Like A Zerg On A Wire

So, I was idly checking my referrals yesterday, the way you do, to see if anyone or anything real had linked to me and I came across a couple of entries for something called Zergwire. I'd never heard of it but it had the word "zerg" in it so I thought maybe it might be a genuine game-related website and someone might have have linked me or mentioned Inventory Full in a comment or something.

Being a blogger I'm naturally just that desperate for attention I'll click any link that might come back round to me. So I did and what came up was...interesting.

Zergwire appears to be some kind of game news aggregator with a heavy bias towards MMOs. It's hard to say more than that because it also has one of the cleanest faces I've ever seen. There is almost no information on the front end other than the pics, the links and the sign-up.

If you dig about a bit, though, you get to the Mission Statement that's buried in the "About Us" link. No need to follow that hypertrail. Here's the whole thing:

 I had to autolevel that image because whoever designed it chose a self-effacing grey on white theme that makes it almost invisible when reproduced. I'd say these people were unnecessarily modest if it wasn't for the big, yellow "Sign up now! It's FREE and awesome" banner they slap across the top of every page.

Well, I haven't signed up. I don't know who they are and I can't find out. A Google search brings up pretty much nothing other then reflexive links to the game entries on the site itself. There's an IP/DNS search that tells you Zergwire operates out of Scottsdale, Arizona but not much more.

None of the "is this website safe to use?" checksites I know have even tested it. Because I'm hyper-cautious I declined to sign up - yet. I am intrigued, though.

All the referrals I received came from the EverQuest page, which, as you can see from the screenshot below, has some very nice thumbnails pointing to recent posts I've written about the game. Also, for some reason, one that I did about LotRO, although to be fair I probably did include EQ in the Labels for that one.

There's a lot of Massively in there, a couple from The Ancient Gaming Noob and something from ECTMMO. Checking the GW2 page there's one for me, one for Syp and two for Jeromai. It looks as though these are being hand-picked rather than populated by some kind of algorithm but who knows?

Anyway, it looks like it could be a useful addition to the somewhat depleted resources of the MMO news cupboard. The look of the thing is very professional and attractive and the content is fairly current and reasonably accurate. Attribution is front and center.

If anyone from Zergwire is reading this and wants to explain more about how it all works the comment section's at your disposal!