.
I've run into a few newish resto druid blogs that I wanted to highlight here. I'm thinking I might do this every so often - shine a spotlight on some new, awesome blogs that deserve your readership! So, if you've got a new blog yourself, or know of a neat blog that could use some recognition, feel free to send me an e-mail at nerfthisdruid@gmail.com!
First up: Twig Heals. Beck provides some really nice resto druid guides to Ulduar that are WAY more concise than mine, so if you've ever been slogging through my ramblings and have thought to yourself, "For crying out loud, Av, get to the point. Tell me where to move and who to heal!" then you should head over to Beck's site and check them out. He's also got a nice little post up about how to track your very own Time-Lost Proto Drake! Beck, I like your style. Keep it up!
Next up: Halcyon Topiary. Aerivore's blog focuses not just on resto druid theory crafting and healing guides, but also on wow as a whole. There are some great posts about what it means to be casual vs hardcore and opinions about the nerfs in Ulduar. Not only that, but it looks like their guild has downed Yoggy. Not only THAT - but they're trying Algalon. Hot damn. Keep an eye on this one!
And last but not least: The Tree Unleashed. Littlebark's got a great writing style. I loved reading through her PUG adventures, and her opinions on faction changes. She recently posted a "Pre-naxx" gear guide for resto druids, so if you're a new 80 or have a druid alt and want to try your hand at healing some raids, you can make sure your gear is up to snuff! Definitely add this blog to your reader - it's worth it!
Enjoy!
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Showing posts with label blog. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blog. Show all posts
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Paladin Schmaladin, indeed.
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Edit: Scroll down for links to other blogger's thoughts on the subject, and TechDarling's video response.
Remember that huge debate about Val'anyr from a while ago (which, by the way, I edited. Now I'm even more right than I was before, lol. Go check it out.)? Ferarro from Paladin Schmaladin said Val'anyr was hands down a paladin weapon, and I said that it was just as good for any other healer. Arguments, debate, and hilarity ensued.
Since then I've followed Ferarro's blog. When she actually sits down to write about World of Warcraft stuff, rather than what her favorite music video is, or how the season finale of Lost was, or how she's a super cool Blizzard employee, I'd say it's a rather good blog. She's got some great paladin information on there. It was a wonderful resource for a lot of different players. I never really liked the whole "look at me, I'm a chick who plays wow, I'm hot, and I'll change my photo around every few days so you can get a different angle of my hotness" vibe she had going on, but you know, whatever. It's her own damn blog - if she wants to write about Lost and change around her picture, that's her own business.
However, her own business turned into our business today.
Some recent news (from Matticus' blog, actually) really caught my eye. Ferarro, the cute girl who you see each day in her profile pictures - the one at her laptop with her cute dog? the one that was in a picture posing with her "mom"? Is not actually her. It's not actually her mom then either, I'm sure. I'm sure Mrs. Whoeverthatis isn't very happy about her picture being used on the internet.
Look, hold on to yer butts, cause this is gonna get a little "tabloid" on ya. I don't even care. I think it's fascinating.
Ready?
I directly quote this timeline from Matticus, because, I could paraphrase, but honestly it'd be like the exact same thing (thank you, Matt!):
She's re-sealed it (edit: now it's unsealed), but you can read this "confession" here from a google cache. ----- er, I take that back. Seems like that link isn't working anymore. Check out this here, because yes, I copied it verbatim and I'm hosting it on my blog for the moment. It's long, and interesting. It's also completely ridiculous. The overall tone is that she's not really sorry (and yes, supposedly the ACTUAL author of the blog now is female). She continually cites that she doesn't know the actual origins of the blog, and that it merely fell into her lap. She "supposes" that she could be held responsible. Supposes? Whoever actually writes that blog now *actively* put those pictures in. She didn't get handed the blog with a static profile picture up and no explanation. She actively and continuously continued to steal this person's identity.
