GoCorral

Unusual look behind the curtain here, what blog articles/pages on the GoCorral website are the most popular? I’ll do it by year, going back to 2019. In each year we’ll look at the top ten webpages, blog post or permanent page.

2019

I was inactive on my blog in 2019. I’d just had a my first kid at the end of 2018 so I was absorbed with more important activities. So 2019 can serve as a sort of baseline for “what if I did nothing?”

I had a total of 1334 views in 2019. About half of them were of the home page which isn’t that shocking. My League of Legends content from 2014 was still the most popular. Cimmeria was a big draw since that’s most of what my blog has been since 2017. The final standout is the D&D Tiers of Play article which discussed the level breaks for powerful spells in D&D 3.5. The same tiers exist for all D&D editions except 4e where they’re slightly different. So that article despite being written in 2016 for a 2003 game is still relevant for the D&D 5e in 2019.

2020

I had a total of 2097 views in 2020. I started writing semi-regularly again in July, but the uptick in views actually came earlier, in March. What happened in March 2020? COVID lockdown! Which also caused a large spike in interest in D&D and online platforms for playing it. There were probably tons of people searching the internet for info on D&D. That would explain the greater popularity of the Tiers of Play article in 2020 and the general increase in interest in my blog which is largely D&D focused. League of Legends content remains a high one as well as that one article I wrote in 2017 about Habitica (which I’m not using anymore).

2021

I had a total of 2643 view in 2021. An increase from 2020, but if you account for the surge later in the year for 2020, its about the same amount of traffic. Same content remains high, League of Legends, general D&D articles, Habitica. Getting the COVID Vaccine being a high one isn’t a surprise either as I got access to the vaccine before other people due to my work. Gurutama Part 12 is probably popular due to general D&D searching as well. That article contained a picture of the D&D races from the 3.5 Player’s Handbook. I’d guess that article is mostly getting hits from image searching on Google.

I’m also noting a pattern of Sandil being a consistently popular article. Maybe I’m one of the few people that wrote anything interesting about Duergar dwarves? Or people like the Fierce Axe and Dwarven Kings? That would explain the Fierce Axe post being popular as well.

2022

I had a total of 3263 views in 2022. So a definite uptick. There’s a huge spike in August that accounts for a decent portion of that, but it seems like the blog was getting more popular in general. Most of the August hits are for the blog’s homepage. Best explanation I can think of is that’s about when I started doing a lot of in text links to other pages on Cimmeria content. That probably improved my blog’s general SEO due to increased linking.

As for what’s popular, there isn’t really a change from 2021. All the same stuff of League of Legends, general D&D articles, Habitica, and Dwarven Kings. How I Played Dawn of Worlds is also a consistent popular article as it appeared in 2019 and 2021 as well. I guess it’s an okay primer on how to get started playing that game digitally? It’s pretty minimal though. I hope it helps some people though!

2023

I had a total of 3293 views in 2023. So almost the same as 2022, but more even instead of having a weird spike in August. Same popular content with two new additions, Setting the Stage and The Lich-queen. Setting the Stage is no surprise. I’d started the podcast in October 2022, so seeing more obvious public interest in the show throughout 2023 make sense. The Lich-queen is likely popular due to the 2023 release of Baldur’s Gate 3 and its strong focus on githyanki and the race’s monarch, The Lich-queen. While I’d written my githyanki stuff back in 2020 and 2021 it got a little comeback thanks to the video game.

2024

I had a total of 6719 views in 2024. A whole doubling since 2023. And there’s some obvious leaders. I’d started doing more RPG reviews which I guess are more popular content than I was expecting. My New League of Legends Map content absolutely exploded, but sort of for the wrong reasons. I wrote that article in 2014. The map got redone once again in 2024 which had lots of people searching for content on that. And my old article had all the right search terms, but the wrong “new” map.

My Home Page appears twice on here as I redid the blog’s organizational structure in 2024. So there was an old Home Page and then a new one that replaced it in the stats. Other odd leaders here are articles on Greek Gods. I’m guessing those are mostly image searchers? Or people curious how to fit the Greek Pantheon into their D&D campaign and looking for inspiration. Unfortunately, I can’t really explain why this content became popular in 2024 instead of 2022/2023 when I published those articles.

2025

I’ve had a total of 3763 views in 2025 so far. I’m writing this at the end of May, so if we multiple that number by 12/5 we get 9031 expected for the whole year. Even better than 2024! Pretty much the same leaders as 2024 though, League of Legends, Greek Gods, RPG reviews, Habitica, and Setting the Stage.

Wrap-up

Putting it all together my most popular articles have been consistently:
League of Legends content
Greek Mythology content
Generalized D&D content
Setting the Stage content
RPG Reviews
Popular topics in general (COVID and Baldur’s Gate 3)
Stuff related to Dwarven Kings for some reason?

So what can I do with this information? I’m only going to write stuff I enjoy writing, but if I wanted to be more popular, how would I achieve that?

1. League of Legends content no longer interests me. I haven’t played the game in years no longer have it installed on my computer. I could certainly do other video game content. Main games I’m playing now are Hearthstone and Deep Rock Galactic. Plenty to write about there.
2. Greek Myths are great fun. But this one feels like a tapped well in my case. I’ve already written everything I want to about the Greek myths in relation to Cimmeria. There just isn’t much else that interests me here.
3. Generalized D&D content is a popular blog topic. I didn’t think I have much to add to that space that other authors aren’t already saying. But maybe people enjoy my voice/style more than I thought. I could give this a try if I’m hungry for a topic.
4. Setting the Stage content will keep getting pumped out every two weeks for the foreseeable future.
5. RPG reviews are part of my broader Chinese RPG project. I’m closing on the end of that one, but there’s a few more left to write. There’s also a few more books I want to read that aren’t Chinese related. I expect this topic to continue for a while longer.
6. Popular topics isn’t something I see myself pursuing very hard. For example, Black Myth: Wukong was a pretty popular game and its a Chinese one, but I still just didn’t feel like getting it and playing it. Getting it, playing it, and writing some blog content on it sounds more like a job than a fun hobby. Political topics are another thing I’ve considered writing but it usually just feels depressing to write about all the things that need fixing in the world.
7. Dwarven Kings content is a mystery to me as to why that was successful. It’s a tapped well within Cimmeria, just like the Greek Myths. And I don’t think there’s a way I’m going to intentionally replicate the success of the Dwarven King posts without understanding what made them popular in the first place.

In conclusion, I’m giving myself permission to write about video games and general D&D/RPG concepts again (used to be way more of that when I first started the blog). We’ll see if that actually happens within the once a week cadence I have at the moment though.