It has been over 3.5 years since the previous poll I did on the state of the blog, and with my job preventing me from spending a lot of time on the blog, I wanted to get some feedback. This helps me to see where I should spend some time and what the community would appreciate most. I’m glad that in this community, you only have to release a quick form, and dozens of people leave some genuinely good feedback that we can work with. So, in this article, I will go over some of the stats that came from this poll and see what can be done to improve upon the blog in the near future. While not all suggestions can be acted upon immediately, it will help to set some priorities going forward.
The poll was released on Friday, April 19th, and shared on Facebook, Reddit, and Discord servers. The poll was also posted at the top of the homepage’s sidebar during this time, giving people easy access to the form. All data was collected on Friday, April 24th, when 82 people filled out the form. Thank you all for leaving your feedback. Hopefully, it can lead to something useful! To those of you with specific questions, I should have reached out by the time this article goes live. Check your spam filter if you haven’t received an email from me yet.
General stats
Since this poll is a core sample of the community, I wanted to gather a bit of data on the people who filled this out. Nothing to the likes of “big tech,” but getting some background info helps to see how the community interacts with the blog. The first thing I wanted to know was how long the readers had played the game. I did this by grouping them into several periods of the game’s life, from the OG Core Set to only owning the game since 6 months. This gives me more info on whether or not new player articles are worth investigating and whether or not there would be an audience for that.
43% of readers came from the days in which we still had regular releases, which is a smaller portion than anticipated. I had expected more veteran players than new players, but reality shows the reverse is true. A pretty large portion of the players joined with the new Core Set and are being pulled in with the repackaged stuff that has been released for the past few years. Since I also supervise the Buy/Sell/Trade group on Facebook, I should have seen this coming, as there are so many people asking around for the older stuff that doesn’t get reprinted anymore.
The next question was on the visiting frequency of the blog. While I have no illusions that the blog is seen as some sort of news site to check each day, it can be worth it to check how often I would need to refresh content in case people check the frontpage.
The majority of people go to the site at least once per month, which is a great frequency for me, as it gives me enough time to work on something new to release. I also appreciate the people stopping by at least once a week, though I hope the backlog of 500+ articles will keep you occupied for a while, as I can no longer release stuff weekly. Those were some crazy days when creativity was high, and I had all the time in the world to work on the blog. Also good to see that everyone who filled in the poll has visited the blog at some point, which will make the data collected more relevant.
Now that we know how often people visit the blog, I’d like to know why. That helps to see if I need more informative or more entertaining articles. Of course, I know the answer is going to be both of them. But it is nice to find out the reason behind the visits. I let people fill in their own answers here, which will skew the results a bit, but be sure that I have read the different reasons and will consider them when thinking about what articles should have priority.
3.4% of you will need more interesting jobs; I can see that much. But I understand where you are coming from and am glad that the blog can help pass the time a little faster. The 30.5% who are stuck on quests have been the main target audience when I started out. The intent of the blog was to provide support to those players with in-depth quest analyses, and I hope that you are still happy with the content aside from quest-reviews. The majority of players just want content on the game and are less likely to read a complete quest analysis. Looks like I will need more generic articles that are easier to read covering a broader range of topics than a specific quest. Good to know!
This leads to the next question, which is on the main topic that readers are interested in. I gave the option of many of the main series that is still ongoing on the blog, but the most popular ended up being what the blog is best known for Quest analyses. Unfortunately, I do not have many of those (non-Nightmare/Saga) ones in the pipeline, as I have burned through the majority of official content by now. I want to at least finish the stuff that FFG has released before covering fan-made projects. I have different writers working on that as we speak.
The next topic that is most appealing to readers is the Player Card Reviews that have been done by Silblade in the past. Sadly, I have not been able to contact him in a while, and those articles have been on hold since June 2023. I hope we can someday return to this, or if there is someone willing to step up and take over the player card reviews. Traits/Staples articles are also very popular, so it might mean that I have to revise the older Trait articles someday. I also have a place for trait reviews from fan-made series, such as AleP, who expand on traits that I had very little to talk about, such as Bree. These trait articles should exist aside from the regular content, as people are otherwise going to be confused on where to get certain packs. This is certainly something I can look into, as it has been a while since I’ve done a trait article.
