Ten years of reviewed years

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Happy New Year! While writing yesterday’s post I noticed that it was the tenth of its kind, mostly focusing on expenses, so if you find that boring, I can’t help you.

Let’s start with the easy numbers:

Overall Expenses

  • 2014: 450 EUR
  • 2015: 355 EUR
  • 2016: 374 EUR
  • 2017: 298 EUR
  • 2018: 176 EUR
  • 2019: 467 EUR
  • 2020: 976 EUR
  • 2021: 916 EUR
  • 2022: 535 EUR
  • 2023: 400 EUR
  • 2024: 236 EUR

So 2018 was an outlier due to unknown reasons and 2020+2021 were outliers due to Covid 19 and me not going outside a lot, but other than that it seems to be safe inside 300-550 EUR bracket, which means 25 to 45 EUR per month, so less than 1 AAA title per month. I can live with that.

MMOs I paid for:

  • WoW:
    • 2014, 2016, 2017, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023
    • about 72 out of 96 months (not counting two years with zero game time)
  • EVE:
    • 2014, 2016, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023
    • as of 2020 it’s three accounts, only one before that – too hard to count I think, but I guess it’s between 105 and 120 months, (out of 120 months) so accounts number 2+3 for the last 3 years make up the time I was not subscribed
  • WildStar:
    • 2014, 2015
    • less than 12 months of subs
  • SW:TOR:
    • 2014, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020
    • about 21 months spread over 5 years
  • FFXIV:
    • 2019, 2021, 2022, 2023
    • about 20 months spread over 4 years (only one free month in 2023)
  • Marvel Heroes:
    • 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017
    • no sub, bought some packs and ingame currency
  • Guild Wars 2:
    • 2015, 2017
    • basically buying expansions with diamonds included

I suppose any statistics about other games are moot, there were some I played a lot, some I played from time to time, some were free and some were bought. Nothing spectacular in a 10 year review I guess.

Hardware

Hardware costs could be another interesting breakdown but I’m not sure I’ll manage to meaningfully break that down, but I’ll try. My gaming PC from 2019 was about 1500 EUR, then a monitor for 400, some more SSDs (let’s say 300), my old graphics card (maybe 300), another monitor (let’s say 300) and some peripherals. That would be about 3000 EUR in 10 years. Sounds low, but even with a bit of research I think I got most of the parts and might not be missing a lot. Taking notes helps.

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2023 in review

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And another year over, which means another review post.

What I played a lot:

  • World of Warcraft
  • EVE Online
  • Diablo IV

Other games I played:

  • Against The Storm
  • GameDec
  • Diablo III
  • Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag
  • Submerged
  • Stellaris

Gaming expenses in 2023:

  • WoW: 102 EUR for 11 months
    • 1x 6 months for 66 EUR
    • 1x 3 months for 36 EUR
    • 2 months for WoW tokens with ingame gold
  • EVE Online: 392 EUR plus 70 EUR (prepaid in 2022) minus prepaid for 2024 (see below)
    • 1x Platinum Pack for 58 EUR
    • 2x Silver Pack for 12 EUR
    • 2x Bronze Pack for 5.50 EUR
    • 3x 3 months for 40 EUR
    • 2x 3000 PLEX for 90 EUR, mostly used for sub months though
  • Diablo IV: 70 EUR – the game on launch

Small intermission:

OK, I’m at the point where I need to redo the math for last years because I am not sure how to handle these “prepaid XX months of subscription” and this year is especially egregious I think.

In 2019 I counted 26 EUR for 2020 subs in 2019, in 2020 I had both numbers (with and without prepaying), in 2021 I counted the prepaid stuff in this year, then 2022 had nothing from 2021 but 70 prepaid, so I guess I’ll count that in 2023 and have something for 2024, because calculating EVE will be something more complicated this time…

Summary:

  • Amount of MMOs played: 2
  • Amount of MMO subscription months paid: 9 (WoW) + 12 (EVE) + about 15 (EVE) = 36
  • Amount of games purchased: 1
  • Amount of MMO expansions purchased: 0
  • Amount of money for ingame/services stuff: hard to tell with the EVE packs, maybe 50-100?
  • Amount of games I got for free and didn’t play: some
  • Amount of games I purchased and then didn’t play: 0

So that brings the total to 636 EUR, that’s 53 EUR per month, slightly more than 2022. This would still be a perfectly valid number, but it’s not painting a realistic picture.

Now if I subtract the EVE sub months for 2024 (oh boy, that’s 23 of them, split over 3 accounts, so basically two of them for the whole year… if I use a 24 month package from the website that would be 270 EUR but if I use the biggest discount paying with PLEX it’s more like 190, so let’s say about 236) then it would only be 400 EUR, or 33 EUR per month. So something in between. So we’ll see how much I will spend on EVE in 2024, but I hope it won’t be that much, even if I’m running my 3 accounts.

Yes, you may laugh, but with the discounts on PLEX, and being able to buy subscriptions with ingame money, just calculating how much you paid for your EVE subscription can be a whole afternoon in itself. Of course it involves spreadsheets, so make of that what you will…

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Amirdrassil week 5 and other stuff

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Kinda forgot to post but after raid week 4 followed raid week 5 and we killed the Council on Heroic. Unfortunately two of our healers are kinda lagging behind on gear, so we went back to Normal after that kill, nothing good dropped and then one of them (unrelatedly) said he’d bow out for the rest of the tier because he’s been hating how Resto Druid feels for weeks with the new Tier bonus anyway.

