Games Played 2023 Edition

Good Morning Friends! It is that time of year when I drag out my spreadsheets and present an increasingly difficult-to-read picture of the games that I have played since 2012. I keep scaling down the browser zoom so that I can capture a screenshot representing the spreadsheet’s totality each year. What you are looking at is a representation of the games that I have played each month and I started this nonsense in 2013… but backfilled some information that I happened to have on hand for 2012. Essentially I am a fairly rabid screenshotter when it comes to video games, in large part because I need something to break up the massive chunks of prose that appear on my blog. So I have cataloged and kept careful tabs on the games that I play during a given year and stored them away in my “Gameshots” vault which as of the time of writing this post is roughly 550,000 files and roughly 180 Gigabytes worth of storage space. This “paper trail” gives me a fairly accurate accounting of what I happened to be playing during a given month, but does nothing to tell me exactly how much I played a given game.

For years I used a service called Raptr, and I always like looking back to see what all I had played in a given year and more importantly how many hours. When I started tracking this manually I decided that trying to determine an hour count was going to be a bit onerous, so instead I made do with a simple binary count of whether or not I played a game in a given month. The black squares that you see scattered across the above screenshot represent a macro that I run that shades in any square with the number 1 in it… I then tally in the final column giving me a total count of how many months I have played at least enough of a game to take screenshots. Patterns emerge where I have a handful of “forever games” that I return to over and over, and then a wide variety of games that I have played for a few months at a time. Since starting this process I have logged 396 games that I have played at the time of writing this post, but by this evening that number may be larger.

Exploring the Games Played in 2023

We will talk about specific trends a bit later, but I tend to have years where I play a wide variety of games and then years where I entrench more into “forever games”. This was absolutely a year for forever games, but I have to admit the data tells a few lies. For example, this would give you the impression that I played a lot of Final Fantasy XIV and Fallout 76… when in truth it was more a few hours each week poking my head in to check out things and do a few daily “chores”. Guild Wars 2 however gets an honest place at the top of this list because it has been my most reliable MMORPG since I finally reached a point of acceptance for the type of game it was trying to be rather than constantly attempting to push it into the World of Warcraft mold.

The game that I spent the most time playing this year however is Path of Exile. I stole this screenshot from my Steam Year in Review that shows I had a grand total of 1246 gameplay sessions with the longest streak being 71 days in a row that I played the game. This does not shock me in the least because I have over 2100 hours on record in Steam for this game. Granted there were several attempts at playing it made from 2014 onwards, but when it finally grabbed ahold of me in 2021 and 2022… I’ve never really let go of it. My happy place this year has been playing some Path of Exile while listening to an Audiobook, and as a result, I have wiled away many hours doing this sitting on the sofa with a cat beside me and another on my legs.

The one that surprised me the most is Wayfinder because I had not even really been tracking my play of this game until the Steam Year in Review happened. This was in large part due to the fact that I was under a pretty nasty NDA regarding my playtime and was following the rules… and not taking any screenshots. I participated in several months worth of playtests before the game “launched” or at least started charging exorbitant fees to keep testing it. It is a bit of a bummer honestly because I thought this game had a lot of promise, but what I played was not worthy of spending cash on yet and needed a heck of a lot more work before it was ready for primetime.

I am also surprised that I spent more time playing Diablo IV than I did Diablo III. Though to be fair… once I dove into Path of Exile head first… Diablo III took a backseat as my ARPG of choice. For Diablo IV… I just keep poking at its corpse trying to make it be a fun game. I will admit though that Season 2 was really fun until I got to level 70. I managed to grind my way up to 90 and then lost all interest in finishing the grind to 100. I think there is hope for this game, and the team seems to be making some fairly rapid changes… but cannot seem to turn fast enough to keep the players engaged fully. The best thing that ever happened to Path of Exile was the launch of Diablo IV full stop. I’ve seen more players discover POE than players who really seemed to love D4.

