#490 Goodbye WoW Insider

Last Friday, terrible news broke through the gaming side of the internet with the announcement and confirmation that AOL will be closing down their Joystiq branch. This closing includes the main Joystiq website and their sister sites Massively and WoW Insider. The news of WoW Insider’s ending stung quite a bit because I always thought that WoW Insider would last long enough be reporting on the story of Blizzard pulling the plug on their very last WoW server.

As established readers knows that I was a hardcore World of Warcraft player and end game raider for years and WoW Insider was my go to news site for all things in the world of Azeroth. I was a loyal reader, reading all their mage class columns, downloading all of their podcasts, and refreshing their home page multiple times during the day during their coverage of BlizzCON or the first few weeks of an expansion.

A bit of trivia I have shared time and time again,but what made World of Warcraft and  WoW Insider so special to me was that they were catalyst and inspiration for kick starting my own blogging career.

It all started with a 2009 Around Azeroth post with a published screenshot that I submitted. Around Azeroth was a series featured the best community submitted screenshots from World of Warcraft. I, at the time being in Highschool, seeing my in game username shown right on my favorite website not only made my week as well as earning some several nerd points with all my other Warcraft buddies.

it was not much but it was mine (Side note I’m using Archive.today’s service’s because I do not know if any of the WoWInsider links will be active in the next few weeks and beyond after they officially close shop)

Then in 2010 I gathered the courage to submit a few written pieces to WoW Insider when the staff were calling for submissions for their breakfast topic posts, another community driven article series with the purpose was a question to ask their readers every morning. Over the next year and a half, I was able to submit three articles as a paid “AOL guest writer” earning me $10 a post.

LINKS: https://archive.today/NOYvg // https://archive.today/0DDHW // https://archive.today/dsiUC

If getting my screenshot made my week, these made my week. and on top of being a paid job it inserted the thought that I could be one of those online personalities that gets to talk and write about videogames for a living.

Following that, once it was clear that WoW Insider’s Guest writers program was going to to be as frequent as I wanted to to be, I struck out on my own by creating my own website where I could write about World of Warcraft as often as I like, which was the creation of this very blog.

For reference these posts went live in February, July, and September of 2011. I started blogging in December of that year.

Even after I started making my own blogging content, WoW Insider gave me support by publishing my submissions to the weekly Blog Azeroth Shared Topics on Blog Azeroth, a website dedicated to networking and communicating with various other World of Warcraft bloggers from around the internet.

LINKS: https://archive.today/bWFyQ // https://archive.today/BzZYc

Those posts and traffic bumps definitely help my confidence to continue blogging adventure

And WoW Insider was the first time I had my voice recorded for a podcast. If I remember correctly I was the first person to ask the WoW Insider panel on their first live show at PAX East.

That is why it is so tough to see them go, not only were they a cornerstone of my high school and college life but that years and years later it still provided quality World of Warcraft news and editorials. It is because of WoW Insider’s initial and continuing help and support has allowed Be MOP to be so successful on WordPress and any other success that comes from the Be MOP name, whether it be the followers I have on Twitter or the community that I have found with the launching of my Twitch page in April of last year.

Good bye WoW Insider, it is sad to see you take your bow so soon.

Find me on Google+ for updates on this blog

I’m also on Twitter

Be MOP focuses on the world of videogames with my own reflections about the current news and developments that happens throughout the gaming industry. Updates Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays

#488 Heroes of the Storm First Impressions

Over the weekend, due to a combination of some free time, watching various PAX South Streams, and remembering that I actually had the game in my inventory, I booted up Blizzard’s second Free to Play game, the A.R.T.S/MOBA game Heroes of the Storm for the first time to play a few rounds.

I played between the two free ranged and support heroes of that week, Malfurion and Falstad, for a few matches in the Raven and Haunted mines map. I did have a fun time playing the game, winning my fair share of matches and even scoring a few killstreaks here or there, I contribute that to my months of Twitch training.

Its weird starting fresh in new MOBA/ARTS game, relaying on the free champs that week instead of the handful of champs you know so well.

My first impressions is that it is a fun game with more of a focus on map objectives than player kills, and the objectives are fun to partake in. from collecting skulls to power up your bulldozer of a Grave Golem as it marches from one side of the map to the other to claiming capture points to ensure that your team gets the highly prized buff or inflicting a powerful curse or attack on the enemy’s defenses.

