The Weekly Warlock Wind-Up: All these women

Adam lives with Diane, in Aldershot in a maisonette. Is it Kate or Kara who lives with Alan in Ramsgate in an apartment?

Blogging Advice

Poneria over at Fel Concentration is helping out with the TNB Wiki (you know, that fantastic resource for WoW blogs and the like) and is asking for the blogosphere to lend a hand by providing all their best tips, tricks and advice about blogging. You can either drop her a message on Twitter or comment on the linked post, and the Blogger 101 page on the Wiki can be seen here. So head over and help out!

Of course, you get full credit for your contributions, so it could be good publicity too…

Here’s my two copper, which I left in a comment:

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Firstly, no matter what people say, everyone wants someone to read their work. The best ways of advertising your blog and getting your name out there:

– take part in all the events you can e.g. charity drives like the ones at Azeroth United.
– leave comments on all the other blogs you can find (and make sure you link back to your own site somehow).
– talk to other bloggers, perhaps offer to swap guest posts to get publicity. Alternatively you could offer to do reviews of each other, or similar.
– sign up to the Twisted Nether Wiki and Azeroth United.
– Post wherever you can, and definitely make sure there’s a link to your blog there. For example, at Blog Azeroth.

Once people are reading your blog, you might want a few general tips:

– Set aside time to write, and don’t rush it.
– Don’t commit to a schedule right away, because you will end up not being able to follow it no matter how hard you try. Wait until you have a better feel for when you have the time and inclination, and do a loose schedule around that, if you must do one at all. Hint: Your readers probably don’t care when you post as long as the articles are enjoyable, so you don’t really need to make your schedule public unless you really want to.
– Try only to write about things relevant to the topic of your blog. Obviously what you write is down to you, but if you advertise as a Shaman blog and start writing about Druid rotations and the latest news from the stock exchange, your regular readers will suddenly become less regular.
– I can’t remember who said it (I think I heard it on a podcast), but “Once you’ve written around 15 posts, go back and delete the first 10, because they’ll be rubbish”.
– Your first article will probably consist of “Hello everyone, this is my blog about <topic> and I hope you enjoy it”. Don’t bother with this, it’s pointless. Time would be better spent writing a decent post about something interesting.
– Never ever write a post which apologises in advance for the fact you won’t be posting, or apologises for the lack of posts already. Similarly, try and avoid short, pointless articles which say “Real life is really busy right now so I might not post a lot”. Your readers don’t care that much.

Hope this helps!

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Vel.

P.S. I think I ought to follow my own advice sometimes!

The Weekly Warlock Wind-Up: Darn, only three letters (answer)

This week, I presented you with this ridiculously-hard-to-format list of words, and asked you to find the three letter word which fitted each row, as well as the word which could be read downwards.

COUNTER  _ _ _  HOLE

BUD  _ _ _  AWAY

FOND  _ _ _  HEM

COVER  _ _ _  LESS

BUTTER  _ _ _  BOARD

FINGER  _ _ _  TOE

OFF  _ _ _  WAYS

See the solution after the break!

Have a break, have a Kit-Kat

It exists, I sat on it!

Well, after more than three years of continuous WoW-playing, I’ve finally decided to take a break.

Truth is, I’ve been bored with the game for quite a while now. It feels as if I’ve accomplished almost everything I want to do, and, without allowing this post to degenerate into a sea of QQ, it does feel as if the game is changing in a way I don’t much like. So I’m going to be permanently AFK for a few months; right now I’m planning to make a return shortly before Cataclysm releases (whenever that may be!) but I can safely say it’s going to be a while, whatever happens. When the main thing you enjoy in a game is just talking to your friends, it becomes nothing more than a very expensive chat room, and it’s not really worth it.

With regards to my guild (which, as some of you may know, I run ran) I’ve left it in the capable hands of my officers, and I have every confidence in them. I won’t necessarily be taking over again when I come back either – we’ll just see how it goes. On that note, I’d like to direct you here, to Cold Comfort, where Karatheya has been kind enough to take up my idea for a post and write not one but three articles about transferring leadership, and all things related to the issue.

