Maybe, but doors scare me.

I’d love an open world Icewind Dale. A really, really complicated, dense open world with true mountain exploring and ice plain pain. Or, shoot, let’s have an occult mystery in the city of Brass (Bronze? It’s been too long, don’t judge me).

I suppose it’s time to pirate WC3, SC2, and brood war rather than play them on the account I bought them on.

Thank you for your service.

No, and yes. You can start a brand new account on the first day of a league and be at par with everyone else. The vast majority of the game is accessible with no demands on you aside from time and skill. Every purchase you make is cosmetic only, simply changing the way some spells look or giving you a pet that follows you around and looks cool while doing nothing extra.

The one exception? Stash tabs. Tabs that specialize in holding certain items for you in your stash. Tabs that let you sell items to others with greater ease. It has gotten to the point where if you want to be best of the best, you should probably have the extra tabs. Why? Because at the endgame, you’ll need to start trading for items that make your build sing, or simply eke out the extra 15% damage that multiplies with other sources to make your dps soar into the millions, because PoE is all about finding something that you can push past where it was supposed to stop being good. Without those stash tabs, making cool items or easily trading with others is much more difficult.

Now, how much would it cost you to be ‘competitive’ with tabs? Probably $10 at most. For a game that I’ve played for over a decade and probably 1000-2000 hours at this point, I think the <$100 bucks I’ve thrown their way is worth it. I have friends who love the game and likely have 3k+ hours in it, and they’ve only spent $150 or so. I think that’s pretty reasonable for that much enjoyment.

I believe that valve does require that you don’t sell the game for less on other platforms. It’s one of the complaints in the lawsuit currently against them by wolfire.

A shooter might be hard, but I think you could make ORION: Prelude fit. It’s a little old now, but still fun. You get to shoot dinosaurs and run around big maps.

Other games that I’d recommend: Avorion (build your own spaceships and fight and befriend the galaxy) It’s not technically a shooter, but depending on whether you pick out lasers, electric tasers, machine guns, or rail guns, there is definitely some aspects of moving to avoid enemy fire while plunking them down. [but don’t be like me and just make lots of borg cubes… because cubes are the best!]

Ark: survival evolved (tame dinosaurs and fight the map)

Elden Ring with seamless Coop mod (up to 6 players at once)

War Thunder for plane sim, World of Warships for good ship battles

Valheim is also capable of being extremely frustrating, so I’d recommend one of the mods that removes the skill penalty loss when dying. It might not be necessary, but dad knows the kids’ temperaments better than me.

We’ll have to wait until it’s out to see. The statement that they want to minimize grind? Hoooooly crap, that’s the exact opposite of what RS was. To get to the higher levels and max a skill, it was basically a mental game of sticking to the best xp/tick strategies, which could still take a month or more to max one skill. That was after they had introduced a bunch of new things. The original days? It was a third job on top of it being the second job to do it in months.

It was also really fun for being so simplistic and had a good mix of self-aware humor, so I have hope for their new game.

I enjoy replaying it, but the contrast between first time and any repeat is mind-boggling, and nearly enough to say that replaying it isn’t worth it. That first time… wow, it just hit so well.

I liked firewatch, even though I usually dislike walking simulators. It really was a good mesh of dialogue and voice actors, unlike others where the dialogue just drags.