Other subjects, such as storage solutions, convention reviews, and new player guides all still score decently high. I will try to keep those going whenever I can, though the convention reviews are going to be few and far between due to the low frequency of conventions for this game. I am also not going to be attending Con of the Rings 2024, so I doubt that there will be more articles on that topic this year unless someone else wants to keep a diary for those conventions. The one outlier in this part of the poll was the small number of votes for the Nightmare Quest Analyses. This has been my focus this year, but if not many people are interested in them, I should maybe prioritize other topics and do NM quests less frequently.
The final question for this section of the poll was how people are informed about new articles appearing on the blog. This helps me to discover where I should focus my promotion. Over half the respondents just happen to casually go to the blog and discover that there is a new article, so perhaps promotion is a bit overrated.
The main channels of promotion (Facebook, Discord, Reddit) are all about an equal share of the pie, so I think the balance between them is sufficient for now. A handful of people are also updated by the WordPress app, emails, and RSS feeds, but there is nothing extra I can do for that way of promoting new stuff. It’s done automatically, and I am surprised people still actually use them. But hey, free promotion for zero effort is fantastic!
State of the Blog
The next section is about the blog and how people regard the individual articles as well as the site as a whole. This has led to some UI changes in the past, and I was wondering if there was a need to freshen up the blog’s look after over 6 years of operation. Most of the questions here were rankings, though I also left plenty of space for people to fill in feedback on the quality and quantity of articles.
Articles
The first question was on the quality of the articles on their own. This is important to me to see how my style of writing appeals to the audience. It turned out rather positively, as the majority of votes were skewed towards a 5/5! This means that there will, of course, always be something to improve upon, but nothing that is damaging the quality of the articles too much.
When asked what to improve upon the articles, many of you had some suggestions that I will take into consideration going forward. Remember that there are over 120 different scenario analyses by now, not counting Saga/Nightmare. Changing the format of all of them would come at the cost of delayed new articles. I would instead choose to change the format of articles after I have written enough new stuff. Suggestions included: Adding gameplay pictures (now only done in special situations, like Temple of the Deceived), Thematic cards to bring to the quest, Putting the Tips&Tricks at the beginning of each article so that people don’t have to scroll all the way down, increasing the length of articles, decreasing the length of articles (so I think I’ll keep about the same level of detail), Fixing spelling mistakes (I have editors for this), adding an index to each article, and so many more minor things. While I can’t promise to change everything, I will look into what can be done in the future to perhaps make the articles easier for you all to digest.
Speaking of which, it will also likely improve the variety of content going forward. The next question asked how people would rank the different types of articles released, and I was somewhat surprised to see it rank pretty high. I find that I am almost exclusively writing Nightmare content and that there is not a ton of variety between those articles. While I try not to have two articles in the same series back-to-back, it does happen on occasion. I am pleased to see that this is not really an issue for the readers, though that can also be because players tend to read the articles they came for instead of reading the latest release.
The layout of articles was also polled, as I wanted to see if the style I stick to is received well. And for the most part, it is! While there are plenty of suggestions that could be used in the future to improve upon the layout, getting mostly 4’s and 5’s out of 5 is decent enough for me that change isn’t necessary straight away. I will look into perhaps testing some features in upcoming articles and then perhaps porting those over to older articles if they catch on. Again, that process is going to take a while and will reduce my capacity for new stuff.
The Blog
As for the blog in its entirety, I also put out a few questions. This is to help make navigation through the hundreds of articles a little easier and to see if the layout was still clear for everyone. The ranking for the blog as a whole was again fairly positive, with only one person being critical enough to rate it a 2. The majority of people acknowledge that the blog’s layout might not be perfect, but it works well enough. I’m glad, as this helps to make the articles easier to find and read, especially for newer players.
