How I Started In Content Creation

I quietly passed my 11 year anniversary of blogging about my adventures in World of Warcraft back in June.  Interestingly enough, I had one single blog post in June and it was actually on my exact 11 year anniversary, but I didn't even notice.  The post at the time was how I was finished with the new 8.3 reputations and would be taking a break for a while.  I've been on that break ever since.

Back to eleven years ago, I started this blog to talk about an idea I had about trying to level a whole bunch of alts.  In my early days of playing Warcraft, I had a few guild mates that had 3 or 4 different toons that they played current endgame content on.  Not necessarily raiding, but at least running dungeons on those characters on a regular basis (this was before group finder).

It was amazing to me that was even possible.  Keep in mind this was back in the days when it could take from 4-6 days played time to get to max level versus the fast and streamlined version that we have today.  I decided I wanted to build a stable of alts and I thought it might be interesting to start blogging about my plans.  The original plan was even more ambitious than what my friends had done.  My plan was to have a character of each class at max level, which back then was level 80, and had only been so for a few months.  The blog really was about tracking those plans, talking about different leveling paths and strategies and providing updates on where I stood with making the goal happen.

For me, creating this content is more about telling my story, and maintaining a history of what I'm doing in game.  I'm glad when I can provide some content or some views that others might find helpful. I felt like had a chance to add more value back in the day when differences in approach could make a difference in leveling speed and there weren't huge boost methods available.  

I've also explored a few other games over the years in the pages of this blog - RIFT, Wildstar, SWTOR, GW2 and more recently Final Fantasy XIV.  I like to talk about what I find interesting in those games, particularly when long content droughts in Warcraft seem to force a lot of us to find other distractions.  I even started a second blog to cover a similar process in SWTOR, one that I actually just recently finished in the current Warcraft downtime.

There was also a period of time when I was publishing some analysis on Activision-Blizzard's quarterly earnings announcements, back when those used to contain useful data about World of Warcraft.  Now Blizzard has so many successful properties, that they no longer break out any data about World of Warcraft specifically, so it stopped feeling necessary.  

I don't get much traffic on my blog, and that's fine.  My second ever blog post, laying out the dream of a level 80 of each class, is still my my most read post ever.  My second most read is a fairly random post about how I'm enjoying leveling my Death Knight during Cataclysm.  Weird.

I enjoy blogging though.  I'm never going to be a video or streamer guy.  I'm frankly probably too old for that, and don't have a whole lot of personal interest in that medium anyway.  My kids do though, so huge props to those of you that are good at it!  The blog for me is really more of a gaming diary that I let other people read.  It gives me a way to maintain some history and see what I've been working on from time to time.  It's also a good collection of data on the progress that I've made over the years.  And it's sometimes fun to look back to see where things used to be and how they used to work (farming for Justice Points gets some discussion for example). 

For those of you that enjoy the written word, I strongly encourage you to give it a try.  You'll be pleasantly surprised the avenues that it opens for you and some of the discussions that it can prompt, as well as the vibrant community that you'll be joining.  

Cheers,

Joar