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Saturday, April 26, 2008

A poll for MMO players...

Just a question, call it an informal poll. Would you, personally, like it if other people could see how many hours/days you'd spent playing the game?

My inclination is no, but I can see it being both a badge of honor and (maybe) even a mark of shame.

23 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well if it includes other stats like how many wins in PvP, how far has the character travelled etc, that will be good.... I think.

Anonymous said...

What if you could have the other stats independently? Like, you can have all the stats you want, would you included "hours played" on that list?

Anonymous said...

When I think "hours played", I think Xfire, so I would initially say "no". Looking forward to other stats, possibly. The thought has always interested me.

Having badges or awards for it, no, but, for information, basically just to see it, yes. :)

Anonymous said...

100% no. This is one stat I find most people would prefer to be kept hidden. When I pester my friends to tell me their /played time on WoW, they nearly never reply with a straight answer, even when I disclose mine.

I could see this stat being used for ridicule beyond all else. "omg no wonder he's got all leet purplez, he's played for 200 days, wut a loser he has no life! lolol"

Milkman519 said...

It's seems I'm the minority here but I would say sure, why not? I don't see anything wrong with people seeing how long I've played the game.

Anonymous said...

I wouldn't have strong feelings either way, but I agree that it would basically be used for mockery. Isn't everything else, in an MMO?

Anonymous said...

I would have no problem with that.

My only non-MUD MMO expierence is WoW, and I didn't play very much. Still, had I played a lot, it would not have bothered me if anyone could see it – whether they knew me in real life or not.

If I was ashamed of how many hours I've spent on an MMO, maybe I should do something about it.

Don Pachi said...

I think more people would dislike this feature than would like it. I also think those who dislike it would dislike it more intensely than those who like it would like it.

It seems exploitable. If it did become a badge of honor, it would just give people incentive to leave their characters logged in for longer than they play; or for others to question the validity of each others' time spent playing.

I don't think something like this should be an option either. It'd make people feel pressured to enable/disable as the case may be.

Personally I'm indifferent to it.

Unknown said...

Yeah, that'd be pretty cool. I could see kidding my friends and being kidded. Almost like Points. But you wouldn't know anything about those.

Anonymous said...

I would lean towards it being more of a badge of shame then a badge of honor.

I think that there is a growing consensus that spending hundreds of hours playing an MMO and grinding forever to level up is going out of fashion. If you look at a game such as Lost Odyssey that prevents the player from grinding - I think that adds to the focus on the storyline and keeps the game a game and not turning it into work.

Daniel Stange said...

I wouldn't care.

Anonymous said...

That's the kind of thing it would be good to have as an option that you can chose to let people see or not, like viewing people's friends lists on XBox Live. Personally I wouldn't want people seeing my time played, but I'd be into being nosy about other people's. :)

Anonymous said...

It wouldn't bother me.
I don't have a ton of extra time to play games like that except my nights off, but I also despite that am able to accomplish and pick things up fairly fast.
So my lower than average play time would at least reflect I am a quick learner/veteran of that type of game.

But either way you can generally tell who the "hardcore" are when they are online every single time you log in, or you see ones who started out around the same time as you vastly farther progressed in a short period of time.

Durgum said...

Every now and then we do the how many days played thing in a group or whatever. I would rather keep that stat to myself unless I choose to share.

Caro said...

No.

Anonymous said...

I might show it to my guildies every once in a while, but that basically already happens when people /played and enter it into chat. I don't want every jackass Night Elf out there reading how much time I've spent.

Although it could be helpful to ensure random people in PUGs know how to play the game. So on second thought, put it in there, but make it difficult to turn off so that the stupid people don't bother.

Anonymous said...

As long as it is off by default and optional, it can't hurt.

Anonymous said...

God no!

Anonymous said...

It should be an option, it's logged by every MMO anyway so it's not a question of the data collection, but letting anybody look around to see how pathet...er, dedicated you are is free survey data for some types.

In short you can see it, the devs can see it, but you can only let others see it via some friends list option.

I'd actually like to see a complete list of stats like GTA, you know: miles walked, total mobs killed, total damage, etc.

Anonymous said...

Absolutely not. If there's one thing I don't need in an MMO, it's a tangible number that all the 24/7 psychopaths can point to and laugh at every time i make a mistake.

"Of course he didn't know to play Fear of the Holy One! He only has 9 days in-game! lolz0rz!!"

But then of course everyone else could point to "9 days in game" and laugh at what an MMO-obsessed loser I am. There's no winning.

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Dustin said...

Why not include a bunch of stats, but make it optional to make them public?

HektikLyfe said...

I say NO! Just like that. Loud and obnoxious.

My reasoning? Well one of the major reasons why I stopped playing Guild Wars was because I couldn't spend as much time in it as my "friends." A numeric value to associate with it would only serve to rub it in.

That information is available to the developer and it should stay that way. You guys use it as you will but don't give griefers more ammo.