500 Hours

After seeing others posting about games they have 500 hours in, I too was interested in checking.

My list is dominated by MMOs.

Completely certain

• Lord of the Rings Online – the Steam launcher shows I have 504.4 hours, so there it is. But that’s only a fraction of my time played, because I played LoTRO before it was available via Steam (which says it launched Jun 6 2012, but I started Jul 2007), and also have skipped Steam and installed directly (how I have it installed right now).

• Elder Scrolls Online – Steam says 268 hours. But I am 100% certain I have 500 hours here too. I remember starting this game on Steam in 2015 or so, but I also played a year on the PS4, and am heavily back since Jan 2021 on PC directly. Oh yeah, this is the one MMO I can play while visiting family because it is available through Stadia, so I have a bunch of hours via Stadia as well.

• Guild Wars 1 – I’d have to reinstall the game to log in a check my hours. But I am also 100% certain I have 500 hours. I played nearly⁺ every class through all three campaigns, repeating missions to get the Protector title on every mission for every char. For my main character (Ranger), I got the Guardian title for every mission, plus Legendary Skill Hunter. There is no way I don’t have 500 hours.

⁺ Nearly every class… the game had 10 classes total (6 base, 2 factions, 2 nightfall) and I played 9 of them. The only one I didn’t technically play was Elementalist, because the game allowed dual classing. What I did was make my Mesmer my Elementalist – I would sometimes equip nothing but Elementalist skills on my Mesmer. I’d lose the Elementalist primary attribute Energy Storage and instead have the Mesmer primary attribute Fast Casting, but for all intents and purposes that was an Elementalist.

• Asheron’s Call – my first MMO, started in Feb 2000 and played about 2 years. Lots of adventuring around with friends from work, we’d stay late and conference call each other. For me to have 500 hours in 2 years means an average of 21 hours a month? An easily cleared hurdle.

Probably

• World of Warcraft – I’d have to reinstall and resub to check – and I played on different servers each time I tried it. There was my first foray, in 2008/2009 on a PvP world (Firefoot, I think) with a friend/coworker. And I hated server-wide PvP. There was the 2nd time, on Zangarmarsh, where I was in the official guild of “The Guild”. There was the third time (Gorgonnash and Earthen Ring), with friends/coworkers in 2015 ish where I had the most fun raiding after using the level boost that came with Warlords of Draenor. There was the fourth/most recent/final time in WoW Classic where I got to the low 50’s on my priest.

Close but not quite

• Final Fantasy XIV – Steam shows 80 hours, but that was my first account. I started another one to take advantage of the much larger free intro (base game plus Heavensward with level 60 cap) in Sep 2020. Yes, I am a cheap bastard. Logging in there shows about 250 hours. I also played some on the PS4, but it definitely wasn’t the ~170 more hours I’d need to get to 500.

That second PC account is one I’m still playing, poking along the Stormblood Main Scenario. I recently arrived at the Azim Steppe. Login queues are still high in prime time (hey this is a really good problem for a game to have) so I sneak in a few hours here and there, mostly late morning on the weekends.

• Eve Online – Steam says 320.3 hours, a very solid number that even I was surprised at. This is a great game with a very different design attitude. I was in Eve University for a while, joined a small corporation that did wormhole planetary interaction, eventually joined Brave Newbies… it was fun but ultimately I didn’t have the time to devote to it. If I do come back (haha, wait it could happen) my next plan is stealth ship exploration in low/null sec.

• Secret World – Steam shows 215 hours for Secret World Legends, but I don’t think that includes time I spent in The Secret World, the original pre-rebooted version. Great game I think about all the time, when chatting with friends about games. Great skill system (in the original game, but even the reboot let you make a variety of builds), awesome quests, unique crafting system that sometimes would appear in quests, entirely cosmetic clothing because all armor/buffs/stats came from trinkets and jewelry… oh heck I might fire this up again soon.

• Slay the Spire – 340 hours on Steam. This deckbuilding roguelike really grabbed my attention. Fantastic game, with a great balance between luck and allowing choices/decisions that let you steer things better ways. Great replay value with four classes that feel different enough, plus a daily challenge. I bought this for Switch as well, and have 70 hours there. So total of 410 hours, and counting higher a bit here and there.

• Splatoon 2 – 175 hours. This is Nintendo’s take on a PvP team-based shooter, and it is a lot of fun. The game involves crazy weapons shooting paint, and your 4 player squad wins the match not by racking up kills, but by having the most surface area of the arena painted your team’s color. Of course, knocking an opponent out helps because it takes them out for a few seconds. Game has events (Splatfests) and nice variety of arenas and weapons. I never finished the single player campaign, but should. Also, Splatoon 3 is coming out and I am absolutely going to buy it.

• SSX Tricky – this game hooked my on my PS2 for months. I 100%ed it, played every course to gold medals and so on. No way for me to check but I had to mention it as the game I played the most on my first console. Based on my Slay the Spire and Splatoon 2 hours, modified down since there wasn’t as much to do, and guesstimated up due to playing a lot of split-screen racing and competitive mode with friends… let’s say 125-150 hours as my best reasonable guess?

I also loved Ratchet and Clank but I just played through the storyline. 🙂