We’ve seen a wave of notable WoW bloggers hanging up their keyboards lately. It got me to thinking – how many old WoW blogs are still left around?
Playing WoW in the early days was quite a different experience than it is now. There were not countless online information sources for you to browse through to learn every little detail about the game. Your information came from Thottbot, or maybe Allakazam. Wowhead came much later. There were almost no YouTube videos. There was no accessible Elitist Jerks forum. If you wanted to learn about your class or a raid boss, your best bet was to read blogs.
WoWInsider goes back to November of 2005, so its the grandfather of WoW blogs. However, none of the original authors are still with them. Their structure makes it so they can be continuous even with frequent writer turnover. Tobold goes back even farther but his blog is not just a WoW blog. There was a huge surge in the number of personal WoW blogs in 2007, which is when I discovered the expansive depth of the WoW blogosphere.
I remember the first few blogs I encountered and read by in my early days of WoW – Resto4Life, Parry! Dodge! Spin!, BigRedKitty, and Frostbolt. All of those have long since shut down. However, Frostbolt is still viewable, even though it is not being updated. I started my historical research project there – looking through antiquated evidence on the corpses of dead blogs. I decided to check out Frostbolt’s blogroll. It is still listing the blogs that he read back in those days.
I went down his list of blogs, and the only two that were listed there that are still posting now are Kinless’ Chronicles and Gray Matter. Kinless has switched to Rift. Does that mean that Gray Matter is the oldest from the wave of early WoW blogs? His archives go back to September 2007.
On a hunch I went to check Big Bear Butt. I know I’ve been reading his stuff for a long while. His archives go back to August 2007, so he started just before Gray Matter. Maybe his is the oldest personal WoW blog still running.
Looking further, I found that one of my favorite bits of WoW entertainment, Need More Rage, has posts going to July 2007. Could this be the oldest active WoW blog?
Nope. Checking around some more, I found that Mania’s Arcania has posts going back to April 2007. Mystic Chicanery has posts from February 2007. Leafshine goes back even farther – to January 2007.
Kaliope’s WoW Crafting Blog goes all the way to November 2006. I remember reading that blog when I first disocovered online WoW research tools. I was kind of surprised to see it still up and running. I know that WoWHead has satisfied all of my crafting research needs. Its neat that she has kept her niche in the online community.
After lots of browsing around, the longest-running personal WoW blog that I could find is Blessing of Kings. Coriel started the blog in December 2005 and has continued to post regularly until now. That’s a pretty amazing feat of longevity, especially when you consider that the focus and high level of content has not diminished in all that time.
Have I missed any? Are there any that have been around longer than Blessing of Kings?
Very nice post!
Back in the days I would mostly go on Allakhazam and WorldofWar.net (which is now wow.incgamers.com) and of course Thottbot.
I don’t remember going on any specific blogs back then.
Right now I visit you
Daughter of Ravenholdt Manor -> http://ravenholdtmanor.blogspot.com/
Mana Obscura -> http://www.manaobscura.com/
Druid Main -> http://druidmain.blogspot.com/
Psynister’s Notebook -> http://psynister.wordpress.com/
and the oldest one (started in May 2007)
Confessions of a Part-time Panzerkin -> http://panzerkin.blogspot.com/
Some of these are on game/posting hiatus. I particularly like Psynister and Panzerkin. Druid Main is on hiatus. Mana Obscura seems to be on a game hiatus but still posting.
Thanks for your tracking. I had found Gray Matter a few months ago but had forgotten about it and I didn’t know Kaliope but I’m a trade fiend so I’m definitely bookmarking this one.
Cheers!
Need More Rage actually done started out as “Diary of an Upwardly Mobile Orc” in Jan 2007. Were hosted on the now defunctified Vox. Weren’t no easy way fer ta migrate it ta Blogger, but I did get it archived over at WordPress.
Leafshine actually started bloggin’ ’bout WoW in beta, on a different blog. Cain’t be bothered fer ta remember what the name were. Dunno if he wrote continuous about it or not, though.
Thanks for the clarification! I’ll have to do some digging about Leafshine.
One comment to show the age of WoW. The reason why there were no WoW video’s on Youtube when WoW launched, was because Youtube didn’t exist at the time. WoW is older than Youtube.
My mind boggles when I think of this: how much change in just a few short years. Also, how we now couldn’t imagine life without Youtube (in WoW-terms or otherwise). Amazing….
My blog and Hogit’s were probably the first WoW blogs that came out. Don’t remember when Hogit started his, but mine started on 2004, during the last months of closed beta.
I went through my feed reader today and culled anything without an entry in 2011. It is somewhat depressing.
My blog goes back from Nov 2006 and has been WoW based since then. In the early days I wrote about other stuff there too, but now those have been forked into twoother blogs, so that the WoW content can be specific.
Looking forward to looking at the blogs you mentioned. Great resource.
Great looking blog with some awesome WOW information. It is definitely not like it use to be. Thank you