As I said earlier, I tend to move in a rhythm where I have a year where I play a large variety of games… and then a year where I retreat into forever games. This was a retreating year which tells me that coming up in 2024 it will be a year where I catch up on all of the games that I missed while focusing on “comfort gaming”. I am sure at some point I will tire of Path of Exile, and one of the things that I am looking forward to spending a bit more time in is World of Warcraft. I had been hesitant to engage much with Blizzard games while Bobby Kotick was at the helm of ActiBlizz… but with him leaving the company and his official last day being yesterday… I am planning on diving into Dragonflight and giving that game a proper shot. I enjoyed the testing that I did of the game prior to the expansion launch, so I am looking forward to diving back into playing the ACTUAL Belghast character, my Human Warrior on Argent Dawn. I’ve been gone long enough that NONE of the Belghast’s on the WoW Armory are actually me anymore.

This is the point where I compare the top played games of 2023 to the top played games of 2022. Again there is some lying happening here specifically with Final Fantasy XIV and Fallout 76, so you can pretty much ignore those. I felt like I had to count them by the rules of this process but I have not spent a ton of time actually playing either of them… mostly doing “wizard chores”. Guild Wars 2 saw quite a bit more regular play with me pretty consistently spending several hours a week playing it. I got completely caught up with the expansions and started working on a second character that is now doing Secrets of the Obscure. Path of Exile absolutely saw a ton more play… Torchlight Infinite dropped to almost no play… and Destiny and Elder Scrolls Online left the list.

Diablo 3 and Diablo 4 both saw considerable play as did Last Epoch and Grim Dawn as I seem to be going through a heavy ARPG phase. Honkai Star Rail grabbed my heart for quite a bit but I have fallen off playing the game over the last several months. New World has continued to be a comfort game for me that I keep returning to, and there have been some truly shocking improvements in the game as a whole making it a really great experience. I had actually gotten back to playing some Final Fantasy XIV and had begun working a little each day to level new jobs having gotten five of them to 90. However, Affliction League in Path of Exile and our “Bel League” private league happened and completely threw me out of the rhythm of playing anything but it for a while.

Games Played Since the Start of this Project

This is the point where I attempt to tackle the totality of the list and make the massive grid of checkboxes make some semblance of sense. It is here that we can start to see some of the trends in how my gaming has changed over the years. I cut off this year at 14 months total played with a game, which makes the cut-off around EQ2 and Wildstar. Last year was the first year where Final Fantasy XIV took the lead spot away from World of Warcraft, and the thing is position on this list takes several years to shift as there are a lot of games that I played for a very long time that are still extremely entrenched in the list. For example, Rift has been a game I have not played in any form since October of 2018… but it still holds on tentatively to the sixth slot in the list. Given how much I have been enjoying Guild Wars 2 I fully expect by this time next year that Rift will have fallen to seventh and GW2 will have moved up to sixth.

Path of Exile is rapidly moving up the lower half of the list as is Fallout 76 and New World. Destiny sits high on the list but I am not playing the game at all and have not for this entire last year… so it will begin to sink down slowly. I am somewhat sad to say that I only played Elder Scrolls Online for a single month last year which means it is likely going to keep slipping down as well. It makes me happy that Everquest II holds a position on the list still since most of my time playing that game predates the start of this project. I’ve returned to it several times but I just can’t jive with its combat systems and as much as I want to love it… because I love the world and the way it was created… I just can’t go back. That is one thing I have noticed about myself is that I have a really hard time diving back into hotbar combat games. I greatly prefer the more action-oriented combat of Guild Wars 2 or New World, and I keep hoping someone will give me a new World of Warcraft or Everquest but with action combat.

This next chart shows only the games that I have played for at least six months. This really whittles down the massive list given that there really have only been so many “forever games” that end up holding my attention for the long haul. Rift had held as a bit of a rampart against the lower tier with a big drop off last year of 58 months for Rift and 30 months for its nearest competitor Guild Wars 2. However, that wall has fallen a bit with Guild Wars 2, New World, and Fallout 76 all starting to climb that slope. Considering that Path of Exile has now hit 24 months of play if it can hold my attention going into 2024 it will start to rapidly pass a number of games in the middle ground. There are a number of games on the list that are just not going to get any more progress… Dragalia Lost fore example was really strong for awhile but given that the game is now dead and closed… it will never gain more months. Similarly, Horizon Zero Dawn is a game that I have played multiple times… but is unlikely to really draw more attention. I know the story very well at this point so when the sequel comes out on PC it is very unlikely I will play through it again.

