The NBI of 2015: Return of the SWTOR blogs

This year's NBI is over: three hurrays for the Class of 2015!

For me it was the third time participating; the second time as a sponsor. I was looking at the blogging archive of fellow blogger Rowan of I Have Touched the Sky, one of my examples when I was still a newborn blogger, and saw that I have been reading his blog for over three years now. Then I noticed that he has only been writing for five, so I was there for the largest part of it! And suddenly I felt very old. Believe me, time flies when you're writing blogs...

The NBI as a sponsor

I suspect that the way sponsors are involved with the NBI greatly varies from person to person. I didn't initiate any writing prompts or challenges myself, but I still felt very involved. The NBI started off for me with writing this introductory post to the NBI and telling a handful of new SWTOR blogs about the initiative. About half of them actually joined, so that was pretty cool. Then I added the NBI blogroll to the right to my blog and made it my mission to visit and comment on at least one newbie blog a day. Thinking about how much comments mean to me, I thought this was one of the small things I could do to as an individual to make newbies feel welcome and connected to the community. I might have missed one or two days, but I think I mostly made my goal.

Although I didn't write any advice posts (reading and commenting on all those blogs actually took quite some time!), I had e-mail contact with three newbies offering advice and managed to contribute to one Talkback Challenge and the Screenshot Safari.

So what did the newbies think of the efforts we sponsors put in? Here are some reflections on the past May by the class of 2015. Just the ones I've come across, so if you wrote one that is missing, please comment and I'll add it:

• In Character: Community
• Tyrannodorkus: Thank you NBI
• Gamer Girl Confessions: NBI: Thank yous
• Zerneblog: Bringing it all back home (well, in a way)
• Waiting for Rez: Anecdotal Feedback from a Newbie Blogger
• Lair of the Wolf Dragon: Looking back on #NBI2015

Luckily, everyone seems to have enjoyed the event, although Waiting for Rez also has some honest critique:

I learned of the event through Syp’s blog, Bio Break and from there went to the official website. There was a sign up for new bloggers and one for sponsors but when I went to announcements and information almost everything there was from last year. I was expecting a breakdown of what would happen over the course of the month or a schedule of writing prompts, something to tell me what I should do as a participant but if it was there, I couldn’t find it. Without those things I had no idea what I had just signed up to participate in.

He has a point. I remember looking at the NBI website a few days before the first of May and all I could find were outdated posts, too. I almost started doubting myself if it would really be starting this May, since the blogging community seemed to be so quiet. I reckoned it was probably buzzing on Twitter, which I was missing since I don't tweet. I was vaguely concerned for newbies that might not tweet either.

And then there were two different ways of signing up (filling in a form and posting a topic on the forum), which I thought was confusing. I still don't know why I filled in that form and entered my e-mail address as a sponsor, because I didn't receive any e-mail by the NBI the past month. Maybe that is still to come? One of the reasons for writing my introductory post was that I wanted the newbie blogs I contacted to have some sort of overview and the official website didn't give that.

Overall, I think the enthusiasm and positive effect of the NBI definitely was there, but these are some organizational things we can learn from for next year.

The SWTOR blog miracle

In a post called NBI Class of 2015 on I Have Touched the Sky, Rowan makes the observation that SWTOR blogs are represented exceptionally well this year. Out of the 22 blogs that participated in the class of 2015, no less than five are dedicated to SWTOR. That is quite a number. For instance, I saw only two dedicated WoW blogs this year.

This is partly my 'fault', because I informed the new SWTOR blogs I knew of about the NBI coming up. But even then I think it's a symptom of SWTOR's apparent popularity. When I started blogging about SWTOR (which actually already was at the start of this blog in 2012, but LOTRO still took a lot of space back then), the amount of SWTOR blogs I knew of could be counted on one hand. When I returned from my extended blogging break in 2014, new blogs started to emerge rapidly. My current SWTOR blogroll shows a maximum of 10 latest blog posts, and it's often filled up with posts from only the last few days. If I press "Show all", I count an impressive total of 25 SWTOR blogs that have posted in the past month! And that's not even everything, because there are also general gaming blogs that write about SWTOR that are absent on the list, like Rowan's, who's on my general blogroll.

I think it is indeed like Bhagpuss commented on Rowan's post: "I suspect it's [SWTOR, red.] going to be more of a long-term, slow-burn success than most of us ever imagined it would be."

One last treat

To end with, a friend of mine started up a SWTOR blog recently, but I only found out when the NBI was pretty much over already. So if you can spare a minute, check out their promising new blog:

It's based on experiences in SWTOR, but I think it will appeal to a broader audience, with subjects that any MMO player will recognize. I would describe the main topic as 'gamer psychology', presented in an unusual format. I'm not going to give too much away; it's best if you check it out yourself. Prepare to be surprised!