This round is on the house

Hello everyone!

Don’t be shy. Come forward and grab yourself the drink of your choice. Nethergarde Bitter is very popular. If you want something more exclusive, pick Plugger’s Blackrock Ale (I’m afraid we’ve only got a few bottles of it). Or get real drunk on Rumsay Rum Black Label. And there’s Fresh Apple Juice for the kids. Have whatever you want - it’s all on the house. You see, today we’re celebrating an anniversary. It’s exactly one year since I wrote my first blog post.

It wasn’t until a few months later that the blog achieved the name The Pink Pigtail Inn and went international. But I was born as a blogger on February 2 2008 and I wanted to acknowledge it somehow, even though I know it's a little bit self-centred.

I’ll quote a few passages from my first post:

“This blog will be about my second life. The life I live inside World of Warcraft in the shape of the gnome mage Larisa, born on Kul Tiras, nowadays living on the Stormrage server. I don't quite know where the blog will go. Maybe it will just be a few diary notes which no one but me will ever read. Maybe it will catch the interest of a few more people. Most of all it's a way to get out a few of all those things which are bubbling in my head. All the impressions, the questions, the experiences I've had along the road. A lot of things happen in the virtual world. When you think about it’s not ONE game, but many, there are so many ways to see it and play it. So... welcome to meet WoW from the point of view of Larísa.”

As you see my idea about what this blog would be about was pretty vague and I’m afraid it hasn’t cleared a bit over time. What I wrote one year ago is still valid. I write about stuff that comes into my mind and I don't have any system or idea about direction. It just happens.

What I didn’t know when I wrote those lines was that the blog actually would catch the interest of a few more than me and a couple of guildies. I’ve gone from almost zero readers to over 200 subscribers. To me that's a huge number, enough to make the inn feel nicely crowded, but not so many that I get scared. In comparison to many other blogs, PPI is still smallish. I know for instance that Gevlon, who got into blogging pretty recently, already has more than three times as many subscribers. When he started out I gave him a little piece of advice. I think he felt he wanted to return this service, so he wrote me a few lines, suggesting me how to gain a bigger audience:

If you have ideas that you are hiding because it does not match the "approved" and "nice" ideas, post them. Granted, you'll be bouncing trolls from your inn, but some really interesting people might come in.

He also added:

Or maybe you shouldn't take this advice and keep your inn a pleasant and nice
place where people love to come.

And it’s the second path that I’ve chosen to follow. I’ll never ever gain any huge audience since I honestly don’t provide any kind of useful information and never try to provoke people on purpose. But that doesn’t matter because I value what I’ve got higher: a relaxed atmosphere, no pressure and an infinite freedom to rant about whatever I want to, without considering the effects on my visitor counter.

During this year I’ve produced over 250 posts, which is amazing to me; I still can’t understand where all the words came from. It’s like a book when you put it together. I’ve had a ton of fun writing them, that’s for sure. Like when we fought that silly mage war, which forced me to actually look a little bit closer at my talent tree, even though I never managed to write anything insightful about it. (A continuation of it seems to be upcoming by the way.) Other posts have been rather sad or frustrated, rants about my struggles to cope with my shortcomings, losses of friends or my problems to make my gaming work with my real life. The blogging is no doubt an therapeutical outlet to me, as it is to many other bloggers.

After this first year, I feel as if I've eventually been accepted as one of many contributing members in the WoW Blogosphere. I’ve gone from trialist to member. Hey, I've even got a link from BRK! That was my proudest moment as a blogger ever, I all but fainted when I found out.

Enough of ranting. I've written enough of retrospective meta-blogging posts during this year. If you're a new reader of the blog and want to hear a bit more about the person behind this blog and her ideas (or lack of ideas) about blogging, I suggest that you read the post where I interviewed myself.

So. At last. Here’s to all of you who regularly come here and contribute, by reading, commenting and linking to the inn. Without you I wouldn’t be celebrating this anniversary. All credit goes to you for helping to keep this place going.

Thank you all. And cheers!