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August in review

Maybe I’m getting old and caving in to people’s trends, or maybe I’m just trying to learn from the insights and “month in review” posts make sense if you still have something to say that you already didn’t and don’t want a ton of mini posts.

Didn’t get a ton of gaming time in this month, summer has been great, I’ve been outdoors a lot despite no official vacation (except one day, iirc).

We played some WoW, killed the Raid Tier’s end boss on Heroic, have since been struggling to get enough people together for a reclear for the people who missed it (but those also didn’t show up consistently, so maybe only half-way bad form?) but otherwise I’ve ignored it. Logged in a couple of times to grab some achievements or just to relax and do some weeklies, mostly ignoring alts. Refreshing to be a casual for a few weeks!

The 14d free login event in FFXIV came and went and I did put in some hours, but I think I didn’t stress it overly much. I kinda planned to resub directly afterwards, but life got in the way, so I’m holding off until I am needed to tank or heal some Stormblood story dungeons, probably soon-ish.

Then I was craving something different and played a couple games of Stellaris, which was usually a full evening. I suck at it but I like the game. Dug out Age of Wonders III again to see if I might be interested in Planetfall, which was (maybe still is) on sale at the time. But I’m still not feeling it. AoW always teases me with looking and superfluously being like Heroes of Might and Magic, but something is off. PF could be different enough because it’s in space, but i doubt it. I still don’t see them as 4X games for the most part. Might try Civ VI that I found in my library, probably from Epic.

Oh and Blaugust – I managed to keep up with some reading in the first half of the month, not so much in the latter. Discord looked busy though, good times.

Topics, games, WoW

I’ve written many times that this is not a WoW blog, just a blog by someone who has played WoW for quite a few years (started in 2005, some short breaks until 2014, then mostly subbed since 2019 again) – but in the last year or so I think 90% of the posts have been about WoW. I do play EVE Online, and at times more than WoW, but I find it very hard to write about, so not many posts. I’ve been slowly progressing through Diablo IV but this is the second post mentioning it, without it being the main topic of the post. (Yes, it’s still fun but not awesome, but I’m still in the story part). And then there are other games. I’ve basically zero interest in Baldur’s Gate III, but all the talk made me wonder if I should replay the original Baldur’s Gate or Planescape: Torment. I probably shouldn’t.

Anyway, after a few weird months (see posting frequency since April) I should probably be happy to have some topic to write about once per week, even if it’s just a small blurb on how the raid went, even if I don’t want to exclusively write about WoW. But then again, there’s nothing drawing me to FFXIV or SWTOR or GW2 at the moment and that list of upcoming games for 2022? Yeah well, I played Gamedec and it was good and then the reviews for Redfall were abysmal and the ones for Forspoken were mixed or worse, Nightingale hasn’t released and so on…

June in review

Oh wow, a second one of these posts. For several reasons June was probably my month with the least amount of gaming time in a long while and July doesn’t look much better with some plans.

I did end up buying Diablo 4 and starting the campaign, and it’s fun, but I’m not particularly far – taking it slow but I kinda wanna see more.

June 4th was my (and our) first raid day, cleared 8/9 Normal that week (Sun+Tue as usual) and then my next raid was the the 25th + 27th when we ended up at 5/9 Heroic. Tbh not completely sure what the guild did in the 2 weeks that I missed, I think they were on 9/9 Normal 1/9 Heroic.
Still at zero M+ and didn’t log in a lot, but at least I managed to get my gear in shape, in relation to my online time – 423 iLvl, where 424 is the max iLvl in Normal. But I guess if I can not totally fall behind with just raid logging I’m happy enough, and I got my 4 set bonus via Catalyst and a bit of rolling luck. Oh, and I’m back to playing Fury. Guess it goes hand in hand with this low-stress season where I couldn’t really be motivated to learn a new class and/or even gear it beforehand in our break between the seasons.

May in review

Ugh, May has been wild and I’ve neither had the time nor any real incentive to play WoW. I think I finished the 10.1 story line so far but didn’t even begin to grind out gear etc.

We only start raiding on the 4th of June (if we even get the people) – it’s been a weird transition from “ok, patch soon, everybody relax” to… no one logging in, no signups going up, or I just missed them because I wasn’t on a lot. Haven’t done a single M+ either, we’ll see how it will work out in that raid week, but I’ll be on vacation soon after.

I did play quite a bit of EVE though, but as usual I find it hard to write about that. I did have fun though.

2022 in review

Another year has passed, so it’s time for a review post!

