Attention Span: A Common Misconception?

[Slide]

Originally Posted by Etadanik

So, what do you think?

Rubbish. You have nailed the fact that adults have less time to play on these games, and kids and university students have more time.

Kids spend there 8 hours a day being ADD, dropping groups, looking for shinies, forgetting about shinies they were looking for etc. Adults tend to have a day worth of planning involved in their minimal play session.

It is a stupid parrallel to draw.

[Etadanik]

Well, the thread has become EQ vs. WoW once again

I've always subscribed to the idea that EQ was a better MMO, while WoW is a better game. That's ignoring the aging issue discussed in this thread, of course.

[Etadanik]

Originally Posted by Slide

Rubbish. You have nailed the fact that adults have less time to play on these games, and kids and university students have more time.

Kids spend there 8 hours a day being ADD, dropping groups, looking for shinies, forgetting about shinies they were looking for etc. Adults tend to have a day worth of planning involved in their minimal play session.

It is a stupid parrallel to draw.

I don't think so. Spending eight hours a day being ADD would imply that people actually had activities to switch between. That's just blatantly false with respect to older games. If you didn't settle down and grind/camp/etc., you didn't do anything.

Don't be so retarded and confuse the few idiots on a server (who are probably played by attention seeking teens anyhow) with kiddie gamers in general. I've observed kids who are addicted to games and MMOs, and they are, very much, capable of being goal-oriented and focused. Adults, on the other hand, can't help but be "ADD" in the sense we talk about it on this board - not the specific psychological condition of ADD or ADHD, but the presence of shorter attention or tolerance spans with respect to monotonous activities.

If you can only play 30 minutes a day, your effective attention span in-game is 30 minutes, regardless of what you do. It's also likely, in this case, that your gaming habits will adapt and make your attention span for monotonous activities even less (since doing 30 minutes of tedium isn't anyone's idea of fun).

[Wizerud]

Originally Posted by ElGallo

Yeah, that's "b." Playing a MMO is worth it, even when the only MMO available is a tedious shitfest. Now that we have MMOs that aren't tedious shitfests, we play those instead.

I'm not sure that playing an MMO no matter how good or bad it is would force people to not play single-player games though. If I didn't think EQ was a great game aside from the community aspect I would have carried on playing my offline games.

[Zuuljin]

Originally Posted by ElGallo

I think they are trying to appeal to a broader audience, not an older or younger one. The only people EQ1 appealed to were (a) the borderline retarded and (b) people so desperate for a fantasy MMO that they were willing to debase themselves to the level of a borderline retard just to play one.

I disagree. Alot of people still play EQ1 even though there are many more MMO's out there, and I would be one of them if it were not for my limited play schedule. If I won the lottery and never had to work again, I would pick up EQ1 in a heartbeat. The community building aspects of the game are much better then whats out there now, and there is a much greater sense of accomplishment for things. If that makes me retarted, so be it. I spent countless hours playing which could have been time spent doing more important stuff, but given the chance to go back and change things, I would still choose to play as I did.

[Wizerud]

Indeed and going back to the original point of the thread if you were never at the cutting edge of expansions or in an uberguild but had a regular group of friends to hang out with it's likely that running out of content will never be a problem. You probably wont have to spend too much time camping shit because it's rare that you'll find an item unique or good enough to beat out bazaar gear that you could kill by yourself or with a group. You log in, you do what the fuck you want, and you log off. Every day. There's no pressure to do anything, even levelling. I think this represents a large number of people still playing EQ (including me). These kinda players aren't forced into situations where they are having to be patient with regard to drops (as often) so the "ADD" issue doesn't arise too much. When it does happen, the rewards are probably actually worth it.