Thursday, August 1, 2013

Remembering My First: 200 Days

This is a little different of a post for my "firsts" section which usually pertains to a first time doing something.  My first companion pet, my first dungeon, what have you.  But it still, I believe, fits the category.

The grumpy elf has hit 200 days played.  That is a hell of a lot of time spent on the game.  Way more than I would like to admit looking back at it.  But what is more telling than my 200 days played as my main hunter is the fact that even with my countless alts, and many max level characters over the years, all of them combined do not even come close to touching that 200 days.

It goes to show you that the vast majority of my time spent playing the game has been on my hunter.  Makes sense because it is the character I enjoy playing the most.

Looking back at my 200 days on that character I can't help but wonder what did I spend the most time doing for those 200 days.  Could it be soloing?  Could it be raiding?  Could it be dungeons?  Could it be questing?  Could it be PvP?  Could it be fishing?  No seriously, could it be?

In over 200 days played my hunter has caught over 25,000 fish.  That has to amount to a fair amount of time.  It is not like the fish just come jumping up out of the water at me.  I needed to spend the time catching them.

I think someone once figured out that the average time to catch a fish is 12 seconds, not sure how accurate that is, but using that number it would mean I spent at least 3 and a half days catching fish, I think.  I would guess it is closer to 4 days, for arguments sake.  Have you ever missed a fish because if you have then you will understand why I think it might be closer to 4 days.

4 days played of just catching fish.  That could quite possibly be up there on the activities I have spent the most time on.  If they ever added an achievement for catching 25,000 fish I would be willing to guess I would be one of a very few that would have it.  That is a lot of wasted time, as some would say.

I am sure I spent more time in dungeons however.   Whether it be soloing or with groups or with the dungeon finder I would have to guess I have done at least 1000 dungeons on this one character over the course of the years.  Knowing I spent a lot doing mount runs for the various dungeon ones that 1000 number would be quite generous.  Even if the average run took only 15 minutes that would mean over 10 days played in dungeons.

I can't tell how much of that would be solo stuff or how much of it would be group stuff.  But I do recall some groups while leveling, like mara groups, that would last for what seemed like hours.  Or the dungeons the first weeks of cataclysm where it was not unheard of to get into a 2 hour deadmines run.  Or even a 6 hour one as one guild mate had that first week.  I am sure I have spent nearly as much time in groups as I have solo in dungeons but even separated into two things they would both have to be up there on the list of things I have spent time on in the past 200 days played.

I have not spent much time doing player vs player content, as my complete lack of achievement in that area show me, but I did spend a fair deal doing world PvP.  Yes, even in this dead time where world PvP is nowhere to be found, I always seemed to find some.  I would get some guild mates and we could spend hours going back and forth in the tram.  It was fun and even as a person that is not really into the player vs player aspect of the game I am sure that added up.  Maybe even enough to make it into the top 10 activities over the first 200 days of my game playing life.

Raiding would be like dungeons.  Some solo and the rest as a group.  Even before the days of the LFR I spent a fair deal of time in raids.  With my guild and alone I would spend time there every week.  I don't think a week has went by in the last few years where I did not spend at least 2 hours of my week in a raid, most likely 4.  With the addition of the LFR and some 4 hour adventures alone to finish one of them in this new raid or die expansion I have spent upwards of 10 hours or more a week raiding just in the LFR at some level or another, but not all on this character of course.  But at least half of that has to be attributed to my main, at least I would think.  So if I had to guess I would say my time spent in raids on this character would be roughly the same as that spent in dungeons.  Enough to rank high on my activity list, but not quite enough to make it to the number one spot on it.

So what could be the activity I spent the number one amount of time doing in the first 200 days?  My guess would be traveling.  By traveling I don't mean going from quest objective to quest objective.  I mean time spent running from one place to another, just to get there.  Time spent on a boat.  Time spent on a flight path.  Basically, any time spent getting from point A to point B.  Even if the end result was I was going there to quest, it is the time spent traveling to a zone or area using some sort of transportation method.  That is what I mean by travel time and that is what I believe to be the activity I have spent the most time doing.  Traveling.

It would be nice to think that traveling would not have taken the biggest chunk out of my activities done but thinking back it seems almost impossible that any other activity could even come close..

I remember flying from darnassus to tanaris every day when I first got home from work and knew I was going to play that night.  I learned after my first fight there that it takes roughly three billion years, give or take, to get from darnassus to tanaris so I would come home, log in, get on the flight path and then go about my business at home.  I would usually come back to being logged out from inactivity of course, but at least I did not have to wait while I was in flight.