The feedback on the blog itself was mostly more article suggestions, so not much I can do with that here. Plenty of people had no notes, or just gave positive feedback.
Call to Arms
This isn’t the first time I’ve done a call to arms, asking people to write articles for me. I have done so in the past years, and that has resulted in some excellent series on the blog. Sadly, with many of the co-authors losing interest after a year or so, I was running the blog with a skeleton crew and could really need some additional people to write on several topics.
I was delighted to see a fair few of you respond enthusiastically about writing an article for the blog. Most of you who have left your contact info will have been contacted already about the prospects of writing for the blog, and I hope to hear back from you soon. Judging by the results, we can expect a lot more variety of content in the near future, with more analyses and storage solutions, as well as some new series or random articles. While not all that was promised will probably come to light, this might just be the spark we needed to keep the blog fresh and relevant instead of me going on and on about Nightmare quests that half the community will never play.
As for suggested topics that people didn’t want to write themselves, here is a short list that people left, which could be an inspiration for anyone reading this article to write about the topics. If so, feel free to reach out!
- More AleP stuff. While we are working on AleP, my own priorities lie with the official content released. I do have a writer going through the Oaths of the Rohirrim cycle, but more support for things like AleP player card reviews or Trait analyses would be most welcome.
- Narrative playthroughs. I seem to remember someone doing these back in the day, where they tried to make a story based on their playthrough with the cards. It would be cool to recreate this, but it is very time-consuming. It also demands a level of creative writing that I’m not too comfortable with, but I welcome anyone who is willing to attempt this. If I can find an example of this, I will share it here.
- An article on replacing Staple cards from your deck. A dedicated article would be nice on this, though I think I’ve said my share in my Multi-deck building articles. It would be cool to see someone else’s take on this.
- New player’s perspective on the game. I can’t do this myself, having owned the game for close to 10 years now. A few new players left their contact info, so I will see if I can piece something together.
- Deck Spotlights / Guides on deckbuilding. I have always said that the deckbuilding aspect of the game isn’t my forte, and there are other blogs that do this better (Hall of Beorn, Warden of Arnor). But if there are people willing to do something in the style of the deckbuilding series that was done for the Ringmaker cycle, then I would welcome that!
- Revised Content Only articles. These are tricky to make for me, since I own all the original content but haven’t bought any of the revised stuff (save for Dark of Mirkwood). The limited cardpool would affect certain quests and archetypes since you cannot really depend on certain tricks if you don’t have the cards for it. Would be nice if a newer player wrote on their experiences with this.
- Articles introducing the game to players coming in from Arkham and/or Marvel. I haven’t played either of those games before, so I do not know the differences and similarities save from what I heard from other players. If someone plays either one of those games and LOTR LCG, then a comparison article would be fun to do!
- Whole campaign reports. Again, I do not have the revised sets for campaigns, but it would be fun to see people cover their campaigns in a single article, including the choices they made, the challenges they faced, and how they overcame those challenges. I don’t have too much knowledge about the campaigns, so having someone else do the article would be appreciated.
I know it is a long list of possible articles, but if any of this inspired you, let me know, and I can see what we can arrange. I will detail the way to become an author for the blog in an email/message to you.
Books
While I keep hammering on about how the blog has books now, it seems that not everyone is aware of it yet. But in this section of the poll, I requested some feedback before we move forward with the creation of new books in the future. It helps to see what went right with the previous batches and what we can improve upon content-wise. The questions on the two books were the same, so I will discuss them per book in this article.
Playthrough Notebook
This book was a part of the 2021 loot for the blog and has helped people catalog their playthroughs for over 3 years now. The included graphs even teach you about which quests you play most often, and the book might have been an inspiration for the COTR Saga companion released in 2023. When asked how people got their hands on this book, most of them had received it as a part of the Patreon reward that year. This meant that the book was free for them, so their feedback was useful, though I value the people who bought the book a little more since they spent money on the actual product instead of getting it as a reward.
For the people who didn’t get one or still want one, see this link. Remember to set your location correctly for a reduced shipping estimate.
