One Year Later...

“And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.” - Abraham Lincoln 

One year ago Sunday, I was sitting in my office at work. It was a cold, snowy, miserable Saturday in December, ensuring that only the bravest and most motivated customers would dare visit the lot. In an attempt to stave off a level of boredom that would have resulted in me falling asleep at my desk, I started casually fooling around with Blogger to see if I could find a blog design that would catch my eye. An hour and a half later, I had the basic look that you see here now (unless you're on a feedreader) and my first post up. The rest, as they say, is history.

I've talked before about what motivated me to begin writing Battle Medic, why I chose the name and who my influences were - all really excellent topics for an anniversary post, but I'm not going to go into all that again. But I have been doing some pondering on my experiences and feelings about this whole blogging thing.


SOME VITAL STATISTICS

Because I'm sure there are people out there dying to know...

Over the past year, as of this writing Battle Medic has seen over 41,500 pageviews according to Blogspot's statistic's page. The best month I had was June with 6,136 views. As well, I have a good number of subscribers to my feed, although I don't really have an accurate way to track that. Google Reader tells me that 188 people are subscribed to the blog.

4 of my Top 5 all-time posts in terms of traffic are unsurprisingly due to being linked by the 800 pound gorilla of the WoW blogosphere, WoW Insider, which always results in a 20-fold increase in traffic for a day or two. However, the post that is hanging on in fifth place is my most controversial post, but also the one that I am most proud of writing: On Raiding Disappointment: An Open Letter to Blizzard. Although some people didn't agree with the content of the post, I think that in terms of the way in which the ideas are expressed it is my most powerful bit of writing. I'm glad that it's managing to hold on to a top spot, despite not being linked by WoW Insider.

I'd like to give a shout-out to my top referrers while I'm at it. WoW Insider is, of course, the site that has sent me the most traffic, although it's not as extreme as you might think. Blessing of Kings - the big daddy of Paladin blogs - is second, even beating Google. It appears that a lot of you use Rohan's Blog Roll to find your way here, and I credit getting listed on his site as what really got Battle Medic off the ground in terms of traffic and exposure. Thanks, Rohan! Orcish Army Knife, Bossy Pally and the Giant Spoon round out the top referrers.

I am extremely proud that Battle Medic is listed on so many Blog Rolls around the blogosphere, and I thank everyone who thinks enough of my writing that they would add me to their site. It's a thrill every time I run across a blog that I'm unfamiliar with and see my blog listed there as something that they read and recommend.

All told, I have been extremely satisfied with the amount of people that are seeing what I write.

Traffic, however, is not that important if the people visiting are not finding the content engaging, and the only way to really know what you, the reader is thinking is the comments. There are a lot of reasons why a person wouldn't write a comment, but the only thing that is going to make someone (especially someone viewing a post in a reader) to stop what they're doing and respond to a post is if it has a compelling message. Agree with me or not, I value every single comment that I have received on Battle Medic, and over the course of the past year people have commented 572 times on the blog. Now I just need to be better at responding to them.


IMPRESSIONS AFTER THE FIRST YEAR

I can honestly say that Battle Medic has not quite turned out the way I anticipated. Don't get me wrong, I am very proud of the posts that I have written, but I hoped that it would have turned into more of a Kurn-esque resource blog rather than the personal game journal that it is now. While I would like to do more analytical posts, I think one of the most important lessons that I learned is that while those how-to and resource posts bring in a lot of views from the search engines, regular readers are more interested in what a blogger thinks about something. It's the personal opinions and viewpoints that keep bringing readers back.

That idea has shaped the evolution of Battle Medic more than anything.

Well, aside from the Dwarfling. I've written about this numerous times - it's almost to the point of getting quite stale - but my life, and consequently my ability to focus on my blog, has changed remarkably since I started a year ago. There have been far too many of the "I'm tired, no time to write" posts for my liking. The last thing I want is to turn this post into another of those, but the Dwarfling certainly has had a big effect on my posting and gameplay.

Still, I have enjoyed writing this blog more than I ever would have thought possible. Before starting it, I didn't realize how much I enjoyed the process and creative release of writing. More importantly, though, I didn't realize that I had something to say. I have opinions on this game and my experiences playing it, and I had no idea that there was a burning need to express them until I started writing about them. It's made me think about the game quite differently.


