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!

Images of Azeroth: 50,000 Words (52/50)

End Time

The Well of Eternity

Dead in the Caverns of Time

Pines #2

Well, this is the final post of my Images of Azeroth: 50,000 Words challenge for November. And of course, being me I couldn't just do the challenge, I had to overachieve; so I posted 52 images. 

This challenge was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be, actually. Putting together the images - both from in game and out - took a lot of time and effort. I almost hope I don't see another screenshot for a while! But I really enjoyed doing it. I hope that you've enjoyed these images!

Angelya over at Revive and Rejuvenate has come up with another Challenge that I, as a Photographer and self-styled Visual Artist, am very excited about. It's IntPiPoMo, or International Picture Posting Month. As a picture is worth 1,000 words, the goal for this challenge is to post 50 pictures during the month of November. I will be posting 25 Images of Azeroth and 25 photographs or art projects that I have been working on personally (and no baby photos, sorry ladies). As well, I will be posting commentary and context with each image.

Please note that all World of Warcraft screenshots are copyright Blizzard Entertainment. The photographs are copyright Brad Stover and should not be reused without permission..

Images of Azeroth: 50,000 Words (27/50)

The Hidden Valley of Dun Morogh

There are moments when travelling that even I, the hardened WoW Landscape photographer that I am, get truly stunned by the beauty of the vistas that I find. One such moment happened to me not that long ago as I was exploring the Hidden Valley of Dun Morogh that lies behind Gnomeregan. It was late afternoon and the sunlight on the mountains and shining through the trees really moved me. It's times like these that I know that the developers really care about this world and how it looks, which gives me a nice, warm squishy feeling down in the cockles of my stony, dwarven heart.

Needles

Given the fact that winter has finally arrived where I live, this image is appropriate. It's another image exploring abstraction and motion - although this one is a little easier to figure out what it is. The high-key background and false blue colour that I have imposed upon it make me think of frigid winter temperatures, but also reminds me that there is a great deal of beauty in the winter, if you're willing to look for it. Ironically, this image was taken on a lovely end-of-summer day when the temperature was sitting at about 25C.

Angelya over at Revive and Rejuvenate has come up with another Challenge that I, as a Photographer and self-styled Visual Artist, am very excited about. It's IntPiPoMo, or International Picture Posting Month. As a picture is worth 1,000 words, the goal for this challenge is to post 50 pictures during the month of November. I will be posting 25 Images of Azeroth and 25 photographs or art projects that I have been working on personally (and no baby photos, sorry ladies). As well, I will be posting commentary and context with each image.

Please note that all World of Warcraft screenshots are copyright Blizzard Entertainment. The photographs are copyright Brad Stover and should not be reused without permission..

Day Thirteen: People I Admire

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 THIRTEEN: PEOPLE I ADMIRE

When I started thinking about this topic I started compiling a list of people that I respect and admire in my head. After about an hour - once the blinding, searing headache went away from trying to remember all those names - I decided that a monolithic list of people was not the way to go with this post; especially since most people will just scan those to see if their name is mentioned and not actually read it. So I started to think of a different way to approach this topic.

The people I admire are the people who do the Thankless Jobs™ in our game. I'm talking about the Raid Leaders, Role Leads, Recruiters and Guild Leaders out there.

These people are responsible for an job that has been glibly compared to herding cats, but would be more accurately described as herding short-tempered, egotistical badgers who are fine when left alone but viciously attack anyone who pokes them with a stick. It's the leader's job to figure out how often it's possible to poke the badger without your face getting ripped off.

I have led online communities before (successfully, I think), and it's not an easy job. There is enough drama to deal with to make a young William Shakespeare quit the theatre and take up chartered accountancy. Often you're trying to provide direction to people who seem determined to remain directionless. Just trying to make yourself heard over the relentless din of internet chatter is often impossible; and on the occasions that you succeed you're often called a tyrant.

So my hat is off to you folks. You're doing a tough job requiring exceptionally clear communication, but doing it in a medium that makes everything you say easy to ignore or misinterpret. Considering most of you volunteered for this job speaks volumes of your character. Selfless, some would say. Noble, even. Masochist? Certainly.

Yesterday, DAY TWELVE: A DAY IN THE LIFE
Tomorrow, DAY FOURTEEN: THIS UPSETS ME

The Death of WoW and the Circle of Life

It is safe to say that World of Warcraft is going through something of a transition these days. The change to Cataclysm's new style of play has not been easy for a lot of people – particularly people who have been playing this game for a long time.

