Three years of Ravalation

Ravalation is three years old. Hurray for me! I guess. I am two weeks too late with the celebration, but there was simply too much to write about. As confusing as blog anniversaries are (should I give out virtual cake or something?), I decided to write a post about it in the fashion I did with my blog's first anniversary. Prepare for a lot of navel-gazing. After all, isn't that what birthdays are all about?

A short history

• My blog started off with this short post at March the 27th 2012.
• I found my place in the gamer blog community during the Newbie Blogger Initiative (NBI) of that year, for which I'm still very grateful. Without it, I wouldn't have met many amazing people.
• As I've mentioned briefly before, I became ill during the course of 2013, causing a period of less or no posts during my time of (partial) recovery.
• I've started writing again since January the 15th of this year. While it's still hard for me to keep being positive at times, I think I've been doing okay.
• 3 Years ago, I wrote about LotRO as my main game and SWTOR as my new game. Now, I write about SWTOR as my main game and Guild Wars 2 as my new game. Is Guild Wars going to be my new main game in the future? I honestly have no idea. I'm still having loads of fun in SWTOR.

Ravalation (f.l.t.r.) in 2012, 2013 and 2015.

Pageviews

Pageviews are sort of a taboo in the blogging world, because, oh, it's not all about the pageviews and if you talk about it you show your (un)popularity for everyone to see, oh noes etc.

Well, I found it fun to read back my 1st anniversary post and see how my blog was doing back then compared to now, so I'm going to ignore the taboo and write about it anyway. After all, it's not like I'm making money with my blog or am planning to do so. Maybe it'll even bring some insight or interesting observations for your own blogging. If it does, I'd love to read about it in the comments.

But first, some educational graphs (produced especially for you by the amazing Marinka):

Observation 1): not posting on your blog is bad for pageviews (eureka).

Observation 2): unless you don't have an audience yet, then it doesn't really matter how much you post (see the start of 2012) - although, of course, you'll never build one if you don't post at all.

Observation 3): although you can't see it very well in the graph anymore, the original NBI tripled my pageviews - thanks NBI.*
Observation 4): I've started following a blogging scheme, so hopefully my amount of posts per month won't go up and down as much anymore - no promises, though!

Ravalation has a total of 193,457 pageviews.

Recent popular posts

I've only included the posts I wrote since January 2015, because the list would look pretty much the same each year otherwise: the older posts obviously still accumulate pageviews. The post with the most pageviews of all time is still LOTRO: Should you play a loremaster? (7173 pageviews).

1) Aerial photography in the Old Republic
2) Blood Hunt HM review: hardmode flashpoint is hard
3) LOTRO's transformation from behind the scenes
4) The Torhead closure within the fanscape
5) The great hunt for a decent outfi

I think it's cool that it's a varied list containing posts about SWTOR, Guild Wars 2 and LOTRO. This means that you guys like reading about whatever game and not only like reading about, say, loremasters in LOTRO!

Disclaimer: this is not a loremaster, but elementalists are allowed nowadays, too.

Comments

1) Happy new year: looking back and forth (30)
2) The great hunt for a decent outfit (25)
3) On the road to destitution with the outfit designer (13)
4) Exploring in Guild Wars - part 2 / The Liebster Award (12)
5) Pipe dreams: SWTOR items I'd like to own for reals (11)

I always think it's funny to compare the posts with most comments and most pageviews to each other, because they rarely overlap. My most viewed posts are always informative (how to do this or that in a game) or news related and barely have any comments. The 2015 winner in this regard is my most viewed number 2) (about SWTOR's Blood Hunt flashpoint), which actually wins the least comments contest by being my only blog post with 0 comments.

The blog posts with the most comments are usually more personal and opinionated. They cost a lot less time to make than informative articles and form the majority of my posts. I generally enjoy writing such posts more, although I think it's fun to have a mix of both types.

Hall of fame

As I just sort of revealed already, I'm a big fan of comments. I mean, pageviews don't really say anything: for all you know that's just an army of spammers passing by ("nah, this one isn't worth the bother, carry on"). But if I get a comment on a post I just wrote, my day is good.

So therefore hereby a special thank-you to the five top commenters of 2015:

1) XxMLG_R4kun0_Noscope420xX
of Shards of Imagination (32!)
2) Shintar of Going Commando (19)
3)/4)/5) Pixelkaffe of... (wait for it) Pixelkaffe (6)
3)/4)/5) Atherne of Atherne's Adventures (6)
3)/4)/5) Lothirieth of Wandering through digital worlds (6)

I already gave Rakuno a honourary griffon for leaving so many comments last time and he seems to be determined to keep his spot. So this time, rather then give him another griffon, I'll post this hall of fame somewhere on my blog for a month. You guys certainly deserve the spotlight!

And of course I'd also like to thank everyone else who takes the time to visit and read my gibberish (yes, that would be you). On to the fourth year!

* This is a not-so-subtle product placement for the upcoming NBI-event: if you're a newish or wannabe gamer blogger, be sure to participate in this year's event in May. There's an introductionary Twitter event going on next week (check the calendar on the website).