I have only played for a handful of matches, so I do not know how I feel about Heroes of the Storm choosing a heavy focus on Talents and upgrading and side-grading the hero’s abilities over the item approach for character improvement. I definitely know that I am not a fan of Blizzard’s gameplay choice to let players pick their champions first and then enter the queue.

I lost quite a few solo-queue matches because our team was comprised of two supports and no damage and that was because there was no time to communicate to the other players and and change our team competition before rolling out.

I do not know how those two complaints will might work with the competitive scene of the game when it comes to the staple pick/ban phase and counting other champion’s play style we see in other games, that is if there is a community interest to move towards a competitive or metagame route.

of course it will, we have competitive Hearthstone tournaments why wouldn’t we have a competitive HoTs scene

Those two complaints are not enough to deter me from the game all together, and I will still plan to play it but recreationally, I know that if I play Heroes of the Storm any more than casually I end up losing money, fast.

I know that if I lose money it will not be because of HoTs’s microtransactions or colorful unicorn mounts but by resubbing to World of Warcraft. It was the same problem I had with Hearthstone. While Heroes of the Storm uses assets from their Diablo and Starcraft games the game is heavily designed with the World of Warcraft Universe in mind, taking a bit of priority over the other Blizzard intellectual properties, with maps, building designs, heroes, mounts, sound effects, and the inclusion of Hearthstones as the item used for recalling back to base.

Even now, after playing a few games, I can feel the itch, the Warcraft itch to resubscribe to reenter the world of Azeroth to revisit those lands and important characters. The itch is especially bad with that new expansion that involves New Outland and time travel. I left World of Warcraft more than a year ago and I know that if I go back I will be lost forever giving $15 a month to Blizzard for the access to a game that I will hardly play.

I wish I could go back to World of Warcraft again, but I just do not have the time, thanks to my current schedule to to allow the time investment for the hours of preparing and committing to a guild that raids end game content continuously and progressively as I would have want.

The kicker is if Blizzard added a special champion costume exclusive to the World of Warcraft subscribers

Another reason that HoTs will not be played anymore than casually is because I already have a main A.R.T.S/MOBA game that I play,on a scheduled basis. A.R.T.S are like MMOs, you can only really choose one to sink enough time into to get the best benefits and I already have one and it’s not this one.

Find me on Google+ for updates on this blog

I’m also on Twitter

Be MOP focuses on the world of videogames with my own reflections about the current news and developments that happens throughout the gaming industry. Updates Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays

#480 The History of Be MOP’s Escape Posts

This past Monday I concluded my last post in the Filler Post series, catching up to the most recent Star Trek motion picture title. Now after closing my third get-out-of-blogging-requirement post I think now would be a good time to take a look back and share all the clever tricks I used over the years to still hit my blogging requirements.

The idea of these non-content blog posts started as a simple idea way, way, back in the day when Be MOP was a Warcraft blog that was focused on the adventures I had through the Azeroth and the Beta of Mists of Pandaria. The post was called, Be MOP #130 Screenshots of Pandaria, and it was just a collection of five of my favorite screenshots from the expansion with clever captions beneath them.

I officially turned the Screenshots of Pandaria idea into a series a month later when college term papers were piling up and I had no time in the semester finals crunch to dedicate to writing and editing a blog post. By the fifteenth edition I moved the Be MOP Blog away from just exclusively talking about Blizzard and World of Warcraft and because of that my Screenshots in the series quickly became over run with screenshots from other PC games that I was playing through and some people were starting to call me out on it.

It was a great series because for a year it gave me a wonderful fall back to have when I could not think of something to write about at the time. While I put my Screenshots series to rest I still had the problem of occasionally hitting a creative drought or a writer’s block and I wrote about those.

Be MOP #271 was simple enough, I had a very meta post that proclaimed and apologizes that I just could not write anything for that day and to make it unique I added a simple picture of a block of wood from Minecraft to still keep it videogame related about a month later I had to resort to using the Writer’s Block series with #286 Return of the Writer’s Block and it was only until the third when I turned it into a Star Wars named series with the third edition, #303 The Writer’s Block Strikes Back and then continued forward with naming all future Writer’s Blocks with the Star Wars Prequel movie titles. When I ran out of Star Wars titles I moved on to the next logical frontier to explore was the final frontier with the Filler Post series that went through all the major Star Wars Movies.

