Top Five Most Viewed Posts By Year

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On the 9th my friend Wilhelm partook in an interesting thought experiment, in which he pulled the statistics and posted the top five viewed posts for each year of his blog. I would love to be able to replicate this post, however to the best of my ability I seem to be unable to filter my statistics based on posting date. I am guessing this is another one of those times that posting on WordPress.com gives you better access to tools than being out here floating in the black with WordPress.org and Jetpack. There are things that apparently I can do to start capturing this with Google Analytics, but unfortunately it is a little late to go back eleven years and make that happen. The post however was a follow-up to another post where he posted what was the most read posts during a specific year regardless of post date, and that one I think I can replicate.

2009 – The Beginning of Aggronaut

So going back and looking at my early posts feels like they were written by a stranger. During 2009 I made a grand total of 53 posts on this fledgling blog, and two of those posts got noticed by WoW Insider, namely the Groupcraft series where I attempted to outline the best ways to build a group in the pre-dungeon-finder era. The other was my expose on how keyboard turners are bad and how you should exorcise them from your raid. I mean it doesn’t exactly say that, and attempts to be a help piece, but looking back it absolutely feels like that today. It is one of those popular posts that I am ultimately embarrassed in the modern era.

2010 – The Absentee Year

During the entire calendar year of 2010 I only managed to make seven posts. Most of these were fairly angry screeds about guild leadership, responsibility, and dealing with frustrations. I was not in a happy place mentally either in real life or in the raid. Again reading through these posts, I can remember writing them but they seem like they were written by someone else. Not shockingly all of the posts that were well read during that year were from 2009. I was very much still trying to be a World of Warcraft blog and I was finding myself way less happy with the game and as a result felt like I didn’t have much to write about.

2011 – The Year of Rift

This is the year that I ultimately left World of Warcraft for the first time and decided that apparently I was changing my site over to being a Rift Fan Site. Look we all make some strange choices and last I recall I am still flagged on the Rift forums as a Fansite Creator. During the course of the year I knocked out 70 posts which was more posts than I had written on the blog up to this point. I did love Rift and I poured my year and soul into making posts about the game, including reposting patch notes with some minor commentary. Additionally I started talking about Minecraft for the first time.

2012 – The Secret World and Star Wars the Old Republic

For being the year that spawned my highest read post ever, it is funny that I only managed to write 23 posts during the entire year. This is the year that Secret World launched and then later in the same year Star Wars the Old Republic, both of which were significant games for me. I was getting frustrated while leveling through SWTOR trying to figure out when I should be doing the bonus series that open up on planets. So one day I sat down and worked my way through the various item databases try and sort out a semi-optimal route. I posted this on the guild forums to help everyone else out that I was playing with, and on a whim I decided to also post this on my blog. This is why I often say that it is never the posts you are actually proud of that manage to get traction.

2013 – The Beginning of Daily Posting

This was the year that I begin the whole “Grand Experiment” and started posting something every day regardless if I actually felt like I had something worth posting. This project lasted about three and a half years and in this first year I managed to rack up 257 posts. The only new post that managed to make the top five however is one that I cobbled together because I couldn’t find a good list of Puzzles and Cairns in Rift and I collated some data I found from other partial sources and combined it. I am rapidly realizing that I probably should go back and edit these posts to update them because they absolutely STILL get hits.

2014 – The Beginning of Blaugust

I continued the Grand Experiment and managed to post every single day during 2014, and seemingly had a few spare posts because at the end of the year I racked up 371 unique posts. This was the year when in my infinite wisdom I decided to start Blaugust, the blogging festival that normally occurs in August and originally asked everyone to make a post every single day for a month. You would however barely be able to tell this based on the most read posts. Once again we have the SWTOR Bonus Series post, the Rift Puzzles and Cairns post… but at least there are a few new ones related to ArcheAge which I believe released during this year. Essentially it seems as though the title of a post makes an awful lot of difference in how many readers it gets, and this is a lesson I should have learned over the years but have almost obstinately ignored.

2015 – Corporate Influence

Once again I managed to create 371 unique posts, which is bizarre to have the same number two years in a row for a “daily blog” that is not 365. I should research why the exact same number of extra posts occurred at some point. The second year of Blaugust got significantly more traction than the first year did and as a result we see the introductory post actually charting in the third place. One of the things I have had a bad habit of doing is coming up with a series idea, only to abandon it almost immediately. One of these series was “MMOs Worth Playing”, the idea being to highlight some of the online games that I felt were under appreciated. One of these posts was on Marvel Heroes, god rest its soul, and the Gazillion marketing department picked up on this and advertised the article, causing a massive spike in readership on that one post. The bonus series post continues to refuse to die.