COMMUNITY

Writing a blog is fun, but interacting with the readers is much more rewarding. It's that interaction that begins to build a community, and the WoW Blogging community is great. It's diverse, engaging and very supportive. I don't think there would be much point in blogging in a void.

Everyone I talk to, whether it be on Twitter, forums or through comments, has been amazing. Support, advice and sympathy have been offered whenever I've been feeling like a grumpy Dwarf, and congratulations are never in short supply when something good happens. And, of course, there is nothing that will generate conversation and comments like posting a picture of the Dwarfling; the internet certainly seems to be taken with her.

I was planning on doing a list of people who have been influential to me and the blog and thank them, but honestly, there are far too many to list. The post would either get too long (it already is... this was supposed to be a short post!), or I would end up forgetting someone important, and I would hate to do that.

However, if you are reading this blog regularly, I thank you. I appreciate how special it is that someone takes time out of their day to read the drivel that I spew onto the interwebs. I hope that what I write is informative, enlightening or at the very least entertaining.

If you have ever commented on Battle Medic, I thank you. Believe me, I know how hard it is to comment on a post. Personally, I find it much harder to write an interesting comment than I do an interesting article. Know that each and every comment, regardless of whether I get off my tuckus to respond to it or not is read and appreciated. In fact, I get a shiver of anticipation every time I see that there is a new one.

If we have ever interacted on Twitter, I thank you. I jumped on the Twitter bandwagon quite late - I still haven't had one year on that yet - but I have a really good number of followers. In my wildest dreams I didn't think that there would be that many people interested in what I have to say.

If you are a blogger and have added me to your Blog Roll, I thank you. If you've ever ReTweeted, linked or written a response to one of my posts, I thank you.

If I have influenced you in some way - to start a blog, join Twitter, think about screenshots differently, or even to ditch all the other races in favour of the clearly superior Dwarves - I thank you. I write this blog for myself, but to know that there are people out there who enjoy what I write enough that it inspired them to do something themselves is very satisfying. I'm glad I could help, and I thank you for valuing what I do here.

And if you read this blog and didn't like it, well, I thank you anyway. Honestly, I get a lot of positive feedback here (the WoW blogosphere is very supportive), and I would love to get some idea of what I'm doing wrong. So thank you for all the constructive criticism in advance.

There... I think that covers just about everyone.


THE FUTURE OF BATTLE MEDIC

Back on that blustery day last December when I pushed the Publish button for the first time, I had no idea whether I would enjoy blogging or whether I would keep up with it. So many of the projects that I take on start out so brilliantly and then fizzle into a small, grey lump of nothing, and I'm glad that I've managed to keep Battle Medic as active as I have, given the circumstances.

I will continue to write this blog as long as there are people reading it. I'm hopeful that I'll be able to increase the frequency of the posting around here, as it's been much quieter than I'd like since August. I look forward to writing another of these posts next year!

Day Twelve: A Day In The Life

This post is part of a series "20 Days of... WoW Blogging Challenge", a blogging challenge suggested by Saga at Spellbound. She proposes twenty questions to be answered in twenty days and I, foolishly, have decided to take up this most daunting task because clearly my schedule is not full enough.


DAY TWELVE: A DAY IN THE LIFE

"Woke up, fell out of bed, dragged a comb across my head. Found my way downstairs and had a cup; and looking up, I noticed I was late. Found my coat and grabbed my hat; made the bus in seconds flat. Made my way upstairs and had a smoke and somebody spoke and I went into a dream..." - The Beatles

In my mind, the true test of any writer is making an uninteresting topic read as if it's the last chapter of an epic novel.

Talking about my typical day is, at this point in my life, like writing a 400 page novel describing whaling in excruciating detail and expecting people to read it and stay awake.

Oh wait. Somebody already did that. Damn you, Herman Melville.

Anyway, literary criticism aside, my days right now are dull. I get up, I go to work, I try to sell stuff while I'm there. If there is nothing else to do I try to squeeze in some writing. Then I go home and take care of the Dwarfling for a while so my wife doesn't pull her hair out in great, screaming fits of exasperation. It's not exactly the stuff of great literature. In fact, I think I can hear the snores from here.