Evidence of this is all around us. Every time someone gives up healing or tanking because it's too hard, there it is. Whenever we hear that a long time WoW player has dropped his subscription we're reminded of it. Every time that a player drops WoW for Rift and starts spamming Twitter with an incessant stream of achievement spam, we can't help but notice. Whenever a beloved, long-time WoW blogger closes up shop, a flagrantly obvious fact is right there in your face like a village full of murlocs:

WoW isn't the same game that you fell in love with six years ago.

Over the past couple of months, many notable WoW bloggers have decided to retire their blogs. Tam at Righteous Orbs, for instance, and most recently Larisa at Pink Pigtail Inn has called it a day. Many others have quietly faded into oblivion without so much as a 'farewell' post - their blogs going dark, leaving their readership to wonder. There is no question that the WoW blogging community is smaller and less brilliant because of their loss of these voices that we were so accustomed to hearing, but as Vidalya at Manalicious so elegantly put it, "other's endings are not my endings".

Being plugged into Twitter and the Blogosphere means that it's impossible to not hear grumbling and griping about all sorts of things and very rarely do we hear someone mentioning how great something is. We bloggers are, if nothing else, champion complainers - and it's not a hard stretch to imagine that hearing all the doom and gloom would affect our opinion of our game and our community to the point where we would begin to believe that it's dying.

I'm curious how a WoW player who isn't active in the community feels about this game and it's health. Do they look at their guild and the competition for a raid spot and feel that the game is hemorrhaging people? Do they think that losing a long time guild member means that there is something wrong with the game? Or do they look at it as the natural way of these things?


IT'S NATURAL

With any game that sticks around for a long time, it's natural for people to come and go as their level of interest waivers. I'm not sure how anyone could play the same game for five or six years - or any length of time for that matter - without losing interest or feeling burnout at some point.

Before I started playing WoW, my game of choice was Counter-strike, and I played it for a long time. I ran my own large clan of players, operated my own public server, a private server and Ventrilo server and even competed in organized league play. I was as involved in that game as it was possible to be. Over time, the game became much less fun and the only thing keeping me coming back was the relationships I had with my clanmates. Eventually I quit, disbanded the clan and moved on. It was a very tough decision.

I see the same thing happening with WoW. I know that when I left Counter-strike the game continued on just fine without me, and the same is true when someone from the WoW community leaves. This game is bigger than any of us and will soldier on as we leave.


CHA-CHA-CHA-CHA-CHANGES

For better or for worse is still a point of great debate, but there is no question that World of Warcraft has changed a lot in the past six years.  And whenever change happens there are going to be people who don't agree with or like the changes. There is no way to please twelve million people, and as I mentioned in my 2010 Peevie Awards, it's the definition of insanity to try.

The people who are most likely to be left out in the cold when change happens are the people who have been around the longest. These are your raid leaders, guild officers and respected, pillars-of-the-community types. And in the blogosphere, they are the ones that have become institutions.  "Oh, [Popular Blogger] could never leave, he's been here forever and he's too good to ever quit." Of course, it doesn't work that way. Quite the opposite; they are the most likely to drift away to something else.

Losing one of these bloggers or guild members is hard, but it says nothing about the game or the community or your guild as a whole. The health of any community is determined by the strength of the people involved, and as someone leaves for other things inevitably someone else will come forward to take their place. New raid leaders will step up, a guild will pick a new leader with new ideas, and new bloggers will begin writing to fill the void.


THE CIRCLE OF LIFE

In the past few months since Cataclysm several high profile blogs have shut down, but even more new bloggers have taken up the blogging challenge. These blogs aren't high profile yet, and they don't have the readership numbers of the blogs that have quit, but they are providing fresh new voices for the community to listen to. Different styles, new opinions and formats are being injected into the community everyday.

That's what tells me that our game and our community are doing just fine. This community and game are far from stagnant, as the new and vibrant voices are showing in every corner of the blogosphere.

The circle of life continues.


NEW VOICES

Vidalya issued a challenge in her post: Introduce and link to a new blogger.  I love this idea, and even as a new, post-cataclysm writer myself, here is a list of recent blog starts that have caught my attention. All of these blogs were started around the time that Cataclysm launched, although I'm using this criteria fairly loosely.

Muradin Musings by Janyaa

Unleashed Rage by Bloody Gneisha.

