Monthly Archives: June 2011

People take suggestions about their game play very differently. Some seem to be offended at the mere thought that someone might give them a suggestion or hint at something that can be improved, others outright yell at you and some appreciate it.

Knowing when you can suggest improvements is difficult, and something I struggle with. I’m overly cautious and don’t want to step on people’s toes. Yet, I get frustrated when I see people not playing to their full ability – and I like to believe it’s lack of knowledge on their part rather than them being lazy. Or simply bad.

I’ll admit, in Heroics with randoms, I seldom give suggestions unless people seem open to it. When I have, the answers have varied between the previously mentioned varieties. My suggestions are never rude or obnoxious (at least I hope not!), but it doesn’t always seem to matter.

So in Heroics, for the most part, I ignore it. But when it comes to raiding with people who are meant to know what they’re doing – when is it okay to tell them how to play their class?

I don’t think I know every class in the game – far from it. But when I’m on my Paladin alt playing in my friend’s guild, and I see a Warlock use the wrong guardian when I know they should use another or I see them not use a spell they could benefit from. Should I tell them or not?

After all, I’m the new member. The back-up healer who jumps in when one of the regulars is out. I’m not really there to tell people how to play, or give suggestions.

What do you do? Do you give people suggestions/tips all the time, or are you careful about when you do it as well?

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It’s Monday, yet again, and it’s been a while since I wrote something – for this I apologise. I’ve been busy playing catch-up after my week away (which was great, by the way) and am only just now feeling like I’m back where I’m meant to be.

I have some posts in the pipeline, but today it’s Monday so let’s start out slow.

Link Love

I’m bad with the link love in general, so here’s to trying to get better at it!

Aralosseien | Achievements Ahoy has a great guide for those wanting to complete the Midsummer Festival achievements this year. There are also links showing the updated drops from the boss. Yummy 353 cloaks and a 353 spellpower staff. (Personally I’m still waiting for the pet to drop!)

Peekaboo | O Gnome Where Art Thou has written a post about responsibilities in raids. She’s new on the scene, so give her a peek. (See what I did there?)

Icedragon | Druid Main has returned from a hiatus. Let’s all welcome her back!

Zinn | Jinxed Thoughts has written down 5 things she’s glad that Blizzard changed. Not everything was better in the “old days” and here’s some of them.

Project Ten Update

Yes, another update on this. I’m slacking so incredibly badly when it comes to levelling these characters. I get distracted by shinies and go do something else. On a positive note my baby Paladin is almost entirely 353/359 geared by now – in 3 specs. (That might be why I’m not getting anything levelled!)

Mage – now level 85 (up 1 level). She levelled entirely using Archeology, except for the few quests you have to do to unlock the portal to Uldum.

Warrior – now level 85 (up 4 levels). She quested pretty much solely. I think I did a total of one instance from 80-85.

Druid – now 47 (up 12 levels)

The other characters are sadly sitting where they are. Instead I levelled a Hunter from 1-20 as Horde to see the quests in Silverpine Forest and Hillsbrad Foothills. I then levelled two different DKs from 55-60 before deciding on faction and race. So yes, shinies distracted me.

I’m going off for my summer vacation after another two days of work, who knows  – if the weather is horrible maybe there will be another 85 by the time I’m back at work. Three glorious weeks free! (Don’t worry – I’ll still be around here, I know you were worried!)

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Yesterday I talked about daring to comment on people’s blogs, because most people enjoy comments – no matter if they’re long, short or filled with content. Getting a comment is almost always a happy thing.

Today I’d like to talk about what we, as bloggers, can do to encourage people to comment.

I could say to write something that is worth commenting, but the truth is anything is pretty much worth a comment. Which is why I resolved to make more comments myself. I do so much reading, and I enjoy that reading – but I seldom take the time out to comment. And I want to start doing that more.

Easy Commenting

First of all, we have to make sure it’s easy for people to comment. No advanced login procedures or having to sign-up to various accounts to do so. Preferably the ability to just put in Name and URL, then comment. Feel free to keep a word verification to keep spam down, but don’t make it more advanced than that.