But anyway, yes, I know. You don’t really care about my guild and you probably aren’t bothered in the least about what I’m actually doing in the game. You come here to read my blog, and what you want to know is – am I still going to be blogging? The answer is yes, I am!

Now, I won’t necessarily be keeping up with the development of the game, and so don’t expect to see many guides or breaking news stories. However, I do feel I can share a lot about what I’ve learnt from being a guild leader for so long, and I would sort of like to write some memoirs, per se. This could very well end up taking the form of fiction, which is an area of writing I once started in but never got anywhere with, so if you start seeing Veliaf the Warlock as the main character in a series of stories, don’t be too shocked. Oh, and of course I’ll be keeping up the weekly puzzle, which is what you’re all here for anyway.

See you next time!

Vel.

The Weekly Warlock Wind-Up: Darn, only three letters

This week, I present to you several rows of words. I want you to place a three letter word on each of the rows which can be attached to the end of the word on the left and the start of the word on the right, such that a new word is formed in each case. Additionally, when completed, the centre letters of each three letter word will spell out another word when reading downwards.

What are the three letter words, and what is the longer word which reads downwards?

COUNTER  _ _ _  HOLE

BUD  _ _ _  AWAY

FOND  _ _ _  HEM

COVER  _ _ _  LESS

BUTTER  _ _ _  BOARD

FINGER  _ _ _  TOE

OFF  _ _ _  WAYS

Answers on Friday!

Vel.

The Weekly Warlock Wind-Up: Matches (answer)

This week, I gave you the below pattern, where sixteen matches made up five squares, and asked you to move just two of the matches to reduce the number of squares to four:

See the solution after the break!

“Playing a mage is easy”

I wasn’t going to post today, but then I watched this, and felt I simply had to point it out. Clearly, playing a mage is easy, and everybody should roll a Warlock.

NB: You probably will want to just skip about 95% of the video as is recommended by the producer, or at least skip through – he literally does read the entirety of the document (I watched it). The original document which somebody actually wrote up for serious can be found here. And yes, the maths makes sense.

Vel.

GearScoreBreaker

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“I AM NOT A NUMBER.”

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Seems like all anybody talks about these days with regard to addons is GearScore, and either how much they hate it or how much they love it. I myself am guilty of the former. Which is why I present to you…

GearScoreBreaker!

This fantastic addon is small, simple and exactly the sort of thing needed to prevent the unjust judging which goes on when someone says “Your GS is lower than mine, therefore you suck”. Allow me to quote from the website to explain what this great little mod does:

To understand how GearScoreBreaker works let’s first take a look at how GearScore (GS) works.  When a GS user mouses over a unit in game, GS calculates a value and sends updates to other guild members via a hidden addon chat channel.  Any other guild member using GS will take this update and store it into a massive database (this is how you can see someone’s GS even if you are not near them).

GSB simply responds to GS.  When GS sends an addon message this mod sends an update back with a new gear score and iLvl.  GS then receives this update and will in turn update its database with these new values.

It is important to remember that GSB will only change the value that is store in the database.  If a GS user is standing next to you then he/she will still see your true gear score.  This is a win situation for the authors of GSB.  At least a GS user must be close to you and hopefully the will then use their inspect button.

So in essence, it messes with the GearScore addon by sending out false information about you; I believe the default value it sends is 6000. So when the idiots inspect you to see your score, they’ll either believe the 6000 and let you in (= win) or have to manually look at your gear, which defeats the purpose of GS in the first place (= win).

You can see the above linked website for further information, and a link to download the addon. As with all my addon endorsements I feel obliged to point out that this mod abides perfectly by the WoW ToS, and all that jazz.

Vel.

The Weekly Warlock Wind-Up: Matches

In today’s puzzle, sixteen matches are arranged to form five identical squares.

Your challenge is to move exactly two matches to reduce the number of squares to four. You have to use all the matches, and every match should be part of one of the squares.

Answers on Friday!

Vel.

A little personal achievement

Well, it may not be the cap, but I have managed to achieve my personal target of over nine thousand fifty thousand gold! The sale that broke it was a King’s Amber, which went for 136g.

Vel.