I wrote this to be the very first post on Massively, then a brand new site in the Weblogs Inc. network (then owned by AOL). First published on November 2, 2007.
This is it. The design is in place, our bloggers are trained and at the ready, and the password has been lifted from the site. Our brand new blog, Massively, is now live and ready for your perusal, your comments, your tips, and your eyeballs. Here, you’ll find breaking news about MMO games both upcoming and established, insightful and wisecracking commentary about your favorite worlds, tips on how to get all your characters in all those universes the best they can be, and the high level of quality you’ve come to expect from WoW Insider, Second Life Insider, Joystiq and the Fanboy network. This is Massively, and welcome to it.
“But wait,” you say, “we’ve already got tons of MMO sites out there. I’ve got sites I read for commentary, and sites I read for news. I’ve got dev blogs, community forums, and even sites that sift community forums for me. There are guide sites that have their own guide sites, and everybody and his cousin is already blogging about MMO videogames. Why do we need one more MMO blog?”
The answer is: because this is the place where all of those things come together, in one location; because of our commitment to producing top-notch original features; and because our incredibly talented staff of writers have spent as much time leveling their word-smithing skills as they have spent leveling characters in the virtual worlds we’re going to be covering.
We’ve got every MMO you play covered, from Age of Conan to World of Warcraft, and even about 400 you don’t (seriously, does anyone even play Planetside anymore? We hope all three of you will enjoy our posts about it). If you’ve ever read WoW Insider, we’re like “WoW Insider for more MMOs than you possibly have time to play.” If you’ve ever read Joystiq, we’re like “Joystiq for MMOs,” but even better, because Joystiq doesn’t do strategies and tips, and baby, we do.
And, of course, we’re a blog — and that means you as readers help us make the site a great place to go to for intelligent discussion about MMOs. We’re aiming to elevate the community, to spotlight the incredible culture that massively multiplayer games are producing, and to show off how talented and creative the fanbase is. Massively is your place to voice and share your opinions about the hottest topics in online gaming today.
We’re also working with some of the most successful developers in the business to bring you exclusives and interviews on some of your favorite games. Plus, there’s always the schwag — we’re going to kick off this site with a whopping two weeks full of contests. If you stick around and leave some comments, you’ll have the chance to win a metric ton of prizes, including beta keys, games, game time cards, special in-game items, game merch, an iPod, a high end video card, and even a 24-inch flatscreen monitor. Everything that developers give to us, we give away to you — it’s policy.
And we also get to break some rules. We’ve escalated the gold ad issue up the ladder to the suits who’ve never even heard of World of Warcraft and convinced them to let us remove the Google AdSense ads that, no matter how much we blacklist, keep turning up new power-leveling and gold selling ads. We’re taking a stand against gold ads and we hope you’ll support us by… reading us!
We’ve assembled an appropriately massive team of some of the best MMO writers out there, and we’re going to go in-depth, every day, on all the games and news you care about, and then some. So get involved — drop us a tip on what you think of the site, or a newsworthy item you want us to cover. Get involved in the discussions in the comments — if you’ve visited our other sites you’ll recognize that your login works just like it does with all the other Blogsmith-powered Joystiq network sites. If you’re new to the family, just leave a comment and click on your name to access your profile and change your custom avatar.
Add us to your RSS feeds or bookmarks folder, not only because you’ve definitely got to come back and check out our contests in the next week (seriously, we’re giving away another Murloc costume from BlizzCon!), but because we’re going to be hitting hard with non-stop, in-depth coverage of your favorite games.
Welcome to Massively!