State O’ Da Greenskin - NDA/Release Plans | The Greenskin - Warhammer Online Blog, Videos, Guides, Webcomic & Podcast

State O’ Da Greenskin - NDA/Release Plans

August 4, 2008 – 1:52 pm

Thanks to Keen and Graev for inspiring this!

I’ve been wanting to write a State O’ Da Greenskin of sorts for a while now. I hope it will provide me with future direction and give you a good idea on what you can expect to see around here moving forward:

This site is a blog, first and foremost

I never really had aspirations of being a full-fledged fan site for Warhammer Online because even though I started a while back (Nov 07), there were already plenty of established, great places for people to find that kind of experience. After doing further research, I found that there was not an established blogging scene for the game. There were a few kicking around, but most had been abandoned after a few postings and hadn’t been updated in months.

I got my feet wet in blogging about World of Warcraft but once I quit the game (Mar 07), I was left with a bit of a void. I really enjoyed writing guides about Shadow Priests and wanted to fill that hobby space with a new game. I’ve always been a huge fan of orcs and goblins, so greenskins seemed like a natural fit in Warhammer Online. Hence this site was born.

I’ve really enjoyed providing WAR/Greenskin fans with commentary for all these months and it will continue to be my primary goal once the NDA lifts and the game releases. Always remember, while I may branch off onto different topics from time to time, my main muse will always be Greenskins.

The Greenskin Webcomic

I have many ideas written down, but these strips take me a really long time to do. To be honest, my interest comes and goes with this feature, so I’ll only post them when I have a strong urge. I’m sorry for any fans out there, but I don’t want to take time away from features I really enjoy on the site to work on something that feels like more of a job… Kind of like Da News over at Syp’s Waaagh! Blog.

ChaosCast: A Warhammer Online Community Podcast

I hope to continue providing the WAR community with a bi-weekly podcast in partnership with Keen and Syp. It may become slightly more difficult to coordinate schedules once the game launches and everyone’s activity level increases enormously, but I think this is a really fun and useful feature! The WAR Community will continue to be our focus.

NDA Lift Plans

Videos - So far, I have seven of them and my goal is to finish two of three more.
Guides - I have just taken the password down from my Guides page, and hope to have several of these released once the NDA lifts. This page will also link to external guides as a resource for fans of this site and in general.
Beta Information - These commentary pieces will include: Beta Q&A’s, Top 10 Positive and Negative Beta Impressions, Greenskin career impressions, and much more.
General commentary - I’ll finally be able to use this site as a personal soapbox for beta gripes and gushes. Take that, NDA!

Game Launch

Videos - Let me just say that FRAPS will be running in the background during every gaming session. I’ll make sure to post if anything cool happens. You’ll mostly see RvR videos, but I may post PvE stuff if it’s interesting enough.
Guides - These will continue but likely become much more focused to the particular career I am playing. I wouldn’t go so far as to claim I’ll be the unofficial team lead for my class of choice… but yeah, I probably will! Submit any of your guide ideas in the comments section of the Guides page.
Commentary - Business as usual!

Site Re-Design

The sidebar is starting to get a bit messy and it will become increasingly so unless I nip things in the bud. I may move to a three-column layout for the front page to clean things up a bit. Individual post pages will feature a two-column layout to accommodate…

Icky! Not really! I want to test the waters here and I hope it doesn’t scare anyone off!

This will not be your traditional Google AdSense / graphical banner ad solution, no siree! I have finally decided to implement the Amazon affiliate program with this site, which gives me an amazing level of control over what is shown. And no, I won’t be selling diet books or decorating guides…

The Greenskin/Amazon store will showcase Warahmmer Online and Warhammer-related items only, which includes: video game software, rules and lore guides, paperbacks, graphic novels, and anything else related. I’ll only make money if people buy products from the store, so this may bomb completely… Hopefully, you’ll start off your Amazon shopping sessions from this site to help support us. If I can’t get anything going over the next couple months, I will look into other avenues.

BONUS! All the income generated from this site will go back INTO the site and WAR Community.

How, you ask? The money will be used to buy prizes for contests (how about an actual statue for future Greeny Awards, more MMO Calendars, free comics, monthly subscriptions, etc.), maintain the server and domain name, pay site contributors for their time, and if anything is left over, buy software and PC upgrades that will continue to let us deliver more fresh content.

Hopefully, you weren’t under the impression that I’m a greedy git, out to get all yer teef!

In Conclusion

I hope you continue to visit The Greenskin and provide your valuable input in the form of comments and feature suggestions. I can’t guarantee that we’ll be able to accommodate everything as we only have so much time in a week, but it doesn’t hurt to try! As always, you can email me directly at Snafzg (at) gmail (dot) com if you’re prefer to keep things private.

Once the NDA lifts and the game releases, I’m sure we’ll all be interested to see where we go in the future. Not just this site, but the WAR community in general. It should be a blast!

Cheers,

~Snafzg