What This Blog Is and Is Not

For those who may have been a little in the dark, I spent a large chunk of yesterday embroiled is controversy over on the TOR forums because of a post I made several weeks ago.  It happens.  But it provided a good opportunity to summarize for people what goes on here and will continue to go on here.

First up, what this site is not. 

HZero is not a fansite dedicated to any one game or any number of games.  I’m not here to ra-ra and hold the pom-poms for anybody. 

HZero is not a news site dedicated to bringing you the latest and the greatest in game announcementes, FAQs, interviews, or insider information.  I’d love to have more interviews here, and hopefully I can wrangle a few up this year.  But outside of a few rare circumstances, I am not your first choice for information about whatever game you are following.

HZero is not an internet phenomenom with thousands of daily hits.  I do a good bit of traffic for an MMO blog, enough to seperate myself from the crowd of who dat’s, but I’m not an elite blogger.  I don’t think I’ve ever pretended to be.  However, there are links to some elite bloggers on the front page – I highly recommend them to you!

HZero is not graphics intensive.  I love screenshots and all that fun stuff, but I don’t really have the skill or time to feed you visually here. I write, I plan, I talk with others, but I’m not putting up great new graphics every month to draw you in.  Just ain’t gonna happen.

Next, what this site is.

HZero is a blogging site dedicated to bringing you insights into the world of MMORPG’s from someone who has been playing them for a long time now.   Sometimes those insights are my own, sometimes they belong to another.  Most of the time, its a blending of those two things.

HZero is a site dedicated to bringing you my opinion.  Not yours.  You are welcome to post up with an agree or disagree and why.  In fact, I hope you do.  That is the primary reason I carved out this space two and a half years ago.  I don’t expect you to be an expert, but I do expect that you will have read the post and understood what I am trying to say.

Also of note:

I am a believer in the school of “a word to the wise is sufficient.”  I do not suffer fools gladly, not here (in real life is another matter!).  Like Confucius says in his Analects, if I show you one corner, I expect you to be able to show the other three.

When I do reviews, I use a four-fold approach.  Good and Bad.  Ugly and Tilt.   Good and Bad are things that are what they say they are, and not just for me, but on the level of causing issues in a game or really making it stand out.  Ugly and Tilt are the same, but for issues that are personal rather than universal.  For example, one of the Ugly’s of EQ2 to me is the inclusion of fairies as a playable race.   That’s definitely not hurting EQ2! It just hurts me!  On the other hand, one of the Bad’s of Warhammer shortly after launch was PvP/PvE playstyle balance.  It hurt not just me, but alot of people who left the game when they realized that they had no one to play through the story and quests with, because it was more lucrative and empowering for the average player to spend their game time in scenarios.

Finally, its worth noting to the world at large, that for the time being, I have enabled comment moderation.  People are welcome to add to a discussion, but if you have nothing constructive to say, your words will not appear here.   Here, this space, is my sandbox.  You are welcome to play in it.  But here, I have the last words, always, and you will behave yourselves in a civilized manner.  At your place, you get the last word, and can act however you please, but not here.

Hope that clears some stuff up.  I guess I should thank all the troublemakers on the TOR forums.  Yesterday was a record traffic day for me, nearly 3 times my old record views in a day.  I just wish the crowd had been a little more grown up.