Besides those I also had a few 404 posts as emergency posts I used as well.

If this blog post is about anything it would be offering my most important blogging tip to everyone out there who has or is planning on starting a blog for the new year, the advice is; Always have an escape post up your sleeve. Even if you build your daily schedule for an allotted amount of time each day to write or even think about a blog post odds are eventually something will happen in the other parts of your life that will force you to cut into your blogging time, and during those time it is important to still keep your site updated with content. Even if it is the most pathetic blog post you ever publish, it still put a little bit of effort into it (hence the Star Wars and Star Trek themed non-posts) to prove to your readers and anyone out there that you are still putting effort into your site and that you care about the product that you are making.

Because it is incredibly easy to lose the motivation to go out and make a new post after you skipped one or two of your scheduled blog post deadlines, do not take my word for it just look at the hundreds of dead sites that have not seen a new blog posts in months or even years.

My second piece of blogging advice for everyone is to find a blogging community resource. there was a time I frequently visited Blog Azeroth‘s Shared topic page where Warcraft bloggers would offer shared topics for each week, for everyone to write about it with their own two cents on the issue. There was a time where I could rely on that site to provide me with a third creative requirements that I would have to write about each week.

Find me on Google+ for updates on this blog

I’m also on Twitter

Be MOP focuses on the world of videogames with my own reflections about the current news and developments that happens throughout the gaming industry. Updates Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays

#471 Three Years

Today is a day for celebration, because today is the three year anniversary marking the event when I created this Be MOP blog and published it’s first post on WordPress. As I said in last year’s post (Be MOP #315), this blog was created after my Junior college midterms after I experienced a very early quarter life crisis.

What is impressive is that in my three years of blogging I still have the bragging rights of not missed any of my Monday, Wednesday, Friday blog post deadlines. Three years of trying to balance college midterms, finals, graduations, dealing with the transition away from college life, and all of the random inconveniences that popped up along the way I was still here, updating my blog on the same schedule I created for myself since Day One.

Since my last 2013 anniversary post and now, what now has changed with me and this blog?

At the start of the year I received a 3DS handheld system with a copy of Pokemon Y for Christmas (Be MOP #318) with lead to influx of various Pokemon and Mario posts appearing on this blog. Later in the year I went out and bought a Mario Kart 8 Wii U bundle (Be MOP #391) and went full Nintendo Fan Boy with this blog by writing about almost nothing but Nintendo from October to December.

But how can you blame me? All of those Nintendo exclusive games were fun from beginning to end and it was a refreshing change of pace from almost anything else I played through on my PC. Nintendo was something I did not know I needed until I got it, now it has been a staple of my weekly free gaming time.

It is amazing that the Wii U, the weakest console this gen, has been able to pump out the most amazing games from this year with having Mario Kart 8, Super Mario 3D World, and Smash run at either 720p or 1080p while having the frame rate be locked at 60fps. I have a theory that the people at Nintendo code their games on magic.

This year I also celebrated my one year of unsubscribing from Blizzard’s World of Warcraft, an impressive feat. As I wrote in my post blog when I talked more in-depth about the year from the MMO (Be MOP #408), but enough things have gotten inbetween me and WoW the resubscribing would be a waste of money.

and no amount of emails will persuade me to go back, Blizzard

But out of everything,my most impressive development this year was development of my own Twitch Channel, branching out the Be MOP name from beyond text to video. Since late April, when I was announcing my plans to do start Live Streaming Infinite Crisis and other videogames (Be MOP #370). I have participated in my first 24 hour stream for Extra Life charity event, helping raise $290 dollars to benefit Boston Children’s Hospital. I have also recently reached my 100th day of streaming (Be MOP #454) and shortly after that I hit 100+ followers on my Twitch Channel.

Since my debut as a streamer and now, I have; accepted into Turbine’s Infinite Crisis Twitch Partnership program, joined the Infinite Crisis Community Stream Team, and have even been invited to stream on the official Infinite Crisis Twitch Channel every week as a Community Streamer.

