The Daily Grind: How long are most of your play sessions?

I’ve seen my Dad spend hours sometimes days camping something in EQ back in the day. I on the other hand play at most two hours at a time, however the EQ community was also a hell of a lot more tight than any MMO I currently play That was a virtual society...what we have now are online games.

After i am familiar with a game its mainly around 2 hours per session 3 to 5 times a week.

2-3 hours typically.

I usually spend around 3 to 5 hours a day on Rift sometimes more and then about 1 to 2 hours on Ever Quest 2. When Prius Online come out most of my MMO time will probably be spent on that.

Used to be 6+ hours when I was unemployed... now it's closer to 2-3 before I start to feel like I want to do something else.

I used to play marathons of 4-5 hours which was really detrimental to my posture. so after years of ignoring back pains, I gave up gaming in such a fashion. playing for hours straight can be fun first, but not so much if you're paying for it later. :s

1 - 3 hours almost every day... sometimes longer on weekends, with weekend gaming sessions stretching into the 8 to 12 hour range from time to time.

I usually get roughly 1hr in the mornings and I get 2 nights a week for all nighter gaming. (I work nights so its my daytime lol)

5-6 Hours weekdays, lots more weekends if im not out with mates.

Depends a lot. I guess the max time I can sit and just play is 2 hours, then I need breaks to fix meals, or just get up and do something else.

I'll typically want to take a break after two hours, stretch my legs a bit, maybe ill resume after half an hour of doing something else, but i guess that still counts as two hours per session.

2 to 3 hours on nights I'm not already busy. Most times if I don't have the time to at least play for an hour, I won't play at all, and it tends to be the same for every MMO I play.

I have a two-and-a-half year old daughter.

So my play time is very fragmented and I will...

...GOTTA GO!

I used to go for 5 -7 hours at a time. These days I try not to play more than 2 hours, and not more than 2 nights in a row.

I still sometimes go for 5-7 hours in non MMO's though, like with Shogun 2.

I've had weekend sessions of WoW where I've been logged in for 8+ hours. Not so much anymore. I'll log in and play for maybe 2 hours max before I'm bored and want to go do something else, if I even play at all. Haven't really logged into my WoW account much in the past month or so.

I play 2-3 hours 4 nights a week. Though if something is new and wonderful I'll put in a 10 hour Saturday if I can.

If it was 10 years ago I wouldn't even both playing MMO's on that schedule. Even today I think about how many non-mmos I could've finished in a month with the amount of time I spend playing MMO's. I wish they cut out the grind because it's getting boring.

My 43 year old retirment schedule. Mon through wed is play as long as i want, family and friends know this, thursday is random, usually gets my Rc boats and challenger maint. Fri is poker night, no getting away from that, sat is another tossup that usually ends up at some family function if not, back to computer time, sunday is sleep recovery and back on the comp and hulu to see what shows i missed during the week.

My two willful Korats are assaulting me the entire time. Note to self, need ammo for shotgun.....

It depends a bit on the game, but a game session typically lasts somewhere between 30 minutes and 2 hours.

Usually 3-4 hours a day depending on how many other things I have to do, such as homework.

Usually 3-4 hours in one continuous session per evening on weekdays, up to 5-8 hours at weekends (with short AFKs as necessary) - that's standard for me - though in the first 1-3 months of a new MMO I play for longer sessions due to my enthusiasm and the novelty value: up to 4-6 hours on weekdays, 8+ hours at weekends, usually at the expense of sleep and/or my other non-gaming interests (my digital TV recorder usually gets very full!).

A few things usually cause my enthusiasm and the lengths of my playing sessions to dip: 1) my friends get bored and start playing less; 2) I become enthusiastic for another game I've bought (not always an MMO, e.g. playing tons of Borderlands co-op is what pulled me away from CoH in a major way, but then Guild Wars and now RIFT have kept me away); 3) I run out of "fresh" zone/quest content that I haven't played through before; 4) I hit the level cap (and/or whatever point in progression I stop getting new gameplay-changing abilities) with my first character.

The last two points are most notable because it's usually when the gear-grind starts in an MMO - lots of people see that as the point where an MMORPG begins, but it's the beginning of the end for me - new gear never has a major effect on gameplay imho, just a few more stat points is never that noticeable, not like getting a new ability you have to try and incorporate into your playstyle - so once a game becomes a monotonous gear grind through zones I've already seen to earn gear that won't have a majorly noticeable effect on gameplay I get a little bored. Playing alts is usually the only thing keeping me around after that point (if their gameplay differs noticeably), but once I've played all the classes/archetypes/callings that interest me up to the level cap then I'm usually done with the game entirely - which is why I still subscribe to CoH and have been subbed to it for 5+ years, as it has so many archetype/powerset combinations I want to play, plus it gets quite a bit of content added in updates so that helps with the lack of "fresh content".

So yeah, 3-4 hours per session/day, double that for weekends, and double it again if the MMO is new and I'm particularly enthusiastic about it. I tend not to log into an MMO at all unless I can spare at least an hour, even though I've played MMOs like CoH where you could achieve things in less than an hour.