I never run out of things to blog about because as time goes on I end up with anniversaries and other milestones about which to write. So on with another one of those. This time it is a memory of the EVE Blog Pack.
I pledge allegiance to the pack…
At some point around the May-June 2008 time frame CrazyKinux started emailing some bloggers who wrote about EVE Online about an idea. He had read something about blog packs or some such, an idea that a group of like-minded blogs and bloggers would cooperate, cross-post, cross-link, and otherwise work together to promote each other and our passion of choice.
Being less than two years into my life as a blogger I was keen to join in. That was back when blogs were almost still a thing and I would expend effort in order to grow my readership. Heady days.
Having collected a few volunteers, on June 16, 2008 the EVE Blog Pack was proclaimed.
I waited around until July 1, 2008 to run my own post about it, as we were still in the process of settling things, with a couple of last minute swaps in the lineup. But the initial list of blogs was:
- A Mule in EVE
- Articulated Sky
- Bitter Old Noob
- Caldari Navy Ibis
- CrazyKinux’s Musings
- Derekest’s Blog
- EVE Newb
- EVE-Pirate.com
- Flashfresh – A Pirate
- Lady in Space
- Morphisat’s Blog
- Nuyan’s Hangout
- Ombeve
- Postings from the Edge
- The Ancient Gaming Noob
- The Littlest Drone
- Votrian’s EVE Blog
- Warp Drive Active
- Winterblink
That list there is a chunk of EVE Online history I suppose. Most of the sites on that list are missing or dormant. Aside from my own site, I think only Morphisat’s Blog has seen a new post this year, with Warp Drive Active following behind with an update in 2017. I’ve left the links in for the sites that still exist in some form.
I am surprised as many still even exist.
(Also check out the playa hosting at Gax Online, another attempt to bring gamers together and do… well… I’m not sure. But it shut down about a year later.)
There are some self-hosted sites on the list, and more often than not those disappear when the owner loses interest. Why pay for hosting and a domain name if you’re not going to use them?
Of course, it is CrazyKinux himself whose site gone, the place with a lot of the information about the blog pack and its changes over time. Fortunately we have the Wayback Machine at the Internet Archive, so I can link back to some key items.
My own time in the blog pack was limited. I disappeared from the list then re-appeared before being officially kicked. Removing me from the pack came about because my site wasn’t (and still is not) dedicated solely to EVE Online. Admittedly, I write what I damn well please and bristle at any suggestion that I do otherwise. Also, the pack was limited to a strict number of blogs, eventually 30, to keep it a focused group. So despite being a founding member, most of my time during the CrazyKinux era was spent as an outsider.
Somewhere down the line the Blog Banters started, a common topic put out about once a month to members of the Blog Pack to write about and cross link to each other. I think I was already out of the pack by the time Blog Banters started. You can tell when I was in the pack later on because I was pretty good about responding to each one and linking out to all participants.
CrazyKinux himself wasn’t in it for the long haul. So far as I can tell, his last update to the EVE Blog Pack came about in March of 2011. At least that is what the Internet Archive tells me.
After that the maintenance of the EVE Blog Pack and the monthly Blog Banters was moved on to other bloggers. I was on the outside seemingly for good at that point so wasn’t paying much attention.
After the departure of CrazyKinux it seems Seismic Stan stepped up to run the Blog Banters, then handed them off to Kirth Kodachi. He held the helm for Blog Banters for a stretch before handing it over to Drackam at Sand, Cider, and Spaceships. I guess there is a summary at that link, which would have been really handy at the start of this paragraph I suppose. There they faded a little over a year back with the 80th running of the blogs.
I believe the blog pack itself was held by Rixx Javix for a stretch, who also provided the logo if I recall correctly, then it ended up with Marc Scaurus who was also running the EVE Bloggers site. It was Marc who put me back in the pack, towards the end of his tenure, and the timing was about right. That was around 2013 and my blog was at peak popularity and I was writing more about EVE Online than anything else. Posts about New Eden top all other categories here.
When Marc wanted to step down from running EVE Bloggers and the EVE Blog Pack there was a battle over who the heir apparent would be, with Cyberin getting the domain and the blog pack and planning to keep the status quo.
Cyberin’s evebloggers.com
Then there was Alexia the usurper who, when denied the old domain, rolled up evebloggers.net where the plan was to get bloggers to post directly to that site and not their own blogs.
And in this corner, Alexia’s evebloggers.net
As it happened, neither of those sites lasted very long. But Fuzzysteve, Steve Ronuken of Fuzzworks and CSM fame, stepped in and setup a prototype site for EVE Bloggers, making it a thing once again. And somewhere in there is the feed for the EVE Blog Pack. I’m not sure what the URL for it is, it might have simply become the EVE Bloggers feed, but it feeds into Total EVE still, so my posts end up there.
That was in November of 2013 and not much has changed since then.
And so it goes. But the blog pack carries on in its own way, as do blogs in general.
None of the above should be read in any sort of grumpy tone. I appreciate all the work that CrazyKinux, Kirthi Kodachi, Seismic Stan, Rixx Javix, Drackam, Fuzzysteve, Marc Scaurus, and everybody else who had a hand in keeping this alive and going so I could, a decade down the road, write a summary filled with half-remember facts and links out to the Internet Archive.
So if I missed anything, or got anything wrong, feel free to correct me.
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