Fun Fact: Because of the old Streaming schedule (M/W/F 11:30- 2:30am and Sat 11-2a) There was a time when I was technically streaming seven days a week

I wonder how long I have to be on Twitch before I can confidently add “Twitch Streamer” to my LinkedIn profile?

Just like my previous yearly posts,

“To make this go full circle here’s a the link to my first post on this blog. Enjoy and I’ll see you back here Monday.”

Find me on Google+ for updates on this blog

I’m also on Twitter

Be MOP focuses on the world of videogames with my own reflections about the current news and developments that happens throughout the gaming industry. Updates Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays

#443 The WoD Pre-launch Patch

From the sudden explosion of hub bub on my Twitter and WordPress feeds I have reached the conclusion that Blizzard has just released their Warlords of Draenorpre-expansion patch on the live servers.

I have not talked about Warcraft in a while, and certain not as much as I used to, since I have cancelled my subscription little more than a year ago. To celebrate this patch going live I decided to revisit some of my favorite WoW news sites, sit down, and read through the most recent patch notes to see what has changed. After reading them all I understand almost none of it. So much stuff has changed since I left, and so much of this patch has changed that changed content that it feels like going back to my old High school, I know the basic layout, but so tiny subtle things has changed, and all the people I knew moved on that it is completely different place compared to when I used to attend. I do understand that the ancient WoW player character models did get a revamp and the fire Mages did receive a buff to their spells so Patch 6.0.2 have earned my approval.

I just wish I could see my main Mage’s new face but I left the option to see the helm on. Kinda kicking myself in hindsight.

I did read up on the Blizzard’s traditional pre-expansion event to entertain and excite the players between now and actual expansion drops. After skimming through the videos and I will say that Blizzard has learned from their butchered Mists of Pandaria pre-expansion content with an actual in-game event with quests, story, and a special dungeon that actually takes place in the virtual world and does not exclusively resides in one little scenario queue. (Be MOP #110)

Professional blogging tip: Never write when you are angry.
Another professional blogging tip: You don’t always need to adhere to the last blogging tip

I also read that Blizzard has rolled the Mists of Pandaria expansion pack into it’s basic game which is, i believe, the quickest Blizzard has ever rolled their past expansion into the main game. Which is really big of them, nothing more to say there but hats off to Blizzard for that move.

I would also use this time to give my thoughts about the next expansion on a whole but because I have been out of the WoW news loop for months I have no idea where to start. Should I talk about the main plot, the player stat change, the change in Blizzard’s game direction? I just do not know. Although I will say that while I was reading through the patch notes now there was a part of me that was making a mental note of all the World of Warcraft/Be MOP posts I could write between the now and when the actual expansion goes live. I did not keep an official count, but I know that was so potential blogging content there that was there could have lasted me months.

As I mentioned in my most recent World of Warcraft post, Be MOP #375, there is nothing in this expansion or in the next one that will ever bring me to Azeroth from a combination of a lack of a social network or guild to go back to and I have moved on from World of Warcraft to greater things in life. But I will always remember the adventures, the fun, and the gaming, writing, and communication skills I picked up along the way with Blizzard and WoW.

“Who can say if I’ve been changed for the better….”

Find me on Google+ for updates on this blog

I’m also on Twitter

Be MOP focuses on the world of videogames with my own reflections about the current news and developments that happens throughout the gaming industry. Updates Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays

#431 What does it mean to be a “Gamer” and other titles

Forward: This post is a long time coming, on top of the recent published articles from various news sites declaiming the title, ‘gamer’ as obsolete and tainted from the recent #GamerGate social media movement.

 

Yup we’re doing this topic. Buckle up

I hold several titles, ‘gamer’, ‘blogger’, and ‘streamer’ as a result of the various choices I have made from my past. I proudly wear those titles now but that was not always the case, there was a time where I had to go through a personal journey in order to build up self respect and confidently announce that I am a gamer, a blogger or a streamer, and in my personal experience all titles went through the same cycle.

 

It always starts out the same with dabbling with the new media or concept, whether it be being gifted my first game,Pokemon Red, by my parents, biting the bullet and starting a World of Warcraft video game blog (this one right here) or committing myself to a constant streaming schedule. At first, for me but I assume many of other gamers out there, there was a period of time where I kept my gaming activity to myself not being the first to bring up videogames, blogging, or streaming in conversations and when I would have those conversations I would be with close friends in the corner of the lunch table in middle school or just as causal blogging side project with my college friends.

