We are now at the halfway point through the year. So here, just a week into the second half, I thought I might trot out the usual post about how 2024 has gone for me so far on the gaming front.
The year 2024 is on us
Time to get out the ManicTime spreadsheet and see where I spent my gaming time so far. Here are all the titles with any time tracked:
- Valheim – 34.39%
- WoW Classic – 29.92%
- EVE Online – 12.04%
- Conan Exiles – 10.87%
- EverQuest – 4.70%
- Balatro – 3.98%
- Elder Scrolls Online – 1.19%
- Tarisland – 0.70%
- Wreckfest – 0.36%
- Lethal Company – 0.27%
- The Front – 0.26%
- Space Engineers – 0.25%
- Palia – 0.23%
- Forza Horizon 4 – 0.18%
- Astro Colony – 0.13%
- Starstruck Vagabond – 0.11%
- EverQuest II – 0.11%
- Rust – 0.10%
- Sons of the Forest – 0.08%
- World of Warcraft – 0.07%
- Hearthstone – 0.04%
That is kind of a large number for me.
I don’t do this sort of post every year. Looking back it seems to depend on whether there is a war going on in EVE Online. But for 2023 the number was 13 and in 2021 it was just 9, so 21 is a considerable jump in my book.
Of course, there is an explanation, but first lets look at the top five.
- Valheim – 34.39%
- WoW Classic – 29.92%
- EVE Online – 12.04%
- Conan Exiles – 10.87%
- EverQuest – 4.70%
It was pretty much assured that WoW Classic and EVE Online would be on the list. It has been that way in the last couple of posts and in my much more regular year’s end play time summary post, at least since WoW Classic has been a thing… and we’re coming up on the five year mark of WoW Classic being a thing. Crazy, right?
EverQuest in 5th place is a bit of a surprise. I mean, I knew I would be logging in some during the 25th anniversary, but not that much. Then I did all of those starting points posts and got a bit obsessed with the overseer again and… well… there it is. There is certainly an argument to be had about whether I have actually “played” EverQuest at all in 2024, at least in the strictest sense of the word. But I have logged in and farted around a lot, and if I am subscribed then Daybreak is happy enough to consider me a player I bet.
And then there is Valheim, at the top of the list. Past history suggests that when we’re into Valheim, we’re really into Valheim. So no surprise that once we started playing it that it became a thing for a stretch. The surprise part was that we played it at all because the Steam Winter Sale 2023 was mostly about me trying to find an alternative to Valheim that the group could try.
So I guess I should address those titles as a group.
- Valheim – 34.39%
- Conan Exiles – 10.87%
- Lethal Company – 0.27%
- The Front – 0.26%
- Space Engineers – 0.25%
- Astro Colony – 0.13%
- Rust – 0.10%
- Sons of the Forest – 0.08%
I played a bit through all of those… except Rust. My time spent with Rust entirely involved me trying to get it to run and be able to log in to a public world just to try it. But in trying out a number of possible Valheim alternatives I ended up with a desire to just play Valheim, so off we went.
I actually collected screen shots and notes for many of those titles… I did the whole intro play-though levels that are now available for Space Engineers for example… and then never really felt I got deep enough into any of them to write a post dedicated to any of them.
The sole exception is Conan Exiles, which I did not buy until we had started on our third journey into Valheim. If I had bought that at the Steam Winter Sale we might not have ended up playing Valheim at all.
Then again, Conan Exiles was a title we played pretty hard right up until the moment we didn’t. We did that first dungeon and then some real life stuff came up… and once again only Potshot and I ended up playing really… and then we stopped. I am not even sure why. But after a month when neither of us logged in I turned off the server we had rented and that was that.
Which leaves the “others” on the list.
- Balatro – 3.98%
- Elder Scrolls Online – 1.19%
- Tarisland – 0.70%
- Wreckfest – 0.36%
- Palia – 0.23%
- Forza Horizon 4 – 0.18%
- Starstruck Vagabond – 0.11%
- EverQuest II – 0.11%
- World of Warcraft – 0.07%
- Hearthstone – 0.04%
This group makes up less than 10% of my 2024 play time so far.
Balatro is the poker, deck building, rogue-like that I tried out for a bit. It has all the fun of poker games and all the annoyance of rogue-likes where, the moment you fail you start back at square one. Even when I was younger and a somewhat obsessed with Nethack, I would eventually get tired of eternal resets and move on to something else for a while.
Elder Scrolls Online was an attempt to find a WoW Classic alternative in case Cataclysm was as bad as we thought it might be. The jury is still out on Cataclysm, it isn’t as bad as possible, but it still isn’t great, but Elder Scrolls Online felt so empty and generic… and gray, so very gray… that I fell off of that after a week of really giving it a go and pressing on.
I know, I didn’t get to the “good stuff” or whatever. But if the game doesn’t give you some of the “good stuff” up front, that is the way it goes.
Then there was Tarisland, which I have probably spent more time with than it deserves. A mobile port to PC with everything that implies. Not awful, but failed to grab me as well.
Palia also got a try. Free on Steam and all that. Not bad, but didn’t grab me either.
Wreckfest I picked up at the Steam Winter Sale entirely because I saw that GPortal would rent you a Wreckfest server so I went to check it out on Steam. It is a demolition derby driving game, very much a Forza Horizon Lite. A solid title that ran well on my PC and worked with the controller I have.
Playing that made me play a little more Forza Horizon 4, just to compare their feel. Wreckfest is very good for coming from a smaller studio.
Starstruck Vagabond is the Yahtzee Crowshaw title that recently launched. I wanted to give that a try. I need to find the will to sit down and focus on it. It suffers from being a very retro themed title, which in part means it runs in a very small window on my very large monitor.
EverQuest II was… well… I thought I might play on the new Origins server… right up until I did and felt the weight of doing the same dame thing I have done so many times already. I need another 5-10 years before the Isle of Refuge feels “fresh” in any way.
Finally, I logged into World of Warcraft a few times to claim rewards or compare its current state to other titles, and I played Hearthstone entirely to get a mount to be claimed in World of Warcraft.
And that is everything that ManicTime logged. For the back half of 2024 I suspect WoW Classic and EVE Online will remain near the top of the list. But we’re kind of done with Valheim, and Cataclysm will likely be done sooner rather than later for us, to the point that I feel there is an opening for another title. I just don’t know what it might be.
