Category: Site Stuff

One Year Old!

Posted on by Gazimoff

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!

An Obscure 2010

Posted on by Gazimoff

By now we’ve drunk our champagne, stayed up to watch the Hootenanny and welcomed in the new year with open arms. Before we wave goodbye to 2010 for good, I wanted to thank everyone for helping me to make Mana Obscura a success. From Blog Azeroth helping me take my first steps through to all those who’ve helped me or linked to my articles along the way, I owe you a debt of gratitude.

To all the readers and commenters, thank you. You help to motivate me to write new articles and come up with new ideas – you’re like the oil that keeps the blog turning. To everyone who’s e-mailed in with feedback or comments, thank you. And to those that I’ve talked things over with, bounced ideas off or generally nagged, thanks for putting up with me.

2010 was the first year of Mana Obscura, starting up in March as a small side project. Since then it’s grown, moving to a new home and spinning out a forum, podcast and youtube channel in the process. I’ve also started to use social networking more, with dedicated twitter and facebook pages. The year ends ten months later with 134 posts and more commenters, subscribers and readers than I could have hoped for. I just hope I can keep you all entertained and informed throughout 2011!

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Where Did The Obscurecast Go?

Posted on by Gazimoff

It’s been a quiet week on the pages of Mana Obscura. There’s normally an update here at least twice a week, but the last post was nearly ten days ago. Ten days. That’s over a week, in case you’re counting.

So what’s been happening to keep me away from blogging for the last ten days? Well, a number of projects have been in the works which have been eating up my time. The first (and possibly the biggest) one is that The Obscurecast has moved to a new home. Feel free to check it out at it’s new location, subscribe to the feed and share your thoughts. All the original episodes will still be on both sites to preserve links, but all new episodes will only be on the new site. If you haven’t checked it out, there’s two more waiting for you to download!

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The Meta-Cataclysm

Posted on by Gazimoff

It feels like Cataclysm has become a euphemism for change. My favourite TV show just cataclysm’d. My car needs an oil cataclysm. “Cataclysm I can believe in”. You get the idea.

It’s no surprise then to see the Web of Warcraft go through it’s own mini-cataclysm. WoW.com has gone back to being called WoW Insider, and has moved to a new address under the Joystiq brand. Although it’s a strange move at first glance (wow.com is a great domain name), it makes sense in other ways. Readers will be more likely to check out the rest of the Joystiq site for the rest of their gaming needs, the site gets more page impressions and generates more revenue.

It also means there’s a chance for cross-pollination. The talented writers at WoW Insider might have more of a chance to create content for the wider Joystiq site. This helps them move from Warcraft journalism through to videogame journalism, and possibly even to the wider entertainment scene. This can only be a great thing.

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Mage Community Forums Now Live

Posted on by Gazimoff

You asked for it, so here it is. After an overwhelming response from the community, both in the original blogpost and elsewhere on the web (see here, here and here) I’ve gone and put together a set of forums for mages to discuss, share and plot against warlocks.

Feel free to head on over to the fourms and join up. Registration is quick and easy, and you can dive right in and start posting as soon as it’s done. You don’t need to be some mage guru to join either – both newcomers and old hands are welcome to join.

There’s also a couple of spots on the forums for you to talk about the blog, The Obscurecast podcast and anything else that may take your fancy.

Let’s hope that this place grows into a flourishing new home for mages.

Website Wizardry… Ish

Posted on by Gazimoff

Apologies for the rather pompous title, but I thought I should actually put a post up about a handful of changes that have either happened or are going to be happening to Mana Obscura over the coming days and weeks. Some of the changes have been a long time coming (well, since the release of WordPress 3.0 at lest), but some of them have only been needed fairly recently.

If you’re reading this in a reader then you’ve probably been completely oblivious to all the changes that have been going on. Content has still been appearing, picked up by your reader and spirited directly to you. The only change may have been an additional footer in your reader posts letting you know where the content came from and perhaps some new stuff that’s appearing on the site.

So what’s been going on? Well I’m glad you asked.

Continue reading “Website Wizardry… Ish”

Coming Back To Haunt Me

Posted on by Gazimoff

So, where to begin with this one. About three years ago I agreed to build a realm website for Earthen Ring, the roleplay realm I was on at the time. It was one of those things where I put it together, handed it over and pretty much left people to it. Needless to say the forum didn’t get maintained, the software didn’t get updated and it’s now a sprawling mess.

About a month ago, I was asked to give it a bit of a kick-start again. After taking backups and performing checks, I’ve moved everything over to a new architecture. And while Earthenring.EU currently looks fugly as hell, at least it has a solid foundation now on which I can build things. I’m currently tinkering with a number of things here and there in order to get things working right, but I’m learning a lot as I go so it’s a slow process.

This means that I’ve been getting cross and frustrated with web software, while Curio (my mage on the server) sits on the Cathedral steps and responds to questions in whispers etc. It also means that some of the blogposts I’ve got queueing up are having to wait a little until I can finish them off. I just hope you can be patient with me while I’m working on other things.

Luckily there have been several things to make me smile as I’ve been working away. So here’s a little link love to those great people who have helped make this whole thing slightly more bearable.

Enjoy!