During that time I did not refer to myself as a ‘gamer’ or ‘blogger’ but rather ‘a guy who play games’ or ‘a guy who has a blog’ in fear of retaliation and because at the time, it could have been easily disproven that that was someone I was not, a poser or someone jumping on the bandwagon.

For refrenece, at all of these these times only owning a few games or publishing a few dozens blog posts/stream sessions with no real viewership.

 

What makes gaming, blogging, streaming stands out from all of my other hobbies that I have picked up along the way was that I kept to gaming, playing more games, going out and actively looking for gaming news sites and articles and liked minded people. and I kept to my writing and streaming schedule with Be MOP.

Then I got to a point, and again I assume I can say this for many people as well, where I have put so much effort and passion into your hobby that I could not deny the title to anyone, not even to myself. The “I’ve made it point” in many people’s journey.

For reference this was when I was making and rearranging my social calendar to make my World of Warcraft raids, reaching the 60th Be MOP post and when I was starting to decorate and customize my blog’s wallpaper and banner with screenshots I took from the Mists of Pandaria beta. As for Twitch I reached that point when I started to get constant viewers coming back to my stream to watch and interact with me in the chat room.

 

As I was writing this I did not realize I was more or less writing about the steps of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs but if the shoe fits

With all that back story of my gaming life, why does it bother me that there are game journalists out there trying to convince me to move away from the name of gamer? Because I worked incredibly hard to build up the title of gamer and blogger in the eyes of my friend, family, and myself and it is insulting when some when a group of people, from within the same group no less, tries to change what it means to be a gamer by dragging the title through the mud. All in an attempt to shame us away from it because of a few bad apples or an exponential boost in mobile gaming population.

Neither the Democrats or Republicans Party tried send out internal and external memos to their supports to abandon using the word ‘Democrat’ or ‘Republican’ when one or a few of their politicians got caught in a scandal. Both parties stuck to the name because they realize the title “Democrat” or ‘Republican’ does not mean the group of people, but rather an idea that a lot of people group up under and rally behind.The same can be said about the title Gamer, it is not named for the group of people who plays games it is a name for the people who are avid fans who feel passionate about their hobby and goes out on day trips to gaming conventions and who cares about nurturing and growing the media on a whole.

P.S: To bring a counterpoint to the idea that the title, “gamer” is being diluted because of the introduction of causal and mobile games bringing in people that have never played games before; My mother and I are both literate and can and has read books, but only one of us constantly frequents goes down the bookstore, attend book meetings and events, actively go out and read new genres and works from new authors, and thinks the best time to relax is with a blanket and a nice book. She is a ‘reader’ while I casually read books on the side.

Find me on Google+ for updates on this blog

I’m also on Twitter

Be MOP focuses on the world of videogames with my own reflections about the current news and developments that happens throughout the gaming industry. Updates Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays

#419 Talking about my Connections to the Gaming Scene

This Tuesday it seems like the floodgates opened up about an indie game developer behind Depression Quest being accused of using her personal connections and influence to gain favorable news stories about the game the dev made.

Despite everything blowing out of control, and the backlash from the people who was trying to control the story from developing and the major problem that was brought up with this story was not the alleged adulterous techniques that was used but how there was no transparently with the some of the members in video game press when talking about the game dev and the game while it was on greenlit phrase on Steam.

At it is at this time I want to sit down and talk about my past interactions with the gaming industry, my Twitch and this blog and what it means to you and me.

 

First things first, when I created Be MOP a couple of years ago I did not set out to try to build another videogame news website, only the time to update every Monday Wednesdays and Fridays there was no way I could complete with the any of the news sites. So I crafted Be MOP with the intentions of one World of Warcraft player writing about his adventures in the Beta of the Mists of Pandaria and my opinions about the most recent developments, soon after I became burnout on WoW this site soon evolved into a general video game blog about whatever topics I want to discuss.

Over the hundreds of posts I had two public moments I want to bring up, one is a small interaction and the other is more complex and interesting to talk about. Both are not bad but moments but they are things I want to talk about while the internet is on the topic of video game media and transparency.

