It’s about time I was honest with myself.

The other day I was looking at some facts.

1. I had nearly 100 Steam games installed.
2. I had ~900 GB of my 2 TB hard drive used on games alone.
3. I had many games I was no longer playing or had very little interest in playing further still installed.

I’m not the first person to take a step back and analyze their playing habits. People talk about their various ways of determining what stays on their computer and what gets sent to the recycle bin. I still think it’s funny that trash cans were replaced by recycle bins on PCs. That’s so PC. PC on PCs. I digress.

This probably isn’t the first time that I’ve written about my fickle nature when it comes to gaming. Sometimes a game just clicks, and I’ll play through it ravenously. Other times I can write a title off within a half hour of playing it. Some games I have in the backlog with every intention of playing through some day, and still others are regular standby games that can’t really be “beaten,” only played. MMOs are that sort of game. So are MOBAs and lobby shooters. Anything with a multiplayer component can typically be played repetitively as long as their is a community to back it up, with no real end state. Most of you will know that I really enjoy League of Legends, shooters, and rogue-likes, all of which have near endless replay value. I also enjoy single player games that do have an end state, and usually once I’ve done all I want to do with those, they get uninstalled, though I have the option of re-installing to play again later if I so choose.

Since it’s not like I was really running out of space, space itself wasn’t the motivator to do some spring cleaning (and yes, I realize spring is a few months off). Basically what it boiled down to was a re-emergence of my dislike for the current crop of MMOs and then also uninstalling a few games I know I really don’t want to ever play again. A while back you’ll probably remember how I had made a return trip to Norrath and was enjoying myself for a time. I also was playing ESO here and there, and even dipped my toes into a few other titles that were free to play. No matter how much I want to like these games, I just don’t. I mean, I know I’ll probably spend more time in EQ2 again someday, and I might play some more ESO sometime, but at this current juncture, I’d rather be playing Fallout 4 or something else that’s more engaging despite having a lack of social connections. I’ve come to accept this ebb and flow as a fundamental part of my personality that can change course rather quickly.

Knowing this, I figured it was time to uninstall some of the games on my hard drive that were collecting digital dust. I had SWTOR on my machine for a while because I installed it before finding out that the 12x XP bonus required a subscription. I jumped on the Wildstar F2P train when that happened, and really didn’t feel much different about it than I did when I first tried the beta. I had RIFT installed as well, though I wasn’t playing it. GW2, EQ2 and ESO rounded out the MMOs on my computer, and those are the only ones I kept installed, though I’m not sure when I’ll play them either. I just know I won’t be playing SWTOR or Wildstar as they just don’t do it for me at all.

Moving on, I uninstalled Hearthstone, HotS and Overwatch. Hearthstone was fun for a time but I ended up hating what it became and I have no desire to try and catch up with the Joneses. HotS was and still is garbage, I just forgot to uninstall it way back when. Overwatch was also a disappointment, and is part of wave of MOBA-ish FPS games (like Battleborn, Paladins and some others that are in development). I got into the recent beta and came to the conclusion that it’s not worth the $60 asking price. I might have been more lenient if it was a F2P title, but it’s not and it was pretty lame.

I also removed some other Steam games from my library as they were games that I knew I wouldn’t play anymore or were ones I hadn’t tried yet and ended up not caring for. Overall I freed up some space on my drive, eliminated excess games from vying for my attention, and accepted my nature once again. There is really only one MMO on the horizon that I’m interested in, and that’s Crowfall, which I backed early this year. I’m not going to buy into hype for any others or jump back into ones I already know I don’t want to bother with anymore. For now, I’m a non-MMO gamer, and I couldn’t be happier.

Fallout 4 has been a great experience. MOBAs, Shooters and Rogue-likes give me a variety of short-term but still engaging sessions for when I don’t feel like getting super involved in something. Most multiplayer games that don’t have the word “massive” in them tend to be up my alley, and the lines between genres are getting so blurred that you still get a little bit of MMO in most of your single player games, so it’s not like I’m missing out on much. Sure, it would be nice to have a bunch of people to play with, but honestly I was playing most MMOs by myself most of the time anyway, so what’s the difference?

I know that many of my fellow bloggers (myself included) got involved with this whole community thing by writing about MMOs, but I sure have noticed a bunch of people who aren’t playing them as regularly or are experimenting with other genres. Honestly, I much prefer reading posts about people’s varied experiences in other games outside of the MMO genre, so I hope the feeling is mutual. I’ve been writing a general gaming blog for a long while now anyway, so I guess this isn’t much of a format change, but more of an admission that I’m done with MMOs again, and I’m not sure how long it will be until I play another.

I have some disposable income at the moment, so it’s likely I’ll have a couple new games to replace some of those removed from my system. I should have more to write about very soon. Sorry for the lack of posting, all work and no play makes Izlain a dull boy. More to come. Soon™