However, given that this is a World of Warcraft blog, I thought that it might be more interesting to let you in on how I squeeze WoW into my day. The Dwarfling has seen to it that my hours of WoW time are restricted, regardless of what plans or agreements I may have made before she showed up. She's the boss now.

I mentioned in a previous post that I am a car salesman at a luxury dealership. There can be an excruciating amount of downtime at my job, so I am able to spend some of my time thinking about WoW during the day. I follow Twitter (my follow list is almost exclusively WoW people) and am able to read a fair number of blogs when things aren't busy.

At about 4:30 or 5 o'clock in the afternoon, things slow down and most people who come in at that point are just there to pick up their vehicle from Service, which gives me a chance to write. This time of day is when I get the vast majority of my blogging done. I know, I'm horrible for doing this at work - but I don't often get a chance to do it any other time.

Baby aggro is much more
frightening than any Raid Boss.
Please don't ask about the wipes.

When I leave work at 6, I have a half-hour drive before I get home and immediately have a baby dropped into my arms. I love my daughter, and I love holding her, but she is needy in the evening; the price we pay for having her sleep through most of the night, I guess.

So the amount of WoW that I can play really is determined by the Dwarfling. She loves being held, and so putting her down to play results in getting screamed at by both baby and mommy (I'm not really sure which is worse, honestly). Playing WoW one-handed is tricky and not very efficient; especially if I want to run a dungeon or raid where I can't stop and turn it off at a moments notice.

I can normally slip in an hour or so of gaming spread throughout the evening whilst the Dwarfling is napping or feeding off of Mrs. Fannon. It's rare to get any uninterrupted gaming time, except for my two raid nights a week, which my wife has accepted somewhat grudgingly. I can count the number of heroics that I've managed to complete on one hand in the past couple of weeks.

Writing time is very hard to come by at home as well. There is rarely a moment that is quiet enough that I can let my mind wander into the creative space that I pull all of this gibberish from. Most of the time my mind is on other things - diapers, soothers, cranky wife or barking dog.

Still, Dwarfling smiles are worth it.  Azerwhat?

Yesterday, DAY ELEVEN: FAULTS, FLAWS AND BAD HABITS
Tomorrow, PEOPLE THAT I ADMIRE

Day Nine: The First Battle Medic Post

This post is part of a series "20 Days of... WoW Blogging Challenge", a blogging challenge suggested by Saga at Spellbound. She proposes twenty questions to be answered in twenty days and I, foolishly, have decided to take up this most daunting task because clearly my schedule is not full enough.


DAY NINE: THE FIRST BATTLE MEDIC POST

Looking back on the first entry that I posted on Battle Medic I am struck by how extraordinarily timid it sounds. It really comes across that I was unsure what I was going to write about and that I was really unsure if anything that churned out of my keyboard was going to be worth reading.

I asked the question, "Why does the WoW blogosphere need another healing blog?" Four months and sixty-two posts later I think I have a better idea of the answer to that question. My experiences in writing this blog has really shown me that the subject of the blog really isn't that important - the real reason that each new blog is important and needed is that each voice adds something unique to the community. I hope that I've managed to add something positive to the discourse.

Re-reading the first few blog entries, I can really see the writing grow as I went through the process of trying to figure out what to write about. I pumped out a lot of posts in the last two and a half weeks of December. My favourite posts of those first, fledgling weeks are Slowing Down is Hard to Do, The First Annual Peevie Awards and First Lesson from Heroics - Communication. There is actually some readable stuff in there.

Yesterday, DAY EIGHT: 10 THINGS ABOUT THE BATTLE MEDIC
Tomorrow, DAY TEN: FAVOURITE BLOGS AND WEBSITES

Light at the End of the Tunnel

When Cataclysm launched I set a goal for myself to complete the raid content while it was current.  I came very late to the raiding scene in Wrath of the Lich King, and missed a lot of really great content.  I did not have the chance to clear Naxxramas or Ulduar while they were relevant, and still haven't made it back there to run them for nostalgia reasons.  I didn't want that to happen to me in Cataclysm.

We're getting there.  The last couple of weeks have seen very good progress.

Shadowgarde is now 8/12 in current tier content, having downed Ascendant Council for the first time last week. We had a couple of good looks at Cho'gall last week as well, even though they ended with some embarrassingly quick wipes.  Only Nefarian & Cho'gall remain in their respective instances; then it's on to Throne of the Four Winds, which we haven't looked at yet.

