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Short Status Update Adsense and NBIMMO

Posted by on May 2, 2012 in Blog, Guildwars 2 | 1 comment

Maybe a quick status update is in order. My Adsense account is restored. Late afternoon yesterday ads started to reappear. My only conclusion is that the removal of the offending article brought the expected results. I still haven’t gotten any notification from Google. Thus, I am just guessing. It’s on today’s list to do some more research on probable causes. There’s a slight chance that a unconfirmed phone number associated with my account caused this, but it has been unconfirmed for more than 2 years.

Having the Adsense trouble off my plate is a good thing, since I can now focus on NBIMMO, the New Blogger Initative that got started yesterday. One of the things I did last night was to sign up for about 100 blogs on my RSS reader, 80 sponsor blogs and 20 new blogs. I also followed them on twitter if there was an ID posted. I’ve now started to actually read / scan those blogs. The idea is to hook up more with the community, just like it is the intention of NBIMMO.

 


© Disclaimer: Guildwars 2
© 2011 ArenaNet, Inc. All rights reserved. NCsoft, the interlocking NC logo, ArenaNet, Arena.net, Guild Wars, Guild Wars Factions, Factions, Guild Wars Nightfall, Nightfall, Guild Wars: Eye of the North, Eye of the North, Guild Wars 2, and all associated logos and designs are trademarks or registered trademarks of NCsoft Corporation. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.


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The Newbie Blogger Initative. I am in.

Posted by on May 1, 2012 in Blog | 0 comments

The “Newbie Blogger Initiative” has been started today by Syp on his Bio Break Blog. Throughout the month of May, a group of well established sponsor blogs will help us upstarts with tips and tricks. Of course this will also generate additional traffic on all the blogs involved, giving everybody the chance to become part of the community.

I signed up as a newbie, since I feel I have still lots to learn and this initiative is a great chance to pick up a lot more knowledge. I know I can contribute as well, talking about my experience at the start and my html, php and WordPress skills. I’ve put a lot of thought into my setup to gather news and how to stay informed about the goings-on in the MMO blogosphere. I’ll summarize that in some post down the road, hoping to get more opinions on it and some help on taming the beast that is social media .

For more info about the Newbie Blogger Initiative have a look at their headquarters.



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Shooting Yourself in the Foot with Dual Pistols

Posted by on Apr 30, 2012 in Blog | 0 comments

My Guildwars 2 beta weekend wasn’t much fun, because I was distracted by troubles with my blog. When I wrote my first post on Saturday morning, I noticed that there weren’t any ads visible. The Google Adsense console also showed that they hadn’t served any since the day before, but Google Analytics showed normal site traffic. Strange. Two other websites I am working on didn’t display any ads, either. Fearing the worst, I expected an email telling me that my Adsense account had been disabled, but that hasn’t happened as of the time of this post. I created a trouble ticket with Google hoping to get some help there.

Things like this can mess up my weekend. I ended up checking my email for answers from Google frequently. And every time I checked my email, I looked for other ways to fix the problem or reasons why the account should have been blocked.

This continued until today and will probably last a while longer. However, I have one scenario which is most likely: The Adsense policy clearly states that your site has to be squeaky clean in regards to content. No adult content, no hate speech, no drugs, tobacco or alcohol. In short, everything an advertiser wouldn’t want to be associated with.

So what’s wrong with an MMORPG blog? Nothing. It’s completely acceptable. Except when you write an article about Hardcore gaming. And use that word frequently in your article. And it is used in the comment section as well. Add a link to a blog who’s got the offending word in its title. And use that word in your post title, the tags and meta tags and -descriptions. Meta tags and -descriptions is text that’s visible to  Google and other search engines to make it easier for their bots to analyze your content. And I just told them I have content on that page they don’t like.

I should have written that article about guns in MMO’s. Guns in general, and perhaps dual pistols in particular. But no, I have to shoot in my own foot.

I’ve taken down the post in question, hoping the problem goes away. Perhaps there will be an acceptable way to repost. But just to be clear, I haven’t gotten any communication from Google if my troubles are caused by this single article. But I have some more indicators pointing in this direction. Until then, there are backup ads from another provider. Plus a single Adsense ad below the blog roll, which is currently not being served.



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OCD? Don’t Play Guildwars 2

Posted by on Apr 29, 2012 in Guildwars 2, World of Warcraft | 3 comments

Is that bag to the left making you nervous? Do you think something is odd about it? Do you you consider 22 an odd number? Have you ever scaled back to 20 slots because you just couldn’t stand having them in your inventory?

