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:
- 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)
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