While considering my view count and answering a question on discord, I combined the “Five Favorite Game Series” idea that’s going around (It’s apparently Krikket’s fault) with a curiosity about my most viewed posts. I intend to do one of those also, at some point, but this is where my thoughts are today. I actually already knew one of the top five, but it’s since gone from number one to number two.
- FFXIV – Shadowbringer Astrologian. (687) This is probably the surprise that shouldn’t have been. It only averages one hit/day these days, but that small trickle certainly adds up over time. It’s actually been popping up a bit more lately. This was a first impressions piece after all the big changes in the expansion. It wasn’t a fun time, especially for a shielding spec.
- GE Big Boy Appliances. (546) The throw-away necro-post that for some reason still gets the odd hit here and there. It was down to only a few hits per week, but with me posting more for #Blapril it’s gone up to a few hits/week. This was my #1 post for a long time but now lags by a little over a hundred views.
- FFXIV – Hildebrand Sidequests. (297) Another throw-away post reminiscing about getting caught up on said very goofy quest series. It’s… not for everyone. I have no idea why this post gets hits, but I quite like the images I chose.
- FFXIV – Shadowbringers – Astrologian Revisited. (241) It’s almost impressive that my follow up to the other post managed to make this list. It actually has 440-odd fewer views. That’s around 33% of the original. This was mostly an update once I reached and tried my hand at some of the end-game content. I thought maybe the problem everyone was complaining about was end-game specific. In hindsight, I guess the problem existed and I simply didn’t care. “You don’t pay my sub,” as they say.
- LegalEagle v. Matpat? (206) I don’t remember hearing any more about this, but it happens to be the oldest post in the list. It was more of a maybe YouTube drama/maybe fake drama curiosity at the time. I’m still not convinced it wasn’t designed to drive views for both channels while providing a very polite “I see you” sort of acknowledgment. Not sure it matters, a year and a half later.
So there it is. Got a cute little pareto/power law kind of curve to it. Maybe I should take on the slightly more disturbing topic of the lowest five. I feel afflicted with a sort of morbid curiosity to see what ended up at the bottom of the pile.
Y’all take care, and remember views aren’t everything. They do not define the intrinsic value of our work, only how many people and bots decided to click on it.
Hey, it’s Blapril time! The goal is to simply promote and stimulate the blogging community by encouraging people of all skill levels and backgrounds to post. The official post can be found here and it’s never too late to start.
Unidentified Signal Source 
That prompted me to look at my all-time “Most Viewed” according to Blogger’s records. For quite a few years that was very reliable. I knew which were the most-viewed and more importantly I knew why – in every case it was because they’d been linked somewhere – old Massively, reddit, the official forums of the game i was writing about – and I’d gotten a huge surge of hits from there.
Looking at it now, all those that I remember are still on the first page of results. In fact, looking at those results makes me think the numbers aren’t as off as I’d thought. At the very top, though, are a couple of posts that don’t seem to have any reason to be there and they have five and three times the views of the next post down the list, respectively.
Hmm… actually, the more i look at this, the more curious it is. I think I might get a post out of it…
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