Twenty-one years playing MMOs

I haven’t replied to a “Daily Grind” from Massively in ages, but this one immediately got me thinking and making a list: How many MMORPGs have you played to date?

I know there were a few more that I tried, but my memory is rather fuzzy about them. So, my list includes the games that I either played extensively or that I have fond memories of.

1. Lord of the Rings Online (LotRO)
2. Guild Wars (GW1)
3. Guild Wars 2 (GW2)
4. World of Warcraft (WoW)
5. Rift
6. Wildstar
7. Star Trek Online (STO)
8. The Elder Scrolls Online (ESO)
9. Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning (and Return of Reckoning)
10. Trove
11. Defiance
12. Aion
13. Allods Online
14. The Secret World / Secret World Legends
15. EverQuest II
16. ArcheAge
17. New World
18. Vanguard: Saga of Heroes
19. The Repopulation
20. Richard Garriott’s Tabula Rasa
21. Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR)

If you have been following my blog for a longer time already, you probably know that I played the games in my top 10 a lot. After that, play time drops significantly. I did not play any of the games from numbers 15 to 21 for a longer time. And from all the games on the list, I only disliked SWTOR.

I started playing MMOs in December 2005, with World of Warcraft. I remember it that clearly because it was a Christmas gift from my now-husband. For the first few years, I played it exclusively and only gave games like Guild Wars and Lord of the Rings Online a lackluster try, because I kept comparing them to WoW. Guild Wars eventually won me over because it didn’t require a subscription. LotRO won because after buying the game and trying it out for the first month, I let my subscription lapse and got an amazing offer for a lifetime subscription (I think it was the equivalent of paying for 14 months of playtime).

Once I was done and bored with WoW, I started giving other MMOs a try. I was always hesitant about paying for two subscriptions as I did not get more free time to play both games, after all. Once I had quit WoW, I spent a lot of time playing Rift. I remember a time where I also mainly played LotRO, but overall, it was always a filler game – or, phrasing it more positively – a game that I escaped to when I wanted something calmer. And then came Guild Wars 2.

And at the moment, it is LotRO – again, as a filler when I want to play an online game as a solo player.

Twenty-one games and twenty-one years later, and it turns out my favorite way to play an MMO is completely alone…!

I asked her where the NPC I needed for my quest was. Off duty, of course. Doh! :p

(Blaugust Post No. 10)