Does it make you nervous that we are talking about bag size? Maybe it helps if I come out of the closet and admit to my sins. I haven’t downgraded to 20 slots, but I have been annoyed by the number of bag slots since I saw my first 10 slot bag. For the 6 slot bags, the availability of slots far outweighed my OCD impulses. Besides, the pain didn’t last to long, since you could upgrade them with relative ease. Eight and 12 slots made me happy, but I used 14 slots for way to long.

And here comes trouble. Guildwars 2 has a main bag with 20 slots and allows for 4 more bags. The first ones you can loot or buy from a vendor are 4 slot bags. Except… If you get “lucky”, this will happen to you. When I picked it up, I saw the 5 slots in the tool tip. “Woohoo !” And then I put it in the inventory. I told my wive that ArenaNet will make a lot of players very unhappy with 5 slot bags. How dare they? They are programmers and geeks ! They ought to have the same problems and preferences as their players. Perhaps they can blame it on somebody from marketing.

And then I’ll find a 7 slot bag. Somebody please tell me I can resize the bag window.

 

(Edit) That’s what I am left with, if I untick “bags”. Still hurts.


© Disclaimer: Guildwars 2
© 2011 ArenaNet, Inc. All rights reserved. NCsoft, the interlocking NC logo, ArenaNet, Arena.net, Guild Wars, Guild Wars Factions, Factions, Guild Wars Nightfall, Nightfall, Guild Wars: Eye of the North, Eye of the North, Guild Wars 2, and all associated logos and designs are trademarks or registered trademarks of NCsoft Corporation. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

© Disclaimer: World of Warcraft

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Barfight

Posted by on Apr 28, 2012 in Guildwars 2 | 0 comments

It took me a while to get playing, since I had graphics trouble. I could get into the game right after character creation, but my screen was mostly black, green or blue. Playing around with the settings would fix it for a while. However, there were still spots in the human starting area where the problem reappeared. Eventually I found a forum post telling me that the graphic card should be set to allow the application to set anti-aliasing parameters, something not to many gaming apps actually do. I may have some collisions with other games eventually. I didn’t get access to the forum posts right away, since those were lagging out as well. Since I played in the closed beta, I had to keep my old server, named “Borli’s Pass”

As for actual play, I created a Charr thief, but I just don’t like that race. On top of it, things were chaotic and laggy, which made me create a human thief named Shamble. The lag in the human starter area wasn’t less than the lag on the Charr side, but the area quests were a bit more straight forward. I got to level 4 quickly, somewhat annoyed by my own overblown heroism in the cut scenes, but everything else seems okay. I made it into town, to meet up with my old friend Petra who’s a server in her dad’s tavern. And got promptly into a scripted barfight. Smack a few ruffians around, make a few more surrender and finally duel their boss. And way to late I find those bottles standing around in the tavern, ready to be picked up:

Once you pick up the bottle, the action bar changes and gives you 3 options: Bash, drink or throw. This is possible with many other items you find throughout the game world. I’ve found a garden hoe and a shovel on one of the farms and they could be used as improvised weapons. The Charr players will have to pick up mortar shells and some mini games use this feature to grab fish to feed a bear or to pick up some bags and defend them against attack rabbits. Weapons you find in game are treated with a slight difference: the 3 options aren’t available immediately. They have to be trained by using the weapon.

I am having fun despite the lag and random guild invite spam. And now I am off to play some more.


© Disclaimer: Guildwars 2
© 2011 ArenaNet, Inc. All rights reserved. NCsoft, the interlocking NC logo, ArenaNet, Arena.net, Guild Wars, Guild Wars Factions, Factions, Guild Wars Nightfall, Nightfall, Guild Wars: Eye of the North, Eye of the North, Guild Wars 2, and all associated logos and designs are trademarks or registered trademarks of NCsoft Corporation. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.


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All the Cool Kids Play Guildwars 2 Beta

Posted by on Apr 27, 2012 in Guildwars 2 | 0 comments

Me too ! If  I am not forced to play on my pre-open-beta server, I’ll be hanging out on the Tarnished Coast server. Name(s) to be determined. I’ll post them in a comment here. I will be playing a thief, after having tried out ranger and warrior already. I liked them both, but don’t want to spoil my fun down the road. Perhaps I can think myself into a Charr thief playing him as diplomat, spy and assassin, although I am a bit troubled by the overall looks of the Charr.

You will not find me anywhere near PvP or WvW, I am just not cut out for it. I did get a glimpse of the tradeskills, though and will see what’s going on there.


© Disclaimer: Guildwars 2
© 2011 ArenaNet, Inc. All rights reserved. NCsoft, the interlocking NC logo, ArenaNet, Arena.net, Guild Wars, Guild Wars Factions, Factions, Guild Wars Nightfall, Nightfall, Guild Wars: Eye of the North, Eye of the North, Guild Wars 2, and all associated logos and designs are trademarks or registered trademarks of NCsoft Corporation. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.


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