Two MMO subscriptions?
Friday, March 5th, 2010I’ve been putting a lot of thought into this lately. I can theoretically see a future in which I am subscribed to two MMOs at the same time. I like STO enough to want to keep it around and support it, yet WoW is constantly pulling me back — both in changed game mechanics that make me really want to go run battlegrounds with my level 40-something dwarf female subtlety rogue, and on the social side that I’d love to be able to join the US chapter of Tamarind’s blogger guild.
But realistically, I barely play a few hours of any particular game per week these days. I’m not sure that amount of playtime is worth $15 a month, and I feel increasingly guilty that I’m barely level 15 in STO after playing for over a month. I barely play at all these days. I’ve been trying to get through Warcraft 3 (for the third or fourth time, I really suck at RTS games — I’ll get to Frozen Throne someday) and maybe eventually beat Torchlight (I do not understand all of these people complaining that the story mode was “too short”) and I’ve got a list of other games I’d like to play too. It’s too much. Especially when I spend the majority of my free time sitting around sighing to myself about how bored I am, and don’t really want to play anything I’ve got sitting on my computer, and end up spending my weekend watching random TV episodes on Hulu.
I know in my heart that I will eventually return to WoW. It is familiar, my friends play it, I can talk to them about playing it. I can read blogs about playing it. I know the game inside and out to the point where I *understand* what people are saying when they’re talking/blogging about it, even when I’m not quite familiar with their class.
For now, I can hold off with WoW, knowing that there’s nothing new since the last time I played. But I know that when Cataclysm is released, I will no longer be able to resist. Will I have enough time to play STO for enough hours that I don’t feel guilty about spending my money? Or will I make some kind of justification like “well, even if I only play a handful of hours a month, it’s still cheaper than seeing a new movie at the theater” and keep subscribing anyway?
STO is a good game, it’s a beautiful game, it’s a fun game, but I think I’m a bit burned out on hobbies in general. I just can’t get excited about much of anything these days.
