About This Blog
The purpose of this blog is to provide rich educational content and insights on game mechanics and PVP (player versus player) combat for MMORPGs. Here you’ll find my comprehensive Guides, narrated videos, and analysis for various games. In 2012, I’m expanding my Guides and videos to include PVE (player versus environment) content.
This blog has attracted many knowledgeable, helpful gamers who have contributed thoughtful advice and tips to me and other players. That’s the power of community 
Who is Taugrim
In real life, I have worked as a Software Developer, Software Architect, large-scale Program and Project Manager, and Management Consultant in the San Francisco Bay Area for over a decade.
My passion is online gaming, and my first MMO was Meridian 59 back in 1998.
I got started writing Guides for two simple reasons:
- there was a lack of rich, helpful, accurate material for specs that I played, and
- the player community often had (very) inaccurate perception on the capabilities of particular specs
My first Guide was for the Ranger-Archer spec in Knight Online in 2005, and I later wrote the LOTRO Captain Guide in 2007. I was motivated to write those Guides because the community believed that those classes were ineffective in PVP, but I knew from experience that they were effective if spec’d and played correctly.
While I received very positive feedback from the community on my Guides, some skeptics responded with “what you wrote doesn’t actually work”. Therefore, in 2008 I started publishing narrated videos with illustrative footage, and my YouTube channel was born.
Eventually I realized that having my own blog would be a better delivery platform for my Guides and narrated videos than posting them on various community forums, so in 2009 I registered taugrim.com and setup this WordPress blog.
In Q4 2011, I decided to give gaming coverage a go as a full-time job.
I greatly appreciate your spreading the word about my blog / stream / videos. To the extent you help me build traffic and reach a wider audience, the better a shot I’ll have at sticking to this long-term, and the more content you’ll get in return.
I welcome any financial support you can provide.
Cheers,
Taugrim
If you need to contact me, send me a public or private tweet @taugrim.
Other Authors
I’ve granted permission to the following authors to publish posts here:
- Cas (shawshank22): a blogger from the UK whom I’ve known for a few years from YouTube. We never gamed together until RIFT, so it’s fun to finally PVP and discuss game mechanics using voice chat. He’s a very skilled, intelligent player and a good bloke, and I’m sure you’ll find his content insightful. Cas became an Author here on 2011/03/12.
Really love your streaming work… I look forward to more additions.
Hey Tau, love your blog, guides, and videos. We (my hubby and I) started following you as a prot pally and wow and are excited to see you here in SWtoR.
I would love to know the details of your gaming setup. Have you considered including this information on your site for your fans?
Thanks for everything! Keep it up!
I posted my computer specs on my TwitchTV channel, since people ask all the time:
SAGER NP8130 GAMING LAPTOP SPECS
Nvidia GeForce GTX 560M GPU with 1.5GB GDDR5
Intel® Core™ i7-2670QM Processor (6MB L3 Cache, 2.20GHz)
8GB Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1333MHz
500GB 7200rpm SATA 300 Hard Drive
15.6″ Full HD LED-Backlit Display (1920 x 1080)
MS Windows® 7 Home Premium 64-Bit Edition
Plantronics Multimedia Stereo Headset (Music, Gaming, Voice) (Audio 350)
Logitech 2-button optical mouse with mousewheel
Stock laptop keybooard
Side note: love the name “Laratea” – very distinctive, sounds great.
An Argument for Donations
I had the privilege of watching your SWTOR livestream chat on the 11th of this month; I find what you do and the risk you take to start what is effectively a small business in an over saturated market where everyone thinks they are a critic, is a very worthy goal indeed. That said, I would very much like you to participate in a donation system for several reasons that I believed were overlooked in an effort for you to “stay your own man.”
While I definitely understand your trepidations about accepting money for the fine work you do on the grounds that it makes you responsible for a particular expectation of content, I do not believe that this is what the donation system is for. I would go as far as to say that if people are participating in the act of donating, a word taken to mean giving money or goods for a good cause for example to a charity, and then expectation a reward, in this case content that they want to see, they are in fact not donating money to you, they are paying you a salary. If we looked at ads from this point of view, I would be able to give you grief that in one of your videos, where I was forced to watch an ad, I saw that you said a mean thing about my class in a particular game, and that therefore because you benefited form the add, YouTube owed me. I believe that we both know that this is not the case.
