2016 Gaming

Happy New Year!  Time to look back at 2016

I'm not going to go into politics, but I will say that I'm not looking forward to 2017 due to what will be happening in the United States on January 20th.  That said, I found gaming a nice way to spend my free time (I watch very little television and few movies) in 2016 and I expect it to be the same in 2017.

I have been using Raptr to track my game time, but I'm starting to doubt the numbers.  I know my daughters and I had played 'Don't Starve Together' but Raptr showed the same total hours in 2016 as 2017.  When I looked in Steam, it shows 17 hours played total (10 hours in 2016, versus 0 in Raptr), which sounds about right.  I'm not looking for a precise number, so I'll start using both this year.

As has been true for the last few years, World of Warcraft dominated my time.  According to Raptr, I've played for 330 hours as compared to 371 hours in 2015.  Until November and December when my play time slowed down, I do expect I was averaging about an hour a day and that it was about the same last year.  I know this is minimal for other players, but it dominated my play time.

The next four games, I almost exclusively played with my daughters.  I played Minecraft for 24 hours (27 in 2015), Civilization V for 18 hours (only 2 hours in 2015), and Don't Starve Together for 10 hours (7 in 2015).  I also played Defender's Quest for 12 hours (a Tower Defense Game I mentioned before) and although this is a solo game, my daughters enjoyed watching me play, so it was primarily a group activity.  The only other significant games time I had in 2016 was playing Gone Home, which I liked, but I also did it partially because I thought my daughters might enjoy it, and 2 hours of the Walking Dead (again with my daughters).

It might be fun to have tablet, phone and 3DS game time tracked as well, but I don't and they are a pretty separate category so I don't feel any real compulsion.  So, not including those, I had almost exactly an hour a day average gaming (400 hours according to my spreadsheet).  Not much for your typical gamer, but given my limited free time, a pretty significant number.

November and December Gaming - Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Factions down and one achievement left for Legion Pathfinder

I haven't been playing a lot over these last two months but I didn't manage to complete the reputation grind (Broken Isles Diplomat) for the Legion Pathfinder achievement that will be required when flying is available.  I also on the same day manage to finish a set of Suramar World Quests that gave me Exalted repution with the Nightfallen, as prerequite for getting the last set of quests for the Suramar quests, the last achievement I need.

So I have done all the solo work but I need to finish the Emerald Nightmare raid to finish the second to last quest line.  I could either try to join my guild raid or run it LFR but neither appeals to me.  Like Ysharros, I'm a little resentful that it requires group content to get flying.  I would also like to get the next Alchemy recipe, but that requires running a dungeon, more group content I'm not particularly interested in doing, so I've stopped doing much of anything.  Logically, if I want to do solo work, I should switch to my priest, Kantra, but it's not really logical and I feel like I should really finish the flying achievement on Kanter first.

The end result is that I'm looking for another MMO to solo in (even though I know in some ways that's not logical).  The Black Desert Online character creator is still amazing and it's on sale for $5 so I've gotten a guest pass from Aywren (who has been inspiring me with her BDO posts), waited the 24 hours (almost) for the game to download, and have already been enjoying the tutorial quests and am already at level 12 in my first day.  My goal is to just do crafting, horse breeding, and house decoration.

I'll write another post later specific about Black Desert Online, but I though I'd mention I decided to go with the $5 package after pondering the $25 package.  I'm not adverse to spending some money in the cash shop but I'd rather choose where to spend the money than having to take what they include in the package.  I'll figure I'll eventually buy some inventory space and strength so I can carry more and might get a pet to help with gathering, but I'll do it later.

The good news is that after not posting for almost two months, I have one post on Black Desert Online and another on 2016 gaming already written in my head.

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year and I look forward to more gaming in 2017!