The captcha is a necessary evil, (By the way, visit www.ifyouactuallygohereimgonnalol.tk TO INCREASE YOUR PENIS SIZE!) and as others have said, I don’t think anyone will be too miffed about it.

2: Captcha is a less than a minor annoyance, and only an issue when I must comment. I don’t have any problem with it staying indefinitely.

3: The current layout is working fine.

4: I’m just fine with two of your Indignant-Journalist/Bartlesque “how is this so popular?!” articles, and possibly a review once a week. Your reviews can be much more insightful and unique then the average blog(which are on par with Youtube comments).

5: My only suggestion would be a single game review on a regular basis. And by review, I mean your insightful critique and analysis, communicated to video game lay-persons. I also played (and loved) ThresholdRPG and genuinely value your opinions. I’m with Peter, and I would enjoy seeing more articles on how you design quests, handle non-combat player classes in an MMO, or why games inspired from colleges in Denmark suck.

This is the only game related blog I read, keep it up.

2) Not a problem here or anywhere else. If you get spam I say go for it.

3) I read it here, so I like the fact that you don’t spam the main page.

4) I would rather have fewer topics that we discuss for longer than having a topic a day. 2-3 topics a week but keep the discussion going.

5) I started reading here because I am a long time player of your game “Threshold RPG”. I have played WoW and a few other MMO’s as well so the more generel MMO topics catch my interest as well.
I would love several posts on one topic where you look at how different games have solved something, how you have tried to implement it, speculations on what work and so on. Topics could be: RP, How to attract players, Big/Small events, Making people feel special, Quests, Leveling systems, Deatheffects, Making repeditive stuff fun (all MMO’s are repeditive if you play enough but some of it you do because it’s fun and some is done because of some kind of reward).

I’m fine with the Captcha, as well. It’s decidedly better than spam.

On topics, you seem to have an interesting variety that often causes me to want to read it. I certainly don’t have much to -say- in response, so the lack of comments should definitely not be an indicator.

Lurkers ftw.

(I also would love to see some explains on why you created certain features. I love hearing the “Why I did…” or “what prompted me to…”, but I’m kind of nosey that way!)

2.) By all means, keep Captcha. Though Hirvox is right, some words are really hard to read! The one I see right now is undecipherable at least for me. Tobold http://tobolds.blogspot.com/ uses a similar system that is more convenient.

3.) I use google reader and the iGoogle gadget to inform me of new blog entries, as I often do not browse from home. Actually, a lot of people do NOT use RSS readers. They visit the site directly OR surf to it over the link in their RSS readers. I personally do not know anyone of my friends who uses a RSS Feed other than that of Internet Explorer, and there people also use it much more as a link list than anything else.

4.) I prefer to read quality topics. There is nothing worse than uninspired blog entries. But you are right, writing a lot, even if it is crap, usually attracts more readers. But do not ask me for hints how to promote a blog, I found your blog over other also very interesting blogs.

5.) Just keep on talking about interesting stuff.

Theme: I didn’t find the old one obtrusive, but this one is definitely cleaner. A positive change.

Captcha: Meh. I expect some form of spam-screening these days, and it’s a minor inconvenience at worst. Definitely better than filtering through spam comment posts.

Rate of Topics: I’m sure between holidays and the relatively recent increase in post frequency, comments are coming at a slower-than-expected rate. Averaging one post per day seems fair enough, though 3-4 per week would be fine too. If you’re posting every day, breaking up articles into parts (like the ‘Nerfs…’ series) works pretty well.

It might get awkward if there are active discussions in more than 2-3 topics. Unless I’m missing something, the Recent Comments list shows only the five most recent comments (which may all be related to the same article). It seems pretty easy for discussion to get lost that way. The few Today.com blogs that I’ve seen all use that format though, so this is more of an observation than a call for change.