Dark Bow and Dragon Arrows

The Jagex announcement for June updates for runescape has been met with some anticipation by me in particular considering I have 90+ slayer and will be able to hunt for the Dark Bow. Although I am nowhere near the level 83 hunter skill requirement to catch the dragon implings - this is likely how dragon arrows will be gained.

As with each new item runescape introduces, the price will be highest for the first 7-10 days and then will gradually start falling down as more items come into the game and the demand falls. Hopefully I will be able to get a few of the Dark Bows and that I can get my hunter skill up to the requirement.

I am still looking to put together some runescape bloggers and have noted some decent blogs that have recently started (or rather that I recently discovered). There are many opportunities for people to get into writing blogs on runescape (or gaming in general) - and they can monetize their site if they seek out different methods to monetize them.

Anyway, to finish off, hopefully there is some real use for both dark bows and dragon arrows when they come into the game rather than just taking up another bank space.

Runescape Guides and Bloggers

Runescape has a significant amount of people who write constantly about the game, either through providing guides or certain indviduals providing an insight into the average players mind. In an equal world everyone would have their voice heard and their good work appreciated. Sadly the world is not equal.

Due to the popularity of runescape it has attracted a number of people who hover like vultures trying to drive web traffic to their sites - mainly to get people to pay for runescape money. Unfortunately, people pay money over for runescape coins and then risk their account as Jagex catch many people via that method.

The popularity of runescape has also attracted a lot of spam bloggers who are constantly updating daily to generate more buzz for such shops. It annoys me that I am trying to get a group of bloggers together who are interested in promoting the game and associated runescape guides without any secondary agenda of funding an activity that breaks Jagex rules. However, the only active bloggers I come across are generally the people that are working together to cross promote their sites.

I guess I could say I am appealing to all honest runescape players, that is the players that play within runescape rules, for them to make a stand and help me form a network of runescape bloggers that have an agenda to help promote legitimate runescape help.

Requirements would simply be:

1. People wrote about the part of runescape that interested them the most
2. People regularly updated the content - at least weekly would be good
3. People within the network helped each other through advice on writing technique or on other technical issues with whatever blog platform or content management system was used for the website or blog.

Those three requirements would be simple to achieve if people were willing to help establish such a network for runescape players. If anyone does want to help form such a group then please get in contact via the contact form on my main runescape help site.

People who are interested can either want to write runescape blogs or simply become a runescape guide writer to help develop my main site.

***Update***

I let my main site expire when Jagex announced EoC so it no longer exists. To bring it up to date would have required a substantial overhaul and a large time investment. Since then, Jagex have released 07 runescape servers and a friend has started a dedicated wiki type site for 07 runescape at http://www.07runescape.com. I am sure he would appreciate any help updating information for that site to ensure it becomes a valuable reference for all 07 runescape players.

Runescape Bloggers

Runescape is an MMORPG that has a lot of dedicated fans, many of whom are avid bloggers who like to express their opinions to the masses. Unfortunately, many players do not maintain their blogs over a sustained period of time and leave plenty of unfinished thoughts.

Personally, I had stopped writing on my runescape blogs when I got bogged down in real life with a course for starting your own business. It has now finished and I have started blogging again, hopefully I will continue to be able to do so in my spare time as frequently as I can.

In that time I have also read a lot about blogging communities as a whole and I have improved my writing style to be more inclusive of other runescape sites in general. This is what I believe will help keep me motivated to continue blogging this time - including others and making it a community.

If anyone wants to get involved and are an existing blogger (doesn't have to specifically be about runescape - but if you play the game it will be so much easier to know the way things work), then get in contact as we can work together and be more helpful to the overall runescape community - instead of letting the writing stop, we can keep each other motivated to continue and increase the overall help offered.

If blogging was tried and writing guides would be better suited, then any player can register on my main runescape help site (site no longer existing - but editors and guide writers can sign up at http://www.07runescape.com for old school runescape game help) and submit a guide for inclusion in the database. Hopefully in 12 months time the site will be much more comprehensive on the help offered and that I would have a good team of guide writers working together.

Social Bookmarking

I have added social bookmarking below each post as this is a growing aspect of websites - especially blog style websites. It will enable people to add to their social bookmarks page and share with their friends. It is kinda similar in style to viral marketing, but instead of informing your friends of interesting sites, you are letting your friends find sites that appeal to you.

Below each post is 10 social bookmarking links that will allow people to add to their favourites and share with their friends. There are many more social bookmarking sites available on the internet, however, I felt 10 was sufficient for now and have chosen some of the more popular ones to prevent too much clutter at the end of posts.

Hopefully in the long term, the social bookmarking, viral marketing and constant development of links and content will help make the process of establishing my runescape helpsite a lot easier.

I have had a few ups and downs in the search rankings, and there is a considerably higher number of people that visit the main site when I make an appearance in some of the top pages - however, still relatively young for a website, I quickly disappear in the search results again and then only a handful of people find the site.

I have noticed though, that around 10% or so of visitors come back to this site again, whether they find it through a different search term, or have it bookmarked. I do encourage people to bookmark the main site at least as it will give you access to all the blogs associated with the site also and can act as a kind of runescape portal.

Viral Marketing

Since I have introduced several blogs to cover various aspects of Runescape, I was hoping to have the word of my site spread further among the runescape players. However, the main way of finding my site still appears to be through search engines.

I have registered on some forums and tried to make an appearance on some to get the word out that my site exists. Although daily traffic appears to increase slowly but steadily, the main problem is still with getting the site more interactive via the forums or any of the blogs.

For anyone reading this particular post, they can help my site by telling their friends - this is the viral marketing aspect. The blogs offer an ideal way for people to tell their friends about my website existing, as they can simply forward a link to their friend via email (the picture of the letter below each post makes it even easier).

Basically, if any readers find any of my posts interesting or useful, or even some parts of the site, then I would appreciate it if you could share this with your friends and forward any posting that you feel would be of interest to them.

As always, I am on the lookout for guide writers and am especially interested in quest guide writers as I am looking to add more content to my main site over the next few months in the hope of catching up to the same level of content as other established sites. Any help to achieve this is appreciated, so I ask if you know anyone that is wanting to write guides, or has already written guides, then let them know about my site.

Thanks.

Latona.

ps. Dont forget to bookmark my site and visit regularly as I plan to update both the main site and the associated blogs on a regular basis.

pps. Dont forget to tell your friends :P