Ask a Salty by SaltySlainte

Mortigan the Lock by Mortigan

Zwingli's Blog by Zwingli (An older blog that has recently returned from the ether.)

Beer Bacon Brawling by Beerbelly.

Healer Aggro by Ttrinity

The Casual Raider by Jack

Rants of a Priest by Morituri

Elfi's World by Elfindale

Cleansing Waters by Mylindara

Specced for Drama by Ama (Who turns out to have been around longer than I thought... her blogspot blog has only been around since November, tho!)

Stand in the Blue Circle by Alacran

Word of Glory by Lynesta

Heavy Wool Bandage by Glorwynn

Healbot by Gina

And more!  I'm quite certain I've missed a bunch of people, and I'm sorry for forgetting you! If you have a newish blog and would like it listed here, leave me a comment and I'll include it.

Second Lesson from Heroics: Hard Choices

As a healer, I take it personally when someone in my party has their health bar dip.  It’s my job, after all, to ensure that they survive so that they can do their thing.  With the new realities of healing and mana management there are limitations to what a healer can do to keep people alive.  This leads to the healer having to make some hard choices when prioritizing who gets what heal and when.

(As an aside, how has no one coined the term Mana-gement yet?  Mananagement, maybe?)

Balance

With very expensive yet weak heals relative to health pools, it has become normal for people to be at less than full health during an encounter.  Therefore, a healer needs to be mentally balancing three fundamental things constantly:

1) The Tank’s Health

2) The Healer’s Mana bar

3) The Party’s Health as a whole

Thinking of the party in these terms simplifies the scope of healing.  You don’t need to worry about 5 different health bars so much as you have to worry about three things:  Keep your tank at a survivable level of health, keep your mana bar up, and keep enough, preferably all of the party alive to finish the encounter. 

Striking the successful balance between these three important factors is at the heart of the Cataclysm healing paradigm.  Sacrificing any one of these elements generally means a wipe, while a properly balanced approach should be successful.  For example, if your tank is low on health but not in critical danger of dying, spamming large heals to top him up at the expense of your mana reserves means that you will not be able to last long enough to finish the encounter.  Likewise, keeping your mana high is pointless if everyone is dying on you.

Yes, this is normal.  Don't Panic.

The Needs of the Many…

A great example of this balancing act occurred last night during a Heroic Throne of the Tides run.  It was a partial guild run with myself, the Tank and a Shadow Priest in the group which was rounded out by a Mage and a Rogue that we found using the LFD tool.  It was a great group, actually, and the run went quite smoothly.  It’s amazing how much easier Lady Naz’jar is with proper crowd control.

However, during the Commander Ulthok encounter I ran into one of these hard decisions that really crystallized this whole balance idea in my mind.  If you have not done the encounter, Ulthok creates Dark Fissures on the ground that expand throughout the fight, similar to the Lich King’s Defile.  There is nothing that can be done about these, you simply need to avoid them and is the key mechanic with this fight.

One mistake that our tank made was that he allowed the first Fissure to be dropped in the centre of the room, which eventually seriously limited the space that we were able to safely occupy during the encounter.  After the first one, he tanked and kited the boss around the edge of the room properly and everything was proceeding fine.

However, about halfway into the fight, I notice one of our damage dealers standing in the middle of the room taking damage from the first Fissure and not moving out of it.  It was the Shadow Priest from our guild, who is a very good player, but it left me with a dilemma:  Do I heal him or not?  In Wrath it wouldn’t even have been a question; I would have spammed big heals on him and the boss would have been dead before it became an issue.  Not so, now.

I chose not to heal him.

That felt really, really wrong, but it was the right call.

In order to heal him, I would have had to start casting my fast, expensive Flash Heal just to keep up with the damage.  It would have saved him, at least for a while, but it also would have destroyed my mana reserves in very short order; jeopardizing the entire encounter and violating the principle of balance.  By recognizing that the Priest was beyond help unless he moved allowed me to focus on what I could save, and ultimately get the kill.

The Lesson

Cataclysm heroic dungeons (and I assume Cataclysm raids, even though I’m not there yet) force you to rethink who you are healing and with what spell.  Many people will tell you that as a healer, you must prioritize the tank and yourself and screw the damage dealers.  I feel this is a flawed strategy, as a party with no damage won’t kill much of anything.  You must strike the balance and keep all three parts of the party alive and functioning.  Sacrificing one-third of your damage to save the whole is one of the hard choices that you’re going to have to get used to making as a Cataclysm healer.