My corporate overlords decided I get some vacation during this time of year, it being the holidays and all that. With some free days on my hands I'm planning to mess around with a couple games.
First up is Millennia a 4X game kinda like Civ. The twist is there are different ages that go off the rails from real history—so you can get a steampunk age or one where aliens invade and stuff like that. I barely touched it when it came out but now, after 7 updates, I figure I will give it a proper try.
Then theres Songs of Conquest, an indie game with amazing pixel art that’s sorta like the old Heroes of Might and Magic games- I might play this with a friend early next year as well.
EDIT: OK im feeling a bit tired so Im just gonna play my current Crusader Kings 3 save till I go 2 bed. Happy Holidays everyone
What are the fine folks on Hexbear playing 
eh, they update things often enough that it doesn't get stale to me and i was never actually much good anyway, so its not like i see endgame content enough to get tired of it. tbh i'm a little disquieted by how much things have changed in the past 2/3 expansions that i missed, but i get that thats just me being a boomer.
having played wow (sometimes obsessively) for 15 fucking years from launch when i was 6 years old, azeroth just feels like home to me. its a comfort and anxiety thing i guess. i hear the stormwind or teldrassil ambient music and i could fucking cry. i have no idea whether its a healthy coping mechanism, but being able to go to azeroth (nice, i know whats going on, people like me) after a day of real life (terrifying and depressing) is what got me through school and my home situation. a video game thats designed so that people can comfortably spend 12 hours a day in it doesn't necessarily have to be good, it just has to be better than the alternative of dealing with real life. very comfort blanket vibes ig, and i probably should have outgrown it. after covid isolation i thought i had outgrown it but evidently not
I’m this way with XIV. I think it’s more common than not. In real life I have to confront unmasked faces every day in the middle of a once in a lifetime pandemic, massive -isms from everyone around me at all times without end, a world that does not give a shit if I live or die or get to work in time (or at all for that matter), and somehow even further alienation from living in the only place affordable to me: rent controlled housing in a way-the-fuck-out-there suburb with a once an hour bus schedule to get anywhere. Life fucking sucks for a lot of people and even having a support network or a decent org or whatever else doesn't really change that for me — hell a lot of the time they’re just as much a part of the problems, too, with the way things are in this stupid country. It is nice to have this thing that I can return to however frequently or infrequently I want and get lost in an evocative and equally-alive otherworld where at least people aren’t champing at the bit to hate crime me or give me the fucking pox for walking to the grocery store or, even worse, daring to suggest the real world be a little bit different. It is 100% a comfort thing to me, too. I get it. And every now and then new stuff comes along and once every few years a bunch of new stuff comes along and all it takes is spending 15 bucks a month and maybe 30-40 bucks every two years, which is somehow still so, so much cheaper than trying to keep up with the rest of modern gaming.