The question is, does this really matter? WHY is this so offensive? I think there's a few reasons. First of all, I've always felt that the wow blogging community was a pretty honest, tight knit group. When I started as a small blogger where getting over 20 hits a day was something to celebrate, I always looked to the other more accomplished bloggers out there. Getting a comment from them was pure gold. And comment they did! I've *always* felt supported by fellow bloggers, and it's a wonderful feeling. To me, the dishonesty of Ferarro is a ugly smear on the face of bloggers everywhere. Yeah - I know - cheesy, right? Maybe, but I really do feel like that. It's disappointing.
Secondly, Ferarro didn't just ask a random cute friend, "Hey, can I use one of your pictures for my profile picture?" She used photos from TechDarling - not just one (and one would be bad enough), but multiple photos. She also stole an ENTIRE POST from TechDarling (this one here). Who actually had that luggage tag? Sarah from TechDarling did, NOT Ferarro. (Ferarro took down that post - and good thing, too - and I don't have a cache of it). Edit - she stole more than just one post. Compare this and this. Did she really think this was ok? This is so. not. ok. Who knows what other posts she stole? Maybe it was just those two. Maybe there were a bunch of others.
Thirdly: "The charade - i.e the beautiful Sarah Townsend - had to continue because that's who everyone trusted and recognized after such a long time."
Wrong. Everyone trusted and recognized your guides, your theorycrafting, your number crunching. Anyone who truly cared about the content of the blog wouldn't have given two shits if you took down those pictures. The people who cared about your cute pictures (or rather, Sarah's cute pictures) were the 14 year old boys who can't understand that attractive girls can play games too. Which makes me wonder what kind of audience you were really writing for all these years?
There is absolutely no reason why that blog needed to continue to steal pictures of a random girl. To have a good warcraft blog, you don't need a picture. What you need to do is write accurate, thought out, interesting well-written information about things people want to read about. You need to have meaningful debates about, for instance, legendary weapons with other bloggers! (!!!) To have a successful blog, you don't need to be "hawt". Was Phaelia hawt? I don't know - she never felt the need to splash her picture around the net. Was BRK a hottie? What about any of the writers from Wow Insider? Maybe they are attractive (or maybe they're not!), but it DOESN'T MATTER. It was the content of their blogs that defined them, not their physical appearance. My point is, the photo had nothing to do with the blog - it wasn't a modeling blog, it wasn't an ad for Hooters, it wasn't a myspace page - therefore there was no reason for her to continue the facade. Just take the damn things down. Stop stealing someone's identity. It's as easy as that. And it IS a complete stolen identity, not just a photo here and there. Ferarro made up a complete life that was a lie based on photos that she stole from this girl: "This is me and my family on vacation. We had fun!" type of photos. "Look at this pet bird that my step-brother got me that's sitting on my shoulder!" type of photos. It's not her bird; it's not her family. She stole the photos and made a story out of them. That's just SICK.
Even she says: "If you take away the fake pictures, like many people have said, this has been a premier quality site for Paladins, both advanced and beginners alike." Yeah - exactly! So why the hell would she keep up this charade? It boggles my mind. She also says "It's an awful secret to hold on to, but the integrity of this blog had to hold out for as long as it could." This, too, boggles my mind. Those pictures were exactly what compromised said integrity of the blog.
And fourth: She inadvertently strengthened the stereotype that hot chicks don't play WoW. She pretended to be a hot female gamer, and while I didn't like the fact that she *exploited* the hot female image, it's true that she did say, "Hey, guys, look - women who are attractive DO play videogames!" And now it turns out that she's NOT that hot female gamer at all. This just reinforces the stereotype that girls don't/can't play video games. This infuriates me. How effing ironic is it that she says THIS in her wow.com interview (bolding mine): "I think it's unfortunate all the hurdles female players so often have to jump through just to be accepted in this game by its male counterparts, let alone be accepted as one who excels at it. So I stopped playing by the hypocritical rules and adopted the saying, "Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter won't mind," and haven't looked back. I'm just going to be myself and post and say what I want, and if you don't like what I write, then just close the window or scroll up. I'm gonna be me no matter what." Yourself, eh? Huh.
