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Monday, June 1, 2015

NBI Class of 2015

So another Newbie Blogger Initiative has come and gone, and this one was not without its controversies and angst. However, it seems that everyone came out unscathed. Like much of what I post, this list is conveniently cribbed from Belghast the Aggronaut, unflagging cheerleader for this corner of the game-blogging community.

Just looking at the list, I am mildly surprised at the number that are dedicated (at least in part) to SWTOR, perhaps thanks to a resurgence in players due to the 12x XP "event" currently underway. Regrettably, I have not read many of these worthy blogs. The ones I have read are starred, but I'm sure all are worth checking out, and I intend to do so in the coming days.
My own blogging month was a pretty great, thanks to some inexplicable awesomeness the first week, and pretty solid numbers since. May was my second highest month ever for pagehits, and by far the highest in almost two years. I know we're not supposed to obsess over such things, but I do anyway. I  have pretty consistent numbers (trending generally upward); but every once in a while, the graph spikes. And this time I can't attribute it to a specific post; which is good, I suppose, but also maddening.
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7 comments:

  1. I take a bit of the blame for the high amount of SWTOR blogs. I tend to look out for new SWTOR blogs, so I contacted some of the above to tell them about the NBI: I figured it would be something you easily miss if you've recently started blogging and don't know about the gaming blog community. I'm happy so many decided to participate!

    That said, 2014-2015 have been very good years for SWTOR blogging. I took a bit of a blogging break, and was surprised to see that the amount of blogs had doubled at least when I came back! There used to be very few back in the day. I don't think it has to do with 12x XP for the new blogs: most of them started before that. Although there has been renewed SWTOR blog activity from some people that came back to SWTOR after a looong break with 12x XP, like you (yay).

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    1. So YOU"RE the culprit! :D

      Yeah, I somehow came in contact with at least Zernebog before NBI even started, so I know there have been a few SWTOR blogs around beside yours. :)

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  2. I also noticed the preponderance of SW:TOR blogs. As well Ravanel's proactive recruitment I do wonder if that's where a lot of WoW's missing millions have gone? I suspect it's going to be more of a long-term, slow-burn success than most of us ever imagined it would be.

    Not that I want to pick favorites but of the NBI 2015 crop that you haven't tried so far I would recommend both Aspect of the Hare and Waiting For Rez as blogs that are updated regularly and make for consistently good reads.

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    1. Thanks for highlighting those two. I plan to check them all out, but have run up against the net nanny here at work.

      I agree that SWTOR seems to have become a slow burning success. There are always plenty of people around when I'm online.

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    2. Thank you for the shoutout in this comment :)

      I've really enjoyed reading all the NBI blogs. It was a fantastic event!

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  3. NBI was pretty awesome, this year. I loved being a part of it!

    As for the graph spikes, I've noticed that if posts are all relatively the same, it's that a tweet of a post got shared to a wider audience, and then I got some folks clicking through "related posts" via a widget I have. At least, that's what I assume based on my own experiences on the "related posts" that are likely to show up. :)

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    1. True, like I said, normally I can point to a specific post, but this time it was over several days, and none of my individual post were getting high numbers, implying that people (or ) bots) were visiting the main page without going to the posts directly.

      I'm glad you were in on the NBI action, you're one of my favorite new Tweeps. :)

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