5 Years of Blogging

Five wonderful and insightful years ago I started this blog.  I had planned a larger post talking about the "future", but like this five year milestone time has gone by faster than I could ever had imagined.  Five years ago I was single and without a care in the world outside of whether my Internet connection worked at home.  Today, I'm married, a father, a belated college graduate, and newly promoted at a company I would never have imagined working for.  Change, as they say, comes whether we wish it or not.

Yet, one thing has remained constant over the past five years: this blog and my gaming.  In retrospect there are a lot of things  I would have done differently, but looking back there isn't a single thing I would want changed. 

Without rambling any further (the kid has gotta be put to bed at some point), I present to you a repost of my first post.

---

The date: 29 May, 2005. The time: 20:24 or 8:24 PM EST for those of you in the civilian world.

This blog has officially started. It has been a process of thought pulling at my mind for a while. I play these games we call MMORPGs, but I don't even know if "play" is the correct word to describe it anymore. I live and breath these games. They are more than an escape from my mediocre life. Fun is no longer the driving factor. Social interaction with like minded nerds and geeks; people whom live through their in game characters as though it was version 2.0 of themselves.

I don't want to hear these gamers speak in foreign Orcish or Elvish tongues. I want them to speak English and call me newb, l33t, or dude. I want role playing that is a real person, embodying a real in-game character. I don't want to know how much you can pretend. I want to see who, what, and how you can do things in game with the class, race, or skills you have chosen in our game of choice.

Ah, the game of choice! Room for debate among the flooded market of MMORPGs and the denizens that inhabit them. From baseless flame fests on the far reaches of the most bizarre gaming message boards; to developer's beloved Customer Feedback Forms. Well known to players that have ever hit cancel on a B-rate MMORPG subscription.

That is what brings us here. The game of choice, or should I say games of choice! After all, it is entirely possible to enjoy the splendor of more than a single MMO at a time. While you risk the chance of losing that significant other, the admiration of your pet, and standing in your real life social circle, you obtain the chance to be the darling of your online world of choice.

Whether its a heroic conquest, a diabolic scheme, or simply a comical battle cry; overnight stardom is possible!

So friends, let us journey down this road. Unafraid of the naysayers! Fearful of the sun that will burn our skin! And most of all, damn proud of what we choose to do with our free time. We are the many, the proud, the MMO gamer!

Lack of updates

Real life is alive and kicking for me, so I apologize for the lack of updates.  I'll try to get my monthly "What I'm Playing/What I'm Paying" post up sometime soon.  Otherwise, expect a quiet May around here.

IGNORE ANY EMAIL FROM ME - GMAIL WAS HACKED

Just a quick note, DO NOT open any emails that you may have recieved today from a heartlessgamer AT gmail DOT com.  My account was hacked and used to send World of Warcraft phishing emails. 

Dec 2009: What I'm Playing/What I'm Paying

Previous months: Nov 2009, Oct 2009, Sept 2009

I'm not embedding the spreadsheet this month because with the birth of a new year, I am planning a new approach to these posts. The "What I'm Playing/What I'm Paying" Google Spreadsheet is still there for the previous months.



With 2010, I am pledging to move this blog towards PC gaming as a whole instead of just MMOGs. I've dedicated a lot of time over the past ten years to MMOGs, but I have played a lot other games as well.  I have ignored talking about many of those games and I want to correct that.

Changes for my What I'm Playing/What I'm Paying posts

First, I am putting myself on a stricter gaming budget.  Subscription MMOG diehards will argue until they are blue in the face at how "cheap" it is to pay $15 a month for dozens of hours of entertainment.  $15 x 12 months = $180 is my budget for gaming in 2010, starting as of Christmas 2009.  My goal is to have a varied PC gaming experience, including MMOGs, FPS, RTS, and web games.  This is NOT meant as a way to prove anyone wrong!  It is a way to show that $180 can buy a wide variety of gaming on the PC if a gamer is willing to be conservative and play some games they have missed over the years.