I spent a lot of time in tanaris because I really liked the zone and then I spent even more time in silithus after that.  I actually went there every single day I played to grind encrypted twilight texts because for some odd reason I enjoyed doing that and I did get a fair deal of experience from it.  If I remember correctly, which I could be wrong, I think I leveled from 58 to 60 just doing that and that alone, a little bit each day.

Not sure what hooked me on it but I was dead set on not stopping until I hit exalted with the Cenarion Circle.  Not like I even knew who they were or what reason I would want to be exalted with them as I had no factions ever at exalted.  I just liked doing it and liked getting that rep.  Please do not ask me to explain it because I can't.  I can, and will some day most likely, go into my first grind and my first exalted reputation and this would be it, for both.

I would say I spent a month or more there alone.  I did not spend as much time playing back then but I did do this a few days a week and it was the only time I played.  I would spend however long it took to fly there, while I was actually AFK doing things much more exciting than staring at the screen while it found the absolute longest path it could ever find to get me to my destination and then I would play for about and hour or an hour and a half before hearthing back for the day.

Yes, I know, I could have just stayed there.  Excuse me for wanting to "go home" at the end of my hard days work of collecting twilight texts.  But the next day it would all begin again.

I think I timed it one day and it took something like 24 minutes to make that flight.  Like I said, I quested a lot in the lower zones of kalimdor, for months most likely, so I am sure that those 24 minute flights added up.  Just like all those other flights added up.

Flying to get around was a huge thing.  I would take flight paths everywhere.  Anything to cut down on the amount of time I needed to run.  Lets face it, running was probably the single most annoying way to travel in the game and quite honestly I am surprised that they have not allowed mounts lower yet.  But at first, you ran and ran and ran so much that I am surprised your character did not turn to the screen and look at you and say, "really, you want me to run back where I just came from after it took me 8 minutes to run here".

Then there was BC, I don't recall ever flying there like we do now, at least not while leveling.  I am also pretty darn sure I did not get flying in northrend until I was like 77 or 78.  So I spent a lot of time hoofing it, mounted on my tiger, or taking a flight path.

I've always been a supporter of lowering the levels for mounted travel.  If they put up a poll asking if we think you should get mounts at level 1 I would say yes.  At least the slow speed land mounts at level 1.  No reason people should have to run until 40, or 30, or now 20.

Do you remember those old world quests that sent you all over the world.  I really loved them, but there was a lot of travel time spent.  From eastern kingdom to kalimdor to eastern kingdom to kalimdor with boats, trams, flight paths, running, all between each move.  I would guess it could be something along the lines of hours of traveling to get each quest line done.  Each of many like it.  Yes, it felt epic, yes I would love to see more like it back in the game, but there was a lot of travel involved, and when thinking about what I spent the most time doing in my first 200 days, that is something to think about.

All this travel, all this time spent, if I had to guess, of the 200 days played that my character has, most of it was spent on the super simple, you don't even notice you are doing it, travel time spent.  A little time here and a little time there, but it all adds up.  It adds up so much so that if someone were to tell me I spent 50 or even 75 of those 200 days traveling from one place to another I would be perfectly capable of believing that.

Thinking back on the first 200 days of playing if I were forced to guess what I spent the most time doing it would be traveling.

I wonder if the newer generation of player, the one that can sit in SW or Org and level through the dungeon system and basically do the vast majority of their game play without traveling would come to the same conclusion I have, that traveling is the single activity I have spent the majority of my time playing doing.  I doubt travel time would even amount to anything for them when comparing.  Lucky them.

Happy 200th anniversary to me.

How many days played do you have and what is the single activity you think you have spent the most time doing?

35 comments:

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    1. It's okay, I deleted the extra posts.

      Thanks... and that was a horrible joke. :P

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    3. Would been better if the gnome said pick a cod. ;)

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    5. I know the feeling, even with spell check my spelling sucks.

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  2. Being an altaholic I don't have a particularly useful /played number on any one toon, my highest /played toon will be my main server auction alt for various reasons (he's also been my raiding main for a while).

    My total time played, if your less than 200+200 days is a hell of a long time, is a HELL of a hell of a long time. Probably close to twice that. I try not to think about it, although my cost/hr for playtime is ridiculously small. WoW is nothing if not a very good value.

    Most of my time while logged in has probably been spent not looking at the screen... I tend to do other things while I play, often watching TV (shows or sports). The only time I generally focus 100% on the game is when I'm doing group content. Since that's a pretty small percentage of my play time, I'd say a toon just sitting there while I was looking away is how I've spent the majority of my logged-in time. Boring, but not sure if it's any worse than your traveling answer. :)

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    1. WoW is an excellent value for the money spent on it. I get many hours of enjoyment each month out of it for less than the cost for 2 drinks at the bar, or one movie ticket.