Blogger users in particular have a problem here. It appears that a lot of times when you create a new blog with Blogger it’s not automatically allowing people to comment with just leaving their Name and URL. Instead you’re asked to login. As a self-hosted WordPress user I don’t have a Blogger account – and even if I do, it has nothing to do with my WoW blog and I really don’t want to use it to comment on WoW blogs.

So please, Blogger users, please check your settings. People might not comment if they realise they have to sign in with their personal Google ID, and not everyone has an account with any of the other options either.

I will be honest, if I have to sign in with my personal Google ID – I’m much less likely to want to comment, and I have no interest in creating a second, separate ID just to be able to comment.

Make People Feel Welcome

Seeing that there’s an on-going dialogue between the blogger and their readers make people feel more welcome. I see this on both WoW blogs and other blogs. Either, the blogger replies with a new post (more common on the personal blogs) or in comments, but the interaction between writer and reader is important.

I could be wrong, but I know for me personally I always enjoy commenting on blogs where I see the writer is responding to comments than I do a blog where there’s never a response.

I’m obviously not advocating responding to every single comment – especially for the bigger bloggers out there, I’m sure that would be literally impossible because they might get 20-100 comments a day. If they were to sit and reply to all of those, they’d have to quit their day job!

No one is expected to reply to every single comment, but it’s nice to see that at least once in a while they do. I don’t need a blogger to reply to my comments, but if I see that they never reply to any comment I will admit – I get less interested in commenting.

Easy Reading

To get people to comment they first have to be able to read your post. For me, there are two things that I really don’t like – trunctuated Feeds and Posts.

I read a lot of blogs from work during breaks and down time, so I can’t always click through to a blog. I will if I am going to comment – but I don’t know if I have a comment to make if I can’t read your post.

This means that if you have a trunctuated feed I cannot read your post at work, and at home I’m most likely not going to either. If you’re unsure about your posts being trunctuated in a feedreader or not, you can always subscribe to your own feed – and you’ll be able to tell immediately.

I don’t like it on sites either. Posts where I can read a few sentences but then have to click on “Read More” to read the full post. It’s not as frustrating as the trunctuated feeds, because I’m already on the site in this case. But from a personal stand point I don’t like sites that use this.

What makes you more or less inclined to comment on a blog? Do you have any suggestions to what bloggers can do to make commenters feel more welcome?

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We talk quite a bit sometimes about Link Love – linking to other people’s blogs – and it’s something I think should be encouraged. Don’t we all just love getting linked?

But I’ve been thinking a bit about comments lately and comment love. Some people care about comments more, some care about it less. It’s like number of views – it’s nice to see high numbers, but it’s not the reason we write.

That being said, I doubt there’s anyone out there who doesn’t enjoy getting comments. I know I do, and I’m not ashamed to say so. I imagine you do too.

I’m bad with commenting though. I really am. Sometimes it’s just lack of time, but other times it’s more than that. At times it feels daunting to comment on a blog. Especially if it’s a serious, well-thought out post. Some theories and opinions out there are just so smart and great that I feel like I couldn’t possibly have anything to add to the topic.

And maybe I don’t have anything to add, I may just want to write that “you know what, that’s a really great idea/post/theory and I really enjoyed reading it”. But I don’t. Because I feel that it’s pointless, why would the writer care if I just comment to say that I enjoyed their post?

I’m sitting here now though, and I’m thinking a step further. Hang on, if I’ve written a post – about anything – don’t I always enjoy comments? Even the ones that just say “Nice! I agree!” Heck, even the ones saying “I don’t agree!” I love all comments; long, short, conversational, wanting to discuss, disagreeing, agreeing… You name it – if you’re commenting, I’m liking it.

I’d like to believe that every writer is the same. Don’t we all like to get some kind of comment? We can see the page views, but it’s somehow more fun to see people commenting. Discussions are awesome, and I love it if I can have a discussion about a topic – but just getting a general comment is great as well. Surely others feel this way too?

Every week I must read a couple hundred blog posts or so, and yet I don’t comment on even half, maybe not even a quarter. I’m trying to set myself a goal to get better at that – because I’d like to believe that others appreciate comments as well – and I like to comment.

What about you? Do you comment as much on posts as you’d like to? Do you enjoy receiving comments on your blog or are you happier without them? Does it matter what kind of comment it is?

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