Regularly Playing Archives - Page 4 of 8

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: November 2019 Edition

March 7, 2025November 8, 2019 by Belghast

Forgive me father for I have sinned. It has been two months since my last Regularly Playing column. The idea behind this is that I throw out and update once a month talking about what I am playing and what has faded away. It also serves as an opportunity for me to “true up” my regularly playing widget in the sidebar of this blog. However had I updated at the beginning of October you would have largely just seen a single entry for Destiny 2. I was in a pretty unhappy place with Blizzard and it really made me not want to spend much time writing about what I was doing other than Destiny.

However we have a new month and with it comes some new perspectives. I’ve allowed myself to step back from that precipice even though I feel like a bit of a fraud for doing so. I was making myself unhappy by dwelling so much on the bad feelings. I am back dipping my toe into Blizzard things, but I am still largely feeling awful for doing so. However lets get to the list so I can start talking more about each one of them.

To Those Remaining

I’ve been playing an excessive amount of Destiny 2 and if you have read my blog over the last month or so you will have noticed this. Destiny is in a truly amazing state right now and the Cross Save functionality has created this hotbed of players on the PC platform. Over night it seems that PC went from the lowest population platform to the highest as folks are taking advantage of just how much better the experience is on the PC as opposed to the aging console generation. I still only have a handful of people regularly playing but it helps greatly to have Thalen who is also going through a similar renaissance. I’ve more or less given up on most of the AggroChat crew understanding or even latching onto how great this game.

This game was periodically off the menu… but as soon as I eased up on my stance regarding the Blizzard/Hong Kong situation it was one of the first things I logged into. With all of the news about Diablo 4 it has renewed my interests in playing some Diablo 3. I more or less failed miserably at this season but I did managed to knock out the cosmetics for it. I am hoping to get back on track with the new season starting soon and return to semi-regularly playing this with Grace.

This continues to be a nightly thing that I play as I am winding down from the day. I am not super active in it, but generally speaking I play enough each night to knock out the daily objectives. I am not sure what it is about this pattern that I find relaxing but generally speaking as I am wrapping up the last few things I am finding myself fighting to stay awake and can lay down the tablet and slumber peacefully. The release cadence as I have said before really is the piece that keeps me engaged, and the fact that I get a gacha summon pretty often through simply playing the game normally. They are not getting money from me, but they are getting a bunch of active usage.

I’m leaving this one on the list but I have to admit it is hanging by a thread here. I initially stopped playing Classic over the Hong Kong incident as I stopped playing any Blizzard games. However upon resuming play I am finding it exceptionally hard to get back into the slower pace of this game. I’ve become used to the run and gun pace of Destiny 2 and my brain is sorta fighting back against this. I had some experience with this when I came back to Classic after the launch of Destiny 2 Shadowkeep. In theory I probably need a bit more time to figure out how to slide back in and resume my path to 60.

To The New And Returning

While I am in a bit of a holding pattern thanks to activity in Destiny 2, I eased into The Outer Worlds a few weekends ago and am looking forward to maybe getting in and playing some more this weekend. This is pretty much the perfect logical successor to my favorite of the Fallout series, New Vegas. It is a weird remix of Fallout, Firefly, Bioshock and Mass Effect and were I not as addicted to Destiny as I currently am it would have become my primary game. I am sure I will get back in and play some more, hopefully prior to the podcast on Saturday.

This is one I did not expect, but after my ceasing of hostilities towards Blizzard… I am finding myself playing a lot more of Retail than I am of Classic. I got in the other night and did the 15th anniversary quests, but I am also finding myself just running around on the Demon Hunter a bit. The other thing I found odd was that I attempted to log into my Alliance characters and found myself turning my nose up at them because they just didn’t feel right. I guess I made a legitimate transition over to The Horde at some point? I blame Grace.

To Those Departing

I am sure I will pick this game back up at some point but I have had another things on my mind. In truth I will always be more of an MMO player than I ever am a purveyor of Single Player games. This one will get attention because I still have yet to beat it. I just haven’t been in the mood for it of late.

