My game time

Mephilis78 · June 4

Would you believe that almost all of my game time in the last couple years has been split between just 4 games? Elder Scrolls Online, Ark Survival Evolved/Ascended, Star Trek Online, and Star Wars the Old Republic.

Funny thing is, I don't even consider myself an MMO fan. Part of the reason I always liked ESO is because if felt entirely different to WoW or LOTRO. In my defense the only one on the list that can be called a WoW Clone is SWTOR.

Edit: According to my Exophase account I have 1400 hours of ESO on Xbox One and 700 on Steam. This doesn't include all the years I spent on the original PC launcher, which goes back to Beta.

Edit 2: In the last month all I've played is ESO and Ark Ascended. During the day I go on Ark and take care of my dinos and plants, during the night I adventure through the Pact territories with Mirri Elindis

AcadianPaladin · June 5

Glad you've been enjoying ESO!

I don't know from other MMO's because ESO is the only MMO I've ever played. I consider the fact that ESO is multiplayer to be a drawback that I happily live with because of the beauty, mass and scale of the game. And it is quite solo friendly. So, since 2016 it has been my elf's home. I quit counting time played after 10,000 hours. When I find a game I like, I generally stay almost exclusively there for years.

ArchangelIsraphel · June 5

I'm pretty similar in my gaming habits. I play quite a few different games, but I have 4 or 5 I've played for years and always return to.

ESO, Skyrim, Stardew Valley, and the Witcher series are my "home" games (with a good bit of Final Fantasy thrown in) they're games I love getting immersed in, and I find comfort in those worlds.

Isn't it a wonderful feeling? They're like "old friends" you can always come back to. I feel the same way about favored books that I've read over and over as well.

I have a copy of ARK: Survival Evolved that I got as a gift-I really need to try It. I adore dinos.

Tornaad · June 5

AcadianPaladin wrote: »

Glad you've been enjoying ESO!

I don't know from other MMO's because ESO is the only MMO I've ever played. I consider the fact that ESO is multiplayer to be a drawback that I happily live with because of the beauty, mass and scale of the game. And it is quite solo friendly. So, since 2016 it has been my elf's home. I quit counting time played after 10,000 hours. When I find a game I like, I generally stay almost exclusively there for years.

I am in the same boat. With me, I got introduced to the Elder Scrolls series when Morrowind came out. By the time Oblivion had been out for a few years, I almost entirely lost all interest in playing other games. I too consider the MMO aspect of ESO a drawback, but I have grown to love everything else.
I have no idea what I am going to do when Elder Scrolls 6 comes out. It will be the first time since Oblivion that I will have played more than 1 game at a time.
I connected my ESO account to Steam about a year or so after I started playing it so my wife could purchase Steam Gift cards when she decides to. Since then, I have played 3,377.2 hours on ESO. I started playing ESO in August of 2016. I think it would have been late 2017 or early 2018 that I connected it to steam.

TaSheen · June 5

AcadianPaladin wrote: »

Glad you've been enjoying ESO!

I don't know from other MMO's because ESO is the only MMO I've ever played. I consider the fact that ESO is multiplayer to be a drawback that I happily live with because of the beauty, mass and scale of the game. And it is quite solo friendly. So, since 2016 it has been my elf's home. I quit counting time played after 10,000 hours. When I find a game I like, I generally stay almost exclusively there for years.

Well.... I find MMOs to be preferable to single-player games because they're not static. In other words, they move forward (some more than others).

Single-player games are dependent on mod authors for expansion. Eventually that either dries up, or gets stale due to author apathy.

Mephilis78 · June 6

TaSheen wrote: »

AcadianPaladin wrote: »

Glad you've been enjoying ESO!

I don't know from other MMO's because ESO is the only MMO I've ever played. I consider the fact that ESO is multiplayer to be a drawback that I happily live with because of the beauty, mass and scale of the game. And it is quite solo friendly. So, since 2016 it has been my elf's home. I quit counting time played after 10,000 hours. When I find a game I like, I generally stay almost exclusively there for years.

Well.... I find MMOs to be preferable to single-player games because they're not static. In other words, they move forward (some more than others).

Single-player games are dependent on mod authors for expansion. Eventually that either dries up, or gets stale due to author apathy.

Sure MMOs get constant updates, but from a practical point of view they are way more static than a single player game. If I play ESO all of the NPCs, except Mai'q, is literally just standing around waiting for me to interact with them. All of the enemies stand in the same spot for eternity waiting for the player to kill them.

