First off, Happy New Year. We're so far into the 2020s and I really can't believe it. New year means new games.
My final major contribution and game I played was Old School Rally, and I was really excited for it, but it ultimately was just so disappointing. Despite that, I'm likely going to keep playing it anyway because the achievements are quite easy to get (even if one of them is grindy).
As I mentioned last month, I'm now a Stardew Valley player, courtesy of one of my best friends gifting it to me for Christmas. I've been playing it with her and her husband, and it's a great way for the three of us to just chill out and enjoy time with each other.
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Happy new year everyone!
I didn't get to play too much during 2025, there was way too much going on for a good chunk of the year which sucked because I did manage to miss out on some of the WoW monthly content via the trading post. Oh well!
This month I've been playing Escape From Tarkov and working on our content efforts for that and we've seen very positive results, huge amounts of traffic for it so more is coming.
I also started playing Palworld again a bit, they did so much last year to the game, it's refreshing to see all these new features and pals added to the game. They are planning on hitting 1.0 release this year which should be awesome to finally have a definitive Palworld release. I'm not entirely certain what their plans are going to be for future content, I'm hoping it's just going to be more free updates considering how much of a massive commercial success Palworld was. I want to revisit a lot of our Palworld content and get it tidied up for the 1.0 release.
World of Warcraft Midnight drops next month and... honestly? I don't know. I don't really have a desire to play it. I pre-ordered the base game to check out player housing and that's still very early on so not super fantastic. I do think it would be great to play on release to see all the new class changes and how less addons is going to be because the addon policy changes are just so massive. It might actually be fun to raid again but also, I really don't want to schedule time to play WoW, it becomes a mind drain sometimes when there are just weeks where you don't feel like playing. God, I must be getting ancient because I'm complaining about playing video games.
Really though, that just takes me to my favourite thing to say and that is if you aren't having fun, stop playing the game. Too many people "invest" money into games and then refuse to stop playing them when they aren't having fun anymore. Whether that's a sunk cost fallacy or just pure FOMO, that's up for the individual to figure out to navigate themselves out of the situation. For me, FOMO definitely has driven a lot of gameplay but I developed a healthier relationship with games when I decided to just stop playing games that weren't making me happy.
League of Legends used to be a game I played for dozens of hours a week but it also made me angry because you as a single person do not matter in that game and when you have teammates who are intentionally feeding (and stating that is their plan at the start of the game) you are locked into a huge waste of time instead of being able to have fun. When I stopped playing League, there was a lot less stress in my life and that was a huge turning point. That was also... I don't even know how many years ago at this point lol. I know Riot has gotten more strict on some of the people that are causing chaos for their teammates though, so that's always good to hear about.
One thing that sucks though is knowing how many amazing games there are out there, but none of us on this rock sitting in the milky way will ever have enough time to play them all, and not even just playing them all, but playing all the ones that interest ourselves. Maybe I'm putting words in people's mouths here, but the large number of constantly updating games that we have now, its possible to become a mono-gamer, never playing anything else, and in a lot of ways this is what's happened to myself. I'd like to change that this year and experiment more with what I play and try to find ways to encourage others to do the same. I love getting maddingly addicted to some of these games, but it's such a departure from what gaming used to be for me, back when it was super expensive in the console days. Nowadays, games can be found so cheap and so much higher quality then the gems of the past, we can all be playing so many more titles for the same amount of money spent.
This year: Play more games, and a more variety of games. More single player is good, but I want to find some awesome co-op gems too because there are not enough good co-op games.
This month: Tarkov, Palworld, maybe a dip of Schedule I. Pokemon TCG, World of Warcraft to prepare for Midnight which I know I will play anyway because launches are so fun. Mario Kart 8 because I need to improve more, I know I can push my karting skills higher.
Dreams: More racing simulation so my wheel stops collecting dust, and maybe my Index can stop collecting dust too.
Not enough hours in the day =/