Chillin’ Out In Limbo Once Again

Lately I find myself stuck in gaming limbo once again. I’ve reached that point where no currently-released games give me that burning desire to log in and play for hours. This weekend I had a lot of free time and ended up preferring to just zone out playing Hearthstone while watching Netflix on my second monitor. I’m not burned out on MMOs or even games in general — quite the opposite, in fact.  I’m desperate for something great to play; I truly do want that ‘next best thing’.

Two MMOs are on my radar as big interests: EverQuest Next and Camelot Unchained.  Both are in in the year or more left in development stage which means it’s too early to wait for them to come out.  For those of you emailing me or tweeting me to check out EverQuest again, I am. I’ve dabbled once again on the old school servers and I’m debating if I want to jump into that heavily or… try FFXI with some friends.

I had a craving this weekend for something medieval or fantasy based where I build and/or manage a kingdom. My mind starting concocting something like WarCraft 3 meets Civilization.  Anyone have a good recommendation for something like that? Just a random thought.

What games are keeping you busy or maybe you can tell me about a game I’ve neglected to pay attention to that might release before my big two.

  • I’ve been playing some Firefall. I played a long time ago in beta and now that it is released I came back with a couple of friends. Having fun so far. I like how the story missions seem to scale the difficulty with how many people you are doing them with be it solo or duo or full on group. The world events and resource gathering can be fun too. Definitely more fun with friends.

    My MMORPG right now has been WoW. My wife plays and I have 4 or 5 close friends that play off and on and there are 2 of them active right now. Mainly doing PvP/achievement stuff and getting ready for WoD.

    I’ve logged into EQ a few times in the last couple of weeks as well, but I don’t seem to have a whole lot of time for anything else.

  • Age of Wonders 3 and Fallen Enchantress (with all the DLC) are both solid empire builders with tactical combat.

    Or hell, go get Civ 5: Brave New World, it’s pretty much excellent.

    Or, it’s about time you gave Paradox games a try, and go dive off into Crusader Kings 2 or Europa Universalis IV.

  • Fallen Enchantress is interesting, although not perfect. You should be able to get a solid 30-40 hours out of it however before it becomes formulaic, which IMO is not bad. At this point though I’d wait for a Steam sale to pick it up with all DLC.

    Civ V scenarios are a good way to kill some time as well, if you have gotten your fill of the grand game.

  • Since Krig and table are both playing ff11 I plan go download that and play when I get back on Wednesday.

    You should join and let’s check it out. Heard a lot of good things recently

  • I ended up playing FF14 again. I enjoy the pace after playing the spastic and loud Wildstar. It’s not going to be a long term home but it is scratching my MMO itch for now. The community seems to be really positive and upbeat which is a nice bonus.

  • Strategy Civ type game with more rts focus and well it’s in space! you cant go wrong with Sins of the solar empire and all its expansions..

  • What happened with wildstar keen ? I also stopped playing ESO, but counterstrike added a competitive mode so i’m back into that in a big way.

    Also Divinty:original Sin is still waiting for me! what a great game.

  • I am completely hooked on Hearthstone on the iPad…the perfect summer game.

    I think I’m done with mmorpg’s, truly. ESO and WildStar and the almost $200 spent really were the end of an era for me. I’ll always play some WoW cuz that’s where my family is camped out…so it goes.

  • Playing some Orcs Must Die Unchained for my MOBA fix, HearthStone Arena, and some Wow leveling when I need some really gentle chill time!

  • I am a bit between games too. Sometimes I log on for a LOL match or two, but I’ve been 8 months in limbo. GW2 was supposed to be my game for a while but its combat and focus on Living Story fookishness was very unappealling. I log in once a month or so play some SPVP and am reminded how much I hate it.

  • For me, it’s come down to realizing that today’s MMOs are no different than MMOs 15 years ago, except that they’ve gotten easier (by my definition of difficulty). I am not turned on by amazing graphics (I play Dwarf Fortress with the default tilesets…). There is nothing new to learn about gameplay or strategy in any MMO since the first one I played (EQ). Of the 2 MMOs that I’d played for more than 1 year:
    1) EQ – I played and continued playing it because I’d never experienced this type of gameplay before. I kept wanting to see what came next, what could I do with my character next? What challenge could I overcome that few others could? What dynamic could I discover next?
    2) WoW – I played it because it was the first MMO game with open world PvP (I played on a PvP server). What sorts of 1 on 1s could I win? Could I win a 1v2 or 1v3 if I got the jump? How well could I do in PvP compared to others?
    2.5) WoW 5-Boxing – I did this because regular WoW brought nothing new (of what I was looking for). What 5-man content could I complete controlling my own 5-man group? How effective was I in PvP vs another 5-man?

    I achieved what I would consider to be a personal level of excellence in those 3 periods of online gaming. Now what? MMOs today are absolute garbage comparatively and bring me no new goals to attain. Not only that, they make the goals I listed above trivial (except the PvP related ones, but I honestly think WoW did faction-based, open world PvP the best yet. WAR had potential. Never played DaoC).

    For many, WoW was their first MMO. WoW attracted a HUGE number of people to enjoy MMOs that had never played online games before. WoW didn’t spoil future MMOs by providing people a laid back experience that anyone can understand or excel at. It spoiled future MMOs by being a lot of people’s first and most memorable experience. And it did it so well that it accomplished everyone’s bucket list of MMO achievements.

    Personally, I will try every new MMO that comes out, but I have little hopes of anything lasting me more than a couple months. Games I keep going back to are EQ (Project 1999), Dwarf Fortress (Masterwork mod), and whatever 4x/Strategy Game I see on my desktop (MoO2, Stardrive, The Guild 2, CK2, GalCiv1/2) and sometimes Eve.

    It’s a soul-searching endeavor, to ask and answer these questions about what entertains us and why.

    PS: Medieval Building Sim? Sounds Like Dwarf Fortress 🙂

  • @Lokked “I played it because it was the first MMO game with open world PvP”**** that you had heard of. WoW was definitely not the first Open-World PvP experience in MMOs.

  • MMOs are such a huge time commitement, even truer if you want to be really good. I think that’s what has been killing my MMO fun lately. I no longer have enough free time in large chuck to really commit to any MMO and I can’t just play casually because I get the nagging feeling of not performing to a proper level. At least, there’s good games out there to play in smaller chunks and I don’t even own a recent console game. Here’s my current lineup :

    – Assassins Creed IV : Black Flag. (I know I’m late on the bandwagon, but I’m lazy bummer who waited for a Steam sale.)
    – Europa Universalis IV. (I’m finally starting to be a decent player making the game much more enjoyable.)
    – Diviniy Original Sin (One good buddy and I always have a co-op game going, Divinity being currently our game after a couple of months of Diablo 3, Van Helsing 2 and Age of Wonders 3).