I uninstalled “Lord of the Rings Online” the other day.
I also uninstalled every MMORPG on my laptop, including “Anarchy Online, “Elder Scrolls Online, “Neverwinter”, and several more… all except for two: “Guild Wars 2” and “Secret World Legends”. Why those two in particular? Because I have logged into them recently, where the others? Not so much.
Then I took a look at my Steam library, and uninstalled all but a few that I have actually played recently. Overall, this clean-up of my laptop saved me over 500gb of space, scattered across two drives (but mostly on my storage drive, which was nearly full).
Now then, I could have taken a much more casual approach to this cleaning of the drives. I could have been more forgiving, and only removed games that either I have recently purchased for the Switch (way more than I’d like to admit), or games that I simply can’t get into (“Grand Theft Auto V”, “Elder Scrolls Online”, etc). But no…
Slash and Burn was called for here.
But, why? Look, over the last few months, I have realized that I’m barely holding on as a PC gamer. It is now clear that I am a Console Peasant, specifically a Switch Fiend, and my laptop is more for content creation (writing blogs, recording and editing podcasts, etc). Otherwise, when it comes to gaming, my PC is used for playing SWL or “Elite: Dangerous”, while My Lovely Bride™ plays on the Switch.
Anyway, one of the main reasons I cleared off these unplayed games, was to make lots of room for other stuff. Specifically, I’m playing a lot of solo tabletop roleplaying games, which means I’m using a lot of digital gaming books, and I need a lot of room for them. Plus, I want to put more retro gaming ROMs on my laptop, so I can play them, again, when My Lovely Bride™ happens to be bogarting the Switch!
I do feel a little bad about removing some of these games, though. It was a bit of a struggle to uninstall LOTRO, for example, because I have such a long history with that game. But at the same time, I also haven’t really played it in months, and don’t plan to change that anytime soon. If I need an MMO fix, I log into SWL, or maybe GW2, but that’s it. So why keep the other games installed, taking up space that could better be used for gaming books, ROMs, and so forth?
In the end, what I really need is a much bigger storage drive in this beast. I’ve considered putting games like LOTRO on a removable storage drive, or even just a thumb drive, but again… Why? I’m not playing these games, and haven’t for some time now. So, why bother?
I just needed to face facts: I play “Secret World Legends” now (and GW2, when I want to play something with my brother). Otherwise, I solo on “Elite: Dangerous”, and that’s about it, when it comes to the PC.
[Update: I forgot that I still have “Rift” and “Trove” installed, because I do play them occasionally, and they run better than LOTRO]