So fortunately this was the last week of raiding before the holiday break anyway, but we’ll still need to find a solution here I think.

But unexpectedly with being on vacation and chilling for a few days I found some fun in WoW again and ran a couple of toons through the Emerald Dream zone, five of them even, so that makes it a total of seven. Didn’t do much after that and also don’t plan to, but the six non-mains now at least have 420ish gear instead of their mix of 410 to 380 before. (Druid, Shaman, Rogue, Demon Hunter, Warlock, Death Knight, Hunter – maybe even in that order). Still no real motivation to bring Priest and Evoker to 70, or any of the Horde toons, but it’s a start.

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One hundred forty million

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Back on track and not forgetting the milestone this time. Last post in August.

Skill category             Points     No. of skills
===================================================
Spaceship Command         49,269,946  69 *
Gunnery                   21,253,832  46 *
Drones                    11,904,316  22
Missiles                  11,338,591  25 *
Navigation                8,606,589   13
Engineering               7,474,275   15 *
Fleet Support             5,532,130   13
Shields                   4,339,138   12
Subsystems                4,096,000   16
Targeting                 3,435,321   8 *
Electronic Systems        2,863,220   14
Armor                     2,609,805   11
Scanning                  1,899,374   7
Trade                     1,066,275   8 *
Resource Processing       976,960     10 *
Neural Enhancement        964,550     5
Rigging                   679,060     10
Science                   541,530     15 --
Social                    434,510     6
Planet Management         394,040     4
Production                276,743     4
Structure Management      135,765     1
Corporation Management    250         1

* = changes since last time

Skills at Level 5:   149 (+7)
Skills at Level 4:   123 ( 0)
Skills at Level 3:    37 (0)
Skills at Level 2:     2 (-1)
Skills at Level 1:    24 (+2)
Skills at Level 0:     1 (0)

Interestingly by using a few account-bound boosters and switching some training around, my main alt has not reached 90m. So out of sync again, as it sometimes happens.

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Raiding Amirdrassil – week 4

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Cleared normal in one hour, while missing 2 healers, so stopped for that day. Got dragged into two M+ because they were lacking a 5th, timed a +15 I’d never been in (Galakrond’s Fall) and then a +16 I’d not seen in forever and only once on M+ (Atal’Dazar) and I was in a raid spec and we timed both.

Tuesday was heroic, still one healer down but we got the first two with only one wipe on Igira, then a first kill of Volcoross on the fifth try that day. And then a 1% wipe on the council, fourth try. So close.
From Sunday on we’ll not do Normal anymore unless we need some filler bosses to concentrate on Heroic.

Finished up the 4 Mythic weekly with 2 10 minute RLP M0 runs and got gauntlets again… Oh well.

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Raiding Amirdrassil – week2

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Oops, forgot to post the post, fumbled something together, then found the draft.

I’ve not had terribly much time to play WoW, and as of Monday evening I think I’ve acquired a total of 2 upgraded pieces of loot. Running 2+2 Tier pieces is worse than 4 of the old ones, so I passed for some guildies. Still feels bad because I know some of them are just rolling for the 20 iLvl upgrade, not simming if it’s an upgrade. Still, bad itemization if it’s a 5% dps loss like this.

The catchup mechanic in 10.2 doesn’t seem bad, in an evening on Saturday I managed to run my 2nd toon through the quest line (this time not reading the quest text, not having to search, etc) and she had no real problems doing it at iLvl 385ish and is now iLvl 421 which is just below Normal gear in the last raid tier (that should have been 424 I think). Not sure on how many I’ll do this, I’m trying to not just gear all the alts this expansion (yeah I did way too much of it at launch, I know).

Fyrakk down on like the 3rd try on Tuesday, oneshot Gnarloot, then Igira on the fourth pull and 2 wipes on Volcoross. Got a nice 2h weapon from Gnarlroot, iLvl 467 but other than that maybe one other drop, everything good I have is from the Vault :/

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A New Home

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I thought it would take a lot longer, but BRAVE has a Keepstar again.

Still K7D-II in Querious, but we’re moving out of the Fortizar.

For me personally not a real change, I have no supercaps so I had all my ships already in the Fortizar.

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WoW’s 10.2 patch – Guardians of the Dream

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So, since we cleared Aberrus at the end of August I’ve not really done a lot. Was subscribed for a bit, did some solo casual things, don’t even remember if we did anything as a group.

But I was called to Discord recently and it was decided we’d start raiding today, so in true “guess I’ll have to do a bit of prep” fashion I resubscribed this morning (took the 3 months bundle), updated all addons (some have not been updated but still everything seems to work), checked my spec, started with the new patch’s questing, and looked at the strategies for the first few bosses.

Then off we went and in our 2 hours cleared 6 of the 9 bosses, with 2 wipes on the seventh (no wipes before). Fun was had, drops were distributed (I got nothing), my damage is bad because I’ve not replaced a single piece since August and some people are already a full tier (aka 13 iLvl) or even a bit more ahead. But I didn’t regret resubbing and that’s the only important thing, although I’ve got no urgent plans for any alts or M+ right now, we’ll see.

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