Breakfast Topic: How much of your played time is really played?
by James Dakin 
Jul 9th 2010 at 8:00AM
If you have been around WoW for a while, you probably have gotten the urge to type in the dreaded /played command. For any who still don't know, that command will show you the amount of time you have played on that particular character. For a player like me who has been around since launch, that number can be significant. But it did get me to thinking, how much of that time was actually spent playing?
Scenario: It is a Tuesday night (last Tuesday, as a matter of fact). My guild is off for the night, since we don't raid on Tuesdays. After a nice dinner and a bit of quality time with the wife, I make my way down to the man-cave to log in and see what's doing. I recently leveled jewelcrafting, so I am collecting the daily tokens for the cuts my main will need. That is reason enough to bring me online on non-raid nights. While I am there, I pick up the fishing and cooking daily. Since both are in Dalaran (love me some Disarmed! and Cheese for Glowergold), I grab them as well.
A few conversations with guildies, three daily quests, one Flame Leviathan weekly run and a few TV sitcoms later, I look up and see it is bed time. I have been logged in for somewhere between two to three hours, and all I have really accomplished are a couple of dailies. My biggest victory of the night was convincing a guild mate that Treme, while not as good as The Wire, is still worth catching if she has On Demand. Hardly what even the most casual player would consider dedicated playtime. Still, it all goes against the total.
The inverse is true as well. There are many nights when I log in and I am moving from one in-game task to another with no break. I have plenty of lost weekends racked up over the past five years when I packed a ton of play into my /played. But I do have a fair bit of time where I am not really getting much done beyond a bit of socializing. In this lull time when summer and the end of an expansion add up to less focused play by many, I still find myself logging in to grab a daily or chat up some friends.
As far as I know, there is no way to distinguish between the two. There is no %active like you see on many combat log parsing systems to help identify time /played versus time /slacked off. If I had to guess, I would bet that somewhere between 30-40% of my /played total was really not played at all, but simply time spent in game accomplishing nothing game-related. With no real way to tell, best guesses will have to do.
So, how about you? If you had to guess, how much of your /played is really played?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
Gamer am I Jul 9th 2010 8:04AM
As a player who is largely a solo-er, I would consider all of the above things to be active play time. However, I have been going for Higher Learning recently by waiting around for the books to spawn (I only have one left), and I spend that time with WoW open to the left of my screen and Firefox open to the right. I've certainly racked up quite a few hours of /played this way, even though I haven't actually been playing.
Ishammel Jul 9th 2010 10:01AM
What I like working out most is the percentage of all my /played time across all my characters, in relation to my life in total. ie. How much of my life have I spent playing WoW? Take out the hours you have for sleep every night and you're left with a pretty scary statistic...!
nahtay Jul 9th 2010 11:36AM
When I was at college - a gamer mate of mine came in and told us all he'd spent 1/3 of his life on wow - an extraordinary feat considering that travelling to college, being there all day, and travelling home, was a 10 hours of lost play time!
he clearly didnt sleep much!
Doru Jul 9th 2010 4:20PM
While I admire the funny tale, i find it hard to believe that a college student could have spent 1/3 of his life on WoW, what with it only being our for 5 years and the minimum college age being 18 (you know, in general). even had he spent every single minute since wow has been active online, that still would not be a 1/3rd. Did you perhaps mean that he had spent 1/3 of his college life?
toddless Jul 9th 2010 10:21PM
my /played is only in the 110's range and I only have 1 main.
my bank alts across several servers (I've xfered my main a few times) total up to around 11 days played.
so around 120 days played. I would say probably at least 4 days of that is flight paths, 1 day of trolling trade, 15 days of me going out to eat while not logging out, and the rest is leveling/raiding.
There is so many hours that I spent just waiting in raids though - it's hard to guess actually.
maybe 70 days of my character actually moving and/or casting something?
Scougelord Jul 9th 2010 8:09AM
As someone with limited time to play WoW, all of my playtime in it is used to it's full potential. I rarely if ever leave the PC running with WoW afk - someone else needs to use the PC!
