Tank like a girl

In just a couple weeks, I will have my one-year anniversary as a blogger. It’s been a fabulous ride, though it has its ups and downs. It’s tough at times to come up with new content, but I am hanging in there, knowing that some of my regular readers will enjoy reading it, regardless of me raiding or theorycrafting or just rambling.

2009 has been a strange year if you look at the WoW blogosphere. Some of the biggest names in WoW blogging have closed their doors, including BigRedKitty and Resto4Life, but also guys like Skeleton Jack, who wrote my favorite DK blog. It makes me determined to keep going, even though the WotLK WoW is so different to TBC WoW in many ways.

The past couple of days has seen a bunch of posts from several WoW bloggers that show the vast dichotomy that currently exists. On the one hand, you have the professionals. There’s Matticus’ guide to blogging, who at times almost feels commercial with his ventures. Sometimes his blog feels less like a blog and more like a brand, and it’s all over the place. Incidentally the same day, Lassira, another (former) writer of the ubiquitous WoW.com, formerly known as WoWInsider, posted her commandments how to not suck at blogging. I vehemently disagree with some of her ideas. I only have to look at the post I wrote that has the highest ever comment count: Red Sword of Hotness. This much coveted drop touched a nerve with people. Gear and progress can do that. And it doesn’t make blogs boring. It all depends on how it’s written. A post that says ‘I got Last Laugh, mwah.’ might be boring. A post that tells an exciting story that finds you holding Last Laugh in your shaking hands at the end, now that sounds pretty neat to me. Not everyone comes to blogs to read the latest professional guide about classes. If I can find any fault with the two blogging guides above, is that they take things a bit too seriously. I am not writing to make money.

And so you have bloggers like Saresa and Leafshine, who present their views about WoW blogging, which are very different and a lot more relaxed than the above’s. Who’s right and who’s wrong? I enjoyed reading both sides of the dichotomy, and I fall somewhat in the middle. I try to come up with quality posts about tanking, solid stuff that’s decently written. I try to entertain with journals about my time spent in WoW, and that has just as many responses as my guides do. There’s a place for both in the world. I love reading Veneretio and Yakra as much as I love reading Naissa’s latest stories. There’s room for both. There should be. Every blogger wants to be read, and there used to be a time that I fretted over the visitor count, but life’s easier when you don’t. As long as people keep commenting and keep reading, life’s good.

That said, I have often pondered tossing out a request for new posts out there, for my target audience: not the tanks that are working on bosses deep in Ulduar, but the tanks that maybe just picked up protection, people who wish to start tanking and could use pointers. If you have any requests, send me a mail via my contact form, and I’ll see what I can do.

I am a mindless zombie who follows the WoW-blogging masses blindly. Braiiiiiins.

 
Okay, not really a zombie, but like a lot of WoW bloggers (e.g. Matticus, Kestrel, Nibuca, Anna and Saresa) I have joined the ‘31 Days to Build a Better Blog‘ challenge. Today was actually a momentous day, because I actually noticed that I broke 150,000 views. That’s a lot of people who stopped by, more than I ever thought possible. I owe it to you all but also to myself to make your visit worthwhile, and to keep you coming for more.

The first challenge is the Elevator Pitch.

An elevator pitch is an overview of an idea for a product, service, or project. The name reflects the fact that an elevator pitch can be delivered in the time span of an elevator ride (for example, thirty seconds or 100-150 words).

 
To pitch my blog, I have to look back at what originally made me want to start blogging about WoW. I’ve had a personal blog since 2002. I don’t post a whole lot in it, but I found myself regularly posting about WoW. In fact, every Monday I would write this lengthy diatribe about my weekend endeavors, pretty similar to what I still post most Mondays. But not all of my friends who read my personal blog play WoW. Some even detest it. The thought occurred to move WoW stuff away from there.

At the same time, I really got more and more into playing my protection warrior in TBC. I posted a class guide for my guild. Gear lists. Starting giving gem advice (even back then I hated parry gems). Admired Veneretio’s blogging style (which I still do). Discovered tons of WoW blogs, but very little protection warrior content out there. As a member of a casual guild, I know that not everyone’s into reading Elitist Jerks and the mad number crunching going on over there. I wanted to be a resource for my guildies, to find consolidated information. And I wanted to be that girl that shows the boys that girls do tank, even if there are less female tanks than there are ranged DPS players or healers who happen to be female IRL. The name is a bit misleading though. I am hardly a feminist, nor does my gender really matter. I love to tank stuff, the rest is irrelevant. But it’s a catchy name, right?

