If WoW (or Blizzard) didn’t exist, what game would you love to be your replacement time sink?

World of Warcraft — and by extension, Blizzard — has been a part of my life for, well, more than half of said life. At one point in time, that thought was pretty wild to me. A single video game I’ve played and had some community or another to be involved with for so long. But now, it’s just sort of a fact. It’s still a bit crazy if I stop to think about it, of course — but now it just sort of is.

And while I realize that not many games have existed (consistently) as long as WoW has, I do realize there are communities with members as fervent and as dedicated as the ones in WoW’s. Given this fact, I sometimes wonder what it would be like if WoW (and Blizzard) didn’t occupy so much of my time. Don’t get me wrong, I play other video games. But I think it’s safe to say that being involved as intensely with one as I am with WoW is hard to do with multiple communities at a time.

Which, again, makes me wonder what community I’d be involved with if WoW didn’t exist. For all its faults at launch, No Man’s Sky has — as far as I’ve heard — developed into a pretty great game with a very dedicated community behind it. Personally, I loved that game at launch, even if it didn’t live up to expectations. But because I had other games to play and because it didn’t have the community-focused aspects it does now, it got left behind.

That combination of “game I enjoyed” and “community that now exists” has made me really wonder what it would be like to be if I had invested time into No Man’s Sky. What would it be like if I were part of that community? Moreover, I’m curious what other communities exist out there that could fill the same spot. Final Fantasy XIV? Speed-runs of old-school games?

If WoW — or Blizzard — didn’t exist, what game/community would you be a part of? What group would gain your intense dedication to continued gaming? Sound off below.