The first encounter was about a year ago when I met the creator of Neocolonialism on the floor of Boston Fig, while making small talk and buying the preorder of the game I mentioned that I am video game blogger and I have an interest in politics topics and I had my own blog. A while later I received an email from the creator that included with my first advance copy of a game, which helped me write a blog post about the game, as seen in Be MOP #295.

 

Since then I have not been in contact with Subaltern Games in over a year, and that was nothing wild, I bought an indie game, received an advanced copy of the game, and gave my opinion about the game. I would almost not mention it but I did not make any comments about the backstory at time of writing the game.

 

The second interaction with the gaming world is a bit more interesting to talk about.

As many know, my most recent gaming project has been the upkeep of my Twitch channel and hosting a stream four nights a week. In my introduction blog post I mentioned that the main game I would be streaming would be the ARTS/MOBA Infinite Crisis (Be MOP #370).

After doing some research and preparing myself for creating my Twitch project I came to the conclusion that Infinite Crisis had everything I was looking for as a new streamer, it was a game still in the beta, it had a small community, and that game, since being a ARTS/MOBA had a lot of replay value for the stream, and most importantly the game is about superheroes fight each other which gave me, an avid comic book fan, the option to tell stories about my favorite Superhero cartoons and comics. 

Choosing Infinite Crisis for my preferred game to stream was not a random choice. I was first introduced to the game when I signed up and got into the closed beta, which you can read all about in Be MOP # 247. Shortly after the writing the post I dropped the game for a while for other -more complete- games I had in my library.

During my time attending this year’s PAX East I saw the Turbine’s Infinite Crisis presence there and after looking around the booth and seeing how far the game progressed it got me interested enough to pick up the game again, which you can follow in Be MOP #367.

During the few weeks I started streaming Infinite Crisis I stumbled upon Infinite Crisis’s Streamer Partnership program via talking someone who was in my chatroom at the time. After that stream session ended I sent in an application for the program in the middle of May (5/18). The requirements to get into the IC Twitch partnership program is to “meet the requirements of streaming regularly, do not run inappropriate content and show your referral link prominently on your page, [and then] you should hear from us within a couple of weeks.” and continued on with my regular life.

Per the norm, I often gather inspiration for blog posts from the interesting games I have been playing lately and with the sudden influx of playing and talking about Infinite Crisis on my stream four nights a week, we saw the publication of my “DC’s ability to print money with Infinite Crisis” (Be MOP #373) and my “Enough with all the Batmans” (Be MOP #382) posts.

Soon after that (June 28th) i received an acceptance letter from Infinite Crisis congratulating me on getting into the Twitch Partnership program.

But what was it?

Being in the Infinite Crisis partnership program means that each week streamers, like myself, are emailed four codes of the newest and latest released cosmetic costumes of the current champions with the instructions to hand them out to our viewers. While I have not every given cash and I hand out every code, goods goes through me and a cynical person could argue that I am paid with in game items that are valued for real life currency. 

During my streams, whenever I try to hand them out I constantly try to remind and tell people where I got these codes from and why I am handing them out. A bit down the like during another past transparency scandal I started adding this comment in the panel section of my stream:

My shtick is that I come up (or borrow) Comic Book related riddles for each stream session and the first person to correctly answer the riddle wins the code for the night. While this panel might be at the bottom of the screen throughout the stream I am constantly drawing attention this specific panel. 

 

But even before that I made a promise to myself to not about my adventures in the Infinite Crisis game post partnership acceptance,there were a few posts that I wanted to write after “Enough with all the Batmans” but every time I sat down I just felt weird writing it, call it a politician’s intuition. If there was a time I had to write about the news from Infinite Crisis I would make it perfectly that I am in that program. 

What does it mean to you?. But this is also to tell you that you are allowed my viewers to know that this is more than enough grounds to discredit my opinions on Infinite Crisis if you want to and I would understand your skepticism, but I can tell you that if you stop by my stream you can tell I genuinely enjoy the game and I have fun talking about the game. 

As I mentioned before the purpose of this post was to make sure that everyone knows what my interaction is with Infinite Crisis, what I have done to make it known, and what it means for you moving forward. I am planning to continue to write about and stream Infinite Crisis and other videogames for the foreseeable future but I wanted to transparent as can be and open up the lines of communications with you guys as well moving forward.

