Ask Massively: Feeds and faceplustweets
Google Reader might be on its way out, but old-school RSS is here to stay. If you haven't jumped to Feedly or some other RSS platform yet, July 1st is your doomsday. How is this relevant to your interests and why am I telling you this in Ask Massively? Well, many of you readers probably don't camp our front page, and if you're not into social media and the latest faceplustweet craze, RSS can help you keep up with the parts of Massively you want to read (and avoid the ones you don't).
... Not that anyone would avoid parts of Massively. Right guys? Guys?
The basic feeds
If you want everything pumped into your RSS reader (I'm using a modded Feedly, for example, in the top screenshot), then your feed link is simple: http://www.massively.com/rss.xml. Endthread!
But maybe you don't want everything we publish to hit your feed. A lot of you are just here for certain columns on your favorite games. You could follow each column from our column calendar, or you can click on the RSS button next to the category name at the top of any category you're interested in like so:
This works for specific columns (e.g., Flameseeker Chronicles), specific games (e.g., Guild Wars 2), specific editors, (e.g., Elisabeth Cardy), and specific tags (e.g., ArenaNet). Tags are what we use to bin content that doesn't have a category. There's no great big list of them since we make them up as we go. Just type in http://massively.joystiq.com/tag/your-text-here and see what pops out.
Booleans and exclusions
Tags are a power-user's BFF because they can be combined to include and exclude multiple searches and feeds all at the same time. For example, if you wanted to search for and follow a feed that includes both "Blizzard" and "Titan" -- thereby pulling posts specific to Blizzard's Titan rather than, say, EVE Online's ships of the same name -- you would use both in the string, separated by a comma.
You could also use the pipe character ("|") as an "or" function. For example, if you wanted to search for or follow the feed for a whole bunch of games at once (thereby excluding anything not specifically listed), you could try something like this:
And if you really hate MOBAs, you could exclude anything tagged as a MOBA from the entirety of your Massively feeds like so:
Combining these tricks will help you craft a totally custom Massively experience. Of course, you might miss a cool new game if you exclude too much!
Faceplustweets
When Google announced the sunset of Google Reader, I saw a lot of internet fools crying, "JUST USE FACEBOOK, DUH." While I don't think Facebook and Twitter share the same precise function as each other, never mind the same function as RSS, I'm nevertheless happy to have such a #firstworldproblem as too many networks for following blogs. The more the merrier! So if you're a Faceplustweeter, you'll be happy to know you can ignore all the complicated RSS clicking and just follow Massively on your favorite social media platform. We generally use those services to present our best content (not necessarily all of our content, though). We've got every social media haven lined up nice and neat on our Community page, but here's the short version:
And though they don't get site updates from us, don't forget our Twitch channel and Steam group! However you choose to follow Massively, we appreciate that you read us, and we aim to not disappoint.
What should you play? Where is the MMO industry headed? How does Massively operate? Has Lord British lost his marbles? Why is the edit button on a timer? Should "monoclegate" be hyphenated? Editor-in-Chief Bree Royce submits to your interrogations right here in Ask Massively every Thursday. Drop your questions in the comments below or ping us at ask@massively.com. Just ask!
