Anniversary

Is that even a word? Last year I managed to remember the 8th birthday of the blog on the 18th of October, now it’s a month late. Bah, who cares. I managed to write around 73 posts in that year (until the 18th, that is) – but with 31 in August and 29 in the 2 weeks before and after  that’s only 12 posts for the remaining 10 months. As far as I can see I didn’t do any of these posts before last year.
Last year I had just restarted SW:TOR (and played for like 2-3 months) and also had played a lot of Guild Wars 2 just before.
2 years ago I was back in WoW, having fun in Legion – this was an extended stint in the Alliance, after having abandoned WoW in early 2014 and only returning for 2 months for WoD a month after it launched iirc.
3 years ago I was back in Ragnarok Online, my first MMO ever. But this was on another server, the first two ones I had played on had been closed down years ago. It’s a long tale of franchises and other things.
4 years ago I apparently wrote about mobile games, and my view hasn’t changed much, but maybe another post is due, having written about mobile games three times in total. I had stopped playing WoW in spring (after a fun visit to another server) and when WildStar launched I was fully on board.
5 years ago I was playing WoW and not much else. That’s also the year where I came back after a 3 year hiatus, not having managed to keep a full year running, only from October 2009 to March 2010 (20 posts in total). Since July 2013 I didn’t have any breaks longer than 3 months, which isn’t too bad. So maybe July 26th, 2013 should be the date to celebrate, but to be fair I did some games blogging in Dec 2011/Jan 2012 [1, 2, 3] – just not here. But these 3 years can be summed up quite nicely by: I finished university, I started working full time, I played a lot of WoW. I also wasn’t not blogging (~25 posts on other blogs in that time), just not about games.

As I wrote somewhere, this wasn’t my first gaming blog, but it’s the one I kept.
This is the first post, made on Oct 18, 2009. It started as a WoW blog because I really only played WoW at that time. This wouldn’t really change for a few years – at least not in the sense that I played a game enough that I would write about it.
This should be post #138.
I’m still mostly playing MMOs, but I’m not raiding and hardly grouping outside of RL friends, so I guess that makes me the prototype casual pretend-single-player MMO player. And I’m having a blast. At least when I’m not on a month long gaming break, which is also fine.
Actually there were quite a few MMOs/notable expansions I only started (or were released) after this blog was created:

• SW:TOR launched on December 20, 2011 – played at launch
• Marvel Heroes launched on June 4, 2013 – I started in December 2014
• TESO launched on April 4, 2014, I started in 2017
• WildStar launched on June 3, 2014 – played at launch
• Guild Wars 2 launched on August 28, 2012, but I only started in spring 2015
• WoW: Cataclysm – December 7, 2010 – played at launch
• WoW: Mists of Pandaria – September 25, 2012 – played at launch, stopped in April 2014 iirc
• WoW: Warlords of Draenor – November 13, 2014 – started in December, stopped in January
• WoW: Legion – August 30, 2016 – resubscribed a month before launch, stayed for a while

But here’s the oldtimers, being released more than 8 years ago:

• EVE Online launched on May 23, 2003, but I started in 2014 iirc
• Ragnarok Online launched in the EU on April 15, 2004, but I started in December 2003
• The Lord of the Rings Online – April 24, 2007
• WoW launched on February 11, 2005 – but I started in May 2006 iirc
• WoW: The Burning Crusade – January 16, 2007 – played at launch
• WoW: Wrath of the Lich King – November 13, 2008 – played at launch

Not even trying something similar for non-MMOs because I don’t even remember when I bought a game at launch day. But I’ve also not just waited for a sale. I tend to not be overexcited and just at some point happen to pick them up if they sound interesting. One exception is Diablo 3, incl expansions.
Let’s see, I’m really bad with predictions (but I don’t do them in my year-end post anyway) so here’s a list with the “moderately interesting” label for the next time:

• Albion Online
• Crowfall
• Destiny 2, the beta really hooked me.. but now.. MMOs, not shooters
• Wild West Online

And yes, this is a scheduled post because I would’ve surely forgotten to publish it on the correct day 😛