      I've already played more this expansion than I did all of last expansion. But I really disliked last expansion. And thanks to the LFR I believe I am playing more now than I ever have before because I feel I have to. I know I don't but I feel I have to.

      So you spent most of their time AFK basically doing other things. I would hazard to guess that would be the #1 activity for most players.

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    2. Technically at keyboard, not AFK, I have a nice setup that lets me multitask quite efficiently. :) "Not actively playing" would be a fair way to put it. Most of the time my toons don't go into AFK mode, though, so it's kind of an active inactivity. Hard to explain, apparently, it's just something I do, not something I spend any time thinking about.

      Regarding your comment below, you might try a phased approach to slowing down rather than a full-stop cold turkey break. Make a hard separation (make an actual list if you have to) between actual required activities (raiding with your normal group and anything else you'd consider important, for me it'd be AH stuff and crafting dailies on top of that) and not really required activities (dailies, tokens, LFR, gearing alts, etc). When you don't feel like doing the not really required stuff, just don't, do something you'd rather do in-game or just log out. That simple. Don't let Blizzard's attempts to give us stuff to do determine how you spend your time.

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    3. I know a lot of people that would be sort of in the same boat. They just hang out talking in guild, in whisper, not really playing but still having some fun with it. Kind of like a chat room with images.

      I can't do the slow down thing. I admit it. Just not in me. If I am on I am actively doing something. I can't do "nothing" for lack of a better word. So if I am not doing those dailies or LFRs I will just log out. But that might not be a bad thing.

      In the end what bugs me is not so much having so much to do, it is trying to get 25 people together and having to deal with all the crap that comes with 25s. It has been wrath since I last did that and in those years, I have changed as a player and as a person. I just can not do it any more.

      It would be wrong for me to just drop the 25 I spent so long to assemble on a server that has no 25 man raid teams. So I am stuck doing it week after week even if I do not enjoy it, I do not enjoy people complaining about each other, I do not enjoy people not signing up but demanding a spot because they are always there. I mean hey, if you did not sign up I figured you were not going to be on. All that little stuff is just getting to me. It is bad when you start to actively hate some of the people you play with. It is not the game burning me out, it is the people.

      And for me that is huge as the one thing that keeps me playing the game are the people. If I actively start trying to avoid the people I play with my entire reason for playing is gone.

      I am thinking of just finding a new leader for the 25 and pulling my 10 out and going back to a straight 10 and when the 25 fails to get even one boss down without me and my 10 then maybe they will learn that listening to me works and crying about everything doesn't.

      Sorry, did not mean to go that deep into things. Just felt like venting.

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    5. lol.

      I am not sure what I would do with it. I would most likely buy the spectral tiger mount so if I came back I had something nice to come back to.

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    6. Yeah, the no-show thing is an issue and it's happening increasingly frequently even with my main 10 right now, that issue is a large part of what led to me leaving my last raid group and now I find myself in the same situation. I just don't understand people who don't consider a raid a commitment equal to anything they commit to do outside of the game. And that includes people declining... sure, notice is better than not getting any but raids are on a schedule for a reason. Work around it.

      I just hope that Flex will actually help with this vs just handing players another excuse ("oh, I just didn't feel like it and you're running Flex, figured you'd be fine without me") that actually has some added validity.

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    7. As a causal guild I would never tell people to work around it but I can enforce my rule that you need to let me know well in advance, as I put things up 2 weeks in advance, if you can or can't make it. If you say you can, then try to work around it.

      I hate that some people get the idea that they should get a spot just for showing up. Sorry, I can not plan around people that I never know if they are going to be there or not.

      It comes to either sign up or sit out. I think my problem will end up fixing itself being I told that one person trying to create drama that effectively if signing up is a problem then you won't get any invites any longer. Effectively this mean, there will be no raiding for him at all. So I am sure he will leave.

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  3. Anon, Grumpy's former Guild Leader:

    I had to check my characters to be sure, but I was already certain I long ago passed 200 days.

    My original main, my paladin was a mere 129 days played. Of course, back then, I had to share a dial up connection to play. My wife and my son also played and they both had level 60 toons in vanilla WoW.

    My second main, the priest came in at 272 days played. Which is not really surprising to me as she became my main at the end of vanilla going into BC, and stayed my main until Mists.

    My new main, my monk is at a mere 13 days played. Sadly for her, the attraction of a new class, as fun as a monk is to play was not able to overcome my need to be away from the game for a while. But as I am intent on coming back full time eventually, she will remain my main.

