It is a good time NOT to play an MMO…

…while still feeling like I do. While in general I prefer to play non-MMOs nowadays, I still get the urge to log into an online world once in a while. Sometimes, I jump into Lord of the Rings Online, because it never feels like I have missed out on anything. I can comfortably and slowly play through older zones without seeing other players, and it doesn’t bother me. With Guild Wars 2, however, as soon as I encounter a group event, it is just not fun to be alone.

Thankfully, there is also Erenshor! I had it on my list of favourite games for 2025. Since then, I haven’t really advanced much because I was still figuring out which class I wanted to play – which mirrors my class-choice struggles in real MMOs. Once I finally made a decision (the Stormcaller), I could not figure out how to leave the tutorial area. When I made a new character to check whether I had missed something and that is why I was stuck, I realized I could also choose to start playing outside of the tutorial zone. So, now I have a new Stormcaller that is free to roam around (well… as long as the hostile NPCs aren’t too high-level).

Being a single-player game, Erenshor has a few very neat settings. The “Server Admin Panel” lets you change the XP modifier from 0.25x XP up to 5.00x XP. You can adjust your run speed, the health or damage of NPCs, the drop rate for rare items, and more. You can even enable XP Penalty on Death if you like, or remove the quest markers entirely.

The developer even added raids recently. I am far away from that part of the game and I am not sure I even want to play it, but just as with MMOs: I don’t have to! It is a perfectly nice niche game for MMO lovers who do not or cannot play an actual MMO, or who just want to have that classic MMO experience without any annoying humans around them. I have to admit, it is nice not having to maintain an ignore list (although, to be fair, my ignore list in LotRO is only collecting spiderwebs, but not player names).

And if a single-player MMO is too much, there are also games dedicated to only a single role in an MMO like Mini Healer and Don’t Lose Aggro. I am currently failing my way through “Don’t Lose Aggro”, mostly because my mind refuses to memorize the skills fast enough. It is still fun, and at least nobody complains when we wipe!

(Blaugust Post No. 9)