2016 – The Year I Mostly Forgot

Honestly I am not sure what exactly happened during 2016, as it is a year I have mostly shoved out of my memory. This is apparently the year I decided to stop the daily posting thing because I only racked up 305 posts. I know World of Warcraft Legion launched, and that is has become my favorite expansion and as a result I am certain from August onward I was completely devoted to that. I also know that Guild Wars 2 Heart of Thorns released, which I am sure I played but I don’t think I really got into it until much later. I know I was dabbling in a few MOBAs, which lead me to write a think piece about how I would really like to see a game that plays like Diablo but has MOBA style character design… something that has ultimately come true now in a few different variants. I was also enamored with Creativerse, which I considered to be an arguably better version of Minecraft… and I think maybe this piece also had some corporate influence in the aggregation department. The Playful Studios account still follows me, but the Creativerse one no longer does.

2017 – The Year of Destiny

I made a total of 247 posts during a year that at least for me was largely dominated by Destiny 1 and Destiny 2. The top post of the year was a guide for hitting 400 light in the original Destiny without having to set foot in any of the raids. Largely I outlined the various soft caps and which activities you could use to bypass them, along with a general starter guide on how to address the content. Bumbling Around confused me at first, but in it I talk about using NumLock as a way of tricking Diablo 3 into spamming an auto attack, for those things you want to keep up on cooldown. For awhile I was obsessive about posting what Xur had every Friday, so weirdly one of those posts made it into the list as well as my post about the PC Launch for Destiny 2.

2018 – Blaugust Reborn

Planet and Bonus Series Level Ranges
Schmoradric Cube
Blaugust Reborn
Bumbling Around
Leveling DPS is Butts

Once again I settled in with 248 posts, which is only one more than 2017 which I can only assume is just weird calendar math since I fell into the pattern of posting every week day. 2017 was the year with no Blaugust, and 2016 had a very halfassed version of it… so come 2018 I was getting external pressure and support to start the event up again. This represents the start of the modern style of Blaugust being a six week long event with a discord and all of the modern infrastructure. Funny story… the other day I joined a stream and the person kept mistakenly calling me Blaugust instead of Belghast. I thought it was somewhat adorable and didn’t have the heart to correct them. The Bonus Series post will not die and the Diablo 3 numlock post seems to have legs as well. Schmoradric Cube though is the weird post that doesn’t fit given it is largely a throw away topic where I discuss a random item you get from one of Cayde-6’s treasure maps in Destiny 2. The fifth place topic is me complaining about the lack of good leveling options for DPS alts in Final Fantasy XIV.

2019 – A Restless Year

Grim Community
Planet and Bonus Series Level Ranges
Final Fantasy XIV Minion Guide
Blaugust 2019
Steelfeather God Roll

I find it really hard to summarize 2019 with one or two major events that happened. Maybe it is just that it seems too recent for me to look back with clarity on what actually happened. I do know that I cranked out 270 posts, and I think this is in part because I started posting our AggroChat episode on Sundays. The stats are a little weird because a post I made in 2015 came back with a vengeance, and I am assuming it got linked somewhere. Once again… I feel like I really should be going back and periodically updating these “guide posts” because I am certain the “FFXIV Minion” guide is woefully outdated. Destiny 2 had its Shadowkeep release which breathed new life into the game for me, and the “Steelfeather God Roll” got traction due to the title honestly. I also did a deep dive on Grim Dawn and its various community supported resources, which got way more traction than I ever released until looking at the numbers for this post. Once again… the damned Bonus Series post remains.

2020 – Life in Pandemia

Controllers for Big Hands
Grim Community
Substitute Amiibo Cards
A Dose of Blapril
Steelfeather God Roll

It is too early to really write the tale of this year, but whatever the case I am certain that it will be dominated by the pandemic and the several month long pause in all of our lives. As far as posts go… the Bonus Series is finally off the map, at least for now. My Controllers for Big Hands post that I am actually somewhat fond of is currently leading the count, with Grim Community holding in strong in second place. My Tutorial on how to create Amiibo Cards is ranking in part because everyone is playing Animal Crossing right now. Blapril just concluded and its announce topic has continued the post-Blaugust-Reborn pattern of making the list, with the Steelfeather God Roll rounding out the top five.

