Time to Loot Turns Two
I did it again. I missed the blogiversary by a few days. But I also did it again in the sense of making it through another year of consistent blogging. Certainly, I posted less this year (I’ll get to the stats later) but I still haven’t fallen into the trap of taking any multi-month breaks out of the blue. For me doing such in the past has always spelled the death knell for whatever blog I was working on at the time.
And keeping on was about my only goal for blogging in 2020. Everything else I figured would come off the back of that. Yep. You could sum up my philosophy toward blogging with Dory’s, ‘Just keep swimming’. :)
In any case, I figured it might be fun to take a look at what my personal favourite posts of the last year were. Without regard for the number of views, just which ones I liked the most. So here we go! :)
Naithin’s Favourite Posts of the Past Year
| Month | Post | Why? |
| Feb 2020 | Forgetting my Own Advice | I’ve not been at this long enough to settle into a particular style or rhythm yet. That was certainly true while writing this post and I would say still true now, too. So it comes as a timely reminder that not every single post has to carry some point to it. Just talking is enough. Write for the fun of it. |
| Mar 2020 | Too Old For This? | This one sparked a lot of conversation, with the post itself being triggered by an innocent (or perhaps not so innocent) question being asked in Kim’s stream, ‘How old are you?’ |
| Apr 2020 | RNG vs. Player Agency | April was a tough month to choose for! April 2020 saw the run of the inaugural ‘Blapril’ event, so there was a post for every day. Ultimately landed on RNG vs. Player Agency as I enjoyed the topic of seeing where they conflicted but also where they could work together to deepen an experience. |
| May 2020 | Using Discord — Without Being Overwhelmed | Shortly after Blapril, and the Discord usage that went alongside the event — there were a number of people expressing a sense of becoming inundated with more than they could handle. Truthfully? With the number of servers I’d collected at the time — I could relate. And so! This post was born. |
| Jun 2020 | Creative Mode Snobbery | For the longest time, I viewed playing games in creative mode (outside the context of grand projects or simply learning the game) with a high degree of disdain. Finally came to the realisation that I’d been looking at it all wrong. |
| Jul 2020 | Eclectic Gaming Day | I went away on holiday in July, so didn’t have a lot of options to pick from. But this one was about busting through the mental barriers I’d built up around playing anything at all. |
| Aug 2020 | Lost Ark Coming West at Last? | This is my favourite less for the content and more for the possibility of it being true! We’ve still heard nothing further since the initial rather ambiguous press release. But I’m holding onto hope we’ll get something soon, to confirm a western release of Lost Ark this year! |
| Sep 2020 | New PC Build | Despite the fact it took a good few months to iron out all the issues with the new PC; getting the parts and putting it all together was a great deal of fun. And it all ended well! (Eventually!) |
| Oct 2020 | Damnit… RMA Required on my RTX 3080 | The start of understanding the issues I was going to face with the RTX 3080, and the unfortunate further realisation that my issues weren’t just related to the more typical early driver issues everyone else was having. |
| Nov 2020 | Five Game Challenge Day 19: Giants Riding Dragons | November was the month I attempted round 2 of my Five Game Challenge. Although it was cut a little short by a thumb-accident that ended up requiring 5 stitches. Still- before that happened, I managed to capture this glorious shot in Skyrim of a Giant having spawned onto the back of a Dragon. |
| Dec 2020 | WoW Shadowlands: Changing Your Covenant | There wasn’t as much information out there as I would like about certain aspects of changing your Covenant. What did you lose? What did you keep? No-one talked about these bits- so I did! And I found out by doing it, in order to switch from Venthyr (Frost Mage) to Night Fae (Fire Mage). Of course… The idea to switch back to Frost has been on the mind a bit lately. But hopefully, those crazy thoughts put themselves to bed shortly. ;) |
| Jan 2021 | Looking Back on 2020 Gaming | The main reason I like this one the most? I can start to see the shape of things to come, regarding having a history here. Building up a bit of a journal as it were is my primary motivation for doing this crazy blogging thing. Can’t wait to see what this looks like at the end of Year 3 and beyond. :) |
Time to Loot Year Stats
| Year | Posts | Comments | Views | Avg. Comments / Post | Likes | Avg. Likes / Post | Total Words | Avg Words / Post |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 201 | 693 | 11,512 | 3.4 | 848 | 4.2 | 161,450 | 803 |
| 2020 | 152 | 705 | 19,728 | 4.6 | 1,260 | 8.3 | 139,955 | 921 |
| 2021* | 7 | 31 | 1,550 | 4.4 | 61 | 8.7 | 5,075 | 725 |
Last year, I just took the stats right through to the actual post date. But I can see that becoming a mission as the years go by, so I’ve cut it down to the calendar year which WordPress gives me all nice and neat.
Beyond that, November 2020 was Time to Loot’s most visited month with 2,631 visits. Single best day wasn’t in November though — it was in April, April 5th 2020 to be precise with 262 views. Nothing particularly special was published April 5th that explains it to my mind. April 4th had Genre Burnout and the 5th itself was simply the Humble Choice bundle information… Although that month we did get Hitman 2. Eesh; where are the choice bundles like that these days?
Ohh- actually, I think I can explain the post views that day after all. If we travel back even just a couple more days, I did two posts on Animal Crossing which was blowing up at the time. The first actually spoke to how I didn’t think Animal Crossing was for me and the follow-up was in response to a comment from Pete, where I queried if it was possible to ‘play a game wrong‘.
Both of those posts were fairly well viewed, so was likely showing the tail of those on the 5th.
In any case, overall? I’m fairly happy with the upswing in stats from Year 1 to Year 2, especially when in light of the fact there was almost 50 less posts to earn them on.
As with last year — my goal is simple. Carry on. Don’t stop. Look forward to writing this post for turning three next year. :)