I am sorry Shadowbringers… you suffered a cruel fate at the hands of WoW Classic and never quite recovered. I know there is a new patch, with new content to experience… but I am also not exactly finding myself rushing back to play it. I am not exactly sure what it is with this game but I go through this cycle after the release of an expansion. I play it hard and heavy for awhile… level two characters… and then disappear. It happened to some extent with Heavensward but absolutely both Stormblood and Shadowbringers saw me in exactly the same pattern. Once the overarching story was completed, my desire to keep playing dissipated.

I’ve also found myself simply not logging into Magic the Gathering Arena. This is a game that desperately needs a tablet friendly version. If that existed I would spend way more of that “before bedtime” tablet gaming playing Arena. As it stands when I am at a PC there are just other games I would rather be playing. I’ve also not felt nearly as connected with either War of the Spark or the Eldraine expansions as I have with previous themes. I loved Ixalan, and I think it might go down as probably my favorite non-Dominaria plane we visited. Return to Return to Ravnica felt weirdly watered down as though it were a subject that had been just spread too thin. I am sure I will return at some point but for right now it leaves the list.

You just never had a chance did you Iceborne. You launched at a bad time for me when my attentions were drawn elsewhere to WoW Classic. Then you announced the release of the PC version and I more or less decided to wait. The PC version really is the best version of the game and I found myself just struggling to get used to using a controller again. I am sorry that we just couldn’t come to a workable arrangement. I will see you in January.

Summary

Hopefully I can get back on the wagon of keeping this updated at the beginning of each month. We have a lot of familiar faces on the list in spite of a few of those exiting. I am sure for example I will play through the new patch content in FFXIV at some point, but that point is not now and it is not even really on my radar. My goal is to finish up The Outer Worlds and try and ease back into WoW Classic. However I have a bad habit of abandoning my goals.

Regularly Playing: September 2019 Edition

March 7, 2025September 6, 2019 by Belghast

For those who are new to this blog, I run a semi-monthly column of sorts where I track what I have been playing over the previous month. This does a few things but largely it allows me to track over the course of the years what I have been into at a given time. My blog serves as a bit of a record to jog my memory and help me firmly plant when certain events are happening. Also it allows my readers a window into what I am up to and what my thoughts are about a thing in short form. I also generally try and use this moment in time as a point to “true up” my sidebar widget.

To Those Remaining

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night – PC / Switch

This one is sorta hanging on by a thread at this point, not for want of desire but more for lack of time. I have however booted it up and made a bit more progress over the past month as well as starting the Switch version. Word of warning, I would say if you are ONLY going to buy a single version of this game, maybe don’t buy the Switch version. It has some slowdown issues and the graphical fidelity are not up to snuff from what I have been used to with the PC version. As it stands I own copies of this I believe for every platform… largely because I want to support the hell out of this title and see more games in this series released.

I have been playing considerably more of Destiny 2 than I had in the months leading up to now. There is a bunch of exciting stuff happening not the least of which is the enabling of Cross Save. I can now play my guardian on every single console platform in addition to the PC and have gone through the process of moving my character from Battle.net to Steam. I am super pumped about the launch of Shadowkeep coming up in October. Of note if you have ever played the PC version then it would behoove you to go through the process of moving your character from BNet to Steam because after October 1st it will not longer be accessible through the BNet client.

I legitimately thought this one would be leaving my list this month. A new season started at the tail end of August and with the impending launch of World of Warcraft Classic a few days later, I fully expected to just skip out on this season. However I found myself once again logging in on a Friday night for the ritual Grace and I have maintained for the last several seasons. It is enough of a thing that it felt weird NOT to be playing Diablo 3 on an opening night. I had a lot of fun and we ran Demon Hunters just to make the season a little easier to complete. I’ve made it as far as unlocking the seasonal rewards and I am not sure if I will push any further.

