I haven't gone anywhere. I just don't really have much to say about WoW after 8 months with no new content.
However, my blog has been more active than usual, as I have been playing a lot of other video games, and writing about them. I think my blog will become more of a general gaming blog, as I'm no longer interested in WoW.
How did you know I'd fallen off of the wagon again?
But as I say in that post, I'm just a tourist now, and I've seen just enough to know that the game really hasn't changed much, other than a few extra "store" buttons that got added at some point in the last year or so.
Nostalgic, yes, but I'm kicking myself a little for not trying out EVE:Online in that time instead.
I'll be back in some capacity, but we have yet to determine to what degree. It really depends on how much interest the new expansion generates with much of the old crew, and whether or not they would like to have a go at raiding.
Elk is still here. Recently upgraded my home computer so I've been playing around with some of the other FPS that I never finished all while I am also playing around a little in the beta.
About a month ago, finished leveling an alt druid to 60 so that I could take advantage of the vets bonus for the druid-hero-boosted 90. :) (Don't think of it as a boost, but the new WoD hero-class).
While running around with this druid alt, I managed to snag a brawler's invite, and have been trying to get my dps classes through all the various bosses. Warlock is by far doing the best and has managed to reach rank 6.
As for the blog, it's still alive and kicking. I am hoping to do something about my casual perspective of the beta. (not a run-through, but changes as I see them).
I've been blogging since late Cata about WoW with short vacations in other games.
I find the regularity and volume of my posts are more dependent on real life than the state of the game. No plans to stop yet!
As you found out, I've stopped blogging about WoW altogether, and instead it's almost all running/biking all the time.
I've been back a couple of time to check out the current state of WoW, but mostly I've been playing SWToR since a month after launch.
One of the reasons I stopped blogging about WoW was having nothing new to say. While I was leveling my characters, it was neat to blog about an ability or playstyle that was new to me, but after leveling quite a number of alts, I felt as if I were just writing boring stuff to an uninterested audience.
Of course, the running/biking stuff is sooooooo exciting...heh, heh.
Hey there, haven't had a comment on my blog for while, let alone check up on it since I stropped writing. Surprised as others to see the view count soaring still.
I too have lost most of my motivation to play WoW anymore, nothing new to grip me like it once did. Especially with a lack of community feel, all too convenient now (Convenience > community).
I do however have an urge to write again, but in what form, I do not know. I may even kick start the blog in one way or another.
Thanks for stopping by,
- Jamin
Still here, though my blog of late has sotta become a random posting ground for random things, and WoW stuff whenever I have much to post.
Sadly, I've been hit with the in between expac virus and just don't log on as much as I used to. Aside from doing small things, my main is sitting in Shrine with nothing to do hence the posting lack.
It also doesn't help like others have mentioned that that WoW magic just seems lacking so there's that. #stillalivethou
Hey there - considering that I must have got your comment ages ago, I think it's probably obvious how active I am lately.
There was a time when I would absolutely have been a "lifer" but after playing WoW for 8+ years I was bored. That, and my ex boyfriend totally ruined it for me. I'm done with WoW, and I can't blog about a game that I no longer want to play. That being said, the months that I spent blogging were awesome and I'm absolutely planning on rebooting my blog now that I've graduated school and got myself a grown up job. I'll be focusing on gaming in general though, not WoW specifically.
I haven't been able to play as much as I'd like for the last year or so.Thus my blog has suffered a bit. I started back in Wrath, but I still play. I much prefer writing to showing my face on camera, though when my funds are low it does seem a bit more tempting to wear a low cut shirt and play games for strangers.
I've been intending to get back into writing about WoW more, but I've had a bit of a writer's block as well as the sheer chaos of life.
Just saw your comment about how often I still blog. Obviously very sporadically. I only log into WOW if they send me a free weekend so I don't have anything relevant to talk about. I mostly muse on whatever video games I do happen to have time to play.
We are still here :) Maybe you were looking in wrong part of Internet. It would be a pleasure for me if you will look at my blog: http://fluffyfatfabulous.blogspot.com/ :)
Hey! I'm still here too. Though lately I haven't felt the urge to post that much. I started it as just somewhere to post silly things I wanted to share with guildies, so I was never a 'serious' WoW blogger. But I'm trying to get back into the swing of things for Warlords, so hopefully I'll have a ton of things to write about by then!
Mirshalak here. I just saw your comment at the Lair.
I've recently downloaded and compiled a pirate server for WoTLK, and have been playing single player for a bit; just soloing five mans like I used to do on retail. I've truthfully been considering trying to produce some videos and/or other content related to that, but I'm also wondering if people are going to react badly because it's my own private server.
While my main has truthfully gone close to being another personality, and as such I could see myself playing TBC/WoTLK on private servers for years to come, I am never going to play retail again. Cataclysm was vaguely tolerable, but MoP was not at all. The old talent trees are completely gone, and they recently got rid of Immolation Trap entirely as well, which was one of the core elements of the Survival playstyle.
So we'll see. As mentioned, Mirshalak as a persona is still very much alive; although in that guise I've moved on to political commentary on a particular conspiracy forum, as odd as that might sound. I've also been in Minecraft periodically since late 2010, but I'm largely burned out on that game as well, now. I could see turning the Lair into a general gaming blog, although I don't really have a computer that is capable of current games right now either, which makes things tricky.
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