Breaking the time barrier.

Arakazi

I've been in a sort of MMO hiatus over the summer months and doing the things that most people do during this time. Soaking up the good weather, going on a trip and mowing the lawn. Although I only been away from my chosen MMO for a few weeks, I can't seem to bring myself to log on. In the back of my mind I think that I have fallen behind the content and that catching up with everyone else has become more and more of a hassle as time goes by.

I'm in my mid thirties now, I just don't have the same amount of time to invest in MMOs anymore. I have a job, kids and a life. A few hours at the weekend seems a lot of time to invest in a hobby now. We all know that MMO's take up a lot of time, particularly if you want to keep up with the content. However, although I somewhat agree that investing time and effort should be rewarded. It becomes incredibly disheartening to find yourself falling further and further behind your guildmates and for it to dawn on me that I simply cannot keep up because I just do not have the free time I had when I was a student or when I was single.

MMO's have become a giant treadmill where even simple tasks such as gathering resources can eat up hours of your time. Raids and farming resources, loot, gear and rep have become barriers to the content I want to do. It's no longer viable for me to keep on doing this. I just want to log on do what I want to do without the inane repetitiveness of gear grinding and other content barriers.

I'm not at all saying that all MMO's should cater for my specific needs. If certain contents requires 100+ hours of time investment, fine, I won't touch it but I won't moan that much about not being able to do it, I do not expect and have never been able to do all the content. But what I am saying is that MMO's should be more sensitive to people like me who only have a few hours a week to play to be able to do fun and rewarding content without the need to commit myself to hours and hours of grinding.