I think what is probably more telling though is the “Streak” chart. This shows the longest number of months unbroken that I have played a game. Destiny still holds the top of this chart but there are several other games that are starting to chip away at its lead now that I have effectively stopped playing it. Specifically, Final Fantasy XIV will absolutely topple it next year and take the top position with Diablo III probably also eclipsing it pending I play a similar amount next year as I did this past year. I think what is more telling though is how quickly Path of Exile has climbed the list from being only at 7 months unbroken last year at this time to 19 months. New World is holding pretty strong with 24, but it is very unlikely that I will ever hit a streak like that again with the game. Dragalia Lost like I said above is a dead game so it will sit there much like Rift… waiting for someone to push it down the list. There is no way that Guild Wars 2 does not move up in the list and will honestly probably be sitting up around Destiny by this time next year.

Another Year Down

More than anything… this was the year of books for me and they were more of my focus than necessarily the games that I happened to be playing. As far as games go… it was the year of the Righteous Fire Juggernaut as I played one as my main character in Sanctum, Crucible, and Ancestor leagues in Path of Exile… and now mourn the death of the character in Affliction. Right now I am trying to find a character that I enjoy even half as much as I did the RF Juggernaut. Currently, I am working on an RF Chieftain… but there is no way it is ever going to feel as tanky and comfy as the Juggeranut did. I am hoping maybe we see some changes that make the class viable again.

I’ve said this numerous times, but I would really like to get back into doing things as a group. I’ve been a solo-only murder hobo for far too long, and I would like to get back to doing things with other players. I am not even sure if that is a Guild Wars 2 thing or a Final Fantasy XIV thing… or even maybe a World of Warcraft thing. I am not sure I ever want to get back to playing on a hard schedule and the raiding life… but I would like to actually do things with someone other than myself going into the new year. I have a catmander tag… I just need to get over my anxiety and start using it. That wall of anxiety has been what has been holding me back from doing things with strangers for years and I am getting somewhat sick of it.

To be fair… group with other players was a goal from last year as well. I did at least finish up my Skyscale which was a goal I talked about last year so there is that. I am not sure what the next year is going to hold and as a result, I am hesitant to make too many predictions. It was a hard year for reasons that were not necessarily manifest in this blog or the games that I played. So next year I really want to work on myself a bit. I’ve still not really recovered from the massive changes we all went through at the start of the pandemic… and I feel like I need to do some drastic things in order to carve myself out a new “normal” or at least one that I am willing to accept. I’ve become a bit of a hermit and I need to change that because I have effectively given up doing a lot of things that used to bring me joy.

I hope you all have a wonderful 2024, and I am sure I will keep this tradition going for at least one more year… so I will see you next December to see what fate has in store for me. Thanks as always for reading my nonsense and if you have made it this far I love you all.

Games Played 2022 Edition

The Grand Experiment – Tracking Games Played Since 2012

Well my friends it is time once again for me to drag out the spreadsheet porn and share with you my gaming habits from the last year. Since this post is likely going to see some fresh eyeballs who have never experienced this level of nonsense before let me give you a high level of this project. One of the cool things about daily blogging is that it gives me a pretty solid record of what I was doing at any given point since April of 2013 when I embarked upon my first daily blogging journey. I also take fairly meticulous care of saving my screenshots and have a collection sorted by game and genre that makes up well over 50,000 individual files and takes up around 140 GB. This has allowed me to more or less reconstruct my playing habits back to 2012.