Secondly, I have loaded up on games via the Steam Holiday Sale.  I have purchased everything from BioShock to Mirror's Edge to S.T.A.L.K.E.R:Shadow of Chernobyl.  Most of these games are on sale from $2 - $5.  At approximately $35 total spent, I feel like I have an entire year's worth of games saved up (and there are three days left for the sale!).

Anyone can buy a bunch of cheap games, but it takes some dedication to actually play them.  A two dollar game is a waste of money if it never gets played.  To alleviate this problem, I am going to have a game(s) of the month as part of each post.  For example:  January 2010 will feature Mirror's Edge.

After each month, I will give a mini-review of the game(s) of the month as well as discuss the others games I may have played.

I will also calculate the amount of time I spent playing each game every month and figure it into a total money vs. total time spent playing equation to determine the value I am getting from each game.  To help track this, I have a decision to make:

Raptr vs. Xfire

Raptr is a newer tool meant to combine multiple IM platforms as well as track how long each game is played.

Xfire is the old standby gameplay tracker.

Having used both together for a month now, I am leaning towards Raptr.  It tracks more data, has better reporting, and a better website.  Xfire will be going bye-bye (again).

Not laws

These are general ideas, not laws that cannot be broken.  The budget isn't set in stone and I am more than willing to break it for a good game (WoW:Cataclysm being a possible budget breaker this year).  It is quite possible this splurge in spending on older games via Steam will be a wash and I will never play some of the games.  Also, its possible a change from MMOG blogging to general PC gaming blogging will kill my readership.

Regardless, 2010 looks interesting!

Welcome to the new Heartlessgamer.com

Enjoy!

Update:  Lost some bottom padding under posts, but cant figure out how to fix it :P Ah well, nothing major. That tricksy padding was trumped by some margin-top with a new class :P

Site Updates Incoming, Need Your Eyeballs (and browsers)

My new template is nearing completion and can be viewed at http://test.heartlessgamer.com. Please check it out and let me know if it appears that something is not working. Currently built to run best in Firefox 3+, but no known issues with IE8 or Google Chrome.

A live version using this template can be viewed at http://reviews.heartlessgamer.com. The rest of my sites will be moved this weekend pending any disasters discovered today.

General comments on the design are welcome.
Thanks!

Multiplaying.net Site of the Week

Multiplaying.net has picked Heartlessgamer.com as their site of the week.

Thanks!

DISQUS comments fixed! Yay!

@DISQUS has helped me identify and remove the offending java script that was causing comments to fail on heartlessgamer.com. Everyone should be able to post without issue now, guest or not.

Please give them a try below.

Heartlessgamer.com Giveaway: Allods Online Beta Keys

Sorry, ALL KEYS ARE GONE!

I will update this post if I receive any more keys.

On Monetizing MMO Blogs

Recently, I asked for some feedback on the site, as well as opinions on MMO bloggers monetizing their blogs.

First, I run advertisements in three forms on this blog currently: in-line text ads, search traffic only ads, and referral links. The first two are powered by Chitika and pay per click. The referral links are to Amazon.com and pay a percentage of any purchases made via that link.

What do you need the money for?

The biggest question that people ask me is what I do with the money I earn. The blog is free to host on Google's Blogger, so there are no web costs (outside of an annual $10 domain registration fee). And it's pretty obvious I don't make my living doing this.

I use the money to pay for some of my gaming. When my blog was more popular (my traffic is down 50%+ this year), I made enough for a monthly subscription to an MMO. Recently, I have used it to micro-transact in games like Battlefield Heroes and Domain of Heroes.

However, since I've not played a subscription game in a while, I have pocketed a good amount of the money made (actually its sitting in my Paypal account). My most recent game purchases have been covered by bonuses I've gotten from work.

The Amazon.com referral links pay out via Amazon gift certificates. When I earn enough for my first gift certificate there, I will purchase more games, books, and movies to write about on this blog.

