I'm sad to say one of my favorite bloggers in the Blog Azeroth community, Crankyhealer, has said her goodbyes to the community and profession.  Her posts are always full of wit and wisdom, with fun images to go along, and she made her blog personal as well, which so few of us have the guts to do.  My hat is off to you, Cranky:  May you find better and less stressful use of your time and enjoy your WoW experience more.  You will be missed.

One of the moderators of Blog Azeroth posted a topic in the blogger forum about why we write.  A number of bloggers responded with their respective reasons and this got me thinking.  Why is it that I write?

I used to host a personal webpage with a diary of sorts where I'd publish my thoughts and feelings, but the problem with that is that as much of a release as it was, it was also very disjointed and personal, not to mention without a real topic that was for anyone but myself.  I often found myself writing out of anger and spite against people who actually read it and feelings would get hurt.  These sort of blogs can work well enough for some people if they lead more interesting lives than I do, but it proved not to be a good enough reason for me to continue.

Recently, one of my dear friends in WoW, Dristanel, decided to share her infinite wisdom with the blogging community of Azeroth.  "Hey, that's a fine idea!" I said.  "Maybe I'll do some too!  I have lots of snarky and sarcastic things to share with fellow WoW players!"  I wasn't serious at first, but then I saw what she could do and the affect it had on people, and I started to consider doing so myself.  And so I did.  And this is the result of a little idea that just happened to work out.

So it's pretty easy to start and be excited about something, but I, for one, get easily distracted and bored with new projects easily.  It's also easy to second guess yourself when you get negative feedback from other bloggers or readers, even if they're nothing more than trolls.  But it's also reassuring to see people regularly posting comments on my blog in reply to a post I've made and the numbers are also a good motivator.  You'll find most bloggers have some sort of counter covertly installed on their blog to keep track of visitors, where they come from, and how they get there.  There's also trackers on RSS feeds, which I myself have fallen in love with -- an RSS feed and the subsequent reader make it easier to check a number of blogs at once for new posts.  Even if you don't post a comment in reply to someone's feed, it lets them know you're listening.

There's any number of different types of bloggers in this community as well.  I personally prefer to be informative but entertaining at the same time.  Other people are more serious with their numbers and their strategies and guides as well as their endeavor to be more informative and to teach.  While we all do CARE if we get read or not, we care for different reasons.

In my personal experience, I've run across a lot of people in WoW playing my respective classes who don't know what their doing.  I don't know that this is from lack of resources or lack of caring period, but it doesn't help to throw some more information out there.  Sometimes it's easier to learn from someone who shares your point of view on a subject or who has an original way to break it down so it's easy to understand.  Part of my job in real life is to educate people on a variety of subjects relating to my expertise, so I consider the blog the same, but in a fun, snarky environment.  If I make a little impact with each post, be it just a nod from someone who agrees to teaching someone something new, then I have achieved what I set out to do.