It's nice to be able to see that the realization of my goal is in sight.  There is still a long way to go, and three of the four encounters that we have remaining are the most challenging of the expansion, so, like the Dwarfling, they're not likely to go down quietly.  But the end is within reach, and that feels pretty good.

For my part, despite the changes to my life, I have managed to attend my raids and keep my focus well enough, although I have hardly been at the top of my game.  Lack of really restful sleep and a hell of a lot of distractions (most due to the relatives that have been visiting us non-stop; welcome to Hotel Fannon) have made things harder on me.  I'm still managing to get the job done, but I don't feel like I've been playing with the same level of skill that I was before.

For example, last night on Magmaw and Omnotron (which are admittedly farm bosses for us now) my use of cooldowns was very spotty.  Ooops.  Nothing earth-shattering or anything and no healing-related wipes, but hardly efficient and I expect better of myself.  I did much better once I realized that I was playing lazy and the pulls of Maloriak and Halfus were much better.

Tonight we'll be tackling Atramedes, Chimaeron and Ascendant Council, and hopefully we'll have enough time to get some more attempts on Cho'gall.  Time is going to be very tight, however.

As I mentioned previously, our Raid Group has a hard time cap; we're done at 10pm server time, pretty much no matter what.  We have managed to squeeze a lot into those 5 hours per week, but we're beginning to run out of time to work on the progression bosses because we're spending all of our time downing the 8 bosses just to get there.

It's a hard choice:  Extend the lockout to work on progression or continue to reset so that we can get the gear.  As of right now, the gear wins out, since a majority of our raiders still need a significant amount of upgrades.  I have yet to see a single piece of Plate Healing gear drop yet, for example, and I know that there are others who have been RNG's bitch as well.  The Resto Shaman that we don't have has been making out like a bandit, however.  Maybe that's another reason that I decided to level one.

Luckily, there is lots of time.  With Blizzard's decision to delay the next tier of raids until patch 4.2, we have at least a couple of months before we move on to another raid.

But the goal for this tier is progressing nicely:  75% of the way home, and still going strong.

This Week in Raiding: Green Bay Wipes Us

This Week in Raiding is a (hopefully) weekly feature discussing the raiding encounters that my guild tackled this week, the lessons learned from them, as well as any news or thoughts on raiding in general. This week I complain about things. Enjoy!


This week in raiding... was cancelled. Apparently last Sunday there was an important broadcast of some sort coming from the telly that had a lot of our raiders transfixed. I'm not exactly sure of the nature of this broadcast, but from what I have gathered so far, I think it was a new episode of World's Funniest TV Commercials, since that seems to be all anybody was talking about afterwards. However, there was a lot of buzz on Twitter about a rather grandiose soup bowl of some sort, so that might bear some investigation as well.

Seriously, though, our Sunday night raid did not go off as planned due to some, err, unannounced absences due to the Superbowl. Oh well, I did my heroic and a couple of dailies and spent some time with my wife. It worked out well, really.

Monday night our regular raiders returned, acting all innocent and, "Waddaya mean yesterday was raid night?" It proved to be an interesting night.

Our biggest nemesis (aside from the elevator, which has wiped us more times than Arthas) was lag. The connection was terrible on Monday night, which likely had something to do with the 4.0.6 patch being downloaded. I noticed multiple occasions where my screen would freeze for a couple of seconds and then race to catch up with me. It's very interesting trying to heal when you're watching a photograph instead of a movie.

In the end we did manage to get our three Blackwing Descent bosses down in the one night. Magmaw actually took us a great deal more time that I would have expected. The lag was causing massive problems mounting him and getting the chains attached properly, resulting in numerous wipes on a boss that I thought we had cased. In one rather unique wipe, I accidentally clicked on Magmaw during the chaining phase and ended up on his back. I was surprised, to say the least, and tried my best to get him chained down, but the tank ended up becoming worm munchies and we called the attempt.

Tuesday morning I had quite a few people hit my blog after searching for "Problems Mounting Magmaw" on Google, so I don't think we were the only ones having this issue. I suspect that this is a temporary issue, so I wouldn't worry about it too much.

On we went to Omnotron, who was one-shot. I know, I was surprised too.