That was the wordy explanation, now comes the short version of the pitch:

Tank like a Girl – a casual look at protection warriors in WoW

That’s the really short version. A longer pitch could be:

Meet a casual protection warrior, with focus on 10-man and heroic content. Reference guides, player journal, UI reviews, with the occasional rant but the drive to stay positive.

 
Aye, that’s it. That’s what I am bringing to the table. Hope you will continue to enjoy that.

First post of 2009, and it took me 6 days into the year to get to it. I’ve been blogging since June now and based on my stats I have come up with 118 posts, 864 comments, 3,394 spam and 74,592 views since I installed WP_Stats in August. I found a sudden burst of new visitors in October, thanks to a link on the front page of Tankspot, run by the most awesome Ciderhelm. If you haven’t checked out Project Marmot yet, you’re missing an awesome thing, especially casual raiders just getting their foot in the door. Thanks to all my visitors and regular commenters, you keep me going. 256 subscribers according to Feedburner, oh my!

That said, there’s room for tons more improvement. Here are my blogging resolutions for 2009:

• Consistently post twice a week, Monday and Thursday in the best case
• Keep Addon corner going, UI tweaking is a favorite pastime of mine
• As per request, write a ‘How to DPS as prot warrior when you are not the tank of the group’ review
• Write more about tanking by tanking more often again in-game
• As content gets added, provide more gear lists (and not just because the WoW masses love them)
• Get into raiding again and share all the triumphs and failures

As today is Tuesday, I am already failing one of my resolutions, but so be it. I will be back this week with one of those ever so super-popular gear postings, top 3 in all slots from heroics and emblem gear. Consider it part 2 of my 3-part gear series for WotLK. The last post will cover raid drops.

I hope to start raiding in the first week of February, as a birthday present to myself? Maybe. I actually have no clue if I’ll be tanking or healing. I have recently started heroics, but only as healer (zomg, golden chains of healing are incredible, aren’t they?). Hopefully Kadomi will get some spotlight time soon, because I know I still got it. I just do. And it’d be a shame to waste it on soloing 3-man quests in Icecrown, and grinding Sons of Hodir and Oracles rep to Revered. Wish me luck for my Mysterious Egg!

I managed to convince someone from my guild that blogging is awesome (and it is), so please welcome Yasura and her ‘heals, smites and prayers‘ blog to the fold! As the name suggests, she’s a priest, and really the pocket-healer priest that’s saved my butt the most. She’s most awesome, and I am looking forward to all her healer stories. Hopefully she won’t gripe about squishy tank too much.

While I am tossing out links, I would also like to mention new awesome tanking blogs on the scene:

• Yakra’s Mirror Shield
• Durnic’s ORLY Factor
• Talldar’s Warriortanking
• Albinobeard’s Defensive Stance

Protection warriors, the world is our oyster!

I’ll try to post links to new warrior blogs I see popping up, especially if they have a tanking angle.

Today I have two new ones:

• Jatheak’s WoW Blog – he’s starting with the premise of rolling a new warrior and guide the warrior to 70, which is always a commendable endeavor. We are prot warriors, we must be legion.
• Big and Beautiful – Arudar’s blog about warrior tanks. Started with a very interesting article about our ‘Oh Shit’ skills, so thumbs up from me.

I just did a major system upgrade of my computer, which required a re-format and all the good stuff. So for the time being I am re-installing a lot of my software. I should be back to posting stuff by the weekend.

I never got around to setting up my blogroll page yet, so for the time being, consider this big honking list of blogs a wonderful resource if you enjoy reading WoW blogs. I made it there too, woot!

Tim Howgego, the author of El’s Extreme Anglin Guide has created an interactive map of WoW communities. I think it’s really neat, so here’s a link. Very interesting article.

I must be a teeny rock in the sea of the Blogosphere, hee.

While this continues to be a work in progress, it’s time for a first introductory posting. Why do I join the ranks of WoW bloggers, when I have a platform in LiveJournal already? Predominantly, I wanted to stop spamming my LJ as I have a bunch of friends there who couldn’t care less about WoW. Furthermore, I wanted to post more. I had the urge to be creative, using my own blog platform, and to post more about things near and dear to my heart.

So what can you expect to see here? Mostly, all things warrior. On my to-do list I have theorycraft postings for prot warriors, gear lists, a leveling guide, fun stuff. A little bit about my alts. Whatever the heck I feel like posting.

I appreciate comments, I do. Feel free to participate in this new adventure of mine.