One Year Old!

I’m not usually one to celebrate milestones, but I think this one is worth sharing – Mana Obscura has made it to it’s first anniversary! It’s taken a fair bit of work to get this far, but it’s also been a lot of fun and incredibly worthwhile.

The blog started off on March 1st 2010 with this post. That initial scrawl set the scene for what has been a strange and often chaotic journey through Warcraft and gaming culture. My discussion on Escaping the Vortex of Suck was probably the most memorable from the early days, and was one of those times where I was cackling like an evil henchman while clacking away at the keyboard. Shortly after that I moved the blog to it’s own domain.

Of course, I couldn’t resist doing an April fool joke last year (although some people thought I was serious!). I’ve done my fair share of other silly stuff, including a lighthearted look at the fish you can find in Vashj’ir. I also listed my three Christmas wishes, hoping for an amusing end to some of those in-game narks we all face.

I’ve also had a few rants as well. There’s been the infamous one about TERA, the one about Authenticators and the one about ‘casual’ not being a derogatory term. It’s been interesting to see the discussions these posts have kicked off.

We also kicked off The Obscurecast back in May. Still going strong and now at 33 episodes its now all grown up and at it’s own home at obscurecast.com. If you’re quick you can still enter the Talk Like A Gilnean competition running over there!

Real-life does sometimes cause a break in blogging, but last year I had the best reason ever for some time away. We had a fantastic day that still brings a smile to my face when I remember it, and some fantastic photos to boot!

So, what of the future? I’m still blogging and podcasting, although an ever-changing workload means I don’t get as much time to write these days. Still, it’s good to be able to get in front of the keyboard and put my thoughts down on paper. Even if the paper’s some kind of digital representation riddled with metaphor. Or something.

It’s likely that Mana Obscura will contain ongoing references to spellcasters in other games. I’ll still be writing about Warcraft (I’m still playing it after all!) but I’ll also occasionally talk about other games I’m playing (currently Rift, Minecraft and Dragon Age: Origins). I hope this’ll still be appealing to you, although feel free to shout if there’s something in particular you’d like to hear more of!

Before I finish up I’d like to thank everyone that’s given me help over the year. A huge amount of thanks go to the community over at BlogAzeroth for helping me with so many things. I’d like to also thank Stu, Pewter and Medros for helping with the podcast. I’m hugely grateful to Windsoar and the Mage Forum moderators for keeping things tidy there as well.

Finally, I’d like to thank everyone who’s visited the blog, posted a comment, subscribed to the feed, sent me an email or grabbed me on Twitter. You’ve helped me to keep writing even when it’s been tough and challenging, or when I’ve been running short of time and thought about throwing in the towel, and I owe you all a huge debt of gratitude.

Anyway, enough from me. Here’s to a year that’s done and many more to come!