10/08/2017

700 Posts!

Once again I get to celebrate the milestone of having written another 100 posts on this blog, bringing the total up to 700! The tradition on this sort of occasion has been to look at Google Analytics and to pick out any funny and/or interesting search terms that led people to the blog since the previous celebration. Unfortunately, as I already mentioned last time, GA is willing to divulge fewer and fewer of the search terms that led people to the site, and at this point I'm up to literally more than 99% of them showing up as "not set" or "not provided", which unfortunately doesn't leave me with enough material for an entertaining post.

I will have to think of a good long-term replacement for this, but for the time being I'll simply take a page out of Calphy's book, who incidentally celebrated his own blog's third birthday the other day and used it as an opportunity to look back at what have been his most-viewed posts in terms of numbers. I've never done that before, so why not? Here they are, according to Blogger:

1. How to Successfully LFG in SWTOR (2014) - 9107 views

I don't often write guides, and not just because I rarely feel an urge to do so, but also because most of the time, by the time the question of whether to share my knowledge about something might even come up for me, there are usually already plenty of good guides on the subject out there. How many guides to "how to get all the Tatooine datacrons" do we need anyway?

But every now and then, something will pop up and cause me to frown when I realise that it obviously confuses a lot of people but for some reason nobody has bothered to explain it properly yet. How to find groups in SWTOR is one of those things - it's not something I've ever struggled with myself, but it was in fact while going through my Google search terms for one of these celebratory posts that I noticed that quite a lot of them were about "how to lfg" or variations thereof.

Some of the information in that post is still useful today, but other bits are quite outdated, which is why I felt the need to release a version updated for 2017 last month.

2. How to use SWTOR's LFG system and /who (2012) - 7909 views

This was a sort of predecessor to the above post, in which I felt the need to address the people who were complaining about having trouble finding groups shortly after SWTOR's launch (before it had an automated group finder) by basically explaining to them how to put a group together the old-fashioned way. I sincerely hope that the high view count for this post is a result of the game's popularity at launch and that people aren't still finding my instructions on how to use /who in 2017.

3. "Should I play SWTOR?" A review after ten months. (2012) - 5025 views

I can see why this one got a lot of views, because the question of what an MMO is like after the launch hype has died down is always interesting to people but only becomes more and more difficult to answer over time as fewer and fewer sites talk about the game from the point of view of a new player who knows nothing about it.

It's kind of funny to me that most of that review still holds true nearly five years later. Except for the bit about there being no "fluff". There's plenty of that in the cash shop in particular, and there are many players nowadays who love to focus on collecting stuff and playing Space Barbie.

4. Bioware Answers Some Questions About Flashpoints: An Interview With Michael Backus (2016) - 4579 views

This was the only thing I've done so far which I would qualify as something a "proper" fan site would do, as in actually engage with the devs and try to increase communication between them and the community. When I finally had the interview ready to post after literally months of pestering Musco about it (bless him), I was super proud and promoted the heck out of it, linking it on reddit, the official forums and anywhere else I could think of. I'd be bloody disappointed if it wasn't on this list!

5. The Art of Achieving Map Completion (2014) - 4231 views

This is another guide that wasn't even really meant to be a guide but kind of turned into one while I relayed my experiences about working on the Galactic Explorer achievement. I can see why there probably aren't many other guides on the subject because it's a bit difficult to write a guide for... where do you even start? Everyone will be missing different parts of the map! I compromised by giving a general explanation of how to best find out where you need to go if you are puzzled by which part of the map you're still missing and by providing more detailed instructions for a couple of zones that had initially stumped me.

6. YouTube Link Love (2012) - 4181 views

I'm honestly not sure why this one is on this list. I mean, yes, it provided links to a couple of SWTOR videos at a time when SWTOR content on YouTube was still relatively sparse, but none of them were even that great. The post never received a single comment either! I think it's something about the post title that must have attracted generic searches about YouTube at some point.

7. Solo Flashpoints - Good or Bad Idea? (2015) - 3798 views

I'm honestly not sure why this opinion piece is on this list, as I don't consider it one of my best and I didn't even come to any real conclusion in it either, though I suppose the question of what differentiates flashpoints from other repeatable quests when you can do them both in a group or solo remains a pertinent one. I suspect that more than a few people might have ended up finding this post when solo modes for flashpoints were first introduced, trying to find out more about how they work and which flashpoints even have them. Sorry, this post doesn't tell you that.

8. The Group Content I Miss The Most (2016) - 3403 views

The reason this opinion piece has so many views is because I actually went and linked it on reddit myself. I'm not exactly sure what brought on this madness at the time, considering that the SWTOR subreddit can be quite harsh on fan content creators, but I was lucky and this post was fairly well-received. I also still stand by everything I said in it. Where is the amazing storytelling experience you used to provide for groups, Bioware? *insert hurt and accusing glare here*

9. The Best Classes to Take into KotFE / KotET (2017) - 2730 views

This post from earlier this year was a bit of a surprise hit, mostly because someone else decided to link it on reddit. I think some people may also be finding it through Google though, as the question of what class is best to jump into the new story is certainly interesting for players returning from a long absence or those who might be considering jumping into the game for the first time while making use of a high-level character token. Some redditors disagreed quite strongly with my low ranking of the Imperial agent, but I stand by that so far. Commenter Sullas was totally right that I should have made the Sith inquisitor number one though!

10. The Missing Companions (2016) - 2726 views

This post from last year was another surprise hit of sorts, as it's neither a guide nor does it provide any particularly deep insights. I don't think it ever got attention from being linked anywhere either. It's just evident that a lot of people care about the companions that have disappeared in KotFE and want to know when they'll be back. Some players who may have been away from the game for a while may even make their return dependent on whether their favourite companion is already back or not, but how are they to know other than from other people telling them? These are the sorts of burning questions that lead people to this post I guess, and unfortunately it only has limited answers.

If you've read all of these before, I can only congratulate and thank you for being such a loyal and dedicated reader! If not, maybe you've found one or two interesting reads for the evening. Onwards to the next 100!

11 comments :

  1. Happy 700th!!

    ""Should I play SWTOR?" A review after ten months."

    YES!!!!

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    1. That's the short version of that post. :P

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  2. Yay, grats on the milestone! :D

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  3. Well done! Have to appreciate a blogger who truly is passionate about the topic he writes about.

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  4. Congratulations! Here's to the next many-hundreds of posts. :)

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  5. Congratulations on the big 700!

    Since you've been looking back at your old posts, do you have any big plans for the next 100? Anything you've been daydreaming about writing?

    And yes, yes google analytics is a butt. I also used it way back when when they feature as actually useful. I've heard it's because they want people to pay for ads, because they divulge more search terms that way, but I don't know if it's true.

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    1. Yeah, I'm pretty sure they give more to paid users. Which makes total sense but it's still a shame when it deprives you of something that used to be a source of amusement and inspiration. :P

      I'm afraid I don't have any particular plans for the next 100 posts; I'm lucky if I know what I'm going to write about next week! Especially as I don't have a regular series running on the blog right now.

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  6. Xam Xam has the "Developer-Watch". How about an "Influencer-Watch"-Series?

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    1. Nah, that's not for me. I have little enough time to play and blog at the moment, there's no way I could keep up with all the content the community keeps churning out. I'm just happy that people are active.

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    2. Just an overview...once a month. :)

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