A thought occurred to me this evening while responding to comments on my gimmicks post: I write some of my best material in comments, rather in the posts themselves.

It seems odd to me. I mean, I typically draft and redraft posts, sit on them for days, remove great swathes and so on, all with the aim of hitting “Publish” on a piece of (hopefully) well-formed and well-reasoned prose. When replying to comments, on the other hand, I tend to let my thoughts flow more freely and don’t usually spend too much time on editing.

I think the reason why I personally feel I write better in comments is that I’m responding to something specific, which focuses my mind and forces me to really examine my thoughts and opinions in one particular light. When I’m writing the initial post I can find myself trying to corral multiple thoughts on a given subject down into some sort of coherent whole, sometimes in quite a short space of time, and sometimes there are inconsistencies and things I’m not 100% settled on that make it through.

Commenters are very good at spotting those, as well as throwing new thoughts into the mix that help crystallise things for me. Comments can make you ask “Did I mean to say that?”‘ or “How could I express that more clearly?”, as well as thinking “I really hadn’t considered that side of it before”. All of which makes for a better blogger.

Anyway, this is all a roundabout way of saying to blog readers that their comments are extremely valued, much appreciated and a hugely important part of the process, and to bloggers to embrace the dialogue that you can have with commenters even if they don’t share your point of view.

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• Beginnings

Yes, still here, although I’m aware that there’s been quite a long gap between posts in the last few weeks, which was a product of a few circumstances and projects that have squeezed my time quite a bit.

Such as?

One of those things is that I’ve recently become an Officer and co-Raid Leader in my current guild, which is an honour but also a lot of work!

As anyone who’s been part of guild leadership will testify, the run up to patches of any kind and expansions in particular are some of the busiest times behind the scenes: you tend to have a lot of roster changes and main swaps needing discussion and attention, your guild’s policies need reviewing and maybe rewriting in preparation for the new content, and that’s on top of the general flood of new information that you’ll be expected to get to grips with. Plus, you know, raiding as well!

It’s not my first rodeo, as they say, but the last time I was involved in guild leadership was around a year ago so there’s a lot to relearn.
Fortunately, a new site launched a couple of weeks ago called MMOLeader, run by some of the big names in MMO leadership. I’ve been keeping an eye on it, although I’m mostly absorbing rather than contributing so far.

Anyway, the upshot is that you might spot a few more leadership-related posts turning up here from time to time. They’ll have their own category as always, so you can avoid them if you like.

So what else is new?

Well, now that Beta raiding seems to be hitting its stride I’m beginning to tap into the flow of information to put together strategy guides for the upcoming Tier 11 raids. I’ve got the menu sorted out but I’ve not got any of the strategies ready to post yet; they’ll start appearing over the next few weeks though, as and when I get time.

There probably won’t be many actual posts until Cataclysm itself, since I’ll be spending my time on strategies and guild stuff. I’ll be back with a vengeance in December though.

I also wanted to say that I’m not raiding on the Beta, and this is a conscious decision.
I’m quite happy to help beta test the solo content and some dungeons, but I want to march into the new raids for the first time with my guildmates lined up by my side, so I’m not doing any Beta raiding.

Will there be a Cataclysm Disc guide?

Yes. I’m working on that in the background as well. I don’t know if it’ll get posted much before Cataclysm gets released, but it will arrive at some point!

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I’m sure it’s a result of blind luck, rather than because someone at Blizzard reads my blog and decided to hand-select me for an invite, but for whatever reason I got a beta invite this morning.
And already I’ve hit a problem, I can’t copy a character to the beta realm because it claims I have no valid WoW account on my Battle.net account. Apparently this means the servers are down for maintenance. Ah well, it’s not like I could play at work anyway…

As far as the blog is concerned I will be breaking with my informal policy of not posting Cataclysm information until later in the process when it’s a lot less likely to change, because frankly I’ll have stuff to report or comment on, and this is my blog (cathedra mea, regulae meae, as Sheldon would say).

However, since I respect that people might not wish to see spoilers. So what I intend to do it flag all Cataclysm beta posts with the [Cataclysm Beta] tag just like this one is, place them all into the Cataclysm Beta post category, and tag them with “Beta”. I can’t automatically keep them out of the RSS feed, so if you do see an inadvertant spoiler I’ll apologise now, but I will do all I can do to flag these posts visibly.

Might be an interesting test of whether I can heal without addons (nothing like a good bandwagon to jump on!)

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Hi, my name’s Malevica and I’m a healoholic. Welcome to my first, tentative foray into writing my own blog rather than commenting on other people’s.

Who I am, and why I’m doing this

I’m Malevica. I began playing as a Warlock in late Vanilla on the Oceanic servers (hello >1k ping) before I rerolled a Priest on the EU servers in early TBC. That’s when I fell in love with healing and I’ve not fallen out of love yet. I currently have five healing characters at level 80: 2 Priests, a Shaman, a Paladin and lately a Druid as well. My main 25-man progression raiding experience is as a Priest.

Why am I writing a blog? I’m an analytically-minded person and I find that articulating my thoughts helps me to work through them systematically and come to measured conclusions. It’s also somewhat cathartic to dissect an experience and commit it to words. I also hope that others might find my thoughts interesting or useful.

What this blog will be

Well, who knows? But I do have some intentions that will help direct the evolution of the blog.

I intend that this blog be:

• Primarily a discussion of endgame healing – this is my sphere of experience so it makes sense to keep this as my focus. I may touch on wider aspects of the game such as PuGs, guild leadership and raid leadership when they present themselves.
• A mixture of personal experience and opinion, and objective analysis – this isn’t a hardcore theorycrafting blog, neither is it purely a vent for ranting. Both may appear, but I will seek a balance.
• Updated approximately weekly – I might post more often, but generally I’d prefer to write fewer better posts than force an unrealistic schedule.

What this blog will not be

I know my limits, so I do not intend for this blog to be:

• Perfect from day 1 – this is a hobby and an experiement for me, so it will start off a bit rusty and (hopefully) improve and develop over time.
• A news blog – let’s be honest, WoW.com and MMO-Champion will get there first. Obviously I do intend to be current and relevant, but I’m not racing to break news.
• To everyone’s tastes – I’m writing for myself, and for people who like what I write. If you don’t like my style or content then I’m fine with that. There are thousands of blogs on the internet, including something for just about anyone. In particular I’m quite verbose and I tend to advocate adaptation rather than “QQ”.

What the name means

Inspiration for the blog name came from a Priest that I came across in a Sunken Temple PuG while levelling. He shall remain nameless, but the screenshot below tells the story adequately. People were genuinely typing “h” in chat throughout the run. I honestly hope this was an alt messing with lowbies. I must look him up one of these days.

And finally

Perhaps it’s a little early for this, since I’ve not actually managed to post anything yet, but for this blog you have to thank (blame?) Karatheya of Cold Comfort whose posts and their comment box set me off along the road of community discussions and writing on the web. CC is a well-written and thought-provoking blog discussing guild and other leadership topics, and I can’t recommend it enough.

There’s also a couple of guides which have been both instructive and reassuring: one from WoW.com and another from World of Matticus. Hopefully their advice will prove itself in the coming months as this blog develops.

Last but not least I’d like to recommend to any healer to check out PlusHeal for some excellent discussions, guides and advice. The people there are helpful and knowledgeable.

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• The Value of Commenters
• Knock, knock!
• [Cataclysm Beta] I’m in the beta!