For years I used a service called Raptr, but when it died I lost something that I considered to be a relatively valuable resource. I knew that trying to keep track of hours played was a fool’s errand and for Steam games that interface did a relatively good job of that. Instead what I wanted to track was whether or not I played a game in a given month. This was a simple data point that allowed me to view how my tastes in gaming shifted over time. The pattern that emerges is that I have a dozen or so “forever games” that I shift back and forth between, and a number of games that I visit for a month or two. Since starting this nonsense I have logged 374 different games that I have spent time playing and of those 236 have only been played for a single month.

Exploring Games PLayed in 2022

Games Played Longer than 3 Months in 2022

This was very much a year of forever games for me it seems. I spent a lot of time visiting old favorites, and this is also the year that I finally “groked” Path of Exile and allowed it to start dominating my life. The above list is every game that I spent time playing for more than three months. Some of these are going to be terribly deceiving because for example, you would think this year is dominated by Final Fantasy XIV and that would be a lie. What I did throughout the year was log in every 4-5 days and either go house shopping or retrieve my money because I failed to win a house in the lottery. Similarly, I played Guild Wars 2 quite a bit for several months in a row, and then have fallen into a routine of logging in and farming the guild halls for resources or doing the occasional world event, but not really spending a massive amount of time there.

Fallout 76 has been something I have quietly played off and on whenever the mood hit me, and it wasn’t really that I started actively talking about it until the rest of AggroChat got into it. New World was a major force in my year because I was either playing in maintenance mode for the first few months, playing on the PTR for the middle of the year and hit rerolling and hitting the game extremely hard for the last few months of the year. I decided to track World of Warcraft Dragonflight Alpha/Beta separate from World of Warcraft as a whole because I very much approached the game from a more clinical tester mindset. I’ve not actively played World of Warcraft legitimately since December 2020 and as such have not paid for a subscription either. Basically, my time in Dragonflight did not really feel like I was truly playing the game because I was playing a series of disposable characters for each testing session.

Apparently, I played Torchlight Infinite More than I thought

The game that sort of surprised me for how long I actually spent playing it is Torchlight Infinite. The weird thing about that is that I don’t really particularly like the game. I got into it from a testing standpoint and between mobile testing and PC testing, I dipped my toes into the water for six separate months. It isn’t a bad game necessarily but it isn’t exactly a game that compels me either. Similarly, I kept trying to play Monster Hunter Rise and never really attached to it. Whatever magic that kept me glued to Monster Hunter World for as long as it did seems to have passed because from what I can tell Rise is essentially a spiritual successor but I am just not finding it nearly as enjoyable. Lost Ark is similarly a game that I kept trying to enjoy, finally giving up on it and moving on with life. I am not entirely certain what it is about that game that I don’t enjoy but it is very much “not for me”.

Total Number of Games Played in Each Year

Something that I started doing last year is adding a bunch of graphs to this shindig. There seems to be a weird ebb and flow pattern arising from the number of games I played in a given year. There are years where I churn through a lot of games, and then years that I play significantly fewer. Considering the number of “forever” games that I engaged with, I would have thought this was going to be a low-count year I did have an exceptionally frantic few months in the beginning. January, February, and some of March I was a game-finishing machine. I was all about the single-player lifestyle and seemingly catching up for so much lost time. I thought that trend would carry forward but apparently, that did not, and starting in March I was diving hardcore into Guild Wars 2 and really finding a place for it properly in my life. Basically, I approached it with the level of gusto that I had Final Fantasy XIV several times in the past. Once that trend started it seemed to reignite my play of shared world games where admittedly I still mostly play like a single-player murder hobo.

Top Games of 2021 compared to 2022

Another thing that I like to do is compare the top games that I played this year against the top list of last year. The first thing I noticed as a trend is that this is the year that I effectively stopped playing mobile games. There is a period of time when lay in bed attempting to let sleep claim me, and that previously had been a time I played random mobile games. I would play a game for a few months, then when I got to the point where it started needing a financial investment I would bounce and move to another one. Instead, I have spent more time sifting through things like Instagram and Tumblr rather than playing a game. I have to be honest, the mobile gaming experience is fairly miserable in general on Android and I don’t really find that I am missing it.

