2018 in review

As is customary I am writing a “year in review” post that shows my exploits and ignores the rest of the world, there are better writers for this kind of stuff 🙂

What I played a lot:

• SW:TOR (there’s not even a close second)
• Two Eyes (Picross on Android)
• Picross Luna II (Android)

Where I spent a decent amount of time

• Diablo 3 (50h in Season 13)
• Destiny 2
• Picross Fairytale
• Dead Cells
• Star Wars – Galaxy of Heroes (Android)
• Pokémon Go (Android)

Played a bit:

• Quake Champions
• Guild Wars 2
• WoW
• EVE Online
• Torchlight II

Gaming expenses in 2018:

• SW:TOR: 7x 13 EUR = 91 EUR for subscriptions
• WoW: 1x 35 EUR for Battle for Azeroth, no subscription yet
  • Oh my, just checked the Blizzard store. It’s on sale *again* for 25 EUR. Stupid me for buying it, but I really had planned to play around this time. Is it selling so badly they need to have it on sale twice in the first few months? Wow.
• Games on Steam: 24 EUR for Quake Champions, 0.42 EUR to complete 2 Card sets
• Games on GOG: 3.90 EUR for Torchlight 2
• Games on Humble Bundle: 20 EUR for Dead Cells, 1 EUR for Shadow of Mordor

This means: 176 EUR in 2018, at ~15 EUR per month. WTF, this is a new low I guess.

• Amount of MMO subscription months paid: 7
• Bought stuff in the ingame shop: SWTOR, but with no additional cash
• Full price games: 2 (Quake Champions, Dead Cells)
• MMO Expansions: 1 (WoW: Battle for Azeroth)

So (and this is new this year) some analysis:

• I’m still mostly playing one MMO at a time
• Although I have 4 mobile games up there, this was only a few minutes at home this year, mostly while waiting for something
• Depending on how much public transport commute I have, I play some mobile games. Usually I read RSS feeds, this winter I preferred gaming
• I guess I didn’t buy so many games that I won’t play then. Yay.

There are still a few Steam games on sale I’m thinking about 😛

• The Flame in the Flood
• Convoy
• Tooth and Tail
• Cat Quest
• Prison Architect
• Another Brick in the Mall

2017 in review

The year is nearing its end and so it’s time for a new round of “what happened?”.

What I played a lot:

• WoW: Legion
• SW:TOR
• Guild Wars 2
• Marvel Heroes
• Ragnarok Restart
• InfiniPicross, Picross Touch & Picross Luna

Completed:

• Mass Effect 3
• Fallout Shelter (146h, 34/35 achievements)
• InfiniPicross (it’s infinite, but 27h and 100% achievements have to count)
• Picross Touch (“completed”, 60h, 13/18 achievements, 550+ games played)

Played a bit:

• Party Hard
• Project Highrise
• Crypt of the Necrodancer
• Rise to Ruins
• Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag
• WildStar
• EVE Online
• TESO (The Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited)

Gaming expenses in 2017:

• SW:TOR: 3x 11 EUR
• WoW: 4x 13 EUR
• Diablo 3: 15 EUR for Rise of the Necromancer
• WildStar: no idea, website says zero
• Xbox 360: 0 EUR
• GameBoy Advance: bought some used cartrdiges at a retro fair, 20 EUR iirc
• Games on Steam: ~36 EUR – Templar Battleforce, InfiniPicross, Party Hard, Submerged, Cities: Skylines, TESO, Rise to Ruins
• Games on GOG: ~14 EUR – Rollercoaster Tycoon 2, Crypt of the Necrodancer, Project Highrise, Pinata(Deadlight, meh)
• Games on Bundlestars/Fanatical: 1 EUR
• Hardware: 17 EUR for a SteamLink + Game bundle
• Marvel Heroes: 30 EUR for ingame currency, via Steam
• Guild Wars 2: 80 EUR for the expansion

This means: 298 EUR in 2017, at ~25 EUR per month. (I actually needed to doublecheck this, it seemed awfully low before I added GW2).

• Amount of MMO subscription months paid for: 7
• Bought stuff in the shop: Marvel Heroes
• Full price games: 1 (GW2: Path of Fire) (and a D3 expansion, which was not full price…)

The 2016 review

It’s Christmas eve around noon and this year I’m early with preparing my review post instead of playing games. I think that says enough.