For the most part, the money earned here can be viewed as an investment back into the blog. However, it still leaves me sitting on a pile of cash that I haven't spent and I am going to work out a percentage to donate to Child's Play (my favorite charity). Going forward, charity will have a lot to do with the money made here after my minimal new web costs are covered (I am bringing some new stuff online in the near future).

Feedback

Surprisingly, most people that left feedback were fine with bloggers monetizing their blogs as long as it wasn't intrusive or contradicting(for example, gold seller ads when I am against gold selling). Chitika has been good about running legit advertisements, but they rarely match search ads to anything my readers would be interested in.

The Amazon.com referral links are more targeted. If I talk about a game, I will usually link to the games page on Amazon. If I review a book or movie, I will also link to Amazon. Or when Amazon runs deals like $3 in FREE MP3s, I will link to the promotional page and collect referrals as people cash in the free codes. This is hit or miss, but is the least intrusive of all advertising and the most honest.

With the feedback gathered, I think I am going to move towards straight Amazon.com referral-based advertising and be more open about my links. Along with the charitable giving, I am hoping this honesty will spur some purchases!

Lastly, I am going to take down the in-line text ads, as well as the search based ads from Chitika on the main page. I'm always open to advertising opportunities, so some form of automated advertising may return in the future.

DISQUS fix, need testers

Update: 4 Dec, 2009 - Thanks for the help so far. If you are seeing "There was an error with your submission. Please make sure you are actually logged in." as a guest, I am working on it.

I have worked with @DISQUS to resolve some issues with DISQUS comments on the site. I am trying to find out from people that have been having problems if it is any better. So if everyone could please try and leave a comment here for testing, it would be appreciated.

Heartlessgamer.com needs YOUR feedback!

Update: THANKS for the great responses so far! Those of you with DISQUS commenting problems, I am working directly with DISQUS on them.

Welcome to www.heartlessgamer.com

As you may have noticed, my URL has changed from http://hgamer.blogspot.com to http://heartlessgamer.com. I now own my own domain name and have redirected traffic from blogspot to the new domain. This probably causes all kinds of weird issues that I am too lazy to fix, so just got to heartlessgamer.com already and be happy.

http://twitter.com/heartless_gamer

I finally signed up for Twitter and was shocked to find that heartlessgamer was already taken.

The REAL heartlessgamer can be found at http://twitter.com/heartless_gamer

As always, REMEMBER THE UNDERSCORE_

The Folly of Changing Things

UPDATE: 12:19 PM - DISQUS comment import is complete. DISQUS integration is complete.

UPDATE: 10:29 PM - Template is back to an agreeable state

I moved my blog over to the DISQUS commenting system today. However, that was not the plan. I had intended to TEST DISQUS on my test blog heartless-gamer.blogspot.com. Unfortunately, doing so in the middle of a 12-hour work shift on a Sunday I failed to notice I was updating my live blog at hgamer.blogspot.com.

So, every last comment ever left on this blog is missing at the moment. A rescue import is on the way into DISQUS and should solve the problem.

Secondly, I fucked up my template and as I have no recent backup for some under-the-hood changes I made it will be a bit before normalcy is restored. That's life though and I'll work at restoring what I can.

Heartless_ Gamer's New Look

I have uploaded my new template for the world to see.

Thanks go out to lawnydesigns for the great base template to build from and the frivolousmotion blog for the tag cloud code.

Please report any bugs to the proper authorities (preferably with browser name and version # if possible).

And my blog roll disappeared into thin air, so stay tuned for a newerish version.

Because I Can!

I am changing my blog layout.

Why? Because I can! And I want to play with some stuff; like a tag cloud!

Watch my progress here.

This Is A Test Post

Tested submitting posts from e-mail.
Nothing to see here.
Move along.

This Is A Test Post

Tested submitting posts from e-mail.
Nothing to see here.
Move along.

Breaking Iron: An Ironbreaker Blog

Just a scheduled programming note: I have started an Ironbreaker blog entitled Breaking Iron.

I am going to use it to muse about the class, patch notes, and playing tips. It should actually contain only useful information, where as this blog contains mostly mindless rants one.

Enjoy!