In her confession, she makes it sound like this blog was some super secret operation. Information handed down from Ferarro to Ferarro. Special rules and protocol to follow. Such a hush hush operation. It's just too ridiculous for me to handle. I don't actually think it's seven different people - I think there's really something else weird going on here, but I guess we'll have to wait and find out.
Ferarro also states that Sarah is being a "good sport" about it. She THANKS Sarah for it. THANKS her for being such a good sport. Uh, really? Sarah just twittered: "UGH-some creep on WoW named Ferraro has been using my photos?" and THEN: "The thing is whoever this person is they're on my FB friends because they have photos from private albums!" WOW. Ferarro: for being so cautious about stalkers - you seem to have become one yourself.
I know that identities are stolen or forged all the time on the internet. It still doesn't make it right, especially not in our own blogging community. And I know people will say "But it doesn't matter WHO writes the blog, it's the CONTENT that matters!" Yeah - I know - it IS the content. I *don't care* who writes it. The offensive part is the content and photo stealing. Bad, bad form. Also, completely immoral, and really, it makes me not want to read her blog again.
And even after all my ranting, I really do hope that the site can somehow bounce back from this. There really was some great info there. Personally, I'm not going back there or supporting her site in any way, shape, or form from now on. But that's just me.
What do you guys think?
EDIT: Take a look at some other blogger's perspectives, if you'd like:
Keredria from Tree of Life
Jana from Suicidal Zebra
The writers from RetPaladin.com
EDIT2: Just saw TechDarling's response via Corgii's blog:
"Freakin’ mmorpg’ers. They’ve been living a lie for so much of their lives. They don’t even realize that pretending to be someone else in the real world is not only wrong and illegal, but also disturbing. But we should feel bad. Ferraro must have very little self-esteem."
/facepalm.
So it turns out that EVERYONE involved here is a douche bag, not just Ferarro. The only thing that might be remotely valid here is the very last sentence. Read Corgii's post if you want some angry rawr bear ranting.
Last edit! Sarah Townsend's video response here.
.
Edit: Scroll down for links to other blogger's thoughts on the subject, and TechDarling's video response.
Remember that huge debate about Val'anyr from a while ago (which, by the way, I edited. Now I'm even more right than I was before, lol. Go check it out.)? Ferarro from Paladin Schmaladin said Val'anyr was hands down a paladin weapon, and I said that it was just as good for any other healer. Arguments, debate, and hilarity ensued.
Since then I've followed Ferarro's blog. When she actually sits down to write about World of Warcraft stuff, rather than what her favorite music video is, or how the season finale of Lost was, or how she's a super cool Blizzard employee, I'd say it's a rather good blog. She's got some great paladin information on there. It was a wonderful resource for a lot of different players. I never really liked the whole "look at me, I'm a chick who plays wow, I'm hot, and I'll change my photo around every few days so you can get a different angle of my hotness" vibe she had going on, but you know, whatever. It's her own damn blog - if she wants to write about Lost and change around her picture, that's her own business.
However, her own business turned into our business today.
Some recent news (from Matticus' blog, actually) really caught my eye. Ferarro, the cute girl who you see each day in her profile pictures - the one at her laptop with her cute dog? the one that was in a picture posing with her "mom"? Is not actually her. It's not actually her mom then either, I'm sure. I'm sure Mrs. Whoeverthatis isn't very happy about her picture being used on the internet.
Look, hold on to yer butts, cause this is gonna get a little "tabloid" on ya. I don't even care. I think it's fascinating.
Ready?
I directly quote this timeline from Matticus, because, I could paraphrase, but honestly it'd be like the exact same thing (thank you, Matt!):
- May 26: WoW.com publishes an interview with Ferarro
- Short time after, Paladin Schmaladin is under lockdown and invite only
- May 29: Jagoex writes about this strange occurrence and drives even more publicity and curiosity
- May 31: Ferarro’s blog is is unsealed and finally confesses.
