Since this is Blaugust’s motivation week, I chose to write a little about two things I latch on to for motivation — especially when I’ve been playing a single game for a very long time, or I write mostly only about a single game. It’s also the weekend, so I’m going to take a little break by writing something shorter for a change!

Game Events

Naturally, if the game you write for has updates and patches, such as an MMO, this could be considered an “event” that would offer a lot of new content to draw upon for topics. When an expansion comes out, that’s even more so. You can make a lot of great series posts blogging about progress through an expansion – just make sure to keep a mind on spoilers if you write about them.

Also, in-game events, such as seasonal events, are great motivation to pull from for blog posts. I rarely ever blog about the quests in an event, however. Everyone has done those, so they’re not usually of great interest to other players – unless there’s something funky about them.

FFXIV event quests are different every year, as are the rewards, but they’re usually tame and feel-good events. There’s rarely anything about the quest storyline itself I put into a post. However, if there’s a special experience (like a weird FATE) that is part of the questline, I might focus on that. I also like to focus on community interactions during the event.

For example, the fact that we fought a big blue bomb for Moonfire Faire this year wasn’t a shock – we did something similar last year. But the fact that the community decided to build a tower of the polar bear mounts and had a parade around the island was worth writing about.

Community driven events based on seasonal events are also great to write about. As another example, I wrote about attending a beach party that took place on the site of the Moonfire Faire event.

Projects

Game events as topics for post motivation isn’t anything surprising. But what do you do when you game doesn’t have an update for a while? That’s where what I call a “project” comes in.

I often set a project goal for myself in a game and use the progression I make in that as motivation to blog about it. Writing posts about a project does two things – obviously, it gives me content for my blog, but it also keeps me accountable in reaching for an in-game goal. I know that because I’m publicly “reporting” progress in my blog, I’m far more likely to keep working towards that goal in the long run.

A good example of a project is when I decided I was going to try healing in FFXIV. I’d healed in groups a little here and there before, but I wasn’t comfortable enough to do it consistently, and not for harder content.

Back in last December, I set out to change that. I made an in-character storyline for why Amon could be a White Mage healer. I then started leveling White Mage from level 1 scratch, with the help of my best friend who is a healer main. I documented the process for several months, mostly talking about leveling (sometimes from my character’s point of view), showing off the newest glamours I ran across, thinking about the new spells I got – that sort of thing.

I leveled and practiced playing White Mage just about every night using an Alliance Roulette. Not only was this a lot of fun to write about, but it gave me goals to work towards in game and eventually taught me how to be an okay-ish healer. And here I am writing a post about that process on top of it!

So whenever you set goals that can possibly translate into a project, consider tapping into that as motivation for your blogging!