Digital Obsession: The Most Addictive PC Games Ever

Man, I know all of these games as to well with the exception of civilization, I just couldn't get into it. I wish I still ran x-fire so I could tell you how many hours I had in WoW, Minecraft, and CS:S. I didn't get into Diablo 2 until years after it was released, and even then I just played single player. I was probably bigger into the first Diablo honestly.

Warcraft definitely was the worst. At one point I took a 9 day vacation and literally just sat at home playing warcraft for the entire duration. Do I regret it now? Nope. It was something I really enjoyed, and still wish I could find a way to play it, unfortunately that game just demands way too much of your life than i'm willing to give it. I'll just stick with planetside 2 for now.

If you happen to remember the nickname you used there, you can still access the profile online:

http://beta.xfire.com/profile/deathspawner

That's mine; so just replace my name with yours at the end.

The multiplayer grind typically doesn't do it for me. It's usually open world games that keep me coming back. I think the most hours I've clocked in was in Morrowind, followed closely by Shenmue on Dreamcast. Skyrim is up there as well.

Personal experiences with every one of these.

I loved civilization and ended up getting sucked into more than a few 12+ hour games (not consecutively though), but it was that very facet that turned me away from it. It took SOOO long to complete just one game, other than that it was challenging enough to be pretty damn hard against the computers but not impossible to win (although it got close)

I never played counter-strike but I've heard good things about it everywhere, I might have to give it a chance because Half-life and the source engine is among my favorites so something based off that has to be decent at the very least, I loved the comparison to the COD series that cannibalizes its self, that's a really interesting way to look at things

I remember playing Diablo II at about 12 years old for hours with a friend.. the cache, it wasn't online it was single player. A friend and I would make a character and just take turns playing through quests and would switch at a quest completion or death. This was also played for entire days at a time over the course of sleepovers lol.

I played WOW towards the end of Middle school, experimented with a character up to level 40 and never got into the guild/raiding aspect of the game but it's appeal was the continuation of the story I enjoyed from WC3, but I definitely preferred RTS to MMO games. I found the repetition of Kill X and get Y really boring.

Minecraft is a continuation and evolution of Legos from Childhood and I still play it every now and then and sometimes play with friends on small servers they have set up.

A bunch of games REALLY sucked me in over the years...

Impossible Mission - C64: Spent WAY too many hours trying to beat that one.

All of the classic Sierra games - PC: Kings Quest, Space Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, Manhunter, etc.

Wing Commander Series - PC: Simply one of the best franchises ever.

CoD Series - PC: Up to MW3

And my ol' standby - Left 4 Dead 2. When I want instant gratification and don't have much time to game, I jump in, kill a bunch of zombies, and jump out.

The Walking Dead is another one that really pulled me in. It wasn't much of a "game", but the story was so gripping, I plowed through all 5 episodes in 2 nights.

What about Ultima Online?  Anyone here ever get into that?  I played for about 5 years, and made my first man sized paycheck of $1200 playing that.  I was 13 at the time I made all the money, so i'm pretty sure the money went to music and t-shirts.

Leisure Suit Larry?!
Marco... dirty dirty.. hahaha

Also have you seen any of the stuff for the planned sequel to Wing Commander? I never played any of the originals but this upcoming game looks like it's going to be amazing.
Also do you have any input on that 100% indie fan-made Wing Commander game? 

If you like Wing commander, the you should go download Wing Commander Saga. Great game to break out the old Wingman joystick for!

http://hothardware.com/News/Wing-Commander-Darkest-Dawn-FanMade-Goodness/

Games that I've sunk more than 200 hours into, each:

Asheron's Call (MMO)

Borderlands

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

Civilization V

Counter-Strike: Source

Duke Nukem 3D

Half-Life 1 Multiplayer

Lineage II (MMO)

Test Drive Unlimited 2

 I may not have sunk 200+ hours into them but my personal favorites are

Mass Effect Triology

Bioshock

Starcraft

Age of Empire: The age of Kings and the Conquerors expansion

KOTOR

And a game for the sega genesis that comes in at #1 called Shining Force 

Definitely would have to agree wow is the most addictive game. Most of my alts get more hours longed in play time then in most other games i have played. (Its sad when you read the play time in days instead of hours because you realize how much time you really spent playing the game lol)

Diablo 2 was one of the first PC games I ever played and man did I play the hell out of that game. I also played a lot of Age of Mythology and became addicted to the Total War games after playing Rome Total War.

For me I'd say the Mechwarrior and Need for Speed series of games, along with WOW too.

Two games that should be added to the list are Master of Orion 1&2 and X-COM UFO Defense. Also, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri was another old huge hit that I still play today. All of those games are so addicting and fun to play.