She's re-sealed it (edit: now it's unsealed), but you can read this "confession" here from a google cache. ----- er, I take that back. Seems like that link isn't working anymore. Check out this here, because yes, I copied it verbatim and I'm hosting it on my blog for the moment. It's long, and interesting. It's also completely ridiculous. The overall tone is that she's not really sorry (and yes, supposedly the ACTUAL author of the blog now is female). She continually cites that she doesn't know the actual origins of the blog, and that it merely fell into her lap. She "supposes" that she could be held responsible. Supposes? Whoever actually writes that blog now *actively* put those pictures in. She didn't get handed the blog with a static profile picture up and no explanation. She actively and continuously continued to steal this person's identity.
The question is, does this really matter? WHY is this so offensive? I think there's a few reasons. First of all, I've always felt that the wow blogging community was a pretty honest, tight knit group. When I started as a small blogger where getting over 20 hits a day was something to celebrate, I always looked to the other more accomplished bloggers out there. Getting a comment from them was pure gold. And comment they did! I've *always* felt supported by fellow bloggers, and it's a wonderful feeling. To me, the dishonesty of Ferarro is a ugly smear on the face of bloggers everywhere. Yeah - I know - cheesy, right? Maybe, but I really do feel like that. It's disappointing.
Secondly, Ferarro didn't just ask a random cute friend, "Hey, can I use one of your pictures for my profile picture?" She used photos from TechDarling - not just one (and one would be bad enough), but multiple photos. She also stole an ENTIRE POST from TechDarling (this one here). Who actually had that luggage tag? Sarah from TechDarling did, NOT Ferarro. (Ferarro took down that post - and good thing, too - and I don't have a cache of it). Edit - she stole more than just one post. Compare this and this. Did she really think this was ok? This is so. not. ok. Who knows what other posts she stole? Maybe it was just those two. Maybe there were a bunch of others.
Thirdly: "The charade - i.e the beautiful Sarah Townsend - had to continue because that's who everyone trusted and recognized after such a long time."
Wrong. Everyone trusted and recognized your guides, your theorycrafting, your number crunching. Anyone who truly cared about the content of the blog wouldn't have given two shits if you took down those pictures. The people who cared about your cute pictures (or rather, Sarah's cute pictures) were the 14 year old boys who can't understand that attractive girls can play games too. Which makes me wonder what kind of audience you were really writing for all these years?
There is absolutely no reason why that blog needed to continue to steal pictures of a random girl. To have a good warcraft blog, you don't need a picture. What you need to do is write accurate, thought out, interesting well-written information about things people want to read about. You need to have meaningful debates about, for instance, legendary weapons with other bloggers! (!!!) To have a successful blog, you don't need to be "hawt". Was Phaelia hawt? I don't know - she never felt the need to splash her picture around the net. Was BRK a hottie? What about any of the writers from Wow Insider? Maybe they are attractive (or maybe they're not!), but it DOESN'T MATTER. It was the content of their blogs that defined them, not their physical appearance. My point is, the photo had nothing to do with the blog - it wasn't a modeling blog, it wasn't an ad for Hooters, it wasn't a myspace page - therefore there was no reason for her to continue the facade. Just take the damn things down. Stop stealing someone's identity. It's as easy as that. And it IS a complete stolen identity, not just a photo here and there. Ferarro made up a complete life that was a lie based on photos that she stole from this girl: "This is me and my family on vacation. We had fun!" type of photos. "Look at this pet bird that my step-brother got me that's sitting on my shoulder!" type of photos. It's not her bird; it's not her family. She stole the photos and made a story out of them. That's just SICK.
Even she says: "If you take away the fake pictures, like many people have said, this has been a premier quality site for Paladins, both advanced and beginners alike." Yeah - exactly! So why the hell would she keep up this charade? It boggles my mind. She also says "It's an awful secret to hold on to, but the integrity of this blog had to hold out for as long as it could." This, too, boggles my mind. Those pictures were exactly what compromised said integrity of the blog.