Maloriak gave us a bit of trouble, but we ended up getting him down on our last attempt of the night. What is the magic of saying, "This is the last attempt of the night"? Is it just me, or does it seem like as soon as that phrase is uttered your odds of downing the boss get better? It's like searching for hours for your car keys and giving up, grabbing a beer from the fridge, going back to the couch and sitting on them.

Afterwards, I pugged a last minute Baradin Hold run with Oath, our main tank. Pit Lord Lootbag dropped my Holy tier gloves, which represented the first raid loot for my holy spec that I've seen in the month that I've been raiding. It was very exciting. Or rather, it would have been if I didn't already have the World Keepers Gauntlets from Earthen Ring already. You know, Argaloth, I could have used those pants that you have on you somewhere. Those would have been very helpful, thankyouverymuch. I'll save the tier gloves, of course, until I have another piece of tier gear. If Omnotron Maloriak drops the Flash Freeze Gauntlets next week I think I'll cry.

How was your raiding weekend? Did the Superbowl or the lag cause you any issues?

Level One Conversations in the Blogosphere

I did a post a couple of weeks ago, An Intimate Conversation with My Level One Self, which turned out to be quite a hit.  It has become one of my most viewed posts and has inspired a few other bloggers to jump on the idea (which, again, was in itself inspired by WoW Insider's Breakfast Topic a long time ago), and there have been some really interesting posts as a result.

It's an incredibly gratifying feeling to have inspired someone else to write something (even if I, in turn, was inspired by someone else's writing), and it truly has been a thrill reading each one as I find them.

Here are links to the ones that I know about.  I will keep this updated as I find more of them.

• Janyaa at Muradin Musings was first with her post:  Conversation With My Level 1 Self.

• Mirandinn at Mirandinn.com posted Talkin' to Myself (My Level One Self).

• Morituri over at Rants of a Priest followed suit with Conversation with my Level 1 Self (well...Avatar).

• Gneisha at Unleashed Rage, a fellow Sargeras-er was a little late to the party but still very welcome: Dear Level 1 Gneisha.

If you have done a similar post or know of one that I haven't included, let me know in the comments and I'll add it here.

What Makes a Main?

(or Why There Are Distressingly Few Dwarves Mentioned In Dwarven Battle Medic)

I imagine that anyone who is reading this blog with any regularity has noticed that it has a very distinct Holy Paladin slant to it and that there seems to be a decided lack of Dwarves around.  Oh sure, there is a picture of a Dwarf in a dress at the top, and a nice shot of Ironforge in the background, but the Dwarven Battle Medic seems to talk an awful lot about Human Paladins, doesn’t he?

So where the hell are all the Dwarves?

The answer is simple enough:  My main character is Thosif, the Human Holy Paladin.  Fannon the Dwarf Priest is an Alt.  This blog and I are named after an Alt. 

This really brings up an interesting question:  How do you define “Main” or “Alt”?  What criteria do you use to define who your main is?  Is there a difference between your Main Character and the Character that you personally identify with or are identified by?  This question was asked recently by the lovely and talented Endyme of (Un)Holy Randomness and is one of those philosophizing topics that I find endlessly fascinating.

WHAT IS A MAIN?

(or My Definition Of A Maintastic Play Style)

Every person is different, of course, and you would likely find that there are as many answers to this question as there are World of Warcraft players.  The only thing that twelve million WOW subscribers have ever agreed on is that THEIR class is underpowered and YOURS is overpowered and should be nerfed.  Of course that is untrue -- except in the case of Holy Paladins, who are clearly underpowered and should be buffed. 

My definition of a “Main” is the one character that, above all others, dominates your thoughts.  It is defined by passion.  It is the character that you speak of first when someone asks you “What do you play?”  It is the character that you log onto first when the new content drops.  It was the character that you were most excited to level to 85 in Cataclysm.  More than likely it is the character that you want to raid with, if you’re a raider.  It is, simply, the character that you are excited about and want to play when you sit down at your computer after a long day at work.

Who did you log onto first on December 7^th?  Odds are that’s your main.

Mains can change over time, and there are as many reasons as there are people playing.  Interests change:  You may be bored of tanking and want to try damage or healing, you may become enamoured with a different class’s playstyle, or perhaps you created a new character of a different race that has caught your imagination.  There is no way to know what factor will come into play that will cause you to emotionally switch from one Main to another.