    So for my main toon(s) we have 129 + 272 + 13 = 414 days played. That doesn't count at all my multitude of alts of course. LOL, no wonder I needed a break...

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    1. Your "mains" over the years are more than all mine combined. I have some catching up to do.

      I am feeling I need a break myself because of the way the game has changed. So many characters I had max in wrath, max in cata and now max in mists have more time played in mists then they did in the other 2 expansions combined. And I was more appropriately geared in those expansions. I think this expansion is really eating up time, big time, just trying to gear up characters, but with 4 hour LFR runs, what could you expect.

      I am trying my hardest to stay playing right now old friend. But I am one "smart ass remark" from many of the ungrateful people around about lately, to leaving and never coming back.

      Sucks when you are doing stuff, for others, and all you do is get grief for it. Maybe my 200 days are catching up to me.

      Might be break time soon. I just wish there were someone to pass the reigns over too.

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    3. Type /played

      It will show you the amount of time you have played.

      I use an addon called altaholics that tells me when I log in and shows me a panel that shows the time played (among many other great things) of all my characters.

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    6. Not sure about server changes, but being you have been playing since 2004 I would have guessed it would have been more.

      Makes me feel like I really play to much if you started 4 years before me and I have so much more play time.

      I guess it is possible that a server transfer can reset it but I really do not know.

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  4. Kind of an aside: I used to say (at the end of Wrath) that Dalaran was like a retirement home where lvl 80 (year olds) went to stand motionless for hours while talking to the voices in their heads.

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    1. Sounds rather fitting and as retirement homes go in game, that really wasn't a bad one.

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    3. Have you seen some of the light shows that go on there, you need to wear the tin foil hats.

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  5. Jaeger:
    /played: 103 days
    Quests: 11k
    Dailies: 6k
    Creatures killed: 220k
    Flights taken: 2300
    Fish caught: 13.7k
    Honorable kills: 1300
    5-mans: 600
    Raids: 300
    Pet battles: 500
    Scenarios: 74

    9 alts:
    /played: 37 days

    I started this account at the end of Wrath, so I've probably spent most of my time doing dailies, followed by instances and fishing. Most of that alts time was spent at the AH.

    Lately, I've only been logging in to post auctions. There's usually only 1 other person on in guild, if there is even one, since many of the main people xfered to Proudmoore. So I'm basically taking a break until 5.4 to see what VR and Flex bring to the game.

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    1. So it looks like I've doubled you up time wise. For that time you are not that far off with the fishing, if you keep up this pace you will have more than I by that 200 day mark.

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  6. Haven't checked, but I was past 200 days in Cata so it should be around 300. Probably less.
    But time-wise, it must be chatting. Not ingame as much, but vent / mumble / ts. I spend hours talking and pretty much running around Dalaran, Org, Shrine, flying around, jumping or just standing still while I talk. It's sometimes happened to be about 10 hours of talking and doing nothing ingame. I think people talk to me because I'm a good listener.

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    1. I have that happen a lot too myself as I always make sure to make myself available in vent so if anyone ever needs to talk or has a question they know where to find me.

      But I just happen to be one of those people that always need to keep moving, even when I am chatting. But if I used that as a yard stick then it would be chatting for me as well. At least through voice chat because no matter what I am doing I am using doing that at the same time.

      Thinking about it now, I wonder how much of that time was spent on archeology. Something I tend to do a lot when chatting and not feeling like doing anything that takes any sort of thinking what so ever. It is mind numbing. But if it were not for that I would have never stuck it through to the seeker of knowledge of the fact I have over 200 tol'vir finds and still have no pet or mount. :(

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    2. There, looked it up. 287 days. 64 days at this level. Meh.
      2005 dungeons. 803 raids. 9053 fishes and other things caught. FP taken 4559. I'm lazy, what can I say.

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    3. I think I am in the 40s for days at 90. I have been playing a lot more on alts however. Need to get back to achievement hunting on my main. That eats up a lot of time.

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  7. While I have no toons that are close to as old as yours, some of the numbers I've discovered are kind of scary. While forgetting to check out how many fish I have caught over the years I did find out that I've killed over 600k creatures. Yikes!

    Head on over to my blog to see some more scary numbers if you like.

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    1. Ooops...forgot the linkie:

      http://jstmel.blogspot.com/2013/08/how-i-wow.html

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    2. Cool, I like that you added them all together. Seems like over all you have some more days played I just have a lot more on a single character.

      You bring up a good point, that the achievement system only appeared in wrath an the /played is probably the only true accurate number for a lot of those things. But who is to say that kills and such, outside of honor kills which where always tracked, were even counted before hand. I would guess some of that stuff was. I know raids and dungeons were not.

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