I am, however, still excited about what’s next for MMOs Lost Ark Gold. Blue Protocol is supposedly getting its first betas early in 2023 and will be released sometime by summer, Ashes Of Creation is somewhere out there on the horizon, and NCSoft’s Throne And Liberty might be released in the second half of this year. That’s without mentioning ArcheAge 2, the unnamed Riot MMO, and Dune: Awakening. MMO fans will be eating good over the next couple of years. I’m just not sure if I’ve got it in me to dedicate quite that much time to these games.

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Part of that is to do with my job. I write guides for MMOs, which means I have to and will play these games, but it also means that some of that spark of enjoyment is lost. Look, I’m not complaining about making money while playing games, I’m just suggesting that finding every node of Iron on an enormous map can turn a fun experience into a tedious one. It’s my plan this year to better balance my work-life balance. Sometimes it feels like there’s some expectation for me to continue working on these games well into the night, but I know that only pisses off my boss.

MMOs also eat up the rest of my time, that’s the problem. They are huge games. I played New World for 400 hours in total and felt like I got pretty far, but I didn’t max out my gear score and never got around to properly exploring the latest area added to the game. Likewise, I progressed pretty far in Lost Ark, getting two or three 1300+ Item Level characters, but that’s still nowhere near ‘completing’ the game. In a good MMO, there is no completing a cheapest Lost Ark Gold game. They last forever.