Compare that to the emergent gameplay of something like Skyrim or Oblivion. If I go to Riverwood to get some armor from Alvor, he might not be there. Sometimes you find out that Alvor got killed by a dragon, or some random enemy wondering into to town. The world in a single player RPG is constantly evolving and changing without the need for constant content updates. That's why we call things like Skyrim a real game. MMOs only have the illusion of moving forward. Really they are always stuck in the exact same place. Even new content is just repacked enemies with a story wrapper.

Also about the mods. How many MMOs have died in the time since Skyrim was released? Plenty, and Skyrim still gets new mods every day.

Mephilis78 · June 6

Tornaad wrote: »

AcadianPaladin wrote: »

Glad you've been enjoying ESO!

I don't know from other MMO's because ESO is the only MMO I've ever played. I consider the fact that ESO is multiplayer to be a drawback that I happily live with because of the beauty, mass and scale of the game. And it is quite solo friendly. So, since 2016 it has been my elf's home. I quit counting time played after 10,000 hours. When I find a game I like, I generally stay almost exclusively there for years.

I am in the same boat. With me, I got introduced to the Elder Scrolls series when Morrowind came out. By the time Oblivion had been out for a few years, I almost entirely lost all interest in playing other games. I too consider the MMO aspect of ESO a drawback, but I have grown to love everything else.
I have no idea what I am going to do when Elder Scrolls 6 comes out. It will be the first time since Oblivion that I will have played more than 1 game at a time.
I connected my ESO account to Steam about a year or so after I started playing it so my wife could purchase Steam Gift cards when she decides to. Since then, I have played 3,377.2 hours on ESO. I started playing ESO in August of 2016. I think it would have been late 2017 or early 2018 that I connected it to steam.

Same here. The MMO aspect of games is very cumbersome and immersion breaking for me. I switched to Steam so I didn't have to type in my password every single time.

Necrotech_Master · June 6

i usually find 1 game that i stick with consistently, and then a bunch of random side games to play during lulls in content or to prevent burnout

my primary game for a long period was city of heroes which i started in i think 2006 and played until its closure in 2012 (and then secretly continued to play it for another 6 years after that on private servers, i havent played it a lot recently because i dont want to start over after all the time i put into it)

i started this game at launch in 2014 because it seemed to have a similar sense of player agency, customization, and build flexibility

on the side ive played a myriad of other games (mostly because i have ~1800 games on my steam account, and most single player games only last me between 4 and 80 hours depending on how much depth they have)

i usually have at least 1 mmo for a real time sink + something to play with other people consistently

SilverBride · June 6

ESO is the only game I've played for several years. I've never been able to play more than one at a time.

TaSheen · June 6

Mephilis78 wrote: »

TaSheen wrote: »

AcadianPaladin wrote: »

Glad you've been enjoying ESO!

I don't know from other MMO's because ESO is the only MMO I've ever played. I consider the fact that ESO is multiplayer to be a drawback that I happily live with because of the beauty, mass and scale of the game. And it is quite solo friendly. So, since 2016 it has been my elf's home. I quit counting time played after 10,000 hours. When I find a game I like, I generally stay almost exclusively there for years.

Well.... I find MMOs to be preferable to single-player games because they're not static. In other words, they move forward (some more than others).

Single-player games are dependent on mod authors for expansion. Eventually that either dries up, or gets stale due to author apathy.

Sure MMOs get constant updates, but from a practical point of view they are way more static than a single player game. If I play ESO all of the NPCs, except Mai'q, is literally just standing around waiting for me to interact with them. All of the enemies stand in the same spot for eternity waiting for the player to kill them.

Compare that to the emergent gameplay of something like Skyrim or Oblivion. If I go to Riverwood to get some armor from Alvor, he might not be there. Sometimes you find out that Alvor got killed by a dragon, or some random enemy wondering into to town. The world in a single player RPG is constantly evolving and changing without the need for constant content updates. That's why we call things like Skyrim a real game. MMOs only have the illusion of moving forward. Really they are always stuck in the exact same place. Even new content is just repacked enemies with a story wrapper.

Also about the mods. How many MMOs have died in the time since Skyrim was released? Plenty, and Skyrim still gets new mods every day.

By static, I mean simply the story in MMOs is added to over time, and while I still play Skyrim and Oblivion alongside ESO, having to dig around for more quest/story mods for TES IV and V is just a not fun thing any more.

ESO has added to the story over and over in the 7 years I've been playing. WoW and RIFT did as well, though they both eventually went in directions I didn't find fun, so I quit playing them.

Mephilis78 · June 7

I know what you meant, I was telling you how it was flawed. Those content updates in mmos amount to retexturing enemies that already exist and making up some lore to justify it, in 9 out of 10 cases. That's not forward movement.

TaSheen · June 7

We'll agree to disagree.