Top Ten of All Time

I thought I would close out this little experiment by showing you the list of the top ten most read posts on my blog since its inception in 2009. I think there are two takeaways from this. The first is that you can never really predict what is going to gain traction, and having a clear search engine friendly title means an lot more than I ever realized. This hasn’t changed my stance on giving posts strange titles however. The second takeaway is that it is never the posts you deeply care about that end up becoming your most read. I have come to terms with this and the fact that the Bonus Series will always be up there in numbers. Like I have said a few times, I really should update those posts.

An Undead Death Knight

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After yesterday’s totally important post, we are going right back to my regular nonsense. I am still playing an excessive amount of World of Warcraft and I am still very much finding it relaxing. At this point currently I am working on an Undead Death Knight and have just started on Frostfire Ridge in the Warlords of Draenor content. I mean I realize that Death Knights get a bit of a boost, but it feels like I am moving slowly because I opted to do Howling Fjord instead of Borean Tundra. While I like the look and feel of the Fjord so much better, I gotta say across the board Borean Tundra is just a better built zone. The objectives are more tightly clumped and there is way less travel time between them. The amount of time I spent flying halfway across the zone in Howling Fjord was significant.

I am somewhat obsessed with leveling an army of Horde characters while this buff is active. One important note is that at the beginning of this process I had two characters sitting at 120, my Warrior and my Demon Hunter both of which were leveled during the early days of Battle for Azeroth. Now you can see I have a pretty formidable stable with effectively five classes missing… Death Knight and Monk that I have already made progress on and then Priest, Shaman and Rogue which are not exactly favorites of mine. For the sake of transparency I should state once again that I spent my boost on the Mage since that is my least favorite class to play, and it also serves as a handy bank alt given its teleportation properties and ability to rapidly deliver stuff to friend characters.

I am of course the consummate adult while going through the leveling process. This time I decided to write a word instead of just drawing a penis with my trail of gunpowder. Sadly it mostly translates as “Euck” but oh well an effort was made. I have been informed that this is client side only, so while I didn’t do this sort of nonsense when Warlords was relevant, I absolutely do now knowing it harms no one. I have to say, as much as I generally did not enjoy Warlords, it is a way better feeling expansion if you are playing the Horde. Additionally that intro sequence while frustrating because it is unskippable, is pretty freaking epic feeling. I feel it is some of the best crafted content in all of World of Warcraft, because it feels like you are playing through a movie for awhile. I’ve always loved the Borderlands style title cards introducing each of the Villains as you encounter them.

In other news I finished the process of unlocking Kul Tirrans on the Alliance side and I now have a potbellied Druid. I don’t love the Alliance content, not in the same way as I did the Zandalari content… but it is equally competent. The funny thing about Kul Tirrans, especially seeing mine… is that they just remind me of the Norn from Guild Wars. I have no interest in leveling another Druid right now, but I mostly chose it for class because it has freaking amazing shape shifted forms. I dig the whole Drust thing, but I am also a huge fan of my Worgen Druid so it would be real hard for me to pass up being a Werewolf. If they had Paladin as an option I would probably consider race changing Exeter over to a Kul Tirran, but alas that is not a thing. Mostly I am just happy to have this done because this was the last thing that I absolutely had to be playing Alliance to complete. I can finish out the rest of the requirements for the Mechagnomes from my horde characters.

The above shot is just something I am posting because I thought it was really cool. I am not exactly sure where I was flying from, but I was headed over to the Dark Portal and this vignette in the distance just looked really cool. Sadly I never could time my screenshot for when one of the lightning flashes happened. There are times when this game still looks really pretty even though the engine at times feels a little dated. The world really is massive at this point, and while we spend most our time zipping around in portals… it is occasionally nice to manually fly over top of it to see vistas like this one.

Blapril 2020 Rundown

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Well folks, it is that time. The first running of Blapril has closed and all of the posts have been tallied. Before I get into the reason why you are all here, I wanted to talk a little bit about Blapril. This came together on the spur of the moment because of the situation we find ourselves in, and the goal was to give bloggers something to focus on while our own personal lives might be in a state of disarray. I think in some ways it absolutely did just that, because it gave us six weeks of focus. We had slightly lower participation than what would be a normal Blaugust, but of those who participated… we had what felt like significantly more output. During the entire series run of March 29th through May 9th we had 48 total participants and they crafted 1124 blog posts. This works out to be an average of roughly 23 posts per participant. Of course the grading period being extended over the full six week run caused a bit of mudflation in the numbers for those who are the most prolific.

