Adding to my Selection Pool
After picking out 6 games yesterday, I still have a whopping 58 to add to my tournament list, so I took a scan through a bunch of games that I’ve played a bit over the years. These include MMOs and single-player games, some released or updated in the past year, and others that have been resurrected after they were shut down.
Of these, I’ve probably spent the most amount of time in LOTRO. Actually, I am currently working on leveling a Hobbit Warden on a standard LOTRO server and a Beorning on Treebeard. While I want to add the game to my tournament, I’m still gonna keep pushing my characters to see how far they get outside this madness.
Beyond LOTRO, I’ve probably split similar amounts of time in Secret World Legends and City of Heroes. If I added my time playing The Secret World to SWL, I’m sure they’d have the edge, but City of Heroes holds an esteemed position in my gaming compendium because it was my first MMO.
On a level below those 3, I’ve spent significant time playing FFXIV, ESO, Albion, Rift, SWTOR, STO, Horizon Zero Dawn, and Nioh. Each of these has held my attention for a while, but none have grabbed me so hard that I stuck with them. I think the closest I got would have been FFXIV, but then that’s such a big game, and as with most MMOs, if you wait too long, the endgame goalposts get moved.
With Nioh, I have bounced off some of the battles multiple times, and while I enjoy the game, I’ve never focused enough to get past some of the bosses. With Horizon Zero Dawn, I just never seemed to have enough time to focus on the mechanics to keep leveling, even though I really enjoyed the parts of the game I visited.
With Albion, I loved the game, loved the crafting, had a lot of fun with the battles, but they overpromised. I grew extremely disillusioned when I spent YEARS waiting for the iOS version. I signed up on day one for the iOS beta test, and I really wanted to play a game where I could have fun on both mobile and on my PC. When they dragged their feet for so long and NEVER expanded the beta to include me, I gave up and turned my back on the game.
SWTOR and STO have my love of their franchises that keep drawing me back but never prove to be sticky enough that I march along the leveling treadmill. ESO was always enticing, but I never finished the other Elder Scrolls games, so while it had a strong pull, I never held on long enough to level very far.
Of these, Rift is the one I had so much hope for and probably leveled the highest in, but still never reached anywhere close to endgame. I love the IDEA of Rift and the possibilities of mixing and matching souls (classes), but there are just some difficulties that have held me back from moving beyond a certain point in the game. Now, I fear I may never get to the end before the game is shut down.
FFXIV, on the other hand, shows no signs of being shut down any time soon. This is a thriving game that just came out with one of the most anticipated expansions of any MMO in years. The problem I’ve had in leveling up in this game is that it seems to be too popular at times. So many people want to play when I get to it that there are queue times and that totally impacts my desire to play the game.
Finally, there are some games that I’ve just dabbled with. These include New World, Black Desert Online, Guild Wars 2, ArcheAge, Everquest, Champions Online, Aion, Valheim, The Division, and Disco Elysium. I’ve loaded these onto my primary system at some point and have jumped into character creation and even leveled through starting areas and beyond, but none have stuck more than a few hours so far.
Ramble 88 |Dingo 4| 2022.13 | Adding to my Selection Pool