First, statistics for December of 2017. I flip-flopped around a lot during the holiday time, as is pretty normal for me. A surprising addition to this list is EverQuest II, in which I had quite a bit of fun starting a new character, at least until I installed new Steam purchase Divinity: Original Sin, which captured a lot of my attention late in the month. (Said attention waned considerably after two very difficult boss fights in a row.

Here’s my annual summary of PC MMORPGs that are on my radar for the new year 2018. (Here is 2017, 2016, 2015, and 2014). I am only considering “traditional” style MMORPGs in this list, not things like MOBAs or brawlers or Diablo-clones or whatever else people call MMOs these days. Actually, since I find out about these from MMO sites, and most MMO sites now cover things that aren’t traditional MMORPGs, some of these might in fact not be traditional MMORPGs.

It’s time for more video rankings! I know blog readers hate videos, but this is the only place I can put this information for posterity. Major video releases from me in 2017 included: The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (still unfinished) Mass Effect Andromeda Final Fantasy XIV - Stormblood, The Legend Returns Guild Wars 2 - Heart of Thorns, Path of Fire, Living World Seasons 2 and 3 Dark Souls III - The Ringed City DLC (still unfinished) Below are my top ten videos in 2017, according to YouTube running time.

The last thing I mentioned playing was Divinity: Original Sin. I sort of gave up on it. It’s a great game and all, but it’s just too exhausting. I went through two boss fights in a row (SparkMaster 5000 and Radagoth) and both times, luck was the determining factor for success. That’s just not fun. I don’t know how all the people who play tabletop games do it. :)

We interrupt your regularly scheduled blog post for a blatant, unabashed, self-promotional advertisement that has no purpose other than to shower me with cold, hard cash that I will not share with you.* I have had a book on Amazon called Lute of the Sparrow under my writing name Everett Renshaw for about seven years now. This weekend (starting January 13), I am making it available for free. Please go forth, download it, read it, and post a review.

I haven’t played ARK much since early 2016, so I decided to re-download it and give it another look. The game finally “launched” last year, after all. Presumably all of the problems I had with the game are now fixed. Well, not exactly. Although to be fair I really enjoyed it before, too. I just ran out of challenge. I got to a point where I could go to any biome and survive, and kill any dinosaur in my path, and that is pretty much “winning” the game.

I never thought this would happen, but YouTube finally made changes that affect me. Previously, channels had to reach 10,000 total views to be eligible for the YouTube Partner Program (YPP). …starting today, new channels will need to have 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time within the past 12 months to be eligible for ads. We will begin enforcing these new requirements for existing channels in YPP beginning February 20th, 2018.

I’m trying an experiment here: A list of MMO news that I found noteworthy during the week. I’m trying this slightly retro blogging format because, to be brutally honest, for most MMO topics, I have a lot of trouble summoning up more than a few sentences of commentary, which results in a glut of unfinished blog drafts and a paucity of published posts (ha!). The challenge here will be finding a picture to use.

I suppose the announcement of RIFT Prime deserves its own blog post, rather than an offhand remark in a news summary. Like most of the other reactions I’ve read, I’m tentatively interested, but I’m certainly not jumping on the hype train yet. See, here’s the thing. I’m probably only going to subscribe to one game at a time. Historically the main reason is that there are precious few games out there worth subscribing to.

Final Fantasy XIV 4.2 releases January 30. Yay! The nostalgia part of this patch means nothing to me, as I’ve never played any other Final Fantasy game. But I’m looking forward to continuing the story. I don’t care much about any of the “progression” aspects, though. I have the gear I need to do the Main Scenario and that’s pretty much all I care about right now. Perhaps counter-intuitively, since I’ve repeatedly said FFXIV is the best subscription game to subscribe to, I’m thinking about cancelling my FFXIV sub before it renews on February 18.

Roughly 75% of the 4.2 patch doesn’t interest me, but there’s a few cool things in there. This cracked me up: You won’t be able to skip the cut scenes in Castrum Meridianum and the Praetorium anymore. If I were a new player, I’d be glad about that, because I’d hate to miss them (I honestly don’t remember if I watched them the first time or not, or if I ever have).

_A series of short reactions to the week’s MMORPG stories, otherwise known as “just about giving up on blogging” because I can’t be bothered to write long posts lately. _ Sea of Thieves was in closed beta. This is a game on my radar, but the more I see, the less I’m interested. For starters, I’m one of the rare people in the world who has never had a “thing” for pirates, so the gameplay loop itself must attract me.

Last week we learned that Red Dead Redemption 2 will be delayed until October 26, 2018, and there is still no word on a PC version. (The first one was a console exclusive.) I personally don’t care that much about RDR2, having never played or even seen the first one. I was more interested in the ensuing Twitter thread I got involved in about PC versus console games. I felt like I came across as one of those “oh no PC games are dead!

