I've been revisiting the
Kingdom of Loathing, one of my old internet browser game mainstays. At one point in time there was an active thread here but it's a pretty quiet game now—but the developers release a steady stream of Steam/console games that bring a trickle of players to see the history of the worldbuilding and humor that's very alive in those games.
The gameplay loop is such that there are 13 levels of "main quest" which can be replayed (with a huge amount of end-game content by this point, with new content still added via monthly donation items to this day.) I was quite glad to see that I could still get my time down to my record of 4 days for the main questline. There's been a few changes to the quests over time but I still have most of them scarred into my memory.
And I spotted one of my old clanmates online and caught up in the chat which was special (especially since it's probably 2019 since I last played in earnest and 2020 since I last logged in).
The only bummer is that I used to look forward to getting an anniversary item on my account birthday each year. But once your account is 11 years old they run out of gifts!
I feel like a lot of the old browser-games have dwindled down to an unsustainable player-base (or shut down entirely) and it's definitely left a hole in my gaming habits. Felt nice to pop in to a community with a shared history and language and just catch up.