What I played a lot:

  • World of Warcraft
  • EVE Online

Other games I played:

  • Final Fantasy XIV
  • Minion Masters
  • Guild Wars 2

Gaming expenses in 2022:

  • WoW: 196 EUR for 10 months
    • 1x 66 EUR for a 6 month subscription
    • 1x 50 EUR for the Dragonflight expansion
    • 1x 80 EUR for an 8 character transfer offer
    • 4x 0 EUR for 4 months of sub with WoW tokens for gold
  • EVE Online: ~270 EUR for ~17 months (+70 EUR prepaid for next year’s subs)
    • 2x 96 EUR for 2x 6 months sub
    • 1x 12 EUR for a single month
    • 2x 50 EUR for two discounted Platinum packs
    • 1x 40 EUR for a 3 month sub
  • Final Fantasy XIV: 69 EUR
    • 5x 13.80 EUR for subscriptions
  • GOG, Steam, Epic, Humble: 0 (Actually one Humble Ukraine Bundle, but my wife paid that one)

Summary:

  • Amount of MMOs played: 3
  • Amount of MMO subscription months paid: 10 (WoW) + 5 (FFXIV) + 17 (EVE) = 32, so nearly 3 per month
  • Amount of games purchased: 0
  • Amount of MMO expansions purchased: 1
  • Amount of money for ingame/services stuff: 80 EUR, plus an unquantifiable amount from the EVE packs
  • Amount of games I got for free and didn’t play: a ton
  • Amount of games I purchased and then didn’t play: 0

The total this year is around 535 EUR, that’s 45 EUR per month. Another very cheap year, even if I’d take the prepaid sub months in, then it’s around 50 per month. Quite ok for your main hobby.

Unfortunately my plan of buying and playing more indie games did not pan out at all.

I did manage to look at a few games in my backlog (most of them I got for free) and write about some of them, no AAA titles this year.

Kickstarter and games

Belghast had an interesting post up last week about backing games on Kickstarter. That’s quite a list of games.

I’ve had a kickstarter account for at least 11-12 years now and I backed 6 projects, despite being a huge fan of the idea initially – and none of them were games. Maybe it’s because I develop software for a living (and despite all outcries from game developers that it’s different and that they’re such special snowflakes) I am wary of release dates and have a healthy dose of paranoia towards things and their funding (same with startups, really – and what is a fresh game company with no history of delivering but a sort of startup?) – and there are so many games already that I hardly play, except for my few favorites. (Right now I have a little craving for EVE for example, but I’m waiting).

So, my 6 projects. One (the first I think) was a comic, from Kingdom of Loathing, which I had been playing at the time, 2011 or so. Two were CDs (Amanda Palmer and Jeph Jacques, of Questionable Content fame), one was basically a GoFundMe, maybe before GoFundMe was a thing. One was hardware that actually got delivered (I think on time) and I am happy with it, but still some remote personal ties and not a random “Oh shiny!” and the last one was actually software. And I’m not even sure if it shipped in the final form, but I pitched in because I liked the idea and also because I had interacted with the main developer in the past. So this was a bit of a “thanks for doing good” and I didn’t care that much about the software itself. Overall I spent 212$ and I don’t regret a single cent. Well, the comic was kinda not needed but I was happy at the time, at least.

Not really sure what to make of it, I guess me being not big into consumerism and mostly deliberating every purchase that’s more than a beer or an ice cream (yes, even single months of MMO subs or a book are usually not purchased on a whim) doesn’t make myself an avid backer of things that might not show up. Then again it’s been a while since I saw a thing on Kickstarter that was actually awesome and at the same time not completely ridiculously expensive – which means definitely not the “I WANT THAT” range. Still glad that Kickstarter exists for the people that like the experience, but I guess I’m not backing anything soon, although statistically 2022 or 2023 would be due another expense…

2021 in review

End of the year means review post, a tradition started in 2014.

Again gaming was (sadly) the number one spare time activity this year, with other things not even really competing. Getting vaccinated at the end of the summer I’m hopeful I can do fun things outside again next year.

But anyway, here are the details.