I'm really surprised there's no Ultima Online or Meridian fans on here.  Those games made MMO's what they are today, plus Ultima Online was awesome.  

Never tried any MMO other than WOW and then Guild Wars for a very short amount of time.

I remember being younger I always thought Everquest looked cool because it mean't I wouldn't have to wait and save up money to buy a new game once I beat one I already had lol... This was at about 10 years old, and I could never convince my parents to to buy it for me or let me buy it for myself because of monthly subscriptions and their fear of using credit cards, and second because the scantily clad female characters on the cover made them think it was filled with softcore porn/nudity for my young innocent eyes lol

I thought Star Trek Online and Star War: The Old Republic looked like they had some potential though, anyone know anything about either of those two?

One of the biggest turn offs from Fantasy/Sci-Fi MMO's for me aside from the repetitive gameplay is when they create their own universes or lore from scratch it tends to be less flushed out, compared to something based off an existing franchise that has a lot of depth and dynamics to it's universe (A.k.a Warcraft, Star Trek, Star Wars etc.) even though they too initially had to start from scratch they didn't do so with the idea of we're making this stuff for an MMO game which effects the way the story line and storytelling translate over to the actual game. 

Ahh yes, Everquest.  That one should definitely be on this list.  That was WoW before WoW.

Was the basic structure of Ultima online and Everquest similar to WOW?
Considering they were out for almost an entire decade before WOW how similar were they in terms of gameplay?

I know the contrast between non MMO games from the 90's and and 2000's to 2010+ can be pretty stark but I'm wondering how much of a difference you can have between massive multi-player online games

I never actually played everquest.  I powered through the decline of Ultima Online while Everquest was stealing players away.

Ultima was like medieval times, but realistic.  You could steal anything from other players, you could buy a house, you could break into peoples houses if you made it in the door before they could lock it, and basically anything else you can think of.  Eventually houses became secure so people couldn't steal from you anymore, and they made a cloned world where you couldn't murder or steal anymore.  After all that happened, or rather after EA implemented all that after they bought OSI,  the game just went into a steep decline.

  The only real similarities between WoW and UO are the unique items you can get from harder dungeons.  However with UO you could solo just about everything with the right amount of skills, and it didn't take 3 hours to do it.  Plus there were no such things as bind on equipped items, so when you murdered someone you could just walk up to their corpse and take it.  Strangely enough UO is still going strong with 90% of the players being based out of Korea and 10% in other countries.  Last I checked they only had about 60,000 players still.  UO2 was announced, but eventually got scrapped, so the franchise just stopped here.  EA killed it.

Wow Ultima Online sounds a lot like something you'd see from the Elder Scrolls series in an MMO, definitely sounds interesting. Sad to hear it's died out though>
I'm not sure if you've heard of it but Bethesda has actually announced their plans and development for an Elder Scrolls Online MMO. There are some gameplay video's out already too but I'm pretty sure their early. But considering how the single player Elder Scrolls games were in Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim where you could break into houses, steal things and kill almost anything and anyone it sounds like this could be the great successor to Ultima Online for you. I'm definitely gonna check it out because I love the Elder Scroll Series and what Bethesda has done with the games as far as entertainment, and depth in the stories.

From some of the other comments and a lot of the positive things I've heard about GW2 it sounds like it might be worth checking out as well.

@ an earlier comment, about a year ago I actually looked up some of the classic games that achieved legendary status and with some emulators gave Master of Orion 1&2 and X-COM UFO Defense and Alpha Centauri a quick go through but I'm too adapted to 21st century games and graphics, they were enjoyable but the limitations of mechanics compared to modern games made me lose interest after the retro pleasure effects of old school gaming wore off haha.
Speaking of X-COM, i've recently been playing the new Enemy Unknown game released and have found that pretty fun too. 

There already is a game similar to skyrim called Mortal Online. I played it during the Alpha and Beta stages, then they billed me for 8 months and refused to refund my money even though I never played after release (they changed their TOS to bill those who were being billed after release).  So because of all that I refuse to give them another dime.  The game probably sucked anyways.

Sigh, the post pending moderation got me.  I'm not rewriting all that.

I thought stars the old republic had a ton of potential but something about the gameplay didn't feel smooth and fluid. It also had several other problems that brought it down, which is sad because it good have been a great game.

Ah, Wing Commander is probably my all-time favorite. That game sucked up a LOT of hours. Currently I've put WoW on hold to play some Guild Wars 2. I'm very impressed with how GW2 plays and it's event driven quests.

I was also totally into all the old Sierra games, Kings Quest, Leisure Suit Larry (chuckle), Space Quest etc. I'd love to see all those updated with modern graphics for nostalgia reasons.