Well the truth is, in my vocation, there is no typical day. Some days start at 6am at a local hospital and end with me greeting my kids as they get off the bus. Some days end at 2am after a long heartfelt conversation and don’t resume until 10am or so the following day. Its a grab bag.
Generally though, on the nights I’m online, I start my gaming somewhere between 8pm and 9pm and will play for 2-3 hours. That doesn’t mean I head to bed then. I’m a bit of a night owl. Some of these posts are generated in that after time and set to public later, for example. Other times I love music and movie trailers.
Other times I’m neck deep in a book. Rarely do I watch TV. I generally pick one show a year that looks promising. Its been a couple of years since the show I picked actually a) didn’t get cancelled or b) held my interest more than a few episodes. I do watch movies, but I’m not nearly up to date on that. For example, of all the new Marvel/Avengers movies, I’ve only seen Iron Man 1. And I just watched it last week.
Game wise, I tend to take my time unless I’m in a group. As the usual healer in our little trifecta for group play, I let my brother (usually tanking) set the pace of gameplay and run with the crowd. In our recent LotRO adventures though, I’m the tank, and I tend to move at a slower pace, stopping to smell roses and harvest resources more than I should. Fortunately, LotRO’s combat system mostly consists of picking which skill on your hotbar you want to one shot the next mob with, so its not a big deal.
Incidentally, this is why I had so much fun and failed so miserably at City of Heroes. I stopped to help every little old lady on the street and bag every two bit criminal on my way from A to B.
I like to end my sessions, if at all possible, in home base. This was one of the irritations in SWTOR, where it was often so much more convenient to just log out in the wilderness of Hoth somewhere than it was to try to go through six loading screens to get back to my ship or the city capital.
This willy-nilly approach to the limited playing time I have has resulted in very few high level characters over the years. And oddly enough, the lack of other options is what has kept me on pace in World of Tanks. That along with the ease of jumping in and out.
That ease is something few MMO’s outside of Rift has ever given me, which is one of the reasons I am personally glad for the F2P transition. I loved all the little daily quests and seasonal festivals, all right there in the capital. Being able to pop in one night and do a few of those at my own pace is something I am looking forward to.
By the same token, this is the same reason my STO character is not only max level, but has maxed out nearly all the secondary assignments (I’m almost done with Engineering, after which only Science, Trade, and Recruitment will remain – and two of those are over halfway done). In some ways, I’ve wondered over the years if I’m more in love with the idea of an MMO than the actual MMO’s themselves. But it may just be that there are so many games I enjoy, getting to play more than one a night or week is a high priority itch for me to scratch. Easy-in-easy-out games help with that.
But in any case, this means I’m pretty sure HEX will be right up my alley as well. Being able to log on, play a battle, and have spent an hour a) having fun and b) accomplishing some definite progression is my holy grail of game fun.
Harbinger Zero 