What I played a lot:

  • World of Warcraft
  • EVE Online
  • Final Fantasy XIV

Other things I played:

  • Horizon: Zero Dawn
  • some Nonogram games (no new ones)

Gaming expenses in 2021:

  • WoW: 206 EUR for 11 months of subscription total
    • 4x 13 EUR = 52 EUR for a monthly sub
    • 2x 17.5 EUR = 35 EUR for server transfers (could’ve saved one)
    • 1x 40 EUR for the Dark Portal Pass in WoW BC Classic
    • 79 EUR for subs, paid last year but running into 2021
  • EVE Online: 576 EUR
    • 8x 49 EUR for 8x a 3 month subscription incl. 3 MCT
    • 1x 5 USD for a 7 day pack
    • 179 EUR spillover from last year
  • Final Fantasy XIV: 103 EUR
    • 5x 12.4 EUR for subscriptions
    • 1x 40 EUR for the Endwalker expansion
    • 2.40 EUR for additional retainers
  • GOG.com: 31 EUR for Horizon: Zero Dawn
  • Steam: 0 EUR
  • Humble: 0 EUR
  • Epic: 0 EUR

And the usual stats:

  • Amount of MMOs played: 3
  • Amount of MMO subscription months paid: 11 (WoW) + 5 (FFXIV) + ~33 (EVE) = 49, so 4 per month
  • Amount of games purchased: 1
  • Amount of MMO expansions purchased: 1
  • Amount of money for ingame/services stuff:
  • 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: 0

The math for next year will be easier again, no weird “I paid so and so many months already” because of course I am not counting single days or weeks in December that spill over, but this time nothing for February onward is paid.

Again EVE takes number one as a spender game, but I did have 3 accounts running all year and they’re now all unsubscribed as well, but 2 still have some time running. WoW also got a full year of subs, but nothing from December onward. Let’s see when the next raid comes and if I will come back. Final Fantasy brought it up to a respectable 5 months, and in that time I didn’t really play a lot of WoW, I just logged in to raid and that’s why I stayed subscribed.

The total this year is 916 EUR, which is 76.33 EUR per month – 5 less per month than last year and still providing 90% of my spare time entertainment. Not bad, but overall still a bit high.

The list of free games I actually wanted to have a look at grows. Epic leads the way here, but GOG also gave out a few freebies. I’d actually feel bad if I never bought any and got them all for free, but again my conscience is clear if I’m not touching them anyway, even if that sounds a bit weird.

  • Frostpunk
  • XIII
  • Pathfinder: Kingmaker
  • Shenmue III
  • Rage 2

Maybe I should actually set aside a budget of 10 EUR per month for an indie game (or every second month), because this is something I kinda feel bad for. The question is if I’ll play it then.

Twelve Years

On October 18, 2009 I made the first post, back at the old URL.

The ten year post has the yearly post counts for most of the years, but let’s repeat and expand:

  • 2009: 12 posts
  • 2010: 8 posts
  • 2011: 0 posts
  • 2012: 0 posts
  • 2013: 5 posts
  • 2014: 28 posts
  • 2015: 43 posts
  • 2016: 23 posts
  • 2017: 24 posts
  • 2018: 84 posts
  • 2019: 96 posts
  • 2020: 74 posts
  • 2021: 80 (Jan-Oct) posts so far

That’s 477 posts, for an average of 39.75 per year, should’ve done 3 more 😛

So maybe I’ll break the 2019 high mark, but it’s unlikely; but I’ve not fallen back down to 2017 levels. It’s ok.

MMOs are multiplayer games. Maybe.

As I was just standing in the kitchen on a short break from work, making a coffee, I had some sort of epiphany. Not the grandiose kind that would make me rich and famous, but this sort of personal insight.

In our EVE Slack there recently was talk about cohesion and people not going on stratops (we don’t have mandatory anything in BRAVE) and I noticed that while I noped out of the war, since we declared a loss I’ve been doing a lot more, including undocking. So my playstyle has shifted from “purely solo” in the last year to “mostly group activities” again.

And I noticed the same both in WoW Retail and Classic. I log on to Classic once per week for our group and don’t feel a lot of excitement otherwise, and I log on to raid twice a week in retail and maybe a bit more, but only for chores like weekly/dailies or opening the vault and sorting enchants for the next raid. Nothing solo.

In FFXIV it’s a bit of a weird mix. This week I focused on crafting and my Beast Tribe Dailies and a little bit of story progress, and I mostly lump in duty roulette and random LFG activies as solo play. I say hi, I might write or read a few sentences about strategies, but I’m not engaging. This is not my guild/FC or a group of friends, just temporary allies for 20 minutes. They could be bots, I don’t care. But it’s fine like that.

I’m happy to have one game for solo play and one or two or three for group play. I guess from the point I started BfA until I planned to start raiding again with Shadowlands launch, I was playing WoW Retail as my solo game. I talked to my guild in guild chat, but I’m not sure I went to voice chat more than twice in those 2 years. When Classic launched it was a mix of solo and group activity, separated by which toon I played.

Not a huge epiphany, but I think doing “group and solo” only works when I am 100% engaged in a single game, I guess Shadowlands launch counts, leveling up solo, doing dungeons in groups, then raiding in groups. Then solo leveling all the alts. But in general, it’s either group or solo.