Milestone: 2 Year Anniversary!

Two years ago today, I kickstarted the blog Spawn of the Dread Master. It was an initiative which I didn't know whether or not would succeed, given that most of my previous projects only lasted a year before falling to pieces, but I figured that it was worth a go.

To say that I'm still blogging two years later is a great achievement in my book. I don't always find it easy to find something to say or write about, as you can tell from the numerous breaks I took prior to the rebranding. Suffice to say, I currently believe that the blog is in its strongest form yet.

Unlike last year, I actually have some things planned to celebrate this particular anniversary, so let's get started!

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The Top Ten Most Popular Posts from the last Two Years

Because, of course, I am now using a different blogging platform than the one I started with, I feel that it is right for me to commemorate the year and eleven-twelfths that I spent using WordPress. The best way for me to do this is list the ten most popular posts according to the stats from WordPress and list my thoughts about each one.

1. Celebrating the "Return" of the Solo-Mode Flashpoints - 3,062 views.

I'll be honest, I wasn't expecting this one to be in first place!

This post was simply me mentioning that Solo-Mode Flashpoints were now repeatable, something which I'm still a really big fan of. I guess this one attracted so many views because people searched for solo-modes and this came up? I honestly have no idea.

In a similar vein, I want to say that the only reason why the spoiler-free look at 3.2 on the PTS post got a lot of views - not enough to earn a place on this list - is because it mentions the Colossal Monolith by name once, and of course with that exploit people would be searching for how to access it before it was meant to go live...

2. Galactic Sightseeing: the 5 most beautiful planets in-game - 2,078 views.

Ah, yes. This was the first - and currently only - blog post to have been linked on both Massively and the SWtOR Reddit sites, which then for some reason led to Spawn being listed in the external links section on the latter site even though more established blogs - including those which have been around since launch - still aren't to this day.

This of course catapulted the post's views through the roof, although I admit my selection parameters were really quite limiting in retrospect.

3. Potential for Future Species in SWTOR - 1,267 views.

Again, this one's high placing surprises me. 

For the most part, this one is probably one of my most solid blog-posts, although I have since come to realise that I completely forgot to include the Cerean species as part of the "new species" section! 

Whoops.

4. The Companion Comparison: HK-51 vs. HK-55 - 1,255 views.

The only post which I know for sure to have been linked to the SWtOR forums in a similarly-themed topic.

So, let's get this out of the way. Even I admit that this post sounds like someone who had been paid to sledge HK-51 in favour of making HK-55 seem better, a view which I honestly held at the time. Whilst HK-55 is still a decent Companion to have around, the constant slew of HK-themed gifts has severely diminished his once-popular standing amongst the wider community, myself included.

=6. "Of Bugs and Men" or "Why Level 60 Hard Mode Flashpoints were virtually worthless" - 781 views.

This post was written at a time when several things were going wrong for Flashpoints. Level 60 HMs were dropping Basic comms from the bosses and weren't updating for the Weekly, whilst Level 55 HMs were dropping Elite comms and the Weekly was updating only for them. 

So of course this issue was fixed pretty soon after the blog post, rendering it null and void, and yet it continued to attract attention. It's currently the only blog post which has ever had its title changed; it used to be in the present tense but is now in the past tense. 

=6. Critiquing Class Stories #6: The Sith Inquistor - 781 views.

The Class Critiques are some of my favourite posts, and I'm pleased to see that they've made a decent presence known amongst the top ten posts. 

The Inquisitor post was standard. Not the best, not the worst, but at the least decent. There's not much to say about it.

7. Critiquing Class Stories #8: The Imperial Agent - 769 views.

Yup, another Class Critique. Not much to say about this one, except for the fact that at some point in its lifespan the entirety of the content was wiped without my knowledge, something which I only discovered when I decided to link the Critiques to the Accomplishment page...

8. Critiquing Class Stories #2: The Jedi Consular - 684 views.

This is beginning to sound like a cracked record!

9. Revan: Analysing SWTOR's take on the Expanded Universe Legend - 629 views.

I was honestly anticipating this one to be higher.

This post was something which I decided to do as a result of feeling bold after doing the Class Critiques. At the time, this was the only phase of 'SWtOR Analysis' I had planned, and I decided to give it a good conclusion. Now that I've done four phases of this analysis, it doesn't really have as much justification for existing as it did to begin with!

This post used to have a poll for people to vote and say whether they thought his story was done justice or ruined, but it has ceased to function with the transfer.

10. Yavin 4, Turn and Face the Ch-ch-cha-changes - 611 views.

This post was written to celebrate the inclusion of the Devoted Allies gear, the Sith ghosts and their talismans, and the gigantic purple swirling vortex of doom. Along with the Elite Strike Team and the Elite Strike Team's Elite Strike Ship from the Jedi Knight critique, the gigantic purple swirling vortex of doom is something which I grew fond of saying mentally and made use of it as much as possible in the post.

Gigantic purple swirling vertices of doom are rarely so entertaining. 

Due to switching to Blogspot and thus 'hard-resetting' the counter, this list will look entirely different next year. I'm looking forward to seeing which posts become the more popular ones then!

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New Stuff

Because this reboot has put the blog in a really good place now to the extent that I'm actually happy with it, I will be using this milestone as an excuse to put something big into motion.

I'm happy to announce that starting two weeks' tomorrow, something called "Wednesday Warzones" will commence. Remember when I first announced this reboot that I was going to introduce a YouTube channel and get some videos up? Well, the channel is actually alive and functioning but hasn't received any love since I haven't really found any proper purposes for it yet, much to my chagrin.

Wednesday Warzones is going to be my attempt to kickstart this properly. Basically, every two weeks I will post a video highlighting a montage of that last fortnight's "best" PvP matches with friends, guildies, or (very rarely) just by myself, or at least the ones which have been most entertaining even if they're a loss. I'm currently looking at including three-to-five matches maximum per video to keep each one fairly short.

With the advent of this, the post schedule will be changing slightly. Every week when there's a Warzones post, the post that would otherwise be on Thursday will be moved to Friday, but on other weeks the schedule will be staying as Monday and Thursday as per usual.

I've been meaning to do something regular for a couple of weeks now to further create a more defined identity for this blog, and Warzones is going to be a permanent feature for the foreseeable future.

I will be using the channel for other things as well, such as Flashpoints or Operation kills, but these won't receive their own special dedicated posts here like the Warzones. There will, however, be a special monthly round-up post in which I include and comment on any videos which were posted during this time besides the Warzone videos. If there haven't been any others posted all this while, then there won't be a post to this effect.

I'm looking forward to seeing what becomes of Wednesday Warzones and I hope that it is well-received when it does launch.

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So here we are. Two years in the trunk already, and it still feels like I'm only just getting started. Granted, it doesn't help that this is the most active period that the blog has seen thus far, so anything beforehand really feels empty in comparison.

Still, as I've said numerous times before now, I believe that this blog is in a very good place at-present, and I'm looking forward to seeing which direction it goes from now on.