Once upon a time many moons ago I used to go to a game shop cash in hand to buy a game of my choosing, sometimes pre-determined other times a random impulse purchase. The fact was I purchased one or two titles a month and played them to completion or got bored/stuck and just wanted to move on. Hardly ever did I have more than one game on the go when I was solely a console player.
After playing the Medal of Honour series to death on PS1 and PS2 and causing all my family and friends to hate me with a passion for nonchalantly head-shotting them time after time on split screen I was left wanting on the challenging opponent side. You see I had not even considered purchasing a PC untill 2002 when I had to get one to play Call of Duty which had me salivating for some online multiplayer WWII FPS action, and action I did find. For two years I played CoD and it’s expansion “United Offensive” with a close knit clan of friends I had made online and my love of PC gaming was cemented.
From 2004 I joined Everquest 2 for a 5 year rollercoaster ride. learning how to play an mmo for the very first time was just fantastic and I stuck to EQ2 faithfully through good and bad untill Sentinels Fate released and I realised I had become completely disenchanted and bored with EQ2’s endgame and moved on to pastures new.
So here I am in late 2010 and every game and its wife are switching to unlimited trials or free to play models. So where once I had to choose which one or two games I DO subscribe to and play every month, I now have to basically decide which games I DO NOT want to play. The list of currently available free to play mmos is just massive and me being me I not only want to try them all but I want to have a max level character in them dammit :P. An unobtainable feat on my play schedule I imagine and even less likely now I have developed a newfound love of blogging.
There is a wiki page with a list of all current free to play mmos here /boggle. No one can ever claim to be bored, even if they have no money to spend. Nowadays we are so spoilt for choice it’s almost detrimental. Then of course there’s my Xbox 360 games I have and others I want. I know one thing for certain I shall never suffer boredom when I retire if this kind of gaming is still on offer in 33 years (Providing the government don’t keep raising the retirement age).
What an absolutely amazing time to be alive and a gamer eh :).
Be well, do good work and keep in touch with your friends!