And fourth: She inadvertently strengthened the stereotype that hot chicks don't play WoW. She pretended to be a hot female gamer, and while I didn't like the fact that she *exploited* the hot female image, it's true that she did say, "Hey, guys, look - women who are attractive DO play videogames!" And now it turns out that she's NOT that hot female gamer at all. This just reinforces the stereotype that girls don't/can't play video games. This infuriates me. How effing ironic is it that she says THIS in her wow.com interview (bolding mine): "I think it's unfortunate all the hurdles female players so often have to jump through just to be accepted in this game by its male counterparts, let alone be accepted as one who excels at it. So I stopped playing by the hypocritical rules and adopted the saying, "Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter won't mind," and haven't looked back. I'm just going to be myself and post and say what I want, and if you don't like what I write, then just close the window or scroll up. I'm gonna be me no matter what." Yourself, eh? Huh.
In her confession, she makes it sound like this blog was some super secret operation. Information handed down from Ferarro to Ferarro. Special rules and protocol to follow. Such a hush hush operation. It's just too ridiculous for me to handle. I don't actually think it's seven different people - I think there's really something else weird going on here, but I guess we'll have to wait and find out.
Ferarro also states that Sarah is being a "good sport" about it. She THANKS Sarah for it. THANKS her for being such a good sport. Uh, really? Sarah just twittered: "UGH-some creep on WoW named Ferraro has been using my photos?" and THEN: "The thing is whoever this person is they're on my FB friends because they have photos from private albums!" WOW. Ferarro: for being so cautious about stalkers - you seem to have become one yourself.
I know that identities are stolen or forged all the time on the internet. It still doesn't make it right, especially not in our own blogging community. And I know people will say "But it doesn't matter WHO writes the blog, it's the CONTENT that matters!" Yeah - I know - it IS the content. I *don't care* who writes it. The offensive part is the content and photo stealing. Bad, bad form. Also, completely immoral, and really, it makes me not want to read her blog again.
And even after all my ranting, I really do hope that the site can somehow bounce back from this. There really was some great info there. Personally, I'm not going back there or supporting her site in any way, shape, or form from now on. But that's just me.
What do you guys think?
EDIT: Take a look at some other blogger's perspectives, if you'd like:
Keredria from Tree of Life
Jana from Suicidal Zebra
The writers from RetPaladin.com
EDIT2: Just saw TechDarling's response via Corgii's blog:
"Freakin’ mmorpg’ers. They’ve been living a lie for so much of their lives. They don’t even realize that pretending to be someone else in the real world is not only wrong and illegal, but also disturbing. But we should feel bad. Ferraro must have very little self-esteem."
/facepalm.
So it turns out that EVERYONE involved here is a douche bag, not just Ferarro. The only thing that might be remotely valid here is the very last sentence. Read Corgii's post if you want some angry rawr bear ranting.
Last edit! Sarah Townsend's video response here.
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Monday, February 23, 2009
Resto4Life, you will be missed.
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I just learned today that Phaelia of Resto4Life is shutting down her blog soon.
This is a big deal.
Resto4Life has always been THE resto blog on the internet. It's the place that had all the answers, all the math, and wasn't like Elitist Jerks in the sense that, well, Phae isn't an elitist jerk.... at all. Phae ALWAYS responded to each individual comment, and took care to never belittle anyone for a silly question. I never found any trolling or douche-bag behavior on her site. The website was like a sanctuary. Seriously.
It's obvious that she put a lot of love and time and effort into that website, and it's going to be sorely missed. But it's also obvious that this decision was *really* difficult for her to make, and I think it's good that she was able to step back, evaluate life, and actually face that difficult decision.
We'll miss you!!!!
(PS - congrats on the baby!! =D)
.
I just learned today that Phaelia of Resto4Life is shutting down her blog soon.
This is a big deal.
Resto4Life has always been THE resto blog on the internet. It's the place that had all the answers, all the math, and wasn't like Elitist Jerks in the sense that, well, Phae isn't an elitist jerk.... at all. Phae ALWAYS responded to each individual comment, and took care to never belittle anyone for a silly question. I never found any trolling or douche-bag behavior on her site. The website was like a sanctuary. Seriously.
It's obvious that she put a lot of love and time and effort into that website, and it's going to be sorely missed. But it's also obvious that this decision was *really* difficult for her to make, and I think it's good that she was able to step back, evaluate life, and actually face that difficult decision.
We'll miss you!!!!
(PS - congrats on the baby!! =D)
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