This one is going to likely maintain a permanent slot on my list. Unfortunately I don’t really have any new screenshots because I no longer play on my phone where it is super easy to take screenshots. On my Galaxy Tab S4 I have to do a complicated volume down and power button to take a shot so I never do it. On my ZTE Axon 7 phone it is a 3 finger gesture to take a shot, and I am wondering if there is a way to restore that functionality to the tablet with an application or something. This game keeps my attention because they keep rolling out new events, with either brand new or revisiting boss encounters for me to play with. I pretty much play enough each night to complete the daily objectives and then head to sleep.

I went from hot and heavy to barely at all on this one. I got in, completed the Shadowbringers story and leveled the Warrior to 80 and my Samurai to 80 as well. Then I disappeared once again because other things released that pulled away my attention. I will continue to play this it fits and spurts for the remainder of this month I am certain, because my attention is being funneled super hard away from almost everything else that I have on my plate. I would really like to level a Magic DPS and a Healer so that I can see all of the Shadowbringers role quests. Still a great game I just am waiting on more story content to drag me back into it.

My attention span for this game has been limited this month, but with the upcoming release content for Throne of Eldraine and the Brawl event happening right now I want to poke my head back in. I have to say though I would play this WAY more if I could play it from my Tablet. My winding down and bed routine would probably include a quick rush through Dragalia dailies and then a few matches of MTGA. I feel like they are missing out on a lot by not having a tablet client, though I guess in theory I could stream this from bed with Parsec. I should investigate how feasible that really is. I sorta wish that I could configure Parsec to work in a sort of console friendly mode where instead of my desktop I am presented with a board of icons of applications to launch.

To The New and Returning

I am a sucker. I did in fact buy this on the PS4 to be able to play it now… when I would way rather have just waited to play it on the PC. The PC version is so superior to the PS4 version for my purposes… however for some reason Capcom is maintaining a staggered schedule of releases. I still love the game and as a result they are getting two purchases from me. I am what is wrong with games and I know I should feel ashamed. I am honestly not sure how much time I will have to devote to this but I really want to poke around and try and get used to a PS4 Controller again.

This is the grand daddy of all things on this list and is consuming the most of my time. As of last night I hit 28 on my Undead Warrior and am about halfway to 29. I have plans already made to run Shadowfang Keep and Blackfathom Deep tonight with guildies, and this game is dominating my headspace at the moment. I cannot fully explain why it feels so good but god does it feel good to be back in Vanilla WoW. I knew I would be playing it because Grace had never gotten to experiment, but on some level I fully expected it just to be the two of us running around and doing nonsense. Instead we have a legitimately large guild full of friends all seemingly digging this experience. Long live House Kraken!

To Those Departing

This one largely lost focus somewhere around the Earth Shrine. I probably will return to it because I really like the idea of legitimately playing this without the Four Job Fiesta rules. That said on some level I agree with Ash on this one that the rules actually improve the game. Right now I feel like I need to do all of the things to min-max my characters, whereas playing under the rules dictates my actions. It limits the scope of what is available and causes me to focus on specific strategies. That said now that I know this is a reasonable option I might sign on next year for the Fiesta from my tablet. I just wish this version synced with any other version of the game so I could pop between playing on the PC for example and the tablet. Everything should have cross save.

Summary

The last several months have been pretty stable to be honest with not a lot of changes happening. Mostly a few things shift into focus as a few other things fall out of focus. I expect this month will be about World of Warcraft Classic with a side dish of Monster Hunter World Iceborne and a little bit of Destiny 2 especially as we get closer to the launch of Shadowkeep. Destiny has made me wish that literally every game had cross save if not cross play. I am mostly fine with having to buy a client for each platform, but I would love to be able to carry my characters over to it. There is no reason why Diablo 3 on the switch couldn’t have connected to Battle.net for example, and I have zero excitement over Overwatch Switch as it stands because I fully expect that it will not be connected to Battle.net either. I want more ability to play with my friends on the characters I have already spent time building, because quite frankly I don’t generally have enough bandwidth to level something new.

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.