There is also a difference between your Main Character and the character that you are identified by.  I go by the name Fannon because that was my Main when I joined Shadowgarde and it’s the name that I have chosen to identify myself by in the blogosphere as well.  The name you go by can change over time as you meet new people who only know you by your new Main’s name.

Of course, emotional attachments run deep and sometimes it is hard to let go of an old main.  Many times the player will be the last person to realize that their main has switched or only realize it long after the emotional switch.  When I declared my new main on the Shadowgarde forums it was a case of “We know” and “about time you admitted it”.  Sometimes you have to just realize that it’s OK to switch Mains.  (Really, Endy, it’s OK).

It is this emotional attachment that led me to naming this blog Dwarven Battle Medic even though my new main is a human. 

WHAT MAKES AN ALT?

(or Captain Obvious Visits Obviousland)

An Alt then is straightforwardly defined as any character that isn’t your main.  People will have Alts for many different reasons; banking, trade skills, PVP, different roles or play-styles.  Sometimes people will have a separate account so they can play two characters at once.  Some people will have an army of Alts with multiple max-level characters while others will have a stable of lowbie characters so that they can experience different things.

Really, there are no rules when it comes to Alts.  Alts are there to fulfill the player’s desire for variety or provide access to something that their main can’t do.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF MAINS

(or Where The Hell Did The Last Two-And-A-Half Years Go?)

I rolled several different characters (including Thosif) before I finally rolled one that resonated with me enough to finally, truly call my Main Character.  This was Fannon.  I rolled my priest so that I could play with my nephew and was so enthralled by the play-style that he became my first level 80.  He was the first toon that I did dungeons with, the first character that I took on a raid, and the first toon that I took through Icecrown Citadel, going 11/12.  It was through my Dwarf Priest that I learned how much I enjoyed healing and Sindragosa 10, my most satisfying boss kill to date, was done on him.  I joined my guild during this time and so I, of course, became known to them as “Fannon”.  By other names too, but those aren’t appropriate for polite blogging.

In what is likely to seem a familiar story, during Wrath I dabbled with other characters to try and experience everything this game has to offer.  Thosif, who I had created very early on but had let languish for a year at level 19, finally caught my eye and I decided to level him to 85.  I was originally going to level him as a tank since I already had my healer, but a guildie was levelling a Protection Warrior at the same time, so I decided to respec Holy so we could run dungeons together.  The first dungeon I ran as a Holy Paladin was a revelation.  The Paladin healing style was far more simplistic than a Holy or Discipline priest, but incredibly and fantastically fun.

I was still raiding with Fannon at this time; steadily progressing his gear through ICC 10 and 25-man raids, but when I got home from work at night, the first thing I wanted to do was play on my Paladin.  I blitzed through Outlands and Northrend to get to the level cap and jumped into heroics to start gearing up.  Meanwhile, I was discovering and devouring every Paladin blog on the internet to learn how to best play him.  The Priest was more and more becoming an afterthought. 

The exact moment when Thosif became my Main is unclear, and I certainly didn’t recognize it at the time.  At some point I started asking for my somewhat undergeared Paladin to be included in our ICC runs.  Oh, it was just Alt runs at first, of course, but soon I wanted to bring him into our progression runs as well instead of the Priest.  It was Fannon who got Sindragosa down for the first time, but it was Thosif that killed the Lich King.  It was in between those two events (which sadly happened a long time apart) that my Main switched, at least emotionally.

When Cataclysm dropped, I couldn’t wait to log onto Thosif and start levelling.  Fannon is still sitting in Ironforge in 251 epics collecting the Rested XP bonus at level 80.

AN APOLOGY

(or I Can’t Believe You Read This Far.  Seriously.)

I would like to offer a bit of an apology to anyone who made it this far.  One thing I wanted to avoid with this blog is a lot of pie-eyed ramblings about my characters and what they had for breakfast that day.  I know a lot of people don’t find that kind of thing interesting, so I try to avoid it wherever I can.  In this case, however, I thought a little history of my own experience with the Main-change would be relevant.  I hope you found it interesting at least.

How do you define your Main?  Have you ever changed your Main?  If so, at what point did you realise that it had changed, or was it a conscious choice?

