I’m always in severe need for some entertainment. In the years before, that was fansubbing for me: translating was perfectly enough for me. Translating, being a part of the community, then later writing reviews even was great. But even then, I always had problems clearing my backlogs, since I simply couldn’t get myself to work on stuff unless I was doing it on the usual weekly scheduled timeslot.

Then of course there were the games. The last few years I can recall getting hooked up on Open TTD, StarCraft 2, Skyrim, League of Legends and KanColle. Open TTD just got boring after a few months, and StarCraft lost its immediate charm quite quick.

Skyrim lasted pretty long, though it comes in bursts: I start a new character, and if it turns out fun enough, then I just don’t stop playing until my character becomes a demigod. That does mean playing for tens of hours straight. At this point I think I have saves for like 5-6 level 70+ characters… But then once the world holds no more challenge, starting a new character immediately just doesn’t work out.

That’s where League comes in the picture. I’ve never been a great League player, and most of my season 3 consisted of struggling to get out of bronze. While I succeeded eventually, and got up to the upper half of silver, once the season ended and Riot started rolling out changes all over the place (and mostly, shut down ranked for a week or so), I just didn’t feel like going back again. Not to mention how extremely frustrating it can be.

That’s the problem I’m facing with KanColle at this point too. The devs’ idea and my style of gameplay are clearly very different. I like to play continuously, which is why most of the time you’ll find me cruising 2-3 with my subs. But I guess it’s no surprise that the entertainment value of playing that way isn’t exactly sky-high.

Before, I used to rotate 4-2 and 5-2 a lot, because I had quite high level fleets suited for those map, and they could grind through them without taking any serious damage. Of course clearing 5-2 without any ships getting shot down would still be close to a miracle, and the 4-2 boss could sometimes hurt too, but getting to the boss wasn’t much of a challenge.

That changed recently. I feel that the enemy ships land crits a lot more, and that makes the whole thing frustrating. I don’t know if I’m just sortieing into tougher maps way more than I’m supposed to – but yesterday I sortied 4 times into 5-2 and had to abort along the way every single time, which isn’t how it’s used to be. And currently my 5-2 fleet is all level 70 and over, while I still remember how I leveled my Shoukaku, Zuikaku and Zuihou there from zero.

Others keep telling me that it’s always been like this and that sortieing was never meant to be economical, but that doesn’t change this sensation of sudden failure. That’s where last weekend comes in.

I got a chance to try out the ESO beta, and while I never could get hooked on to MMORPGs before, this sure hit the right tone with me. League is frustrating and time-bound, and KanColle too, though in other ways. In League I’m bound to play a whole game once I start, which can go up to an hour, while in KanColle I just can’t keep playing continuously without either ruining myself economically and/or getting bored and frustrated.

An MMO like ESO might turn out to be the right solution.