 

  Find me on Google+ for updates on this blog

I’m also on Twitter

Be MOP focuses on the world of videogames with my own reflections about the current news and developments that happens throughout the gaming industry. Updates Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays

#416 Spare an Extra Buck for Extra Life? Follow Up

It is election season all over the states and just about now all the politicians are coming out of the woodwork shaking hands and asking for money, and I am no exception.

Instead of asking for money for my own political organization to secure my seat in the NH House of Representatives I want to bring to light a charity event that I am a participating in this fall.

 

I talked about this event a few months ago when I signed up with this event, but Extra Life is an organization that gathers players from around the world to come together on October 25 to marathon videogames for 24 hours in order to raise money and awareness for that gamer’s favorite hospital in the Children’s Miracle Network. This is my first year participating in the Extra Life event and my goal is to raise $200 for Boston Children’s Hospital.

So far, between the first time I wrote about Extra Life and now we were able to raise 125 out of 200 but we are still $75 away from reaching our goal, which is way I am writing this post to see in the hopes that we reach the goal before October deadline.

From my political experience I know that blindly asking for money with no payoff will wield little results, so there are a series of thank you to those who donates. Everyone who donates any amount through the my extra life profile, from one dollar to a hundred, will be featured on my  “Extra Life 2014 Sponsors” section on my Twitch channel. Because Extra Life is advertising themselves as a videogame marathoning event, those who donates $1 per hour for the entire day, for a total of $24 or more will be entered into a raffle to name out of our pet chickens that we received as baby chicks earlier this spring. 

She has grown up quite a bit but she’s still just as adorable.

(Post Publishing note: because there was a slight miscommunication between me and my mother when she was writing her blog post about this event, the new rule is that anyone who donates ANY amount will be entered into the raffle to name our pet chicken)

 

As a little extra incentive IF we are able to reach the fundraising goal of $200 before late October I have promised that, come October 25, I would stream my 24 hour gaming marathon on Twitch for everyone to see.

If you are interested to seeing your’s truly try his hand at a 24 hour stream session then head on over to my Extra Life profile and donate to a worthy cause. The Extra Life page accept all major credit cards, all donations are tax-deductible and 100% of the funds raised will be going to Boston Children’s Hospital.

 

Thank you in advance for your generosity

 

Find me on Google+ for updates on this blog

I’m also on Twitter

Be MOP focuses on the world of videogames with my own reflections about the current news and developments that happens throughout the gaming industry. Updates Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays

#408 A year without World of Warcraft

I was looking back at my old posts this month and I noticed that it was this month, one year ago, when I made the decision to end my multiple year long, uninterrupted, World of Warcraft account (Be MOP #253)

this was the same time as I was graduating from college, kinda like the last sentence of the previous chapter of my life

 

What is more impressive with is that I have stayed away from World of Warcraft, not coming back for the Siege of Orgimmar patch, the when the reveal and the beta of the Warlords of Draenor was announced. Unlike some of my other friends I did leave the years on Azeroth bitter or looking back on my years playing with bitterness. If you remember I left World of Warcraft not because a game decision from Blizzard or because I hit a gamer’s equivalent of ‘rock bottom’ it was because I was guildless and  I was burnt playing one game, almost exclusively, for years.

Looking back I am glad my years in Azeroth, it was a costly experience yes, but it was an experience none the less. It was only from my years of playing World of Warcraft: I have realized and got a hands on experience on what is needed for a good team composition and what makes an amazing teammate (Be MOP #103).  Because of the years of listening to World of Warcraft podcasts and reading the strategy guides of the latest 5 man dungeons and raids, I have experience and learned about good and bad game play mechanics which I used when describing why Super Mario 3D Land was fun for me (Be MOP #349)

Most importantly of all playing World of Warcraft gave me the opportunity to create this blog, and with that I have dramatically improved my writing style and techniques which is amazing considering a few years ago I had some terrible writing and testing anxiety. While this blog has not cured my anxiety, I have seen improvement over the years in how I write from forcing myself to write something -anything- every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

 And World of Warcraft  has continued  helped me even after leaving the game

World of Warcraft was the gate way to the PC gaming platform, before WoW I never picked a PC game having gaming experience be limited to the family Nintendo system, but over the years I have bought better and better gaming laptops to handle the newest expansions and to preform better when I am needed the most in a raid. As a result I had a pretty nice machine to adequately run current PC games on Steam.

