Category: Site Stuff

Injecting Chaos

Posted on by Gazimoff

I’m a big fan of Lego. I like to buy the big Technic sets – the ones with pneumatics and gears and motors and so on. When I buy a set, I open the box and meticulously follow the instructions, sorting the pieces by size and colour before assembling whatever was on the front of the box. It gives me a sense of satisfaction, building a machine that does something.

Point is though, it’d probably be a bit boring to blog about. You can imagine what it would be like – going through the same motions and doing the same kind of things week in, week out. It would get old, fast.

It becomes much more fun when you throw away the instruction book, take a hammer to the car or whatever it was you made and inject a little bit of chaos. Doesn’t matter what it is. Just the mere act of playing around and making something new from the pile of bricks you have is enough. It’s a lot more fun as well – the challenge moves from being “what set of bricks do I buy next” to “what do I want to make that’s fun?”

It’s even better when you get feedback. Other ideas pop up – people suggest ways of improving the model, of other things that you could build, or share what they did that was similar. It’s also a bit of a loop – ideas create ideas.

So why am I talking about Lego on this blog? Well, it comes from Anea’s idea for this week’s Shared Topic. Would having no comments at all make us better bloggers? Would it leave us free to pursue our whimsies and desires? Or do we rely on the comments and feedback – are they integral to the creative process?

Just like buying a box of Lego, I could write about Warcraft in exactly the same way. But wouldn’t it be a boring, just reading about what quests I’d done or how my raidgroup was doing? Wouldn’t it be better if I talked about the quirky things I’d got up to with other people, what opinions I held about aspects of the game and where I’m heading next? Wouldn’t it be even cooler if it started a discussion, where we bounced ideas and thoughts around, and I used them as the basis for new topics every so often?

It’s why I write – I like to think that a new post that I write is the start of a discussion, not the end of it. I don’t like to provide the definitive answer or the conclusive proof in a blogpost, just an opinion of what’s worked for me.

For me, getting feedback on what I write is essential to this process. It might be about a problem that I’m facing, in which case I might be given a solution. It might be about an idea, in which which case others might chime in with theirs. It might be about something I’ve experienced, which might encourage people to share theirs. All of this creates positive responses, which in turn generate new posts, which generate new responses, and so on.

Besides, a little bit of chaos is a good thing.

A Moment to Review

Posted on by Gazimoff

It’s been an interesting first month blogging about Warcraft. In that time I’ve covered the patch changes, UI design and addon choices, quirky graphs and diagrams, and roleplay choices and ideas. I’ve also rambled on about my in-game experiences and achievements, and how those experiences have shaped my opinions. I’m still a noob though when it comes to this, so I thought it was time I turned to you for advice.

I’ve learned a lot about blogging and how being passionate about something doesn’t always translate into something that’s entertaining to read. I’ve tried a range of content to work out what people like to read, and it’s fun to find out what’s popular. Having said that, it’s been a bit of a scattergun approach – I tend to write about whatever comes into my head rather than staying focused in particular areas. The only thing that I’ve been focused on is the series on UI development (which is still ongoing).

Seeing as how it’s been a month since I started, I thought it would be an ideal time to ask for general feedback from you! What do you make of the story so far and what would you like to see more of? What doesn’t work so well for you, or would you like to read less? What would you like to become a regular item on the blog?  Is there anything you’d like to see me tackle, or any question you’d like me to answer?

  • More mage related stuff? Maybe more caster stuff in general?
  • More roleplay, maybe even some stories or IC posts?
  • More UI or addon discussions?
  • More charts/graphs?
  • More general experiences/opinion?
  • Anything else?

I’d like this to be a conversation, so I’ll try and discuss any comments I get. If you prefer to contact me directly, you can always send an email to me@gazimoff.com. I read every email I get and respond to nearly all of them. I’ll be taking all feedback I get seriously, so that while it’ll still be fun for me to write it’ll also be more interesting for you to read. It’ll also mean that I can plan articles ahead so that they appear more regularly.

Thanks for reading, and I look forward to hearing what you have to say.

Cheers!

Amusing the Muse

Posted on by Gazimoff

About a week ago Windsoar from Jaded Alt was celebrating six months of Warcraft blogging. In order to celebrate hitting this milestone she offered herself as a muse to anyone who asked. While I’m still new to this myself I thought that it would be fun to try, expecting something related to magecraft. Unexpectedly, the suggestion from my muse was a completely different.

I peruse a lot of new blogs as I welcome new bloggers to BA. Yours was one of those that really stood out–professionally laid out, and quick, tight posts right from the start.

