The Daily Grind: Does absence make the heart grow fonder?

Absence makes the wallet grow fatter.

I'm still in two minds as to how I feel about the whole DLC concept for offline, single-player games. Of course it's great getting 'moer, moer' of a game you like, but on the other hand, almost 30 years of having offline, single-player games that ended once you finished them and that's-that-until-the-sequel-if-you're-lucky, kind of makes me resent the whole DLC thing. Stupid, I know, but there it is.

More on topic, I don't mind taking a few months or even a year off and coming back to find an almost-completely new experience, because it's like getting the game again. :D The one thing that does bug me though, is having to update gig after gig of client data. Again, pretty stupid, but who said there's anything sensible about mmoging/:D

If anything absence makes you forget why you quit an MMO in the first place.

You often hear people saying they played WoW "on and off" and I know myself that when you depart for a few months you tend only to recall the bits you liked.

Not for me. After abandoning my six L80 WoW toons a year ago I haven't had the slightest desire to play that game again. While WoW is a great game that gave me thousands of hours of entertainment I eventually ran out of things to do that were worth the time and effort involved in doing them.

I have my own way of playing MMOs so I do not play subscription MMOs any more, champions online global agenda, gulidwars, great games and I do not have to log in just because I paid this month and have to do something about it to justify the cost.

Same reason I wait for firefall with much anticipation looks great, may be even better than Tabula Rasa and will be free to play.

And to answer the original question yes I do big gaps between times I log in continuously to a game and play it almost every day, that makes me appreciate the game more and I do not suffer from burnouts.

I agree, with an important caveat that I'll make later.

In my personal experience, SWG is the rose-colored title I reminisce about the most. I remember the great community, the sandbox world, and the excitement of what the game updates offered with a nostalgia that almost borders on melancholy.

Only one problem: My memories aren't accurate at all. SWG at launch, and through the CU, was REALLY broken. It was a lot of "go do two missons and go back to the Rebel mission dispensor for more missions" again and again and again until your fingertip was numb. Not exactly world-changing gameplay, that.

Doesn't matter. Every year or so my nostalgia gets the best of me. I re-sub for a month to try out the game again. It's nothing like the title I played "back in the day", of course, but the NGE is actually not that bad a game now. It's certainly more of an actual GAME than the title was at launch. Unfortunately, thereare too few players to create an acutal community now. Add in the "It's-Just-On-Life-Support-Until-TOR-Shows-Up" vibe, and I end up cancelling after one month again.

So, yeah, in some ways absence does make the heart grow fonder. But what I've come to realize is that what I really miss are the times and adventures I had in the MMO space with old friends. Simply re-subscribing will never, ever give us those times back again.

Just my two cents.

It depends on the game for me, if it is something like WoW where i will have missed expansions that make you level up to the new cap, then fine. If you dont play for months you can level through the new content and play with the other people in the "noob" crowd for that expansion and still have a good time.

However, if it is a game where the "expansions" dont up the level cap, but just add new gear, forget it. You'll never catch up and just get steamrolled by the "higher up" players.

I never unsub from my main mmorpg if not the reason is i leave it at all.
But i play all those f2p sidekicks every few months spending a week or so in them for some vacation of my main game.

It's actually made me go the other way, I'm angery. Angery that my game hasn't evolved and improved on issues players are very aware of. Now I find myself hunting for the Great White Whale of MMOs, with all my wishlist components.

Is that a shark expertly and suavely riding an ice surfboard?

Depends on why I left.

Eg. I played both WoW and CoH for approx 2 years.

I left WoW because I just couldn't stand the end-game raid-grind. It was one of the least fun activities I've ever done in my life. It made me HATE the game.

I've never felt any desire to return after leaving.

I left CoH because it had no end-game, and while I still love the game and how it plays, two years of levelling alts through the same content was enough.

I generally resub once or twice a year to check out changes.

I chuckle looking at the Champions Online screenshot gracing this article :)

It's one of the few games where you leave and come back later to find that your character is still perfectly able to tackle content and not be turned away from a group because his "purps are last month's weaker purps." No such thing. I love that.

I'm more inclined to return if I can try the game again, with my old characters, without paying a subscription first.

Games without subscription are, of course, prime examples. One of the reasons I prefer them; if I think about going back, log back for a couple days, and decide I'm not yet ready to return, it leaves a bitter taste in my mouth if I had to pay a month's worth of subscription just to try the game a couple days.

LotRO was where it happened to me. Tried the game as soon as it went F2P, left, and when WoW became too much a bore to play, I went back, played a couple weeks with old and new characters, and subscribed.

For me to return to a subscription-exclusive game, I need to either feel like I have no worthy alternatives, or else I have to be quite sure whatever drove me away from the game is fixed. I really hate paying a full month just to leave the game again before the month is over.