Owen Jul 9th 2010 8:10AM
About 10% I usually log in and afk in dala while I wait for raid time :D
quasarsglow Jul 9th 2010 8:10AM
I tend to love maxing out skills and rep, so a lot of my /played in the 15 or so months I've had an account is leveling professions, dailies and standing around in borean tundra tossing a dot, PWshielding and autoattacking whatever poor rhino happened to be passing by. Hours of that, but I have master of arms and the only weapon skill not maxxed is clubs, 3 points away.
I don't know if people would call that "playing" or not, as I spend most of my time following guild chat.
Anuillae Jul 9th 2010 8:10AM
I'd have to say, in my 18 days played time (across my main and bank alt) , only about 16are actually at the keyboard. As someone who does quite a bit of AH-ing, a lot of my played time is made up of addons posting/cancelling/crafting/mailing.
kyusswren Jul 9th 2010 8:11AM
If spending time chatting doesn't count... then maybe 8 days out of 100.
VampireDKC Jul 9th 2010 8:15AM
I always log when I come home, right before dinner, to do stuff for a couple of mins.
THen dinner and dishes, wich i do not touch the computer at all. And then start to play again.
And on raid days I might start raiding a book about 20mins before invites start.
SO I easaly rack up 30mins a day that I am logged in but not even behind the computer.
Pat Jul 9th 2010 9:43AM
Raiding a book!? xD I had an image of someone sitting there ripping the pages out and stabbing the binding with a pocket knife while 9 other people stand around (one of whom is throwing herbs on the person as a sort of "healing" effect) o.O Don't mind me! To much coke.
pcj Jul 9th 2010 8:14AM
I have nearly 500 days /played time on my main (145 days /played at 80) and I would say a lot of that was spent AFK...
MusedMoose Jul 9th 2010 8:15AM
I play WoW with one of my best friends; it's really the only way we can hang out regularly since she lives too far away. While we do quests and instances together, sometimes we just sit in a quiet place and talk, and those talks sometimes go on for hours. About three weeks ago, I'd intended to log off, but we spent another two hours talking and only stopped when I had to go to bed. *grin*
So while I don't know if the hours I've spent talking with her would count as "played time", I wouldn't give them up for anything.
Ozzard Jul 9th 2010 8:17AM
... but... but... but... socialising *is* play, to me at least :-). I suspect the answer depends on why you play Wow.
Neyssa Jul 9th 2010 8:18AM
Nice guest topic :)
I guess half of my playtime would be just the fun part, no combat, no anything.
- I like customizing a new alt
- running around in the city, watching Trade for business, like low-level stuff crafting,
- turning on my Auctioneer and buying/selling stuff
- Getting lost on WoWhead and WoWWiki (and wow.com :) - I just researched some low level item, an run into the story of the hard-to-collect epic weapons.
http://www.wowwiki.com/Rhok'delar,_Longbow_of_the_Ancient_Keepers
Then I read the article, look up how to get it, etc.
- Collecting stupid screenshot like going up to the lake above Stormwind (with my tauren) to fish.
- ADDON Configuration - I guess this is my favorite. I love playing around with customizing my UI, getting new addons, etc.
- Asking my BF to two-man Karazan, getting him to take out his drill to go to the Grim Guzzler, because I just read about the succubus who gives you a quest.
- Paying again and again in the barbershop to fit my druid to the season.
But I think this is also part of the game and one of the best. I hate it when I am in the mood to do any of the above, and guildies jump on me that the raid they are in needs exactly me. I wish there was a hidden status (the opposite of RealID :)
flint Jul 9th 2010 8:21AM
Haha, I do that. I'll log on and spend like 2 hours just sitting in Ironforge, trolling Trade Chat. Or even sometimes, I'll just leave WoW on as I go down for dinner and come back after 40 minutes of being AFK.
Arizor Jul 9th 2010 9:08AM
Back under the bridge with you!
flint Jul 9th 2010 2:05PM
I'm more of an intellectual troll. Though I will sometimes start the "Why is it called an XBOX 360?" and "Anal " stuff.
Noyou Jul 9th 2010 8:23AM
Hmmm,
Lately been tabbing out and reading WoW.com while taking FP's and maybe getting carried away with all the *distracted by talent tree bombshell* news :)