double DING!

Today is my second blogiversary and, after the flurry of posting I’ve done in the last week to make it so, this is also my 300th blog post.

Looking back at what I wrote on my first blogiversary, I find that I haven’t actually accomplished very many of those ideas about what I thought I might like to do in my next year of blogging.

I didn’t write the stories I thought I would. Or rather, I didn’t finish and publish the stories I thought I would. I’ve had partially-finished stories about “Kivrinne and the New Forsaken” and “Kymberlea in Exile” sitting in my drafts folder for over a year. I have another partially finished story about my Night Elf Mage, Keriluna, and how she came to be a student of the Arcane. I had ideas for stories about the new Gnome and Troll starting areas that never quite materialized, and as the time since the launch of Cataclysm increased — and now as the time of the end of Cataclysm is drawing nigh — they’ve seemed like they would be less relevant and interesting for people to read. My backstory about Kregga is still lying in disjointed fragments, in part because some of the areas where I might have liked to have taken pictures to illustrate it changed too much in the Shattering for me to use them now. Perhaps I should just use the hand-drawn pictures I scribbled while writing out a draft of that story in long-hand. Although I didn’t publish any long stories, I did write little bits and pieces of stories as I participated in various blog challenges or Blog Azeroth Shared Topics. Saz’s Through Your Interface challenge in particular has provided me with some great prompts for story tidbits. I wrote about my characters’ hometowns, about their relationships with each other, and their romances. I haven’t quite finished TYI yet, but I surely will during the next year. I also wrote a brief history of my Orc Mage and about Kelilla’s adventures at the New Darkmoon Faire. Perhaps in this next year, I will finish my stories now in draft, or perhaps I will wind up writing a bunch of completely different things.

I still intend to write about the Grimtotem in the post-Shattering world, but I also still have to finish questing through Kalimdor. My Tauren Smitespec-Disc Priest outleveled Ashenvale before she was halfway through the zone, and in the interest of seeing the story “in order”, I’ve had her waiting on the cusp of Southern Barrens until I manage to get my Orc and Night Elf Mages through Ashenvale and Stonetalon Mountains. And I keep getting distracted by other projects.

My long-term goal of leveling a character of every Class to the cap is still just that — long-term. I have three 85s, who are the same three characters that were my three 80s at the end of Wrath. I would like (and should be able) to get my level 82 Hunter to 85 before Mists arrives. Doing 2012 in 2012 provides a lot of impetus to get moving on my other characters — but it also encourages me to spread the leveling love around, so I’m likely to end up with several 40s, 50s, and 60s over the next year, and still not have very many more characters actually at the level cap.

I was successful, though, in posting a lot more art in my second year than I did in my first, and I hope to continue doing so. I’ve still got a bunch of pictures sitting in my art folder just waiting to be posted, and I have a few more in various stages of completion.

With the debut of Transmogrification, it’s not at all surprising that my most popular posts of the past year have primarily dealt with Fashion.

My first Transmogrification Template Kit post gets a steady stream of page hits. A lot of searches for plate fashion have ended up here due to The Well-Dressed Paladin and the sets I designed for Morgion — a post I made just after my blogiversary last year. My second round of pirate outfits got linked on WoW Insider, producing my busiest day ever on 21 September 2011. People looking for Dark Ranger garb have also ended up here a lot, though Anne Stickney’s version, part 1 is much better than mine (and I eagerly await her part 2).

Other posts that brought people in were The Great Blog Noblegarden Egg Hunt, Round II — I’m starting to think about if there will be a GBNEH again this year, and who will host it? — and a deliberately provocatively titled post I made shortly after Blizzcon in October. I hope that at least some of the people who came here looking for lady Pandaren did some poking around on the rest of the blog and found enough things that they liked that they’ve kept coming back.

Althought I’m still not very good at the whole engaging with the community thing, I have found, in two years of blogging about WoW, that being involved in the blogosphere has definitely enriched my experience of the game itself. I anticipate that I will continue to read and write about WoW for as long as I am playing it.

I am sadly lacking in ideas for mathoms this year, but if there’s some subject you’d like me to write about, or some idea for a Transmogrification Template Kit (perhaps using a specific piece of gear) that you’d like me to tackle, please let me know, and I’ll see what I can do

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