I realize that you are a mechanics man at heart so let me just give you some numbers. You are starting a small business right now, meaning you hold all of the risk as an entrepreneur. 80% of small businesses fail within the first year according to the SBA (small business administration) website. The failures are due to a litany of reasons one of which is a lack of funds. If you want to start a business you usually go to a bank with a business plan outlining what you are going to do and how, and they will run the numbers and decide if the investment is worthwhile. Now I’m sure that attaining money from a bank where most of the older employees don’t know what a blog is will not work. So I propose that you work on putting a business plan together that you can post on your blog to explain your business and your goals, from where people can decide whether or not they want to donate money. Explain that this money is to be allocated however you see fit and that you have no liability. In fact I believe in this so much I am willing to help you construct this plan, if you would like, see my email address below.
Finally, I’d just like to add that there are many viewers such as myself that would love the chance to help you get this blog, and for you, career off the ground. My view is that investing and donating money to small startups that you believe in, is akin to being a patron of an artist, and by funding said artist, you do your part to continuing their wonderful work.
Think about it and get back to me.
Jack Cellucci
Email: jackcellucci@gmail.com
Hi Jack,
That was an excellent post, thanks for sharing your perspective.
I didn’t say I’d never try Donations, I just wanted to check out some other revenue streams / possibilities first.
The “patron” analogy fits better in this case than “charity” IMO.
Given that MMORPGs are a highly social, Internet-based experience, I have seen some rather unpleasant behavior from donors trying to exert pressure / influence in a non-constructive way, as I mentioned in the 1st episode of Taugrim Talks SWTOR.
I’m not saying that the majority of donors would behave this way. But I’ve seen that some would.
Re: starting up a business, yea I know as a long-time entrepreneur what the probability of success looks like. I wouldn’t try this if I didn’t truly believe that I offer a distinct set of capabilities to my audience that would be meaningful and relevant to them.
At any rate, there’s a decent chance I’ll try donations in January. We’ll see.
Hi Jack,
Wanted to follow-up on our dialogue about donations from last month.
I implemented a PayPal donation button earlier today.
Thanks again for your thoughtful post and encouragement!
That sounds fantastic. As a side not I only used charity because that was the precise definition I found from the dictionary and it happened to say “for example a charity.” In in no way meant to offend.
In response to what you said regarding Unpleasant behavior on behalf of subscribers (i only summarize because I do not know how to reply to multiple parts of a post in word press) and your January plans, I feel that even just posting some sort of plan for your business or even a set of expectations that one should have when they donate, would help weed out some of the “RiffRaff.” Also, if you need any help putting one together, I have some free time on my hands.
Of course I will be playing SWTOR as well. In fact my brother and I as well as several others are in a trooper only rppvp guild.
As a final note, I also believe that you bring a sophistication and maturity to a community that lacks both (at least in terms of broadcasting) and that is really what sets you apart. People such as myself who are casual gamer’s have grown weary grief giving trolls. After all the reason for me taking the time to write this posting in the first place was to display the fact i appreciated what you did, but most of all I don’t want you to fail at it.
Hey Taugrim, I enjoy your videos and they inspired me to try doing one in a similar format to yours. I know your busy juggling the casting and the organizational side of trying to be a full time caster, but if you get a moment to critique or give advice to me about my video I’d appreciate it.
It’s of my scoundrel in a PvP match on Jung Ma.
Excellent video! I Liked and commented on it.
If you haven’t already, I’d encourage you to post it on the Scoundrel forums, it will be very helpful to fellow players.
Thanks, I responded on you tube as best I could. I posted it on the forums and seems to be getting a good reception. I just made a new video of voidstar, where I break down the mistakes I made to try and correct them. But all in all was a decent match. I tried to get rid of the black boxes but with windows movie maker if I went 16:9 the top resolution option is 480p. So I stuck with the black boxes to get 1080p.
Man you should really try the shield spec tree on either your trooper or powertech. It might not look like much on paper but I found its actually better dps than the dps tree (yeah I know doesnÈt make sens). Also … If you run with a healer you just wont die.
I did try the tank tree with my BH running the tank stance. The sustained and burst DPS is noticeably lower when you don’t have points in the middle tree.
Anyone running with a healer will feel stronger.
I see when you hit the windows key it only shows the bar at the bottom and doesn’t minimise the game. If you just go into the settings .ini and turn D3D to true it fixes this problem.
Ignore that comment it resets itself
Hey, I remember you from your swordmaster in Warhammer Online. I would always try and keep you alive since you helped so much in the war effort. : )
Glad to see you’re playing Old Republic now. I’m sure you’re just as troublesome for the other side as you were back then.