Is this a WoW blog or not? The future of Sunmurma

I think it is, unfortunately. A WoW blog, that is.

I recently changed the subheading of Sunmurma to read “striving for variety and falling flat on my face.” It used to say “formless, random, casual posting.”

As my blogging about WoW has ebbed, so have my readership numbers. When it has stayed on course with current events in-game, the numbers have historically been higher.

While it’s difficult to be 100% specific (due to the vagueness of interpreting “home page” views), a cursory look at my blog stats shows that somewhere between 85-95% of my 29k total views over the life of this blog are of WoW-related articles. I’ve written 203 posts to date, and 101 of them are about WoW, so it looks like half of my posts are generating nine-tenths of the traffic.

By extension, it’s safe to say that as my latest, most popular WoW-related posts become obsolete, and I continue to write about different topics, my average number of page views will continue to fall, and eventually approach a limit of, say, 40-to-50-ish views per day. This takes into account that people may find this blog for those WoW articles forever, and adds those views to the 10-15 non-WoW-related views that I seem to get each day.

Oh no!! *scrambles to renew WoW subscription…..

Just kidding.

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I’m struggling a little with the idea of what this blog is. While it’s intended to be a diverse blog, it really has been WoW-heavy. Writing WoW posts brings in WoW-playing readers, which in turn leads to a percentage of those readers adding the blog to their readers, blogrolls, and bookmarks. Articles move up to the front page of certain search term results. Posts get linked on other blog posts. Etc. And with the popularity of the game, it feeds on itself. Thus, Sunmurma is basically a WoW blog.

I’m not putting down the work that I put into those posts; they have played a part in my enjoyment of my hobby, as well as in my development as a writer. However, they overshadow everything else that I write. Other than my recent Baseball Hall of Fame post, which happened to be timely (a quality rarely found in my non-WoW posts), I have written nothing that has garnered more than 300 views. In comparison, I have a couple of dozen WoW articles that have gotten more than 300 hits, including one that has over 7,000.

So, it’s a WoW blog. Unfortunately.

The question is, will it always be?

Assuming that I do quit the game, which looks likely, I will continue to blog about other topics. I enjoy blogging – and what I’ve accomplished with this blog, from a writing standpoint, has far exceeded my original expectations.

However, I have several options for doing so, and that is what I’m struggling with. Here are a couple of them:

1. Keep writing Sunmurma, here at WordPress.

One option is to keep going here at Sunmurma. I set this up originally to be a topically open-ended blog. It became more of a WoW-related one as a result of me following my whims. I can grit my teeth and keep going, powering through and attempting to change the overall picture or definition of what this blog is… but that seems like a tough task – it may be a safe choice, but I fear that I may also lose my identity as a “guy who blogs about WoW” in exchange for “some guy who blogs, that people don’t care about.”

I feel that there is some material here that is as good as, or better than, my best WoW posts. It’s enough to build upon. However, I fear that Sunmurma will always be an enigmatic, WoW-related blog if I do this.

2. Create a new blog, here at WordPress or somewhere else.

Another option is to abandon this blog, partially or totally. It could be done in a few different ways. I could create a different blog, make it topic-specific, and keep this one as a personal, casual blog (kind of the reverse of what Big Red Kitty did with his blog, Brain Needed Space). I could just create a new blog and set up shop there, retiring this one. I could take the name Sunmurma somewhere else, away from WordPress, and start Sunmurma over. I could follow in the footsteps of Andrew (who retired Of Teeth And Claws last year to set up the excellent Systemic Babble): create a new, more diverse blog, transfer over select posts from Sunmurma, and retire this one.

These options are attractive to me, although I feel that it’s inevitable that I will detach my writing from a significant portion of those who read my blog on anything resembling a regular basis if I do this. Perhaps it’s a silly fear… and by the way, let me be clear: I don’t care about gross numbers – if I did, I would stay with this blog and cling to those who will find my outdated WoW articles, relishing the inflated stat totals that will linger for a long time (based on what I’ve observed). What I do care about is the wonderful group of people, including fellow bloggers, with whom I’ve had the privilege of interacting over the past year. I don’t necessarily think that I would move back into a complete vacuum if I created a new blog… but that doesn’t mean that this wouldn’t be something of a significant change for me, with respect to readership and my blogging experiences in general.

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I’ll be up front here: I’m seriously considering abandoning this blog, in favor of a new one. It’s a possibility that has been slowly gaining strength in my mind. I’m not sure where I will go if I do – I generally like WordPress, and haven’t tried anything else, but I would probably be fine sticking with it.

If anyone has any advice or suggestions, I would love to know your opinions – feel free to leave a comment below or contact me via email. And thanks in advance… and thanks, in general, for reading this little blog!

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If I do make a new blog, I will of course provide a link to it here.

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