Again I didn’t really go out of my way to buy stuff in sales, but it happened. Again I don’t really buy new stuff. Again there’s MMO subscriptions. Again I’m pretty happy with my spending.

• Played a lot:
  • WoW: Legion (6 toons at 110)
  • EVE (hard to measure)
  • Marvel Heroes
  • Diablo 3 (S6: Crusader/Slayer, S7: Wizard/Chapter 4, S8: Barbarian/Chapter 4)
• Completed:
  • Mass Effect
  • Mass Effect 2
  • Memoria
  • Chains of Satinav
  • The Nonomancer: Graybeard’s Revenge
  • Pony Island
• Played a bit:
  • WoW: WoD (1 month just before Legion launch)
  • Faeria
  • Mass Effect 3
  • Dishonored
  • Guild Wars 2 (quite a bit at the start of the year)
  • Broken Sword
  • The Witcher
  • FarCry3: Blood Dragon
  • AC: Brotherhood (finally abandoned, Black Flag next)
• Basically only logged in once or twice:
  • WildStar
  • SW:TOR

Gaming expenses in 2016:

• WoW: 117 EUR – 45 EUR (Legion), 52 EUR (subscription), 20 EUR (character transfer)
• EVE: 144 EUR – 2x 6month subscription (until April ’17)
• Marvel Heroes: 80 EUR for the Advance Pack 3
• Games on Steam: 33 EUR – Broken Sword 1-5 (15 EUR), KotOR2 (3 EUR), Faeria (6 EUR), Dishonored (3 EUR), Pony Island (2 EUR), Out There Somewhere + Dungeon Hearts (1 EUR)
• Xbox 360: 0 EUR

This means: 374 EUR in 2016, so ~31 EUR per month, slightly up from last year’s 355 EUR, but with a 4 month subscription credit into 2017.

• Amount of MMO subscription months paid for
  • with money: 12
  • with ingame currency: 1
• Bought stuff in the shop: Marvel Heroes
• Logged in to but didn’t spend money: GW2, WildStar, SW:TOR
• Full price games: 1 (WoW: Legion)

Quick 2015 review

Even though this blog doesn’t have many posts and also not many readers, I like doing review posts of my stuff. Caught a cold these days and didn’t get to play a lot on New Year’s Day.

Some people did cool charts on what they played in 2015, I can skip that fancy stuff and do a short list, especially as I can’t tell what I played in which month, as I wasn’t paying many subscriptions and am generally not good enough at tracking these things.

• Significant amount of time spent:
  • Marvel Heroes
  • Guild Wars 2
  • WildStar
  • Ragnarok Online
  • EVE Online (only January+February)
  • Trine 2 (via AggroChat Game Club 2)
  • Shadowrun: Dragonfall
  • Shadowrun Returns
  • Lost Lands
  • Xbox 360: Rock Band, Rock Band 2, LEGO Rock Band
• Insignificant amount of time spent:
  • Mass Effect
  • Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood
  • Borderlands 2
  • Age of Wonders III
  • Diablo III
  • Heroes of Might and Magic V
  • SW: TOR
  • Android: Fallout Shelter
• Log in, play less than an hour, log out:
  • WoW
  • Age of Wonders – Shadow Magic

Gaming expenses in 2015:

Damn, this is a lot harder than last year.

• WildStar: ~40 EUR for sub in Jan-Mar iirc
• GW2: 110 EUR: box for 10 EUR, Heart of Thorns Ultimate Edition for 99 EUR
• Marvel Heroes: ~120 EUR -Magik Hero Pack (16 EUR), ingame currency (~105 EUR)
• Games on Steam: ~66 EUR – AoW3 (15 EUR), SR: Dragonfall (4,50 EUR), SR: Hong Kong (19 EUR), The Witcher 2 (3 EUR), Borderlands 2 (10 EUR), ME 1+2 + AC4 (14 EUR), Hero Siege (1 EUR)
• Games on GoG: 3 EUR – Robin Hood (2 EUR), The Witcher (1 EUR)
• Games on HumbleBundle: 16 EUR – GameMaker (12 EUR), Trine (1 EUR), Talisman (3 EUR)
• Xbox 360: 0 EUR, unless I forgot a random used game for 5 bucks
• EVE: 0 EUR (paid in Nov ’14)
• WoW: 0 EUR
• Ragnarok: 0 EUR
• SW:TOR : 0 EUR

To sum it up: 355 EUR in 2015, which boils down to ~30 EUR per month for gaming. (2014: ~450/year or 37.50/month)

