Friday, June 19, 2009

Morning in Vana'diel: Too Many Blogs.

Morning in Vana'diel is your daily dose of FFXI and all things Vana'diel. Give us your thoughts on the interesting topics of the day! Today, Ring wonders if there are too many blogs about FFXI or not even about FFXI. Ring is even feeling a little ranty today.

As I have mentioned before the Tarutaru Times Online is a great source of blog information about FFXI. You can get updates on what people are doing, how they are playing and just random tidbits about people that play FFXI. It does have problems though, but they aren't really problems with TTO itself and more with some of the people that post on it. There are lots of good posts that are interesting recaps of FFXI game lives, and such and that is what blogs are for. The problem is when attention whores use blogs. There is the classic "I'm quitting" post. That's great, but the internet is not your high school year book, and we are not BFF. One "I'm quitting" post isn't even that bad, but when you have more than one blog post ever that states you are quitting and "never coming back" then it's time to give up on blogging. More recently, there have been a flood of "I didn't win the Mog Bonanza so I'm quitting" blog posts. Two problems with this. One, what kind of sad person banks continuing to play on winning an in-game lottery? Two, what kind of sad person thinks that we care? The only way they get clicks for these short and boring posts is by using a deceptive title on TTO.

The nature of MMO's is that you play them for a long time and this can lead to waxing and waning of interest in the game, and you can also pick up other games and MMO's during the time you are playing. I will fully admit to playing WoW on occasion, and it's a really good game, just not the game for me. I do like using it as a measuring stick against FFXI and other games because it kind of serves that purpose for all MMO's right now. The thing is that I would never blog about playing WoW or any other MMO that I have tested out on my FFXI site. I do understand that they are personal blogs and that you can post about whatever you like. "It's a free country" is fine, no one is stopping you but before you bust out your best Cartman voice and start yelling "It's my blog, I do what I want" let me just remind you that you did sign up for a Final Fantasy XI blog roll site and you don't have to report all of your posts if you want to talk about something else.

So maybe there are too many blogs, but maybe people just don't know how to blog right. TTO isn't MySpace, it's a place to put your thoughts about FFXI. Try to respect that like a good majority of the TTO posters do. A huge portion of the blogs on TTO are great and I encourage everyone to use TTO or even make your own blog about FFXI, but keep what I said in mind and have a like dignity.

So what is your favorite FFXI blog? Do you have your own? Which ones do you hate? Do you want to hear about people playing other games? Am I just a whiny bitch? :) Leave a comment and tell us what you think!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yeah well, you update your blog like 4 times a day and spam up TTTO something fierce, so maybe you shouldn't be complaining too much.

Anonymous said...

BLAH BLAH BLAH

Drac said...

I've "known" Ring for a while now and I am of the general opinion that he's a pretty decent human being from what little one can know of a person through a videogame.

That being said, I'm not a fan of the new style of his blog. That's ok though 'cause there are plenty of blogs out there. The nice thing is that he probably wouldn't give two shits about mine; we're just different styles of players and writers.

I do think blogs are pointless in the grand scheme of things but so is a adolescent keeping a journal. It's really for the writer moreso than the reader, if there are readers. I do not see the point in worrying about "clicks" outside of "is anyone reading this?" but I can also agree with Ring's point about signing up for TTTO.

I encourage people to write because people are so fucking illiterate and mindless most of the time, it's a healthy exercise. However, when I come to a blog site about FFXI, I don't give a shit about WoW or your workout routine or what your mom said to upset you at dinner last night.

Also, you're a whiny bitch Ring. ;)

Omoikitte said...

Mr. Anonymous, you sound sanctamonious in your comments, yet it is largely due to the limitations of how TTTO is structured, that when Ring has turned his blog into a news site, he ends up spamming the site, and has talked about his concerns regarding this and potential ways to deal with it, most of which require some coordination with the owner of said site.

There is no reason he shouldn't use his blog in this method at all, it is an extremely common way of disseminating information, and to be perfectly frank 4 times a day for a news related blog is pretty slow, FFXI is hardly a hot bed of information in the larger scheme of things, and signing up to TTTO is a viable way to try and reach a larger, wider audience.

Evilpaul said...

Anyone who's registered with TTTO either as a Reader or Blogger can adjust their options to filter out any blog they aren't interested in.

Bloggers can go 'Blog Management -> Edit -> Hide This Post' to remove particular entries from the front page.

I generally do this with posts that have nothing to do with FF11, or the guy who runs it removes them later (all my FF11 posts have 'FFXI' as a tag). I mostly post on FF11 or videogames in general, so if that's the only reason somebody would want to read it they won't be annoyed too often.