What I've Been Up To And Why I Might Start Posting Again

...It's been over 5 years since I stopped posting here.

Because this blog was primarily about WoW stuff, the fact that I stopped playing right before the Shadowlands expansion dropped guaranteed that I wouldn't be posting as much as I used to. In fact, I ended up posting only a couple more lengthy articles before moving on.

 

Now that I'm (tentatively) back, I should at least answer the following questions: 

1. What have I been up to since I stopped posting?

 

2. Why am I posting here again after over 5 years? 

 

3. What's the future of this blog going to be?

What I've Been Up To

 

Over the course of 2020, the number of articles I posted on the blog dropped off significantly. While this was partially due to my waning interest in a game I've played for nearly 15 years, I was also focusing my energy on another project using an alternate alias known as "Depravity".

Specifically, I was working on an edited machine fan translation (if you can really call it that, though computer-assisted translation is a real thing professionals do) for a certain adult game. I did this partially to learn Japanese in a creative way since I've always had difficulty learning things in a more traditional manner and also to provide breathing room for the fan translator group working on a dialogue patch of their own for the game. The end result of this was that my patch ended up being considered the superior option, which meant that I had to focus on fixing and improving that patch while also integrating with a community that likes the game in question along with the developer.

The developer then, surprisingly, released a sequel in mid-2021, leading to me working on another "translation" patch for that game. 

By the time the vast majority of the sequel's dialogue was finished, I decided to try livestreaming on Twitch again, eventually settling on mainly streaming Rimworld with a mod that lets viewers interact directly with the game. I still stream to this day here for anyone interested in joining the fun.

I also did some other things ranging from working odd jobs due to the pandemic to moving on from forum posting entirely (I had already long stopped using Wowhead by then, but was still posting on and browsing Reddit) in favor of joining various game community chatrooms and chatting up a storm. I even wrote some essays about game-related topics in the form of Google docs, though I privated most of them except for this one.

I also periodically checked in on this blog's dashboard and even occasionally edited some older posts with small disclaimers when I considered them necessary to add. Incidentally, I noticed that for some strange reason, viewership increased despite my inactivity. The blog as a whole has gotten 3-4 times as many daily views relative to the average daily views when I actively posted. I'm seriously flabbergasted as to why people are looking up old, outdated information and opinions that I posted, but I guess it makes me happy that the blog's visibility increased in a sense... assuming the viewership is actually legitimate and not just a bunch of web crawlers and other bots.

 

Why I Want To Post Here Again

 

As much as I'd like to say I want to post again for some virtuous reason, such as to combat misinformation and toxic dialogue inside (and outside) the gaming space, the reality is that I mainly have two selfish reasons.

The first is that I've still been accumulating article ideas over the years. Some of them are even in draft form, such as a game monetization tier list that I've used to record my changing thoughts on the various ways games are monetized.

The second is that while I've used chatrooms on Discord as an outlet for my opinions, I am less active on the platform because I don't trust the platform's developers and I've been finding fewer reasons to stay in various communities on the platform. Alternative options, such as other apps or various forums, do not appeal to me either.

 

As a result, I've had an increasing urge to post something on this blog again for about the past half year or so. The only reason I haven't posted sooner is because of a mix of procrastination and because I was also very busy with certain real life obligations.

 

The Future Of This Blog

 

I might post the following types of articles based on the drafts I have sitting around:

• Armchair game design stuff
• I posted quite a few of these for WoW (and a few other games), so it goes without saying that I will likely post suggestion and design ideas for games I've recently played.
• In fact, The next article I plan to post is a repost of the Granblue Fantasy: Relink suggestion compilation Google Doc that I posted above. I am mostly posting it for the sake of preservation, but also to add a new foreword and afterword to address the upcoming expansion for that game.
• Game monetization stuff
• I occasionally posted about game monetization such as the WoW Token and loot boxes, and I will likely continue.
• The game monetization tier list I mentioned is a major contender, but I may also write a separate article on battle pass systems, which I think is overly despised by the gaming community.
• I also have ideas to directly review how specific games are monetized, explaining why I personally don't spend much, if any, money on their microtransactions.
• I will use a new tag: Monetization & Microtransactions, for these articles. I don't know if I will retroactively add them to past articles.
•  Game guides
• I didn't write many game guides in the past and they were frankly awful anyway.
• However, thanks in part to some inspiration from creators such as GiantGrantGames (this SC2 campaign tips video in particular serves as a helpful template), I have come up with some ideas on how to write more digestible guides, mostly in the form of a series of tips. 
• Tier lists are also a possibility, but they will be half review and half useful guide of a certain aspect of a game at best.
• Naturally, these won't be for WoW either. I have played pretty much every modern Atelier game since I stopped posting on this blog though...
• I will use new tags for these game guides, most likely something along the lines of "Guides", "Tips", and/or "Tier Lists". 
•  And more...
• For some reason, the Rimworld trait rating article is one of my most viewed articles, even though it's grossly outdated. I may write a more up-to-date one to account for the DLC and various changes.
• I guess this one can technically count as a game guide. 
• There may also be commentary articles on various happenings in gaming, such as the development practices of certain companies that are, in my opinion, being unjustly hailed as industry messiahs. Those who have talked with me within the last couple of years may know which companies I'm talking about.

However, just because I have a bunch of article ideas and a desire to post them, that doesn't mean I will. The Granblue Fantasy: Relink suggestion compilation already exists and was even posted onto Reddit, so it's relatively easy to copy, paste, and reformat that article while adding a few paragraphs of additional thoughts. One thing I am certain of when it comes to article postings is that they will be quite infrequent, though ideally the article frequency will be a little higher compared to right before I stopped posting on this blog.

 

In other words, expect at least one more article. Hopefully many more than that.

Addressing One More Thing

While I doubt anyone will ask, I think it is important to address this: We are now very much in an age where I can simply ask some form of generative AI to write articles for me. I do not plan to do this. Ever.

However, based on the online discourse I've seen, I have legitimate concerns that my writing style may lead to accusations about the possible use of generative AI anyway. To address these possible future accusations, I want to say the following, which I will also post on the general talk and feedback page:

The writing style I use here and have used in various forums and chatrooms is one I've been using online for about 2 decades since I joined the Wowhead Forums. It has slightly changed over that time (I try to use verb tenses more correctly, italicize and bold certain text more often, use somewhat rougher language, etc), but one look my post history should make it apparent that the style is largely consistent.

 

In addition, the entire purpose of this blog is to record my opinions and convey them to whoever may happen upon them. While I don't entirely oppose the existence of generative AI as a tool (a topic worthy of its own article someday, maybe), using it in the context of writing articles for me from a prompt would defeat the entire purpose of this blog since the expressed opinion would, at best, be a representation of my opinion and not my actual opinion.

 

I write and post articles here because I find it fun to do. Why would I want to automate that process?

 

I don't plan to use AI generated images either. I mostly used screenshots and photoshopped charts, if any at all, in my articles and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. However, I can't make any promises about source citing, since some sources (particularly other articles and posts) are likely to have been produced through some form of automation. I will, as always, vet my sources to make sure they don't completely suck though.