The Think Tank: Which MMO can you just not bring yourself to delete?
Whether it's a closed MMO icon still taking up space on your desktop or a free-to-play game that you "might play again one day," there's bound to be at least one MMO that you just can't bring yourself to delete from your hard drive.
Since many of Massively's writers are MMO hoarders (we can stop at any time!), I felt it was fitting to take some time aside and work out our issues with separation and letting go. Hold my hand and breathe normally while we tell you which games will always maintain a special place in our hearts (and on our PCs).
My games folder is a graveyard. Honestly, I'm half hoarder and half purger. I won't delete games if I think there's any chance I'll play them again. But I've got some doozies -- Star Wars Galaxies and City of Heroes are permanent installs on my machine, but there's also Asheron's Call 1 and 2, DC Universe Online, and Neverwinter... games I'm really probably never going back to.
I'm much worse about mods. I still have 10 gigs of Sims 1 and 2 mods even though I've long since given away my disks!
For me, its gotta be Star Wars: The Old Republic. I am such a huge Star Wars fan that it would hurt me. On top of that, I was a beta tester and a collectors edition buyer, which means I have a soft spot for the game I saw grow up from a mediocre game to a super fun game. It's probably silly, but I can't help it! I don't even play it at the moment, but I love it!
Probably Lord of the Rings Online. I originally quit after Moria, but I've gone back at least four times since. And I promptly quit again inside of a month each time! Every once in a while I'll have a hankering to fish the Brandywine or ride past Weathertop or whatever, and no other game offers those specific experiences. After a couple of days playing, though, I'm reminded of how much I dislike most of the mechanics as well as Turbine itself.
A clean break would be cool, but I don't see that happening unless another Tolkien MMO happens.
Dude, I delete them if I'm not playing them. I'm one for nostalgia and all, but clogging my hard drive with unplayable software is just not my bag. Besides, reinstalling MMOs is pretty painless these days. I think I must've reinstalled SWTOR about four times so far. No biggie.
World of Warcraft. I can never delete it because even when I think I'm done, someone I know will drag me back in for a two-week or two-month spurt. And by someone I know, I primarily mean my sister. As for the other titles on my hard drive, well, I think of them all as potential stream subjects, so I'm wary of removing them. If I ever stop writing about games, I'll delete everything including my actual computer and just live in the woods.
For a long time, it was Champions Online -- and to be quite honest, I didn't even uninstall it. I just didn't install it again when I got a new computer. I have a lot of memories and a lot of friends there, so it's really only natural that I had some resistance. To a lesser degree, Defiance also occupies that spot right now; it's a game I basically don't play, but I really liked it when I did. I just sort of get in that funk where I don't want to play a game I liked for whatever reason, but I insist to myself that I'll go back. I don't know if I will, thinking on it logically, but I see it in my list of games and don't bother uninstalling anyway.
World of Warcraft will always have a special place in my heart. I played it from the original beta test through Cataclysm, and during those seven years, I collected countless amazing memories with my friends and family. With my father and brother at my side, I led my guild through raids in Azeroth four nights every week. So even though I haven't played WoW since February of 2012, I still have it installed on my PC. In fact, I'm so attached to the game that I still pay my monthly fee as a subscriber. Logically it doesn't make sense to throw money away like that, but I can't seem to let it go completely.
Every time I build a new gaming computer (as I have earlier this year), I feel a bit of a relief when I'm forced to rebuild my MMO library. Not that downloading hundreds of gigabytes is any fun, but it really forces me to look at what games I could live without. Most of the time, I find myself reinstalling the original Guild Wars every time, even though I really don't play it that often anymore. Not only is the nostalgia still there, but it's just a really fun game. Or at least that's how I remember it. See, it's like keeping your old early-'90s Ford Escort under a tarp in your back yard because it was your first car and you were loved for taking everyone to the mall in it because no one else could drive or their parents wouldn't let them get a license. Who cares if the car misfires and the vinyl seats are all dry-rotted? It's the memories that make it worth saving. What were we talking about again?
Guild Wars 2. I started to play in December last year and still haven't made it past level seven. I keep telling myself that I'm missing some key element that I will surely find, but I just haven't found the energy to go look for it. I refuse to delete it because my character is terminally cute and I know that someday, someway I will find the means to play through whatever it is that keeps me logging out after a half hour's playtime.
What do you get when you throw the Massively writers' opinions together in one big pot to stew? You get The Think Tank, a column dedicated to ruminating on the MMO genre. We range from hardcore PvPers to sandbox lovers to the carest of the carebears, so expect some disagreement! Join Senior Editor Shawn Schuster and the team for a new edition right here every other Thursday.