Gazimoff the Librarian

Posted on by Gazimoff

I’d scarcely believe it myself, but Mana Obscura is now three months old. It’s come a long way in such a time and is an incredible amount of fun to do, but it’s starting to groan at the seams a little now. It needs a careful eye cast over it, a little tweak and clean here and there, a little bit of spit and polish. It also needs a bit of work under the hood.

First things first, I’ve changed the name slightly, dropping the pretentious “the” and just sticking with Mana Obscura. I’ve also procured manaobscura.com as an address on the interwebs, and ManaObscura as a pigeonhole on Twitter. This particular Twitter feed will only contain stuff related to the site and the occasional retweet of good content created by others, so if you’re tired of GamerGaz filling up your tweetstream, here’s an alternative for you. Of course, while you can update your bookmarks there’s no rush – the old one will work just as well for the time being. If you subscribe to the RSS feed, you should be changed over automatically.

I’ve also started seeking out mage strategies and guides from across the interwebs for inclusion in the Mage Resources Guide. There are a ton of really good mage bloggers and writers out there pumping out some really good content, but it never sees the light of day or gets shared around. Rather than trying to rewrite everything, I’m just trying to catalogue and archive links to it, to try and point people in the right direction.  If you see something that you think would help mages or if you’ve written something you’d like to share, drop me note and I’ll add it to the guide.

In fact, the guide is part of the reason why I’m doing a spot of tinkering. There’s some features that I’d like to add to the site, but none of them seem to be sitting smoothly. As a result I’m going to be working away in my underground lair, trying to work out better ways of sharing everything here. It’s possibly going to mean fewer blogposts while I’m breaking and fixing things in my test chamber, but I hope the results will be worth it.

Talking about site work, I’ve been asked to take a look at rebuilding an old realm website and get it fit for Cataclysm. This is a much larger job that’s going to have me working for several weeks, rebuilding a forum, wiki, gallery and other fun stuff for people to use. It’s going to be complicated as the software hasn’t been updated for yonks, but it’s hopefully going to be worth it for them.

So there you have it. A little bit of librarian work, a little bit of tinkering. Still, it’s enough to keep me busy for a few weeks at least. Don’t worry though, I’ll keep you posted on how things progress. And if things seem a little quiet, don’t worry. I’m probably just working inside a machine somewhere, swapping around a few cogs and gears.

Cataclysm: My Rules of Engagement

Posted on by Gazimoff

As the new expansion approaches, there’s going to be a huge amount of information released. Blogs and websites will go crazy, posting update after update on every single detail. The web will be awash with screenshots covering every single detail.

Some readers don’t really want to be presented with news on Cataclysm, and I can appreciate that. In order to be as fair as possible, I’ve listed what I will and won’t write about as far as this expansion is concerned. This will hopefully mean that those readers hoping for a spoiler-free experience should know what to expect.

I should point out that at this point I do not have access to the beta, and I’ve not tried sandboxing the alpha client. Until further notice, what I write about will be inferred from other sources of information. UPDATE: I’m now in the Beta, so I should be able to describe content first-hand.

What I will write about:

  • I’ll cover class mechanics in detail, particularly for mages. This includes what spells are available and how the talent trees affect those spells.
  • I’ll also touch loosely on professions, where the profession has a direct impact on the class. I’ll try to keep this as generic as possible.

What I won’t write about:

  • I’m not going to write about specific quests, even if those quests are significantly important. I want the stories they unveil to be fresh to people
  • I won’t be covering particular areas of zones where there’s been a radical change in Cataclysm. Again, I want players to be able to experience that “wow” factor for themselves.

What I’ll commit to doing:

  • Any post that might contain Cataclysm spoilers I’ll tag with [Spoiler] in the post title. If it’s a particular type of spoiler, I’ll add that too.
  • Anything that I link to that might contain spoilers, I’ll also label as such.

What I ask of you:

  • Please don’t post comments that include quest or lore spoilers, as I’ll probably delete them. If you must, please include a link and a tag instead.
  • Please feel free to chime in with your own thoughts and opinions. If you’re not talking about class specifics though, please try to be as generic as possible.

I hope all this makes sense, and is as fair to as many people as possible. With a bit of luck, this will mean those who want will get to experience the expansion as a fresh and new experience. If you have any questions, please feel free to add them in the comments!

An Interlude, with Music and Ice-Cream

Posted on by Gazimoff

There’s going to be an intermission at The Mana Obscura over the next week or so. Don’t worry though, normal service will resume on roughly 9th May give or take a few days either way. And to put your minds at ease, I’m not having surgery or real-life problems or anything of that nature.

You see, I’m getting married. More specifically, I’m marrying the lady who plays the gnome in the picture above.

We’ve been together for six years and living together for just over four. When we started dating we lived at other ends of the country, so we used MMOs as a cheap way of keeping in touch. We started with Horizons, but moved on to Warcraft on the day of release. I bought a copy for her as a Valentine’s Day present back in 2005 just so we could enjoy it with eachother.

Since then we’ve been playing together, questing together and raiding together. We’ve shared the highs and lows of guild achievements and guild drama, boss kills and burnouts.

Not a day goes by that I don’t think how lucky I am to be loved by the girl that I love, but who is also into gaming and geek culture. I couldn’t ask for a better friend, guildmate and wife.

So while I work on the last few stages of the “Getting Married” achievement, I’ll leave you with “Geek Like Me” by The Wonderstrucks.

See you all in a few weeks!