I notice that I play a lot less games the older I get. I get bored of the games I play, and the urge to try new stuff just isn’t there anymore, and I find myself playing the same old games over and over again.
World of Warcraft is one of those games. I originally started playing it in 2005 when it came out in the EU. I used to play on my brother’s account, during the few hours of the day that he wasn’t online. I’ve not played it consistently since then, and I’ve taken a lot of breaks, but since Battle for Azeroth I’ve been playing it more or less every day. That’s also been the case with the latest expansion, ”The War Within”. The only content I really interact with is PvP, arenas and such. The previous expansion, “Dragonflight”, turned gearing in PvP from a nightmarish chore into what it should have always been: an easy grind. Getting gear is not a fun or interesting part of PvP, killing noobs is, and the fact that it’s so easy to get into PvP now with the new gearing system is amazing.
TWW expanded on this system and improved it in many ways. You no longer need to have precognition as an embellishment, it’s simply a gem that you socket now, letting you have other powerful embellishments instead.
While there still are a lot of frustrations in the game, what we have now is such an incredible improvement from how things were in “Shadowlands” (the expansion before “Dragonflight”), that it almost beggars belief. I really hope that Blizzard keeps this momentum up, and don’t let PvP stagnate completely.
Since Holinka left, we haven’t really had much communication in terms of PvP, so we don’t really know what their thoughts or plans are; I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what happens.
Another game I played a lot of this year was Neverwinter Nights. This is a comfort game for me. Like WoW, it’s something I played a lot of when I was a kid, and getting back into it this year felt like coming home, or tasting a food that you haven’t had in ages. This year was the first time that I actually explored the game’s community content, and I’m really glad I did because it made me discover my new favourite RPG: “A Dance with Rogues”.
It’s probably one of the most infamous modules for NWN, and there probably are good reasons for this. While the adult themes are very heavy and prominent, it doesn’t necessarily force that on you, it’s up to you, the player, to chose whether to engage with it or not. You can play as an incredibly sexual character, but you can also not. The princess in my first playthrough was a very reserved, stoic character; someone who had fallen from her position of royalty but would not resign her dignity in her new life.
I was honestly stunned, time and time again, playing this module. I never thought a community made campaign could do so many things so right, from dialogue, to quest design, to story; it really is perfect (bar a few scuffs here and there).
I played both the original version which came out almost 20 years ago, and the remastered version which came out in 2020. The second part have yet to be remastered, and I really can’t wait to try it when it is. ADwR is a game that I will come back to again and again.
Warlockracy on Youtube did a great review of the game a few years ago, and I really recommend you watch it.
I haven’t really put a tonne of hours into anything other than this. I got back into Satisfactory in November, and have been playing it on and off. It’s a chill game, but it’s not something that has me locked in for hours and hours at a time.
I started playing Core Keeper with a friend. It’s a fun game, but probably not something I will replay unless there are some major content patches to it in the future. It’s similar to Terraria, but more in the style of Stardew Valley. There are some cool things you can do with automation, but it’s very bare bones, and I hope this is something they expand on in the future.
There aren’t any upcoming games that I look forward to, and none of the big releases this year have really caught my interest. I guess the only thing I know I’ll try out is Obsidian’s “Avowed”, a first person RPG set in the same universe as their “Pillars of Eternity” series. The gameplay does look kinda boring from the few videos I’ve seen, but Obsidian usually manages to compensate this with their writing, so it’s a game I’ll be checking out for sure.
At least I know for sure I’ll be playing WoW in the new year.