A true evening gamming session where I want to do a dungeon, a real quest (thinking EQ iksar Monk shackle quests) or a solid grind is usually about 3 hours. Assuming a bit of travel and character maintenance that usually leaves about 2 hours to do something.
Now on the weekend it’s usually a matter of how early I can wake up . . .
With wife and kids my playtimes are 30 mins here, 60 mins there, but when I can plan a session for a raid or something I try to get 2-3 hours. That's usually max.
The Mrs and I plan around min 1 hour to 4 hours depending on the day, we plan to play after all our real life chores completed. Our big distraction are pets ... we have to take care of them, sometimes they even participate in my raid leading adventures!
Weekends can have an extended play periods.
I typically have many characters, and prefer the parts of the game where one levels them up and develops them to the so-called endgame. When crafting or questing I don't need to plan for any long periods of time without being interrupted.
Pantheon is likely to require far more grouping and involve things that cannot be done in half an hour or an hour unless one is rather lucky.
So looking ahead to Pantheon, my answer is "you tell me".
If the only way my character can do something more productive than craft or kill relatively trivial mobs is to group for a dungeon or raid that takes three hours to complete, I will wait until I have the three hours.
If much of the game is finding a camp, and people tend to go in and out of camp groups, so that it is perfectly normal to find a group, play for an hour and then leave, I won't need to wait until I have a longer block of time before I try to group that day.
If some or many or most dungeons are relatively small and one can, with good play and luck, get to the bottom and complete a run in an hour, then I will be able to join those groups anytime I have an hour and a half or two hours.
Back when Trials of Atlantis was released for Dark Ages of Camelot I remember raids taking three or four hours or more and often you couldn't even go afk for large portions of them (autofollow didn't work when diving into pools, swimming, then coming out again). I always hated having things that took so long where if anything came up you just lost all the time you had invested and got nothing. Even when I thought I would have the time I could never be *sure* and to me that was aggravating.
I have no problem with things being very difficult and failing more often than succeeding but needing a huge chunk of time before I could even get to try was not fun for me. Others, of course, feel differently.
My play sessions on weekdays, if I plan on playing, is usually 4-6 hours. For weekends it's usually when I wake up.
If I have no time, or little time, like 30 min - 1 hour, I will spend that time organizing bank, selling loot, maybe crafting, making an alt, and/or traveling to the dungeon I plan on leveling in so next session, when I have more hours I can hop on and look for a group right away.
If I have a laundry day, or days where I will be up and about sporatically at home, then I will go into a dungeon safe area with some low level mobs and solo exp grind until I am out of mana and then go do w/e I was needing to do for a little until my mana comes back and then rinse and repeat.
Kilsin said:When you plan a gaming session, how long do you typically set aside for it, barring any emergencies or family needs popping up? #MMORPG #communitymatters
Weekdays 1 to 2 hours more exploring, gathering crafting, traveling preparing
weekends 3 -6 more grouping dungeon crawl commit to a group for a longer period of time.
I don't know that I plan out sessions, but I usually have a list of things I want to work on, and my goal when I log in is often to cross some things off that list.
So for example, I might want to do some crafting, and I know that I'll have a few hours on Saturday morning where I can log in and focus. Thus, by Friday night I'm planning to do my crafting on Saturday morning.
But, it's an organic thing, and not "ok, I have 2 hours today, what can I fit into that." It's more like "oooh, I should have enough time to go work on that camp today!"
As for how much time I have during a gaming session, it depends on the demands of RL. If it's a weeknight, odds are I have a hard stop around 10 pm. Since I often don't get home until 7 pm, that might mean I only get one or two hours in tops.
In the begining I will likely play until I can no longer function due to sleep deprivation. I will be playing once the kids are in bed until I start to doze at the keyboard aroudn 1am-2am, so probably 4-5 hours a night the first couple of weeks. Then I will likely play 2-3 hours on weeknights and 2-6 hours on Fri and Sat nights. With that said, I likely won't "plan" to do anything in game if I don't have more than an hour to play unless the solo content is viable (to include crafting/exploring); I'm not one for loggiing into an MMO just to chit-chat.
My minimal timeframe is usually 2 hours, even if sometimes I log on during my breakfast and prep time (around 45min at best).
However my sessions can be extremely long, on week ends it can range over 10H hours with little pause or stops, depending of food management (logistic is the nerve of war). However if I am on weekend/holidays, I tend not to play while tired as time gained now will have to be recovered by sleep which could alter my next logging time. IE : When I'm not bound by work, gaming can occur most of my daytime with decent sleep to be fresh of mind the next daytime.
Kilsin said:When you plan a gaming session, how long do you typically set aside for it, barring any emergencies or family needs popping up? #MMORPG #communitymatters
6-7 hours usually Monday through Thursday, ~10 hours on Friday night and ~17 hours on both Saturday and Sunday. :)
I see this in two parts:
1. if I plan to play with no specific goal in mind, then M-F 2hours, and Sat and Sun could be between 4-10 hrs with a hour, hour-and-a-half break inbetween depending on chores and whatnot.(I'm single, heh)
2. If I am planned to play- then hard start and hard end at 2 or 2-and-a-half hours. Planned means like a raid, or a regular group that we plan to do progression or spelunking (dungeon diving)
So, on average, maybe once or twice a week is planned, all other times is open. On weekends, there may be a planned group/raid/event, but I could be on doing other stuff before hand for an hour or two, break, then make the game appointment, then futz around afterwards or get in a groove and get another group doing something else and leave 3 hours later all frantic and buzzing to camp out and leaving the sorting and selling to NPC's of my stuffed bags till tomorow when its calm.