Before we get any further in the process I just want to take a moment to thank all of the participants who joined me in this nonsense. While I have doubts at times about the process, I never once have doubted the absolute wonderfulness of this community that seems to magically appear each year. Lets take a moment to see the full list of everyone who signed up to join in this event.

Participation Award

Regardless of amount of content posted, each and every person who signed up and joined in this process gets to proudly wear the Blapril Particpation badge. It is colored blue, like the color participants are given in the discord. I appreciate each and every one of you for the time you took out of what is I am sure a crazy schedule right now dealing with all of the social changes we have experienced thanks to the pandemic.

Newbie Awards

Newbie Blogger Award

This next group of bloggers get to wear a special badge because they are first timers to the Blaugust/Blapril proceedings. Some of them might be brand new to blogging, and others might be new to trying to create content regularly. Whatever the case they have put themselves out there and this is their first time going through this process. As a result they get a bonus badge that is purple, the color of the group on the discord. Join me in congratulating our new players.

Bronze Awards

Bronze Award

From this point forward we are getting into the total post count based awards and while technically everyone that earns a rainbow award also has qualified for bronze, I am only going to list individuals under their highest achievement. This first group are bloggers who managed to get at least five blog posts during the entire event running from March 29th through May 9th.

Silver Awards

Silver Award

This next batch of bloggers managed to get at least 15 posts during the entire event running from March 29th through May 9th.

Gold Awards

Gold Award

This group of bloggers managed to get at least 25 posts during the entire event running from March 29th through May 9th.

Rainbow Awards

Rainbow Award

This last batch of bloggers managed to get at least 31 posts during the entire event running form March 29th through May 9th. This is potentially our highest number of individuals getting to this rank in a Blaugust/Blapril event, because we managed to get 21 bloggers up to this rank. The highest number of posts came from our dear Bhagpuss with 48, and the closest runner up was at 45 for MagiWasTaken who was a Newbie from last Blaugust. I am exceedingly proud at everyone for their accomplishments.

Final Thoughts

Due to the impromptu nature of Blapril, we had slightly lower participation than the last few years of Blaugust. However I still think we had a pretty fantastic turn out all things considered. There are folks who just didn’t have the cutlery to be able to handle a blogging event right now, and I absolutely get that. We are going through a very scary time, and because of that especially I am thankful to the community we have built here. As always I tabulate all of these results by hand, and am of course fallible. Some blogs are harder to read for the purpose of counting total posts than others, so if you feel I made some mistake in my mathematics, then by all means reach out to me and let me know what the actual count should have been.

August is only a few months away, and I can tell you with all certainty that we will not be doing a full Blaugust this year. However I have been talking with the other mentors and we hope to create some sort of mini-event to take its place. Until then however, just know that I am extremely proud of everyone who steps forward to take on the mantle of this challenge. I am happy to have you all as peers.

AggroChat #298 – Faces Ground and Griefers

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Featuring:  Ammo, Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tamrielo and Thalen

We start the show with what has disturbingly become a tradition for us as we talk about what life is like in this weird time we happen to be living.  For some of us I believe it is week eleven and for others week nine, but really what exactly is the passage of time anyway.  The first topic is a bump from last week as Tam talks about discovering Rampage the Board Game, otherwise known as Terror in Meeple City in its most modern incarnation.  This leads down a rabbit hole of talking about classic monster movies and many agreeing that the correct place to start is with the OG Godzilla from 1954.  From there Bel dives into a topic from the Aggronaut blog, of if grinding is actually fun.  This leads to a whole other discussion of how each of us appear to have a vastly different description of what that even means.  For Kodra it means grinding his face off over and over against hard content, but for Grace and Bel it largely means repetition of largely mindless content.  Tam on the other hand has to have a purpose and his brain has to be engaged.  Finally we talk about the integration of PVP into otherwise PVE games and why developers seem to be stuck on that concept.  This leads to some discussion of a recent outing in Sea of Thieves when Tam finally gets people interested enough to try it, but they get griefed over and over by some jerk ruining an otherwise enjoyable experience.

Topics Discussed

  • Rampage the Board Game
    • Terror in Meeple City
    • Classic Monster Movies
    • Mechagodzilla
  • Is Grinding Fun?
    • World of Warcraft
    • Farming Content
    • Phantasy Star Online 2
    • Grinding Hard Content
      • Hollow Knight
  • Do PVP and PVE Mix Well?
    • No
    • Why Devs are Obsessed with It
    • Why its a Bad Idea
    • Why Sea of Thieves ruined the experience

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