I played an awful lot of Action RPGs, and while I had distanced myself from Diablo 3 in 2021… it made me miserable doing it. So this year saw a bit of a resurgence as I allowed myself to play it once more. I also branched out and played a lot of other games from Path of Exile to Undecember. Last Epoch is actually shaping up now to be a game worth playing and I am actively looking forward to the multiplayer client testing. Elder Scrolls Online and Destiny both fell by the wayside further and Guild Wars 2 really moved into the forefront of games I care deeply about. GW2 had been a title I had struggled to really understand for the better part of a decade and finally for whatever reason this past year it clicked for me. New World continues to be a major force in both years and while I was very much in a depressed state about the future of that game at this time last year, this year gave it a brand new lease on life.

Games Played Since the Start of This Project

Comparing my Top Games of All Time from Last Year and This Year

I am shifting things up a bit differently this year. In the past, I had posted a snippet of the larger chart and it didn’t really mean anything. Instead, I am looking specifically at the total months played counts at the end of this year s contrasted with where we were at the end of last year. World of Warcraft has finally been dethroned, but admittedly this is only due to some trickery and me not counting my time spent testing Dragonflight as me playing World of Warcraft. If you added the 4 months that I tested Dragonflight to the Warcraft totals, then you end up with Final Fantasy XIV finally tying it. For me, my “truth” is that I was not actually playing World of Warcraft but instead focused on rigorous testing and writing bug notes, so that is ultimately how I logged it but I could see the argument the other way around.

Destiny fell to third, and I found it funny that Diablo 3, Elder Scrolls Online, and Rift all held their relative positions at Third, Fourth, and Fifth. I technically did log into Rift and play for a little bit but not terribly munch. I was feeling nostalgic and trying to figure out what the hell I was doing the last time I played largely drove any of those feelings from me. Guild Wars 2 and New World shuffled the order as did Minecraft. You are not reading that wrong… I did in fact play Wildstar this year admittedly with the emulator server client that is deeply incomplete but I will be keeping tabs on that as it progresses. I do feel a bit bad because if trends continue to follow by this time next year Everquest II will have most likely been pushed off the list.

Games Played Longer than Six Months

Something that I started last year is charting all of the games that I have played for longer than six months in total. You can really see that there are six games that have dominated my landscape for the last decade and that is Final Fantasy XIV, World of Warcraft, Destiny, Diablo 3, Elder Scrolls Online, and Rift. Of those I am no longer really playing World of Warcraft or Rift, so their influence will continue to be diminished while games like Guild Wars 2, New World, and Path of Exile are starting to gain ground. It will be interesting to see what this looks like in another decade if I keep up with this nonsense. I had been fairly regularly playing Magic the Gathering Arena but I largely stopped that. I am not entirely certain what led to me not playing it, but it has been ages since I have even booted it up to claim free cards, let alone sit down to play an actual game.

Another thing that I started last year is keeping track of my longest streaks. What I mean by that is the most months in a row that I have played at least some of the game. This list changes a lot more slowly because while I may shift through several games in a year, it is very rare that I keep at them for more than a few months at a time. New World is gaining ground as a serious contender at twenty-three months so far, and Path of Exile while much further back in the pack is gaining ground with seven months. It is going to be very hard for something to top the salad days of Destiny and how active I was in that game. Thirty-Three months is going to be extremely hard to top and even Diablo 3 had its streak broken last year.

Another Year in the Books

Sometimes I roll into this post with thoughts about what might be on the horizon for me as a gamer or blogger, but this time I really don’t know what the next year might hold. I thought last year that I would be focused more on single-player games, and while the first few months were definitely that… I quickly fell back into my shared environment gamer ways. I am so far removed at this point from regularly gaming with others, that I wonder if I will ever get back to my “pugging” for hours at a time sort of ways of my past. I’ve not raided in any form since 2016 and even then I was not the most serious raider. I think I might have largely closed that chapter in my life and instead, find comfort in having other people around… but doing my own thing.

For those who might want to go back in time and see how this series has evolved, I finally actually created a proper category on my blog for it. I know it only took me seven years to get around to doing this. I think one side goal is to do a better job of charting this data as the year is going on, rather than having a flurry of activity in the last few months trying to catch everything up. Another thing that I want to do is dive back into Guild Wars 2 and finally finish up my Skyscale so I can fly like a proper player of that game. Maybe even finish my Epic Weapon that I started and then largely walked away from. I would love to be able to dive back into Final Fantasy XIV but I wonder if that game is “finished” for me. I am feeling about it much like I felt about World of Warcraft at the end of Wrath of the Lich King. The narrative was wrapped up in a clean and satisfying manner and it is going to take a lot to really engage me in quite the same way as I had been for the last ten years.

What are your goals for the coming year? Do you think this whole game-tracking project that I keep doing is pure nonsense? Feel free to drop me a line below. I hope you all have had a great holiday season and that you have a phenomenal start to the new year.

Games Played 2017 Edition

Year End Review

One of the weird things that I do is that I attempt to keep track of the games I have played during a given calendar year.  I started this madness I believe in 2015 and then have slowly been back populating that list based on a few methods.  Essentially I am tracking things on a month by month basis and if I have written about a game or taken screenshots of a game…  I log it as having been played during that month.  The end result is this weird history of the games I have played over the course of a given calendar year.  Seeing as this is the last “weekday” that I will be making a post until the beginning of 2018…  I figured it was the perfect time to break out my post talking about the various things I played this year.  Without further stalling…  here is the data.gamesof2017

Click on the image or here to see the full google sheet.

During the course of the year I played a grand total of 41 different games, which is from 57 last year and 67 the year before that.  Basically the key difference is that I mostly played MMOs which tend to hold my attention for larger periods of time than burning through a bunch of single player titles.  Lets take a swath of the top ten titles and look at them a little closer.

  • World of Warcraft – 10 months
  • Destiny – 8 months
  • Diablo 3 – 7 months
  • Final Fantasy XIV – 7 months
  • Horizon Zero Dawn – 7 months
  • Destiny 2 – 6 months
  • Pokemon Go – 6 months
  • Fallout 4 – 5 months
  • Guild Wars 2 – 4 months
  • Zelda: Breath of the Wild – 4 months

At first glance the clear king is World of Warcraft with 10 months of play, but if you look back at past years this tends to be the one game that I am almost always at least playing a few days a month.  However you notice that I largely took a complete break from the game in March and April and I feel like it is largely due to a few games coming out around the same time…  Mass Effect Andromeda, Horizon Zero Dawn and Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.  I feel like the true winner is Destiny and Destiny 2 because if you include those as one game… then I played them every month of the year with some overlap between of two months when I was technically playing both.  Granted I am including the time I spent playing various betas of the game but still…  I feel like this was the year of Destiny for me personally.  I spent significantly less time playing Final Fantasy XIV as I played rabidly during the launch of Stormblood and sorta bounced off otherwise.  Another anomaly this year is that Rift did not make the top 10, and similarly odd is how much of a return Pokemon Go has had…. but I largely chock this up to getting a new phone that handles it better.  The weirdest part about this years top ten list is that it includes several single player titles:  Fallout 4, Horizon Zero Dawn and Zelda: Breath of the Wild.  All three of these are games that I keep being able to return to and play again and again in short bursts.

topplayedtotals2012-2017

Click on the image or here to see the full google sheet.

Multi-Year View

Now if we expand out even further…  here is the list of everything I have played since 2012.  Things get a little spottier the further you go back.  Essentially I have back populated this last by going through all of my old blog posts and jotting down which games I talked about playing.  Additionally I have scanned all of the screenshots that I happen to have and divided them up by the month the file was created as an attempt to create a somewhat accurate picture of what I had been playing.  Generally speaking if I am playing a game I am taking screenshots because I always need images for my blog.  I may or may not have almost 30,000 screenshots sitting on network attached storage…  and a stack of every hard drive from every machine I have owned waiting for a day when I feel like going spelunking for more screenshots.  I am not even sure why I started down this path but now that I am on it… it has become another obsession of mine.  Basically from here on we are going to largely talk about the top fifteen games I have played since 2012.

  • World of Warcraft – 47 months
  • Final Fantasy XIV – 42 months
  • Rift – 37 months
  • Destiny – 27 months (including D2 31 months)
  • Elder Scrolls Online – 26 months
  • Diablo 3 – 23 months
  • ArcheAge – 13 months
  • Guild Wars 2 – 13 months
  • Wildstar – 13 months
  • Everquest II – 11 months
  • Fallout 4 – 10 months
  • Star Wars the Old Republic – 10 months
  • Trove – 9 months
  • Pokemon Go – 8 months
  • The Secret World – 8 months

First interesting pattern is that there is only one non-mmo on this list and that is Fallout 4.  I am not entirely certain why I keep returning to that game but there are so many nights I will fire it up on the laptop while doing other things and just roam around.  Once again Rift has fallen a bit in the rankings as this time last year it was tied with Final Fantasy XIV for the second place slot.  Destiny slides up into number three eclipsing Elder Scrolls Online, especially if you include Destiny 2 playtime which I denoted in quotes.  Guild Wars 2 and my resurgence into that game caused it to leapfrog Wildstar a bit, and then the tail end of the list is either new because I expanded things out to top 15 or in a similar position.  There are some games on this list that are likely to eventually fall out of the ranking.  I am not really playing Everquest II anymore in part because the management since the swap to Daybreak has just been pitiful.  Its a torn community and just not the environment I remember loving.  Trove may or may not see me returning to it, because I have a friend who is super into that game right now…  but also playing on the PS4 and not PC which makes the return to play with him more unlikely.  Additionally that game has changed so much since I last played it that I would almost need to start fresh to really get back into it.  Similarly I am not sure how much more time I will be devoting to ArcheAge because I just don’t find the game nearly as compelling as I once did.  As I leveled in the game it felt like the things I wanted to be doing narrowed rather than broadened given that I have no interest in PVP nonsense.  I left shortly before they split the servers into veteran and new player experiences, and I am not even sure what the game looks like right now.

Looking Forward

As far as the calendar year of 2018…  I am not really sure what I will be playing.  It is a forgone conclusion that I will be playing World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth.  In spite of me not really liking the more PVP centric focus, I would be lying if I said I would not be playing it at launch.  I predict that I will be playing some more SWTOR in the near future because the release of a Star Wars movie always brings out the nostalgia for all things Star Wars.  On top of that with Disney pulling the license for Marvel Heroes…  I want to make sure I experience the story content in SWTOR just in case they for some reason decide to do the same thing they did with SWG.  I know at some point I will make a return to Final Fantasy XIV and more than likely when they patch in the next step of the Palace of the Dead.  As far as new games go…  there really isn’t much on the horizon that really interests me.  I am not enthralled by Crowfall or Camelot Unchained, because they seem to be creating games that don’t really stoke my interests.

Brad McQuaid will likely bring us some sort of version of Pantheon: Rise and Repeat as I heard someone call it the other day (I believe Wilhelm but not 100% sure).  I played Everquest, and Vanguard…  and Pantheon seems like more of the same just yet another slightly higher fidelity version of the same game Brad has kept trying to create since the 90s.  I don’t have near as much nostalgia as some do for the “you must have a group with you at all times and death must be frustrating and painful” genre.  Ashes of Creation looks mildly interesting…  but what I have seen of the community tells me it is going to be a game I am not going to enjoy much in the same way that I didn’t enjoy ArcheAge at launch.  Monster Hunter World is definitely something I am looking forward to giving a shot, in spite of the fact that I am horrible at Monster Hunter games.  Anthem also seems really interesting, but the gameplay footage we have seen reminded me a bit too much of the promises Division made but never quite delivered on.  In truth in the 2018 calendar year… I expect to keep playing a lot of the same games I played during the past several years because those MMOs just keep getting better with age.