What is Profil3?
Add Tyrende to my friend listThe absolute best way is to email us (mog at beckett dot com) with article ideas that are timeless. The vast majority of our articles are either time sensitive (dealing with a recently released X) or are regular columns that are generally only given to freelancers who have proven themselves to be both talented and reliable. But not in that order though. My job is to edit work, not send out emails every day because a freelancer keeps telling me “it’s almost ready” three days after the due date. A good, reliable freelancer is a thousand times better than an incredible, but flaky one.
I strayed a bit from the target (oops). So basically, 95% of the stuff is already spoken for by our regulars. What we need are the filler articles that can be put in a side folder and pulled out in case a article doesn’t come in (this happens a lot, especially when games are pushed back and the company can’t talk about anything new). An example of an article that is timeless is like the WoW Mods article from Issue 9, which is sort of like a guide to improving your game. We’ve done articles on beta testing (how to be a good beta tester and what it takes to beta test a game as a guild), guides to professions and earning money without cheating, and general industry-based articles that look back or forward and don’t examine the now.
Now it’s a slow way to break in (obviously) and it certainly won’t pay the bills because it may take six months before we get the article in (if we use it at all), but it sets up the relationship and puts you on the radar.
The second tip I’d give you is to always keep contact. Things get really busy (as evident from the time it took me to respond to these questions!) and things get hidden under the never-ending pile of work. Every few months, shoot out an email just to ask if we’d like any more ideas or articles, or even just to see how we’re doing. It doesn’t have to be work-related, it just needs to go “hey, I’m here under the pile of papers on your desk!”
As to the question about where the magazine and our main website is going? The magazine is going to continue covering a wide array of topics. MOG isn’t meant to focus on one specific type of gamer, and while it spreads us a bit thin, I think it’s better to have a little bit of everything. We’re a hybrid class. We’re nearly done with the leveling guides for WoW, so we’ll probably move into leveling guides for AoC and/or WAR, while keeping up our class guides with EQ2. LotRO will probably get it’s time to shine as well in the guides. As for our features, we’ll continue to mix it up with updates on current MMOs (CoX, SWG, DAoC, DDO, FFXI, etc. etc.) when they come.
If you’ve noticed a few issues go by without mentioning your favorite MMO and there’s been a big patch or update or expansion (or one is coming up), shoot us an Email to let us know you miss seeing us covering it. We WILL get it in as soon as we can. There are literally too many bigger MMOs out there to keep up with every last one, so titles get priorities depending on what our readers ask for. Email is the easiest way to get our attention.
As for the website… right now we’re in the very early stages of doing something that may or may not happen. I don’t know when, or if, it will happen, or if it will even turn out the way we’re hoping it will. Vague I know, sorry. We’ve got a lot of great ideas on paper, but they haven’t moved from the paper stage, so for the moment they’re just cut trees with some ink on them. Lots of ink. And doodles. I like to draw little sleeping kitties on just about any writable surface that gets within 5 feet of me.