What’d I’d like to know is, why’d you start? When I read a post, I feel like you’ve been doing this forever, but I know darn well that I only welcomed you to my reader in the last couple of weeks! Curious minds want to know.

It’s true, I’d only started blogging about Warcraft at the beginning of the month. I’d been playing the game since the day of release here in Europe, but only now felt that I wanted to write about it? It definitely sounds unusual, and like most unusual things it has a bit of a tale behind it.

The journey that led me to creating The Mana Obscura is a haphazard one that probably starts before I even started playing Warcraft. I was involved with a couple of hobbies and used to make little community websites for them. Forums, galleries and the like – helping them to keep in touch and share ideas. Some of them are still running, although most have been handed on. It was a start, allowing me to build up experience in how to develop content-based websites – how to lay them out, what information to put where and so on.

When I started playing Warcraft Earthen Ring famously didn’t have a realm forum. An enterprising player created one, but it went out of service once Blizzard gave us an official realm forum. Part-way into Burning Crusade a crackdown started on the same official forums, with raidguild recruitment threads being locked or deleted. In response I banded together with a couple of other players and set up EarthenRing.EU. It’s a project I’ve since handed over to other players, but it’s still used and has some interesting content.

So this explains the technical stuff but not the writing. For that I need to pull on a different thread.

For my job I write a lot of technical documentation, with most of it being designs for new telecommunications products and services. It’s mostly translating an image that I hold in my head into words on a page, explaining how whatever it is would work so that other people can go off and build it. Sometimes my blogposts sound a bit like an excerpt from one of these documents, particularly if I’m trying to explain something. It has it’s own form of language – quite formal and unemotive – that can creep into whatever else I’m doing.

I’ve worked on Wikipedia, in creating new articles and cleaning up existing ones. It’s something that’s fun for a while, but it started to feel restrictive to me. I wanted to express my own opinions on what I was writing about, but was limited to quoting other “reliable sources”. Eventually the limitations, coupled with an ongoing degradation of the community, persuaded me to call time on it.

I’ve also blogged before, keeping a geekBlog of all things technology. While it was an ambitious project, it was also fairly restrictive. I ended up having to research everything heavily just to justify the opinions I held, referencing everything out and spending a heavy amount of time on each blogpost. In the end it became a chore to update, and as a result I’ve put it on hiatus. I would like to restart it at some point, but it’ll probably have a new format and shorter, snappier posts.

While I was working on the geekBlog I also did some guest blogging for Media140. This was great for me as it taught me the value of editing – chipping away at an article until it’s honed to perfection and polished to a shine. While my own editing is nowhere near as good as the the professional editor I wrote for, I like to think it taught me a few things.

Looking back on it now, it feels almost inevitable. I had a desire to write about videogames (particularly World of Warcraft, but some other stuff from time to time), but I also wanted to have fun writing it. I wanted to feel like I was having conversations with people instead of presenting a formal argument or specification. I was also thinking that I got a lot of fun out of playing games, and that writing about that fun would give me a chance to relive it.

So there you have it – the story of how The Mana Obscura came to exist and why I started to blog about Warcraft. I wonder now if my tale lived up to my muse’s expectations…

(image credit: Parnassus by Andrea Mantegna, currently held at the Louvre)

Hello and Welcome!

Posted on by Gazimoff

Yes, welcome indeed to The Mana Obscura. This little blog is to hold my inane ramblings, random outbursts and illogical rants on all things gaming.

Why Mana Obscura? Well, a lot of these games have spellcasters of one form or another. Mages, Warlocks and Priests to name a few. And I end up playing spellcasters. A lot.

Like many gamers, I talk with my friends a fair bit about the games that I’m playing, either with what’s been going on in them or what new stuff’s coming out. There’s also a chunk about the stuff I’m doing in-game, from the basics through to high-end content. I also talk about the classes I play, either discussing how the mechanics differ from one game to another or how a particular character works. There’s a lot of talk here, but it tends to only stick with a small group of people, so I decided to start blogging about it.

It’ll have a heavy World of Warcraft bias, but will also include other games that I’m playing from time to time. It’ll also include stuff that might not strictly be Caster related, but that I think is either interesting or cool.

This place will be updated randomly as I have time and as new things come up. Don’t count on me posting daily, but you can expect a comment from me whenever something interesting is going on.

It’s also a comments-open thing, so if you have something to share (or if you think I’m talking a load of crap) then feel free to sound off.