Admin: Post Three Hundred

• It's that time again. Welcome to the three hundredth post here at Bullet Points. Just like last time, this feels like the perfect time to reflect on where the blog has gone over the last hundred posts.


• Just like the run from 100 to 200, reaching three hundred took me about seven months. I can't see my posting frequency change much for the foreseeable future. I still enjoy writing for the four of you still reading, so I'm not going anywhere. At the same time, I don't have enough interesting things to post about to do any more than I am. Whether what I already post about is all that interesting is open for debate.


• I started collecting site metrics about a year ago because I am a little bit of a freak. The cool thing about it is that I get find out about readers that are either passing through or lurking quietly without drawing attention to themselves. Please don't think that just because you don't comment that I don't love you. I lurk on too many blogs and never comment to ever pass judgment.


• One of the benefits of watching all these numbers is to see the readership grow. Comparing the last seven months to the prior seven shows an approximately eighty percent increase in page views. I attribute most of that increase to the attention I got for blogging about Champions Online. The fervor around the game has passed, but some people have been nice enough to stick around anyway. For those of you looking to improve your blog's profile, I suggest waiting for the next bandwagon to come along and jump on. It really works.


• From the top five posts on the site, two are old Free Realms favorites, both of which are almost a year old now. Three other posts have climbed up, though. The top post is my Top Five Things To Do Before Cataclysm. Cataclysm continues to be a big topic, so I'm not surprised people are feeling nostalgic about the old world. My Q&A about Champions Online pulled quite a few hits, mostly on the strength of the words "Kevin Poe" in that article. That guy is such a pain. Rounding out the top five was the news about Turbine adding a solo option for the epic quests in LotRO. An amazing update which I would love to try out if LotRO wasn't still crashing my computer.


• Where in my last anniversary post I could identify definite gaming focuses, this cycle shows an almost gleeful bouncing around from game to game. If anything, the theme has been my triumphant return to single player gaming. Games like Mass Effect 2, Dragon Age: Origins, and Grand Theft Auto IV kept me quiet busy. I enjoyed the solo options in primarily cooperative games like Left 4 Dead and Borderlands. And in the last month I've rediscovered why I bought an Xbox 360 with Assassin's Creed and Brutal Legend. Not that I'm giving up on MMOs just yet. That lifetime sub for Champions Online has lived up to its promise, so I'll be in and around Millennium City whenever the mood strikes me.


• One of the side effects of all my gaming is that I've done a lot less reading. And thus there's been a lot less blogging about books. I also cut way back on my comic buying, but I wasn't blogging about that so much anyway. Heck, I haven't even killed time with a random Top Five post for a while. Hmm.


• On the creative side, my Microfiction stories have been few and far between. That's the kind of thing where something pops out only when the mood strike. On the other hand, I just started my Unexplored Worlds series. Focusing on encounters for the pen-and-paper roleplaying games gives my creativity the kind of structure it needs to produce regular work. I'm not sure how many of you still roll a d20 with any regularity, but feel free to use this stuff as inspiration for your own games.


• With any luck, we'll see post four hundred before the end of the year. I look forward to seeing where the journey takes us.

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