• Amount of MMOs months I paid subs: 5
• Amount of MMOs I logged into and played truly “F2P” without purchases: 3 (Ragnarok, SW:TOR, WoW)
• Full price games/expansions I bought: 2 (Heart of Thorns and SR: Hong Kong)
• Amount of games I feel I supported enough/voted with my wallet according to the amount of time I spent there: 2 of 2
  • preordered the HoT Ultimate Edition because I felt bad for enjoying GW2 so much on a 10 EUR one-time purchase
  • spent about exactly 10 EUR per month for stuff in Marvel Heroes – like a sub, but 100% optional. I never felt pressured to buy something. I ❤ you, Gazillion.

2014 gaming expenses

Why come up with original content when you can grab the best ideas? 🙂

This is what I spent on games and gaming in 2014, but I’m sure I forgot somethng.

MMOs, roughly by time /played

WoW: 156 EUR

I was subscribed for 6 months in early 2014 (I think 2 of those were spent only logging in once a week and chatting to guildies, could’ve saved that) and for 1 month in December after I had bought Warlords of Draenor 2 weeks after launch, end of November. WoD was 45 EUR and I also had one paid character transfer in February to the server where I was working on Algalon.

WildStar: ~105 EUR

I don’t remember the box price (around 40 EUR?) and I’ve been subscribed since launch (5 months).

Pet peeve: NCSoft always needs 2FA via email because my IP changed. Doh, I live in Germany, where roughly 75% of non-mobile users have a new IP on a daily basis.

SW:TOR: 36 EUR

I was subscribed for 3 months, January until March. If I remember correctly I was levelling my Jedi Sage to 55. No clue why I didn’t write about it.

EVE Online: 48 EUR

I was subscribed until February and came back in late October. That’s 4 months of subscriptions (1 discounted) and I spent 2 PLEX on dual training I had already paid for in 2013.

Marvel Heroes: 8.50 EUR

I started close to New Year’s Eve and spent money on 1000G to buy 3 heroes at the sale. Quite fun, looking forward to finishing the story mode for the first time.

Other games

Diablo 3 – Reaper of Souls: 40 EUR

Back when it launched it was fun for a while, but now awesome fun like Diablo 2 was. In the patch preceding the expansion launch and also after the expansion I played a whole lot. Worth the money, even if went a little stale after a while again.

Steam: ~30 EUR

Hammerwatch 4-pack, Assassin’s Creed 2, AC 3, AC: Brotherhood, AC: Revelations, 10000000, Game Dev Tycoon, Terraria, Gunpoint

I had grabbed Assassin’s Creed 2 at a sale, completed it in a few days and bought the sequels, started with Brotherhood then went to play something else. Still looking forward to finishing them.

I wrote about Game Dev Tycoon and loved it. Same for Gunpoint. Terraria wasn’t really my cup of tea and 10,000,000 was a bit weird, but after an hour it was more fun than in the beginning. And Hammerwatch I only stopped playing because of Marvel Heroes. Still plan to finish it piecemeal.

GoG: 15 EUR

Heroes of Might & Magic 5 Bundle, The Settlers 4, Age of Wonders Shadow Magic, Master of Orion 1+2

After this post I didn’t buy Anno, but Settlers 4. I got the Master of Orion titles because of good things I heard, but it’s a bit too oldschool it seems, I wasn’t immediately hooked. HoMM 5 got a decent amount of play time already, it looks better and plays nearly as good as HoMM 3. (HoMM 4 sucked, btw)

Humble Bundle: 13 EUR

Humble Bundle 11 and Shadowrun Returns, haven’t played any of these for an extended amount of time.

XBox 360: 0 EUR

The only topic where I can’t easily track my purchases online, because I only pick up discounted games in stores here and there, but I’m pretty sure Lego Marvel Heroes was the last one at Christmas 2013.

That’s ~450 EUR in 12 months or 37.50 EUR per month. A lot more than I had thought but still not too bad for a hobby that I could spend a few hours a day with.

To reflect on what could be done to save some money:

• only 2 MMO subs per month (should be no problem, 2014 it was 19 months of subs in total)
• restrain myself even more at sales on Steam/GoG/Humble Bundle (wasn’t too bad though) Then again I think I bought more Humble Bundles because of the soundtracks or one game than because of the majority of games in it
• if I didn’t count incorrectly, I paid for 3 full price games or expansions (D3, WS, WoD)