First Week: The Blogenning

"All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning." - Albert Camus

It’s has now been a week since I first put up Dwarven Battle Medic and I must say that it’s been a learning experience.  I have never had a blog before, and aside from seeing what other authors do with their blogs, I really have no idea what I’m doing.  I’m learning on the fly and hoping for the best.

I thought I would share some of my initial impressions and observations about being a blogger.  I’m pretty sure that the majority of my readers at this point are bloggers themselves, so I’m sure most everyone who sees this will know exactly what I’m talking about.

Observation 1:  The Stats Page is Addicting. 

I have spent an inordinate amount looking at the Blogspot stats page this week.  Each pageview that shows up is an incredibly exciting thing and I can’t help but wonder who is on the other side.  It is very cool to know that someone has taken a look at what I’ve written.  Some random stats for those who are interested:  Not counting my own, I’ve had about 100 pageviews this week from people all over the world.  Canada, US, England, Italy, South Korea, Germany and Australia among others have been represented.  Welcome, everyone!  

Observation 2:  Links are The Single Coolest Thing Ever.

I received my first link this week for my Tower of Fizzle post and that generated a fair bit of traffic for me.  It was from the lovely Ophelie at Bossy Pally and the Giant Spoon.  Another big thank you for Janyaa at Muradin’s Musings for being the first person to add me to her blog roll! 

Observation 3:  Pageviews Without Comments Are Frustrating. 

With the blog being this new and paying as much attention to the stats as I am, seeing people viewing the blog but not leaving comments is a little disheartening.  I understand that the comment leaving public is quite small in proportion to the people reading, but I can’t help but wonder what people think about what I’ve written.  Of course, I don’t think anybody puts out a blog so that they can be quietly appreciated… I think every blogger is secretly looking for that comment that says they are doing a good job.  Blogs are far too public to not be a cry for a little external approval.

I would like to give a shout-out to my first commenter, Janyaa from Muradin's Musings, who's post on LFD compassion should be required reading before people can enter the LFD queue.

***Edit:  OMG, I completely forgot that Soul from Cathedral of Taintedsouls left a comment early on as well.  Thank you, Soul, here is some link love.  :)

Observation 4:  Moar Pictures!

This one is tricky since I do a lot of my writing during downtime at work where I have no access to my screenshots.

Observation 5:  Generating Content is Harder than I Thought. 

All of the best blogs out there have really solid content on them.  Guides, theorycrafting or other helpful posts that have kept myself and others coming back.  That stuff is hard to write.  Fluff (like this post!) is easy and can be entertaining at times, but real content is hard.  Unique content is even harder.  Things like Amber’s Flowchart Fridays are fantastic things to make your blog stand out.

Observation 6:  Patience While Posting, Young Padawan.

Of the stuff I have written, I am happy with the majority of it.  Looking back I should have taken a bit more time with a couple of the posts as I’m not sure that the ideas are expressed as well as I would have liked.  The patience to proofread and then proofread again is something that I have yet to master.  Spelling mistakes are embarrassing when the entire world can see them.

Final Observation: Blogging is a Lot of Fun.

Introductions and Obligatory Welcome Post

Hello, World of Warcraft blogosphere.  I've finally decided to join you.

Welcome to my first foray into the blogging world, The Dwarven Battle Medic.  I'm Fannon, a raid-healin' Dwarf Holy Priest from the Shadowgarde guild on Sargeras-US.   I'm a healer.  I heal.  That's what I'm hoping that this blog is going to be about.  I hope you enjoy it.  Actually, more to the point, I hope somebody actually reads this.

<listens to the echoes for a moment>

In addition to my Holy Priest, I have Thosif, my Holy Paladin and current Main, and I am also leveling the Resto Twins, Shaman and Druid.  My hope is to have all four healing classes raiding in Cataclysm.

Now, I'm sure you're thinking "Why on Earth does the blogosphere need another WOW healing blog?"  That's a great question, and I wish I could answer that.  No answer that I can think of doesn't boil down to something incredibly narcissistic.

I hope that this blog will be at least entertaining.  I don't suspect that I will get very deep into theorycrafting at all... really, Kurn and Rohan and Elitist Jerks are going to do that better anyway.  I fail at math.  What I hope to give you is some Light Entertainment Warcraft (if anyone gets that reference, kudos), some insightful commentary occasionally, numerous spelling mistakes, and hopefully lots of jokes.

Enjoy the ride.