I had a somewhat shocking realization this week.
I looked at my total time /played.
I’ve always known about what the total was for each character, but I never took the time to add them all up and find out the sum of the time I have spent online in WoW. Well, now I know. It is 340 days.
That’s almost a year of my life spent sitting in front of the computer. Holy cow.
Further analysis: I started playing WoW during spring break of 2006, so somewhere around March 10th or so of that year. It has been about 2371 days since I began. According to /played, I have spent 340 days online during that time. That is 14.3% of my life. Translated further, that equates to an average of 24 hours per week or about 3.4 hours per day.
That is a very sobering statistic.
I don’t consider it time wasted. As further context, I watch essentially zero television. I know a lot of people who spend more time in front of the TV than I do in front of WoW. In addition, I am a teacher and I get a lot of free time over the summer when I can rack up a lot of playtime, so I don’t actually play three hours every day.
Also, before anyone gets all judgmental, this is not time taken away from my kids and family (well, mostly). I put my kids to bed at 8:30 and then I have about 3.5 hours before I go to sleep myself. That’s my prime gaming time.
Still, the idea that I spend that much time in game is a little shocking. Does it make me want to stop playing? No, but I think I can try to use this epiphany to establish a little more balance in my life. As the GM of a large guild, there was once a time when I felt guilty if I took a day off from the game. I used to think that any day I wasn’t online would be the day that drama happened. I have realized that this is not the case, and that the guild will continue to roll along even if I take time off. I don’t play every night any more. I often take weekends off. I am certain that my time spent in game over the past year is not nearly what it used to be in previous years.
I do think I’m going to uninstall the add on that gave me my total time /played, though. Maybe I’m better off not knowing.