It was only after WoW when I started to truly pay attention to the other offers (humble Bundles and weekly sales) that were happening on the other side of the PC gaming world

 

Because of World of Warcraft and blogging about it for so long it has gave me the blogging experience on how to write blog posts  continue blogging about general videogame topics, something I do not think I could have succeed in the way that I did the get go. All that blogging experience and confidence helped me take the leap into creating, and broadcasting on my own Twitch account, something I know I could not have done without this blog giving me confidence and experience on how to talk to people with my own voice.

As a result from my year of writing about other games all these posts has helped me focus and form my own opinions about other videogame topics. From the silliness of a moral dilemma I have with Tf2’s hats (Be MOP #254) to the more pressing problems with pre-ordering games, hacking up content of the main the game to sell as exclusive gaming platform perks or DLC for extra profits to, to the videogame company’s love of  Bullshots (Be MOP #348).

Now, most importantly, I do not have to worry about getting the most value out of my monthly subscription I feel less guilty spending my nights playing games of other generas and a because I am no longer in a dedicated raiding group I have a free-er schedule to actually play these games. A full time job does interfere with my preferred gaming schedule but because my job gives me money each week to buying MORE games and other things, I am inclined to let my job eat up the majority of my week.

Looking back, even though I know I am never going back to World of Warcraft (Be MOP #375) I  do not regret any of years leveling up my characters, chain running instances and raids, grinding for dailies, or hunting for the rare achievements in the game because it helped be grow into a better gamer and a better person on and off line.

 

Find me on Google+ for updates on this blog

I’m also on Twitter

Be MOP focuses on the world of videogames with my own reflections about the current news and developments that happens throughout the gaming industry. Updates Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays

#400 How Far We’ve Come

Today is a big milestone for me, this Monday is the 400th Be MOP post! What makes this milestone truly impressive is that it is the 400th Be MOP post without skipping a beat on my Monday, Wednesday, Friday schedule that I have set in place with my first post that I made two and a half years ago. This means I wrote through all of my college finals, every sick day, every snowstorm that caused a blackout, and everything that happened to me in my Post-college life.

Looking back on some of my first couple of month’s posts it is amazing how short some those post actually were.

 

I have mentioned this before but the Be MOP blog was the result of a winter time walk down main street of my college town, the week before my Juniors finals, and experiencing an early Quarter-life crisis when I realized that I was just a Political Science student, with no minor, soon to go out to the world in just a few short years.

To top it off were people out there who were just a little bit older than me making a living from playing and writing videogames, a job option that was very appealing to me, and I was no where close to being on that track for that sort of career path. Although looking back I was already making some money from writing about videogames, it was just too inconsistent for my liking.

I was actually waiting for WoW Insider’s next call for submissions, which was scheduled to return soon before coming to the realization that I could publish these thoughts by myself.

 

When I first started BeMOP.wordpress.com so long ago I had no idea that it would last for this long, even during my transition from experiencing burnout from World of Warcraft to writing about PC and general gaming events.

And because of little blog I have:

• dramatically honed my writing abilities
• 200+ WordPress followers
• a Twitter account and now it has grown to 500+ followers
• the confidence to add ‘blogging’ to my resume. (the same resume that I submitted to get my current post-college job)
• started a Twitch Stream and soon after got accepted in the Streamer Partnership Program from Infinite Crisis.

This one email made my week

 

For today I just want to say, ‘Thank you’ to everyone who ever stopped by or left comments on this site, swung by my Twitch Stream, follow me on Twitter and even enduring through every single political inspired posts about videogames, literally none of this could be possible without you guys and I thank all of you because of this. It really makes my days and helps motivate me to push through the days when I was hit over the head with writing block and I have the days when I do not want write about anything.

To anyone who is still hesitant about starting or continuing their blogging/streaming experience, start now and just keep going. You might not always pump out your best quality works all the time but you will eventually improve day by day, week by week. Even if you do not get noticed right away, it is better to start building a background of quality content that you can pull up any time to prove you have a solid history of writing or producing content rather than waiting to come up with the perfect way get famous with your debut.

 

Find me on Google+ for updates on this blog

I’m also on Twitter

Be MOP focuses on the world of videogames with my own reflections about the current news and developments that happens throughout the gaming industry. Updates Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays