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Games Played 2019 Edition

December 30, 2022December 31, 2019 by Belghast

For those who have been reading this blog for some time you will know I have a yearly tradition of doing a rundown of the games that I played during the year and comparing them to the same periods over previous years. I have this weird habit of keeping track of what I am playing in a given month and tracking this in spreadsheet form. I started doing this in 2013 and thanks to my other habit of keeping track of spreadsheets I have gone back as far as 2012 with some level of accuracy. I could likely go back further… but that is a job for another time. Essentially based on screenshots, what I am blogging about and what I am talking about on the podcast I can create a fairly accurate record of the games played during a given year. For those who are prepared to descend into madness you can view the entire spreadsheet here.

The Top 10 of 2019

The rules are simple… if I played a game in a given month I fill in a box and then tabulate the number of filled in boxes giving me how many months in a given year I played a game. This is not nearly as granular as I would have liked, but trying to keep a journal of every game I played on a specific day truly would be madness. From this we can see some trends about my tastes during a given year and how these have changed over time. The games I played over the most months are as follows.

Diablo 3 – PC and Switch – Played All 12 Months
Dragalia Lost – Android – Played All 12 Months
MTG Arena – PC – Played All 12 Months
Destiny 2 – 10 Total Months
Final Fantasy XIV – 9 Total Months
World of Warcraft Classic – 7 Total Months (counting beta time)
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night – 6 Total Months (counting beta time)
Elder Scrolls Online – 6 Total Months
Anthem – 5 Total Months
Pokemon Go – 5 Total Months

Now lets take a look to see how this compares to last year, as there are several changes that are worth talking about.

First off there are some significant games that are completely missing from the list. World of Warcraft for example which still reigns as the game I have played for the most months total is completely missing from the top ten. Additionally Monster Hunter World which came on with a vengeance last year is also missing from the list because I more or less have been waiting for the PC release of Iceborne given that I have little to no interest in playing on the console release. I took a break in Destiny 2 for a few months and because of fun seasonal events and the switch release I have played Diablo 3 significantly more often this year. The release of an excellent expansion in the form of Shadowbringers also leapfrogged Final Fantasy XIV several positions. Dragalia Lost had not quite launched early enough to make the list for last year but was a nearly daily fixture in my life in this past year. Both Elder Scrolls Online and Pokemon Go have been on the decline in my free time, so both dropped significantly in the numbers.

The Top 15 of All Time

Now we are getting into the territory of the images being impossible to read, but the above sheet snippet shows the top 15 games of all time. However for sake of sanity I am going to bullet point the list so you can see it more clearly.

World of Warcraft – 60 Months
Destiny / Destiny 2 – 55 Months
Final Fantasy XIV – 55 Months
Elder Scrolls Online – 44 Months
Diablo 3 – 41 Months
Rift – 39 Months
Pokemon Go – 25 Months
MTG Arena – 21 Months
Dragalia Lost – 16 Months
Monster Hunter World – 16 Months
Guild Wars 2 – 14 Months
Minecraft – 14 Months
ArcheAge – 13 Months
Fallout 4 – 13 Months
Wildstar – 13 Months

World of Warcraft continues to reign at the top of the list, but its lead on the other options is shrinking because I am continuing to play that game less. Destiny and FFXIV are now tied for second place, and I fully expect that the Destiny Franchise will have potentially knocked Warcraft out of that top spot. Elder Scrolls knocked Rift out of the previous 4th place but didn’t gain as much ground this year as I didn’t play it nearly as often. Diablo 3 has risen up to claim the 5th spot and gained significant ground considering there was a big gap before between 5 and 6. Rift continues to descend the list because I am not actively playing it and also did not spend much time playing it last year either. What I find most interesting is the last three on the list because if you had asked me to guess as to what this list would like like ArcheAge, Fallout 4 and Wildstar would not have been still hanging on after all of this time. For reference you can check out last years post where I am pulling the comparisons from.

Other Interesting Data

Some other interesting data worth noting. In 2018 I played 70 unique games and this year I played considerably fewer, only racking up 48 games. That is still a lot of games but I felt like for a large chunk of the year I had a pretty stable list of titles that I kept bouncing back and forth between. The weirdest thing is… that if you look where I spent a lot of my time they are not on the same titles that I listed in my top games of 2019 post. I am a sucker for “comfort gaming” and there are a lot of times I keep playing games that present familiar patterns. I’ve spent a huge chunk of my vacation playing The Witcher 3 and I have loved it, and I guess my hope for this new year is to spend more time playing single player games since my multiplayer communities have been waning.

In 2018 I played 33 games that I would describe as a “Singleton” or a game that I only poked my head into for a single month. In 2019 that only represented 19 total games and it feels like that is really where the difference between the years comes into play. I was seemingly more adventurous in 2018 than I was in 2019 and I hope I can capture that spirit for 2020 and get out of my comfort zone a bit more often. For those interested in more trending information along this topic you can see a number of my posts since starting this tradition.

Games Played 2018
Games Played 2017
Games Played 2016
Games Played 2015 – I hadn’t quite figured out the format yet

And with that… I wish you all the happiest of New Years after sharing my past year with you.

Regularly Playing: August 2019 Edition

August 2, 2019 by Belghast

Seeing as it is Blaugust, I thought it might be a good idea to go ahead and get this feature out of the way. For those who have been reading this blog for some time you will know that I have a semi-monthly series that I call “regularly playing”. The idea is for me to take a summary each month of what I have been playing and write a little bit about where I am in my mindspace with each of the titles. I then in theory us this list to update my “regularly playing” widget in the side bar until the first part of the next month.

It really serves two purposes. Firstly it gives me a pretty easy post by letting me talk a bit about what I have been playing at the time. Secondly it gives me an easy way of marking the passive of time when I am compiling the games I played on a yearly basis… which is another thing that I do. I legitimately go back and look at these posts when trying to remember exactly what I had been playing during a given time frame. I wish I had been doing them for the entire ten plus year long run of the blog. I find it interesting on a personal level to stop and assess where I am in gaming each month.

To Those Remaining

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night – PC and Switch

I was admittedly a little concerned that I might be removing this game for reasons I will get into when I talk about Final Fantasty XIV. That said I have been returning to playing it of late and made some more progress. At this point I am a good way into the game, far enough to be able to have gotten the false ending and am now working towards the good ending. For those who are playing I just finished the Hidden Desert and think I am nearing finishing the Secret Lab. It has been a really long time since I have seen a weapon upgrade, so I think at some point I will need to look into finding that. This is still a phenomenal game that makes me exceptionally happy. If you ever loved Castlevania or even if you never played one before… I highly suggest checking out this title.

This is another title that I thought I might be removing from the list this month, however over the last few nights I have dug back in and am working my way through the Solstice of Heroes event. I really want to get the armor and I am reaching the place where I am actually pretty close to finishing the first set. Essentially I need to run a bunch of crucible/gambit and a bunch of strikes. I started chipping away at the gambit specific requirements last night and knocked out generating 100 void orbs. Tonight I will likely do some crucible to finish out the defeat guardians bit and get my powerful gear engram from that activity. The real highlight of the event is the European Aerial Zone event which is exceptionally fun and serves as a high flying boss rush mode as you seem to be able to do superman style leaps due to I am guessing lowered gravity settings? Whatever the case it is fun as hell.

I need to return to this one as I really need to wrap up the seasonal stuff before the season changes. I believe that is going to happen at the end of this month, but I am not 100% certain. Whatever the case I had a lot of fun this previous season and there are a bunch of achievements that are hanging by a thread. I should at the very least go far enough in to unlock the next stash tab. Honestly a running theme is that Shadowbringers threw everything for a loop and caused me to pretty much stop playing every other game I had been playing.

This is still my bedtime activity and probably will be until we reach a point where they stop dropping content back to back. This week they gave us guilds in game, and the Robosquid Armada lives again in Dragalia. This has more or less been our brand for doing nonsense and since most mobile gaming is nonsense it seemed to fit the bill. I am nowhere near as progressed as some of my friends, and I don’t really play this game any other time than the thirty minutes or so before I fall asleep each night. However I enjoy my nightly jaunt into mobile-diabble-land. Right now I am chasing the water variant of the Axe lady in the center panel of the above triptych, Julietta. I’ve not lucked into pulling her, but I am trying… because I am lacking a native 5 star axe-wielder in water elemental type.

I have been fully engaged with Final Fantasy XIV since just before the launch of Shadowbringers. Can we just talk about how amazing this expansion has been? It is without a doubt the best Final Fantasy XIV expansion to date and is quite possibly the best MMORPG expansion story wise I have experienced. In truth this expansion might now be my favorite Final Fantasy game in general but we will have to see what the post first credits roll content is like to determine if it actually bumps Final Fantasy VI out of its well earned spot. Weirdly the class changes have ignited in me the desire to level all of the things and as such I have been pushing a lot of alternate DPS classes through the Deep Dungeon alternate leveling system. I’ve bizarrely fallen in love with Red Mage… a finger wiggler. We are just going to pretend that the vestigial sword makes everything okay.

Still playing this but nowhere near on the level that I was previously. War of the Spark for whatever reason didn’t really excite me, because truth be told… I am not really a huge fan of Planeswalkers . I feel like they make the game of Magic feel like something other than its original core roots, and not necessarily in a good way. War of the Spark however did something important, which was to break the mythic ceiling for Planeswalkers and allow them to start showing up at all levels… also greatly diluting the power curve of them. M20 has recently arrived on Arena and with it I am starting to tiptoe my way back into the game and also starting to factor in what my decks will look like once the rotation happens in September.

To The New and Returning

There are some nights when I want to do more than just run through my Dragalia Lost dailies, and on those nights I have started playing Final Fantasy V on my Android Tablet. I’ve lamented before that I have never actually played this game legitimately. What I mean by that is that I have played through it a few times for the Four Job Fiesta, but never actually played it without restrictions like a proper game. I attempted to play it back in the day with a partially translated version of the rom on an early SNES emulator during the late 90s… and quite honestly the massive amount of frame-skipping required to make it feel like anything other than a slide show killed my joy at trying it. I’m currently up to the post Library of Ancients jaunt into the Desert, but I feel like i probably need to gather up some more levels or at least devise a plan for the Sand Worm before continuing onwards.

To Those Departing

I am certain I will return to Elder Scrolls Online at some point, but I played next to none of it this past month and I am not sure if I will have any time to play it moving forward. World of Warcraft Classic releases this month and with that I know it will start eating copious amounts of my time as I grind up my Forsaken Warrior. I don’t play ESO like an MMORPG really, but instead come in and work on some story content and then wander off. I’m in the midst of the Vvardenfell stuff, which was super good… but I just have to be in the right mood to play it. Once I have cleared Final Fantasy XIV out of my head a bit I fully expect to fire this back up for some relaxing weekend questing.

It turned out to be another fairly stable month with only two titles really changing up the mix. As I said in the above paragraph, this month will see the return of World of Warcraft in the form of the Classic server. I’ve lost all desire to play the live client in any form. That said I really should go back and gobble up the story content that has released since I last played. The biggest problem there is that story content doesn’t work the way it does in other games with World of Warcraft, and it would require a good deal of bandwidth to even figure out how to make sure I was not missing something. All of which are things I have not been willing to really do.

Regularly Playing: July 2019 Edition

July 3, 2019 by Belghast

For those who have been reading this blog for some time you will know that I have a semi-monthly series that I call “regularly playing” where I attempt to update the sidebar on my blog. This is the second month where I am trying to do this at the beginning of the month rather than remembering to do it towards the end of a month. June was a pretty stable month as far as game playing, and effectively there is really nothing much changing in the mix. However I am still going to go through the actions of this post to keep myself in the habit.

To Those Remaining

I am completely in love with this game. I’ve written so much about it recently, but effectively this is as thought you had sat down immediately after creating Symphony of the Night and just kept going on and adding in all of the features you ever wanted in the game. The experience is flawless, and while I am hearing there are issues with the Switch port, I am too busy making my way through the PC experience to care. They have all the time in the world to fix that. I have gotten the “bad” ending, and now am trying to work on better endings.

I went on a brief binge of playing this game and then once again got distracted by something else. I want to return to playing on a more regular basis, but I am going to have to burn down some of the other games I am working on to free up the mental bandwidth. Bungie is doing a great job of stewarding the game into this new era and I am looking forward to some of the changes that are coming with the new expansion. The game is in a great place, so well worth checking out.

This is still very much in the rotation because I have more objectives to accomplish during this season. I’ve completed one conquest which can be seen in the above screenshot, involving collecting a 50 million gold streak. The next up is going to be doing a bunch of GR55s as multiple classes. I still have yet to master any set dungeons so I should probably knock that out soon as well. Essentially I got distracted but I still very much want the penultimate reward this season.

This game is effectively my night cap. I crawl into bed and spend 10-15 minutes playing this on my tablet before eventually closing the lid and going to sleep. Dragalia Lost lives in this weird place where it is just engaging enough to keep me playing on a regular basis… and not engaging enough to keep me playing it constantly to the point of burning out. In part the later part is in thanks to its mobile mechanics which favor short bursts of play rather than extended play cycles. Whatever the case going on two years I am still doing this thing.

I am playing nowhere near as much as this game deserves but I am still periodically logging in to move the needle forward. Right now I am deeply distracted by all of the other games that are on the market and calling my attention. I will return to you at some point when a lull happens to continue adventures in Morrowind proper.

I am completely back on my bullshit folks… and loving it. Just prior to the launch of Shadowbringers I found a way to get re-engaged and as a result I think the expansion thus far has been all the more meaningful. I am not sure what else I can really say about this that I have not already said in a bunch of recent blog posts. Final Fantasy XIV is a lovingly curated game experience, and I am enjoying the hell out of the ride.

This month I have not spent an awful lot of time playing, but it is still on the list of things that I dive into when I want something more quiet and contemplative. I am not entirely certain this one is ever really going to leave the proper rotation, at least not for the time being. The pace of magic sets being released really reinforces the need to keep popping ones head back into the game every so often. Yesterday Core 20 was released, so I need to pop in and check it out.

To the New and Returning

For the very first time in the history of this column of sorts… I don’t have any new games being added to the mix. I reached a point of stasis this month and for the time being it is a pretty great mix of titles to be engaged in.

To Those Departing

Once again… nothing to see here. I didn’t out and out stop playing anything this month but continued largely playing the same things.

Honorable Mentions

This one is sliding in as an honorable mention and not something new… because quite frankly I don’t think I will be spending any more time with the game. Wizards Unite released for mobile platforms and represents an attempt to capture the same magic as Pokemon Go… but with the Harry Potter IP. I feel like they have failed to do that, and as a result have created a fairly cumbersome and often times unfun experience. It is worth mentioning, but only just.

A lot of my bandwidth was taken up by watching the E3 coverage unfurl, and as a result I am giving it an honorable mention as well. It was not a great show, but there were several gems. The new Commander Keen game is not really ones of them, but I am just in part happy see ANYTHING to do with that IP. It was probably a toss up between Microsoft and Square for who had the best showing, and then everything else falls down significantly after that.

Regularly Playing: June 2019 Edition

June 4, 2019June 4, 2019 by Belghast

For those who have been reading this blog for some time you will know that I have a semi-monthly series that I call “regularly playing” where I attempt to update the sidebar on my blog. I failed miserably at the last incarnation, because the side bar never actually got updated. Additionally May was a crazy month with all of the weather issues and I never quite got one of these done. Instead I am shifting to a June edition where I attempt to start doing these towards the start of the month instead of the end of the month. I seemingly inhaled my coffee this morning so… lets do this!

To Those Remaining

I continue to truck along happily in Dragalia Lost and especially now that I have my Samsung Galaxy Tab S4 there is rarely a night that goes by that I don’t at a minimum play through my dailies. I’ve said this before but there is a release cadence of content that keeps me engaged and the fact that another character summon is just around the corner. The whole summoning process feels much better than that Wyrmprints have been completely removed from the mix. After playing effectively the entire time I have gathered up a good stable of five star characters that I have not even bothered leveling yet. I still sorta wish there was a switch version.

If you have read the blog over the last few days you will know that I am fully engaged with Diablo 3 right now. Last night I attempted to farm some more chests but sleep claimed me. I am however on a mission to get the Avarice Conquest and will get there sooner or later. I love Diablo 3 so much and while I fade in and out of its focus… I will always sooner or later return to it.

While I am not playing a ton of it… I am still very much engaged with Final Fantasy XIV and am looking forward to the upcoming head start on June 28th for Shadowbringers the next expansion. Pretty excited especially considering the drastic class changes that I think will lead to a more accessible environment. Right now the plan is to level the Samurai through the story quests and then level Warrior with Dungeon Finder given that Tank queues are a breeze. I’ve always done it the other way around and I think a lot of what leads to my burn out is trying to claw my way up to level as a DPS when I could simply go the easy route and level through the story.

While I am not playing it a ton I am still fairly engaged with Magic the Gathering Arena and the War of the Spark expansion seems to be pretty interesting. We talked a bit about this on the podcast but I am really wishing they would make it so that constructed is a format that is always available for play, given that is probably my favorite of the “event” types. It also serves as an amazing way to obtain cards from a specific set.

To The New and Returning

I did a lengthy post about this the other day but I am starting to play Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night which is as close as we will probably ever get to a proper Symphony of the Night sequel. While I only have the E3 demo version right now, I will be getting access to the full thing on my birthday… June 18th and plan on picking it up for pretty much every console that it will be available for. It is likely going to be a toss up between Switch and PC as to which version I actually play the most.

With the Season of Opulence starting I believe today… I’ve been poking my head back into Destiny 2 of late to try and reacquaint myself with the way that the game as a whole feels. I completely missed the Season of the Drifter because I was off doing other things, and the start of a new Season seems to be a good time to get engaged again. I still very much love the game but at this point am so far behind that I am not exactly sure what the most ideal catch up mechanic would be. This is the problem with Destiny as a whole is that there isn’t a painfully obvious way to gain a ton of light levels quickly.

I’ve also of late been spending a significant amount of time playing Elder Scrolls Online. A new expansion released and it has made me want to start playing again… in spite of not actually being willing to start the new content. Instead I am working my way through Vvardenfell… aka two expansions ago? The game is pretty great and ends up filling the same niche that Star Wars the Old Republic does… in that I mostly want to come in and gobble up a bunch of story content and then wander off.

To Those Departing

Grim Dawn

I know I will revisit this game again, but for now I am not playing it and it leaves the list. Based on screenshot evidence I seem to have stopped playing sometime mid April. Still a really great game and I expect to get the itch at some point in the near future… but being engaged with Diablo 3 again mostly pushed it off the table.

Marvel Future Fight

I played this a significant amount of time for a short period of time… and now find it really hard to get back into it. I feel like I hit the free to play wall where I have done as much of the content as I want to do before needing to spend a significant chunk of money. The grind set in and all of the things that would offer advancement require either a lot of money or a lot of time.

Mortal Kombat 11

Going forward I am going to try to filter titles like this off the list in part because there are a lot of things that I play furiously for a weekend and then never play again. Mortal Kombat 11 was one of these and while I fully expect to return to it periodically it isn’t really worthy of the moniker of “regularly playing”. Its still a really cool game and you should check it out especially when it goes on sale.

Outward

This again is another example of a game that probably shouldn’t have made it onto the list since I played it obsessively for a few nights and then never again. I’m going to start an honorable mentions section below for some of the games where I play in this manner because I have a few of them this month as well.

Star Wars the Old Republic

I came in… I gobbled up the entire Eternal Throne storyline and then wandered off once I started the content immediately following that. I have no clue why I suddenly stopped playing but I did. I expect honestly at some point soon to add this back to the list especially with a new full expansion on the way. I still really like this game and am happy it found its feet post launch. I would love more of the content along the lines of Fallen Empire and Eternal Throne because both were phenomenal.

Honorable Mentions

Again for those who didn’t read all of the blurbs above, this is a section I am adding in part because every month there are a handful of titles that I play furiously for a few days and then wander away from. They don’t really deserve the title of “regularly playing” but they are also worth noting.

While there is actually a game here I am not entirely certain if it is a game I want to play. This is something I have been poking my head in to check on since the backer alpha began. I had a few fun nights with it but more or less have consigned it to hibernation once again.

I have no clue how much of this I will be playing. I randomly installed it and started playing a few weekends back after watching a series of videos on it by Gaijin Hunter. It is a really cool game and I think it might be something that I could settle into as a bizarre “what if capcom had made skyrim” experience. Not quite ready to add it to the regularly playing list, will see if it returns by the end of the month.

I had a lot of fun with this game right around the time of launch and then I wandered away… and am not exactly sure why? I really need to get back to playing it and at least make my way through the main story. I get easily distracted when it comes to gaming and I am guessing me getting into World of Warcraft Classic beta was the shiny object that caused this one.

And… last but definitely not least… we have World of Warcraft Classic the aforementioned shiny object. This is coming in as an honorable mention and not a regularly playing in part because I have forcefully pulled myself away from it. This game launches officially in August and given the amount of time you need to spend leveling in this game… I don’t see a point in burning myself out before that point. We are completely nonsense and are going to be making an attempt at 40 player raiding again. I will give more information about this as time gets closer. However for now it claims a spot on the Honorable Mentions.