Blog Azeroth

Blog Name: LoreCrafted

Blog URL: http://www.lorecrafted.com

Blog Focus: Warcraft Lore. I'll focus on all aspects of the lore that I can manage, from the MMO itself to the tabletop RPG supplements, comics, and novels. The goal is to help foster a working knowledge between which lore is current and which lore has been retconned. Speculation about future lore is also included, as well as a healthy dose of author opinion.

Character Name: Tharion Greyseer ("Tharion" in-game)

Character Server: Earthen Ring (US)

Other Information:

I'm the leader of a small (~20 unique members) but long running (~4 years) roleplaying guild on Earthen Ring called the Netherbane. It's a demon hunter focused guild, so is steeped heavily in night elf lore and culture. For every game that I play I take a huge interest in the world lore, as I prefer to have a greater understanding of how characters would think in each setting. My Warcraft lore obsession is just a natural extention of that.

I try to post to LoreCrafted every weekday, leaving the weekends for personal time. I have a rudimentary posting schedule, with themed articles appearing on various days as well as a could of "floating" articles that I write as I feel the muse upon me.

It should be noted that I'm wholly new to blogging, so I may make (and have made) a few newbie mistakes. I'm still learning this medium, but I do enjoy it thus far.

LoreCrafted itself was launched officially on Labor Day, so it's still in its infancy, and I'm working hard to grow both its content and its readership.

I really enjoyed your article Demon Hunter RP. Is it really THAT bad...", and your blog as a whole looks great. A couple of suggestions:

• Disable requiring people to log in to comment. If you're concerned about SPAM, there are a number of plugins that can protect you. (Akismet generally does the trick.)
• You seem to make reference in your Demon Hunter RP article to previous things you've written about DH lore. It would be helpful to cross-link within your blog so that it's easy to find more content that has piqued your readers' interest.

Again, your blog looks great. I'll be subscribing for sure!

Thanks! I've gone ahead and disabled commenting. Its purpose was to help the bridge to the LoreCrafted forums, since I have a plugin that bridges the login from the blog to the user table for the forum. However, I just realized that if I disable registration for commenting, then I don't really need to bridge the logins as much. So I'll attempt it that way on your suggestion.

Also, a question. Is there such a thing as "over-linking?" Granted, I planned to link a lot more than I've ended up doing (and I plan on correcting that both with my backlog and my future posts), but a part of has a desire to link every mention to WoWWiki, another blog post, or my Netherbane website. Some posts, for example, may end up with a link in almost every sentence. So I'm just curious if that would be considered too much, or if the cross-linking of information was allowed at that frequency.

Once again, thanks!

While I'm no expert on cross-linking and referencing it just seems that if you intend to use a LOT of links that maybe you should include a Works Cited section at the bottom of each post. If it's absolutely crucial to put the link in that particular sentence then by all means please do... but if someone were to post too many links in a single blog post, I might find myself not following any of them. Know what I mean?

I'm sure your readers will appreciate your decision no matter which way you choose to go. It's more a question of whether you want to possibly overwhelm them in the post content or have them ignore it at the bottom of your post.

On the other hand, I find including a footnotes section to be annoying as a reader. I don't like having to scroll down to find a link and then back up again to try and find where I left off. I'm a huge proponent of in text citations. If you're sourcing information off of one place, then yeah, toss in a footer link. But if you're making numerous references to other places/characters/storylines, link the actual phrase or word accordingly. That way, if I'm really curious, I'll click on the link right there and then. If I don't care about it, I can still move on without skipping a beat.

Not trying to step on your toes or anything, DK. Just providing an alternative ^^.

Just wanted to step in for a moment and give my two cents...

When I first learned of the LoreCrafted blog, I was extremely excited. I am somewhat of a lore buff myself, but I lack the time commitment to actually sit down and study it as much as I would like. The LoreCrafted blog offers me, and anyone else really, a way to continue to learn about the lore of Azeroth.

I also know of Tharion's dedication to whatever project he is working on, oftentimes sacrificing his own playing time in the process. Each time, his completed works are never disappointing.

Great job Thar!

Not at all. I, actually, agree with you fully. Just have a bit of trouble explaining each and every aspect of my thoughts, I suppose.

I think it could also be cool to have those little speech bubble icons like here at the end of a sentence you want there to be a source for and just have a mouse-over script that hovers a blockquote of what you need plus be a clickable link that takes you to the original source. Of course, that may sound overcomplicated. The possibilities are endless so it'll be interesting to see where you go with your blog.

Wow, very cool. I like it, it's fun to explore the lore behind the game. Very nicely-done layout, too!

Thanks! I'm still working on getting into a regular posting groove. My goal is to eventually reach at least one themed post per day, but the dayjob and other such things tend to prevent that currently.

There's a lot of lore out there to cover, and I wanted to skew the blog more towards being a "practical lore guide" as opposed to a simple encyclopedia (we have WoWWiki for that!). So most of my articles attempt to either correct misconceptions about lore, highlight important aspects that lay the foundation for other stories, and other such things.

Hopefully it will develop into something that people enjoy reading.

Thanks again for the compliments.

We need more blogs like this.

Great job on Lorecrafted, Tharion. I know how much of a sacrifice it is to keep up with all that and keep it interesting.