Lands Ho!

I read a post at MassivelyOP this morning, where Bree was asking the regulars what their three most-played MMOs of the year might have been. It got me thinking. In 2022 I probably played mmorpgs for fewer hours than at any time since I started, back in 1999. 

For a moment I was tempted to say "video games" there, rather than just mmorpgs. Technically that might be true. It would be misleading, though, suggesting as it would a larger falling-away from the overall hobby than I feel has taken place. 

There's absolutely no question about the reason my game-playing has declined. It's not lack of interest; it's one hundred per cent down to having a dog in the house. This morning, for example, I was out walking her for almost two hours and that's in the depths of winter. The better the weather, the longer I'm outdoors these days, which I'm sure is great for both my mental and physical well-being but obviously knocks a big hole in the time I have to sit at a desk or in front of a keyboard.

It's not just the getting out of the house, though. Since we got Beryl, I've been very loathe to engage with any content that can't immediately be interrupted. Beryl's super-power is knowing exactly when I'm just in the middle of a crucial battle and she makes full use of her abilities. It's easier not to get into the situation in the first place than it is to deal with it when it happens.

Despite that, I still play video games every single day and I would guess I may well be playing - or at least trying out - more individual games than at any point in my life until now. What's more, I'm even finishing quite a few of them - playing them right to the closing credits - something I've very rarely done in the past.

A visit to the Carriage Museum. (No, not really...)

A great deal of the variety derives from my relatively new-found love of demos. I've always enjoyed the kind of free trials, betas and so on that ongoing live service games like to use as promotional tools but until I discovered the joys of Steam's NextFest I didn't have any idea just how much I really, really like demos. They're just the right length to sustain my interest without outstaying their welcome. I kind of wish developers would just make games that last about an hour, sometimes. It often seems like enough.

It's hard to be sure exactly how much time I spend gaming, anyway. Unlike several bloggers I follow, I don't run one of those apps that tallies up how much time I spend playing each game I log into over the course of a week or a month or a year. Maybe I should, although honestly they kind of give me the creeps. I'm not at all sure it's information I want to know in that level of excruciating detail.

Still, it would be handy at least to have some idea. I could go through Steam and check my time-played for each game there, I suppose, but that would be too much like homework and anyway it would only give a very partial picture, seeing I play most of my games elsewhere.

I could also go back through the blog and check how much I posted about specific games. I have a determined tendency to post a lot of posts in quick succession whenever I get into a new game, so the blog does at least leave a convincing trail of infatuation. 

Never did find time to post about my "Punk Bed", did I?

Even then, though, I frequently pull  back on the posting after an initial flurry. Either I run out of new things to say or, more likely, I start to get a sense that an over-abundance of posts on one subject is unbalancing the flow of the blog. As I keep repeating, I have yet to miss a single day playing Noah's Heart since it launched in July but I've been holding back on writing about it too much, not because I don't have more to say but because I don't want to turn into that guy, the one who won't shut up about that game no-one cares about.

That just leaves memory and as we know it's the most unreliable of narrators. I posted a comment to that MOP post and I couldn't even decide with any certainty what my three most played mmorpgs of 2022 were. You'd think I'd be able to remember but no. I could just about remember what I'd played but as for how often, after the first couple the rest all seemed to melt into one general background hum.

Just for the sake of posterity, I'm going to list out the mmorpgs I can remember playing at least once in 2022. It's a list that's going to start with a couple of definites for most-played and then quickly tail off to "in no particular order". I'd also lay good odds it will be incomplete, as a flip through last years posts would almost certainly prove. Only problem there is there were three hundred and twenty-eight of those. Who has the patience to comb through that?

1. Noah's Heart
2. EverQuest II
3. Lord of the Rings Online
4. New World
5. Guild Wars 2
6. Rose Online
7. Chimeraland
8. Dragon Nest Origins
9. Vanguard Emu
10. Occupy White Walls
11. AdventureQuest 3D
12. Rift

Our mission, to explore strange new worlds. Then forget about them.

A round dozen. Not bad. And as I said, I bet it was really more than that. Some very obvious omissions there, too: EverQuest, Final Fantasy XIV, Elder Scrolls Online, World of Warcraft... When it comes to playing video games, I don't do schedules or goals but as a general principle, when it comes to the end of 2023 I'd like to be able to say I at least logged into those four, always with the caveat of Blizzard becoming somewhere I'm willing to spend either time or money or both. 

I've particularly been thinking about trying some FFXIV again lately. It would be interesting to see how much has changed for the solo player. I also think that it would make a big difference to my hours played if I could work out a better way to play games away from my desk. That's an ongoing investigation. 

It's been useful putting this down in print. It's clarified my thoughts somewhat. I had been wondering if perhaps I might be coming within sight of the wind-down of my love affair with the hobby but I can say now that's definitely not the case. Just typing out the names of these games makes me want to log into each and every one of them, not to mention all the new ones I haven't yet tried.

All good for another year, then, I guess. Onwards!