MMORPG tends to be very number-oriented. This is a world you hear like soandso does 9724.5 DPS and thisandthat has a 25.83% to crit. However, even in a world of heavy mathematics, it is pretty clear that time is something people never get. I'm not talking about like you thought you played a game for an hour and it was actually ten because you were too engrossed in the game. I'm talking about obvious misuse of the unit we usually call 'second' 'hour' and 'day' to the point it has no meaning. Some examples:
"I can hit level X in 3 days" (3 days here means 72 hours of continous playing).
"The kill rate for my group is Z mobs per hour" (where Z is a number roughly equal to two times the number of mobs that can spawn in one hour)
"WoW is so easy that you can hit level 80 playing 30 minutes a day for 3 months" (that'd be 45 hours of playing time, which would easily shatter any record for solo fast leveling known to man)
I used to try to point out the inherent impossibility of some of these quoted numbers, but I realized I'm not going to be able to change the world. So if you can't beat them, join them. MMORPG, and any time-intensive gaming activity, should have a new unit of time, the uber-time. Activity can be measured in uber-seconds, uber-minutes, uber-hours, or uber-days. When the uber unit is invoked, it is understood that the laws of physics are bypassed with their invocation, allowing you to do the impossible.
On a more serious note, I wonder if people say these things to feel better about themselves or does MMORPG really suck you in so much that you begin to lose any sense of time? I know there are plenty of times where I was planning on to play an hour and ended up playing five, but at least I am aware that five hours have indeed passed. It seems like some people would still think only one hour has passed even if the clock goes from 10pm to 3am. Well obviously there's going to be a bit of both, but which is the more dominant factor?
"I can hit level X in 3 days" (3 days here means 72 hours of continous playing).
"The kill rate for my group is Z mobs per hour" (where Z is a number roughly equal to two times the number of mobs that can spawn in one hour)
"WoW is so easy that you can hit level 80 playing 30 minutes a day for 3 months" (that'd be 45 hours of playing time, which would easily shatter any record for solo fast leveling known to man)
I used to try to point out the inherent impossibility of some of these quoted numbers, but I realized I'm not going to be able to change the world. So if you can't beat them, join them. MMORPG, and any time-intensive gaming activity, should have a new unit of time, the uber-time. Activity can be measured in uber-seconds, uber-minutes, uber-hours, or uber-days. When the uber unit is invoked, it is understood that the laws of physics are bypassed with their invocation, allowing you to do the impossible.
On a more serious note, I wonder if people say these things to feel better about themselves or does MMORPG really suck you in so much that you begin to lose any sense of time? I know there are plenty of times where I was planning on to play an hour and ended up playing five, but at least I am aware that five hours have indeed passed. It seems like some people would still think only one hour has passed even if the clock goes from 10pm to 3am. Well obviously there's going to be a bit of both, but which is the more dominant factor?
