Recovering WoWer seeks sub-$20 advice

Games
1

April 2006, I cancelled my WoW account.

So far I’ve played Civ4 with my wife, Diablo2 Hardcore with The Amazon Basin, and about 5 minutes of the Rise of Legends demo before I decided that I didn’t want to teach myself how to build these three new buildings the game was demanding of me without giving me any tips on how to build them.

So now I’m looking for games to play. I like stuff I can pick up and put down at a moment’s notice. The big reason I got tired of post-60 WoW was that I had to either raid or wait in a BG queue to have any fun. I’m married, and I don’t like putting my wife on hold for 4 hours while I play games. Diablo is great for this - I can jump in and out at any time. Unfortunately, I’ve beaten the crap out of D2:LoD many times over.

What’s hip and cheap? I haven’t really had any gaming Kool-Aid in the last 2 years or so, so anything that maybe was AAA last year but is in the bargain bin this year is fair game.

Links to other threads that did this last week are also welcome ;)

2

If you haven’t played Fate, I found it to be a pretty good nicotine patch after I stopped playing WoW. Simple and elegant Diablo clone that costs $20.

http://www.playfate.com/

3

Eve-Online is pretty time-friendly.

4

You could have been playing WOW with the Amazon Basin. :-)

5

The WoW Basin chapter is huge, and largely composed of great folks. I spent well over a year gaming with them, and while I’m still a Basin member I no longer play WoW (I actually started with the Basin in a DAOC chapter). They still have an active D2 community, and their Guild Wars chapter seems pretty hopping as well.

Sadly they have no one in EQII besides me, my wife, and a friend or two of ours…

6

I am a bloodthirsty PvPer. Based on my (admittedly happy) experiences with AB in D2 Hardcore, I chose to play WoW with my old CS clan.

If I chose a large-scale player association to guild with in WoW, I’d probably go with Shadowclan.

Does AB do PvP in WoW?

7

City of Heroes or Guild Wars are both games that don’t need nearly as much time investment as Wow.

8

What’s the deal with flight attendants anyway?

9

Yeah, I’ll second that. The early solo play has very little waiting after the drudgery of the initial tutorial and starter quests, and lets you do something meaningful in 1/2-1 hour. There are some free trials floating around if you want to try it out.

EDIT: Personally, I’ve found that playing EVE after WoW is great, since it’s so very different from WoW, and a lot of the issues I had with WoW seem to be gone from EVE. YMMV, of course.

10

On Tichondrius, it does, as that’s a PvP server. Last time I played, though, which admittedly was a billion weeks ago, the focus was on the umpteenth Onyxia/MC/ZG/BWL raid, with the odd BG group here and there. Then again, as far as I’m concerned there really is no substantial PvP the way I like it in WoW, and that’s one of the reasons I no longer play.