World of Warcraft
My game of choice, for many years, has been World of Warcraft. It’s been a the place where I met my husband, made some fantastic friends, and generally provided community. One of the amazing things about this community is our ability to create and collaborate, and PLZ Enchant Me is one of the results of that.
PLZ Enchant Me is a project in which I made a website and discord, to support my enchanting ventures in World of Warcraft classic the Burning Crusade expansion. To market my enchanting skills, and let people connect with me in a convenient way.
Classic Enchanter
When Blizzard announced the revamp of its World of Warcraft classic game, I knew I wanted to be a part of it. With a small group of friends we ventured onto the Mograine server. It became a very tight knit community, and together with friends was able to clear all content, and complete my tier 3 gear set.
But this was classic, and I was incredibly broke. So much so, the people I enjoyed battlegrounds with, collectively funded my epic mount, trading me 75-150 gold each. But in general I was lucky if I could scrape together enough gold each reset to fund my raid consumables and enchants.
Burning Crusade
When Burning Crusade came around, I became incredibly lucky, and that sparked this project.
It started with the officers offering raid spots in Karazhan in the first week to the first people to level to max level. I had a group of friends set up to level in dungeons with me, and it was crazy fun, and ended up being in the first 10 at level 70 in our guild. With that I secured my raid spot.
This raid dropped Mongoose enchant, one of the most valuable enchants. Quickly I was making 100 gold per enchant, and the race to stay ahead of the game intensified. As more enchanters also learned the enchant, it was time for a new tactic.
Website
There were a few tactics used by enchanters to market themselves and get the sale.
- There was active promotion in trade and world chat.
- You could contact anyone in world and trade chat who was looking for the enchant.
- And one guy had build a Google Doc listing all the enchants he could do and the materials.
Seeing the doc, I knew my skills allowed me to do something similar, but make it into a website instead. I thought this would be a great opportunity to test out Google Sites, a free drag-and-drop website building tool.
Google Sites
In general I think Google Sites is a convenient way to link different documentation and scheduling that are within Google Docs, Google Calendar, etc. The tool has integration with Google tools, and it allows you to limit the access to the website by email address.
The editing interface is simple and easy to navigate, but it’s limited in its customization option. This allows you to fast and easily set up a page to manage a project or event, and have its documentation available to the right people. That said, if you want a company website, or display a bigger portfolio, I think Google Sites is not the right tool.
Result
For “PLZ Enchant Me” I think Google Sites worked very functionally, allowing me to make a website extremely fast and it works. Visually it’s not the prettiest solution, but I think for the function it serves, it might not have to be. There are a limited amount of customization options, and for the being a project or event based tool, I think that’s enough.
Different projects require different solutions. As a free tool, which has amazing integration with Google tools, I give Google Sites a 5/5 for functionality. As a website that requires more, I will still recommend WordPress.