A Bethesda-heavy month. Oblivion - 23 hours Fallout 4 - 20 hours Rift - 15 hours ShooterGame* … I mean ARK - 10 hours Morrowind - 10 hours Skyrim - 4 hours Dark Souls III - 3 hours Final Fantasy XIV - 2 hours ESO - 1 hour It might seem like an even distribution of games across the entire month, but it was more like a sequential progression of games starting with Morrowind, then Oblivion, then ARK, and then the month ended with Rift and finally Fallout 4 sunk its claws into me big time (again), quite unexpectedly.

_A series of short reactions to the week’s MMORPG stories, otherwise known as “just about giving up on blogging” because I can’t be bothered to write long posts lately. _ Nexon laid off some people. I don’t think I play any Nexon games. Forbes interview on WoW Classic. I don’t think I mentioned this at the time, but while Blizzcon made it sound like WoW Classic was right around the corner, I secretly thought it sounded like they hadn’t even started on it yet.

I’m excited and terrified to announce that I’m launching an experimental podcast project tentatively called Main Quest and you-yes you-can listen to the first two episodes right here! Well, down below a bit, anyway. Have you ever been sitting at work, or driving your car, or waiting at the dentist, and thought, “I wish I could listen to the story from a game right now?” Well I have. A lot. So much so that I’ve recorded a lot of my own gameplay with OBS over the last two or three years, converted it to mp3s, and put them on my phone, just so I could listen to them at work.

With all the buzz about RIFT Prime, I wondered if I could recreate a nostalgic experience for free just by starting a new character on plain old RIFT Normal. I wanted to check two things: To see if experience points were withheld from free players at the beginning of the game just like at level 68, leading to hard road blocks that could only be made up by endless grinding or spending cash.

A series of short reactions to the week’s MMORPG stories, otherwise known as “just about giving up on blogging” because I can’t be bothered to write long posts lately. Sorry about last week’s post. I was scrolling through Twitter last Friday and much to my own surprise I found that I’d posted something to my blog without even looking at it or setting a header image or anything. This time I will refrain from scheduling this to post right after creating the draft!

I put off FFXIV for a couple of weeks while I finished my Fallout 4 obsession, then I jumped in and completed the Main Scenario Quest for the 4.2 Patch. It took two whole days, maybe three total hours. I’m glad to have finished it. I had basically zero interest in playing it, to be honest, but I know from experience that no matter how much one doesn’t feel like playing the MSQ, it’s far better to stay up-to-date than to have to catch back up later.

I’ve worked on this post for a very long time. I’ve added stuff. Then I’ve deleted stuff. Then I’ve added other stuff. Then I’ve deleted other stuff. I don’t even know what it reads like anymore. If this were a novel, it would certainly be abandoned. Bhagpuss asked me what I didn’t like about the Ashes of Creation video. I actually try not to be this negative anymore, because it doesn’t do anyone any good to complain about something that other people might like.

_I’m still tinkering with the formula for this weekly “bullet post” thing. Now I feel like I should include news items and any interesting progress I’ve made on games I’m playing. _ I started the week playing some FFXIV, trying to work on improving my gear with Rabanastre runs and Omega 4.0 runs. Then I started playing ESO, trying to find what it was that everyone keeps saying that they love about that game.

If I had to guess which MMORPG was most popular right now based just on my Twitter feed (discounting WoW of course), I would guess that ESO is probably a strong contender. I used to love ESO. I played for about two months when it launched. I enjoyed it a lot. It was such a fresh take on the genre. It has fantastic graphics, sound, and music. It’s clearly a high quality game, well worth the purchase price.

Not only am I still trying to find a formula for this weekly bullet post, but I am also still trying to find the right formula for the post’s title. I have played nothing at all this week except Kingdom Come: Deliverance, and am now over 60 hours. I almost rage quit when I met the first boss and died a hundred times, but after I eventually beat him mostly through luck and potions, I realized it was actually really easy and there was no need to quit.

I can’t say that February was the most productive month I’ve ever spent on this Earth. But I got a lot of material for a podcast, at least. (And YouTube videos, if I ever upload them.) Kingdom Come: Deliverance - 63 hours Fallout 4 - 60 hours Final Fantasy XIV - 39 hours Elder Scrolls Online - 17 hours If you were to put them in chronological order, it would be: Fallout 4, FFXIV and ESO, then Kingdom Come: Deliverance.

Steam is having yet another one of those sales, and I saw that a lot of Square Enix games were available cheap. Life is Strange, for example, is available for $5. It’s one of those games that everyone says is fantastic. It also happens that the first episode is available for free, so I thought I’d try it out and see if I wanted to spend the $5 for the entire thing.