#NBI: Meet other newcomers
Around one month ago one of my favorite gaming bloggers, Syp (a.k.a. Justin Olivetti 
decided it was time to help bring some new faces to the MMO blogging scene, and created the Newbie Blogger Initiative. It’s been a great opportunity to meet some new and old faces, and find motivation, share tips and learn tricks of trade with others on the same situation. Around a hundred experienced bloggers showed up to promote the initiative, and another hundred new blogs answered the call, including myself. I don’t know about you, but I would call this a complete success.
UPDATE
Syp just posted the final list NBI participants and sponsor’s advice posts, and it’s an impressive one. You should most certainly check that out.
Now that the initiative is at its end, it is my time to pass along the torch. As the final NBI Challenge, I’ll now introduce you to three of my favorite blogs I discovered thanks to the NBI. I do recommend taking some time and going through those two lists I linked if you have any interest on gaming blogs, there are many great new and old ones beyond those below.
Okay, enough preamble. Here they are:
Image Heavy
I have not really played World of Warcraft for many years now, except for a few hours when I gave the Cataclysm trial a chance, just to see how Azeroth changed from the world I once knew. But this blog makes me very nostalgic, and miss those gratifying moments I “lived” on that world.
Eva does a great job showing the beautiful world created by Blizzard, and her posts are always a joy to read. If you like some pretty screenshots, you are in for a treat.
Divinity’s Reach
Deep and complete information about Guild Wars 2. This is a very impressive blog looking to become one of the best sources of information about the upcoming MMO, and so far, they are doing an amazing job at it. Their articles on PvP and builds are some of the most complete out there. This one is a must-read.
Created by Entombed, they are also looking for more writers to join the staff and help with their noble goal, so if you want to write about Guild Wars 2 but lack the disposition to look after your own blog, give them a heads up.
Bloodthorne
I enjoy when a writer makes us think, and TJ Edgar likes to deal with some tough subjects. Not saying that this blog is always a dark read, quite the contrary, I find his writing quite captivating and pleasant while driving us readers to ask intriguing questions.
And more
These are just three that impressed me, but there are many new and not-so-new blogs I can recommend. Here are a few others I enjoyed reading this past month:
- Shards of Imagination
- MMO Compendium
- Ravalation
- Brazokie’s Blog Space
- My Staff is Bigger than Yours
This is an amazing time to read and talk about games. Thanks again Syp, you are the man!
Thankyou so much for the mention!
I admit to doing a little happy dance when I saw.
My pleasure, just keep doing what you’re doing, your blog is great. ;)
Like Eva, I broke out into a makeshift dance (if you can call it that) at the sight of this article. Thank you so much! If you ever want to join us and stop this whole ridiculous blogging business of yours, you will always have a place with us!
ROFL!
I have considered it, I’ll let you know. But I can hardly find the time to write stuff here about all games I play including GW2, I don’t see myself having enough to talk exclusively about GW2 at this stage. Perhaps later on I’ll get in touch.
Thanks for the invitation tho
Some pretty good selection there.
And thank you for the mention as well!
My pleasure, couldn’t let some other good ones go without a mention. ;)
Woohoo I have fans ! ! ! Well a Fan, well a person who likes my blog, well a person who ran out of options before getting to my blog, well someone who is capable of reading my writing…
I joke of course, thanks a lot for selecting my blog in this post, it is appreciated and of course means a lot.
You have an avid reader, how about we settle with that?
Keep up the great work.
Great post! You’re right, it is a GREAT time to read about games. It really does seem like there’s a blog for everything now–I love it!
Didn’t have time to react to this earlier, but thanks for mentioning me as well. I’ve silently been following your blog. Silently, since I’m only a simple soul playing some MMO’s, but reading only is fun too. I must say I love your new blog layout to bits (okay, well, it’s perhaps not that new anymore, but still). It’s more my style than the old one.
I also should thank you for helping me out on Ravalation. My blog wouldn’t look like it does now without your help. So, double-thanks!
Hi there, and thanks for mentioning me. I would like to tell you that I’ve also been following your blog with interest, but I’m more of a silent follower. Thanks again, by the way, for helping out with Ravalation. My blog wouldn’t work as well without your help!
On a sidenote: I tried to comment on your blog yesterday, but it wouldn’t let me. After typing the same message over and over for 3 times, I gave up. I’m now writing from my Mac, just to see if it works. Somehow it did not on Windows (Firefox browser, same as I have here). Might be something you want to look into, not sure if others are as persistent as I am!
You’re welcome, I’m glad your blog is working better now.
I’ll make some tests to make sure everything is working here. I’m just using the standard WordPress comment system so there shouldn’t be anything wrong, but maybe my theme is doing something that it shouldn’t. Thanks for letting me know.
Just thought I let you know. I checked here, and your posts were being marked as spam for some reason. Not sure why, but I marked them all as “not spam” so hopefully my filter will learn from this mistake. If it happens again please let me know on Twitter, Facebook or through the Contact form and I’ll approve it manually.
Thanks again for taking the time to post.
[EDIT]
Actually I think I found out why it was being marked as spam. The URL for your blog had two colons, i.e. http::\\ I don’t think my spam filter liked that. ;)
Aargh, now that’s stupid of me! I think I tried commenting like half a month ago as well and it didn’t work, and my browser remembered my typo… >.< The colon looks real small (well, near to the p) in this font, so I didn’t notice it.
If you’re a real nerd (and I suspect you are), you could always make a message appear whenever your website suspects it’s spam (something along the lines of “make sure you spelled your e-mail address / website correctly, it’s known for eating your post otherwise”). What happens now: if you spell the website wrong, the page reloads and your message is gone. I was sort of half expecting a message like “your reply is awaiting approval”, since on many blogs do such a thing and don’t show your message at first. It was pretty confusing. Then again, you might want to keep it like it is and shun these terrible misspelling creatures from your website all together!
Thanks, and sorry to have been bothering you with this.
I don’t think it’s possible to have a message alerting that a message was caught as spam, specially because that would give spammers a tip that they need to change something to fit within the rules. Sorry
The message “your reply is awaiting approval” should probably appear if necessary. I’ll try later to see if it is. Your messages however shouldn’t required approval anymore.