2020 in review

It’s the last day of the year and so it’s review time again!

What a year. I don’t think I need to go into specifics but let’s say my gaming time was exorbitant in comparison to other years, but so were my expenses.

What I played a lot:

• EVE Online
• World of Warcraft – Retail
• SW: TOR

Other things I played:

• Diablo 3
• Forgotten Anne
• Anno 1404
• Stellaris
• Borderlands 3
• The Cycle

Gaming expenses in 2020:

• SW:TOR: 5x 13 EUR = 65 EUR for subscriptions
• WoW: 214 EUR, of which 79 go in the 2021 bucket
  • 4x 36 EUR = 144 EUR for 4x a 3 month subscription
  • 1x 40 EUR for the Shadowlands expansion
  • 1x 66 EUR for the 6 month subscription that comes with the transmog set
• EVE Online: 897 EUR, of which ~179 go to the 2021 bucket
  • 1x 20 EUR for a character transfer
  • 120 EUR for several packs
  • 36 EUR for Skill Extractors
  • 212 EUR for PLEX
  • 8x 49 EUR for 8x a 3 month subscription incl 3 MCT
  • 3x 39 EUR for 3x a 3 month subscription
• Humble: 8 EUR for Forgotten Anne
• GOG: 0 EUR
• Steam: 4 EUR for Renowned Explorers + 10 EUR for Stellaris
• Epic: 0 EUR

And the usual stats:

• Amount of MMOs played: 3
• Amount of MMO subscriptions months paid: 5 (SWTOR)+12 (WOW) + 33 (EVE, but really only 20 for this year) = 37 / 50
• Amount of games purchased: 3
• Amount of MMO expansions purchased: 1
• Amount of money for ingame/services stuff: 120 + 36 + 212 = 368 EUR
• Amount of games I got for free and played a lot: 0
• Amount of games I got for free and didn’t play: too many
• Amount of games I bought and then didn’t play: 1 (Renowned Explorers)

So for both EVE and WoW I have paid subscriptions far into the next year, so I’ll separate those out. Sure, I spent it this year but it’s a subscription for 2021 and it’s such a huge chunk that I want to jot down both numbers.

Also: why so many? So I was subscribed to WoW for the whole year, that’s 12. I was subscribed to SWTOR from June through October, that’s 5. And in March/April I came back to EVE in full swing and first transferred my old NullSec alt to a second account, and basically ran three accounts for 3/4 of the year. That’s also why I burnt out a little and didn’t really play EVE since Shadowlands launched, but I plan to return in January.

So yes, it looks even worse than when I did a preliminary tally a while ago, 1234 EUR, at 102.83 EUR per month. Separating out the 2021 pre-payments, I get to 976 EUR, at 81.34 EUR per month. Still the highest amount ever and unlikely to be topped. Then again, 100 EUR for basically ALL your spare time entertainment per month is still a really good deal.

The only thing I can say in my defense is that all these budgets for the year 2020 were not exhausted at all or kept at the bare minimum:

• vacation – not zero, but a single very short trip by train + bike with a few nights in a hotel
• public transport and bike repairs – close to zero
• going out for drinks – zero
• going out for lunch/dinner – a few times in the summer when we could sit outside, with a table for ourselves
• ordering stuff online – surprisingly, despite spending all the time at home I did order a lot less stuff at Amazon or elsewhere

Also I really planned to buy Horizon: Zero Dawn when it came out for PC in August, and buy that new graphics card I had postponed buying last November when I replaced my PC. And I’d been trying to get my hands on a 3060 Ti or 3070 for 2 weeks (for a reasonable price), but to no avail. I didn’t buy a new because I spent all my time playing EVE in August, and then transitioned to WoW and Shadowlands. And now I’m changing the wording of this paragraph as I had indeed managed to order a 3070 on Dec 28th and was eagerly awaiting it being shipped today on the 31st, but it didn’t happen.

So in the end I have a guilty conscience but realistically I guess I shouldn’t – a few nights out a month would easily cost more than these gaming expenses I’m making such a fuzz about.

There’s such a huge list of games I got for free in 2020 and didn’t play, but I’m actually interested in these, it’s just (as always) the thing about freeing some gaming time from the thing I am giving 100% at the moment, usually an MMO.

• Prison Architect
• My Time at Portia (I actually played someone else’s copy for an hour or two when it launched)
• Darkest Dungeon
• Cities: Skylines (hey, I bought this one a while ago)
• Tyranny
• Pillars of Eternity
• ARK
• GTA V
• Assassins Creed Syndicate