Quality-wise, the respondents were very positive about the book, with little to no notes on how to improve upon the design. This is the stuff that I appreciate a lot since it means we did well on our first try with the book! The only relevant question I got for this book was if it would be possible to make it hardback. It is certainly possible, though I opted not to do so for portability and to keep the costs low. Hardback often adds about $10 to the price, which is pretty significant to me. I also like the paperback more when you are carrying this book around at conventions. If people really want a hardcover version, I can set one up, but if that’s all the feedback I get, then the project will be a major success for me!
Field Guide to LOTR LCG
This is the more recent book that was supposed to be for the 2022 Patreon supporters but got delayed to May 2023. After release, it became so popular that I decided to set up a store page for the books in order to let everyone enjoy the contents. This book features single-page summaries for every quest that includes tips, statistics, and two unique challenges for that quest. It has been a fantastic resource for beginning players, but it also has a function during the game as the back cover has a tracker for progress/threat/etc.
A larger portion of the respondents used the PDF version to recreate the book or keep it digitally. This is a good alternative for people who want to quickly scroll through the document and not carry around the book all the time. Over half of the people did end up getting the book, though many are Patreon supporters who got theirs for free. Again, people filled out that they would still like a copy, possibly not knowing that it has been for sale for almost a year via this link.
As for the quality of the content, it was a perfect 5/5 from everyone! There is nothing more I could really hope for and I am glad people are so happy with their books. I understand that the hardcover book is quite an investment, but the PDF can be obtained through any donation to the blog, making it possible to get for people with smaller budgets for this game.
In terms of feedback, there was not much here. There was a suggestion for Keywords to be added to each page, which is an interesting one to me. It would help Victory Display decks a lot, and I could perhaps summarize the quests in a few distinct words on what sets them apart from the rest. An interesting suggestion, for sure.
Future Books
I am going to give myself so many headaches with this next section, but yes, I have been thinking about making more books available to the community. I asked for some suggestions and if there was any demand for topics that I suggested.
The majority of you want a guide to traits and deck suggestions with those traits. I would have to think about how to go about this, but it would be fun to have 4 pages per trait talking about their strategy and topping it off with a suggested decklist. Unfortunately, I cannot link to RingsDB in a physical format, but perhaps linking back to the original article could resolve this. The other suggestion that got quite some traction was the guide to Nightmare quests in the same style as the Field Guide. I do have plans to get this one done eventually, but I will probably have to wait until the majority of Nightmare quests have been covered on the blog.
Additional remarks/questions
The final section was a place for people to leave any questions or feedback that didn’t fit anywhere else in the poll. While I don’t think it is important to go into every bit of feedback that was given, I was grateful for all the nice messages under the Positive Feedback question. It far outclassed the Critical Feedback section and shows me what the motivation is for myself to keep going: the community.
The critical feedback was more in line with what the previous sections also mentioned. I know that there is a lack of structural releases and a variety of articles. I want to improve on this, but I won’t push myself too hard to set deadlines for people. Hopefully, the new articles from this poll will help me in keeping up with demand for a while, though it is always good to have people wanting more. In the end, this is still a hobby, and I don’t need to stress too much about meeting deadlines. I got my regular job for that.
There were a couple of questions on how to notify me of typos in the articles. While I do have an editor to check my work, I am not a native English speaker, nor are several of my co-writers. So mistakes happen. You can probably best notify me by reaching out over social media, as I can quickly alter the text to fix any mistakes. It might seem a bit nitpicky, but it helps to improve the quality of the content. You can also leave a comment under each article, but I wouldn’t suggest doing that. If you can let me or Beleg489 know, we can fix the issue!
Thanks again to everyone who filled in the poll. Feedback like this helps me to help you more! I am not sure when the first changes of this poll will be noticeable to everyone, but hopefully, this article will give you some insight into how I plan to introduce these changes to the blog. I won’t really be looking at the poll from here on out, but if you have any comments on this, leave them below the article, and I will see if I can introduce them together with the rest of the changes.
Vision Of The Palantir 