And what game?
Roughly 30 000 hours in WoW. I’ve been playing it since 2005 - mostly active, only a couple of 1-6 month breaks.
Quick approximation - let’s just ignore the exact dates:
- 18 years * 365 = 6570 days
- 30000 hours / 6570 days = ~4.57 hours/day
During the last 18 years, I’ve played an average of 4h 34min of WoW every day.
In other words: if I sleep 8 hours a day, during the last 18 years, I’ve spent about 28% of my waking hours playing WoW.
While I’m at it: I’m 34 years old. I have spent roughly 10% of my life playing WoW.
jfc lmao
Other MMOs: Guild Wars 1 & 2, FFXIV, are all between 1000-1500 hours each.
Outside of MMOs, the #1 is probably Trackmania (2020) at ~600 hours.
How much of that time was actually spent playing? A huge percentage of my /played is standing around either AFK or using the game as a chat client
Vast majority of it is active playing - I’ve thought about this earlier too, and I really rarely just afk or stand around while in game. Even if I’m just waiting for eg. raid to start, I usually just go do some gathering, pet battles, dailies, something.
Ah, I forgot about raiding
Almost 1000 hours in Rocksmith 2014. Yes, I still suck.
Slay The Spire: 850 hours. I feel like I’ll never get bored at a retirement home because I’ll just keep playing Slay The Spire. It’ll be my mahjong equivalent.
World of Warcraft since 2004. Why measure in hours when you can measure in years?
Same same. It’s something disgusting too like 4+ years.
Other than that one probably football manager at like 2k hours.
I’d rather not say exactly how many hours, but it’s Factorio so… a lot.
3,545 hrs in Rimworld. Minecraft is probably up there too, but I don’t have an exact number. In both cases, I just keep coming back and starting over with a fresh set of mods.
It is a toss up between Starcraft Brood War and Minecraft. I stopped counting at 30,000 starcraft games and Ive played minecraft since java classic
Gotta feed the beast
Minecraft. Probably over 15,000 hours playing servers modpacks, developing mods. It’s been 13 years now!?!
I wish I had my Minecraft hours. I’ve been playing since Beta on PC across many PCs. I bought it on Xbox 360, separately for Xbox One, and Android. I think I would compete with some of the WOW players here tbh…
According to my Steam account, it’s Satisfactory with 823.4 hours played. Runner up: Team Fortress 2 with 547.5 hours.
I’m not sure that count is accurate for games I’ve owned a long time like the Half Life series; I KNOW I have more than Steam’s claimed 32 hours in Half Life 2, and I absolutely have more time than the 12.1 hours logged in Half Life 1.
I’m kinda curious about certain SNES games like A Link to the Past, which I’ve played over and over since they were new. I bet I have a thousand hours in at least one SNES game.
World of Warcraft no doubt. About 2500 hours per year and been active for 12-ish years.
War thunder is probably second at about 3.5k hours.
I have no way of estimating Diablo 2 or Starcraft 2 or Baldurs gate 2.
Just to put the in context, you would need to play every single day for roughly 6.8 hours in order to rack up 2500 hours in a year.
To further contextualize, in the U.S. a full time job, that is a job wherein one works a combination of days each week (typically 5 8-hour days but sometimes 4 10-hour days) is around 40 hours each week, or 2080 hours a year.
The typical worker also takes vacation, sick days, etc equaling between 1-3 weeks each year. Meaning they may not even work an actual 2000 hours each year due to time off.
So you are putting in more time to WoW each year than the typical full time worker is to their job.
And you still have time for other games.
I do one game at a time, but about 2500 hours per year.
I’ve got 5 weeks of paid vacation and 40 hours work week.
I don’t like traveling, I don’t want kids, I don’t like going out on weekends, I don’t watch TV or series on Netflix. Minor optimization on adult chores such as meal prep and a 10 minute commute leaves a lot of time for whatever I want.
2500 hours per year
That is… more than a full-time job
Jesus Christ dude. Do you have a job?
Yes, average 40 hours per week for the last 10 years.
Arma 3, 1,234 hours according to Steam.
This, but 4k hours. Simultaneously the best and worst game I’ve ever played.
DayZ mod?
I messed with that a bit in the early days but it was so janky. Chernarus is my favorite map though.
I played the campaigns co-op, a lot of co-op scenarios, and also a lot of scenarios like Pilgrimage, Antistasi, and all the randomized ones like DUWS.
Cart racing, Star Wars mods, WW2 mods, the mods really made A3 amazing.
How do you get into the game modes? I played all the campaign and there’s nothing left
You can play Scenarios (missions) by following these directions: https://arma3.com/workshop101
Some scenarios require mods. I would first either pick scenarios that don’t need mods or need only a few. Mods are subscribed to the same way but you enable them in the Arma 3 launcher, and they will take effect in all scenarios when you have them enabled.
The quality of scenarios varies widely, but the popular ones are usually pretty good.
Probably chess. I have tens of thousands of games on all the separate accounts I use online, not counting over the board games- both casual and tournament. Also game analysis, reading chess books, and watching chess videos.
I have no way of estimating but I’m certain we’re in the thousands of hours region.
Guess it depends on which time format you are playing, but even ten thousand games of bullet adds up, and it always amazes me how much time increments can add to total duration too. What’s your rating after that many games?
On 2+1 bullet I hover around 1900-2100 depending on the week. 10+0 I’m consistently 2100~
When I started playing chess I was like 600. I quickly made it up to around ~1200 and then got stuck for a while. Then it was like 6 or 7 years or so playing chess on and off. Would go up 100 or 200 points and then plateau for 6 months.
Also yeah most of the games are bullet. But I do have >1000 10+0 games
Damn. That’s a very solid rating. I feel that improve and plateau as well. Did you do any study or really just through playing games?
I study my 5 min and longer games. There’s an open source chess game database where I input the games. I set it up so it runs stockfish and I can write annotations and notes.
I will go over each game and write notes on what I was thinking, potential things I could have done better, mistakes I made, tactics I missed, mistakes my opponents made, etc. That type of thing
Then after going through and writing a sort of summary of the game with a couple takeaway points I turn on the engine and go through a second time to see if my analysis was correct and see things I missed. One thing I learned very quickly that the engine makes you look like a dumbass 😅
Although from what I’ve read even people like Carlsen experience that.
Saving all my games in the database is useful because I can see my win rate in specific openings. So for example I’ll play an opening like let’s say French defense on White’s side. I play the Tarrasch variation.
- e4 e6
- d4 d5
- Nd2
Here the typical response, and one I have a good win rate against, is 3 … Nf6 which leads to the mainline. However, through looking at the opening statistics I saw I had a 30% win rate against 3 … c5 (terrible compared to the 65% win rate against 3 … Nf6)
So seeing this, I do some research on that specific line of the opening and I now have a response. Through this type of trial and error after game analysis you start to learn many sidelines of openings and you better understand the ideas and themes prevelant in those types of positions.
In addition to all that, I study openings using books. I play the same openings every opportunity I can. I always start with e4 and for example I have a response against the three most common moves.
- e4 e5
Here I play the Danish Gambit
- d4 exd4
- c3 dxc3
- Bc4 cxb2
- Bxb2
I have read a book about this opening, as well as studied it through engine and of course the post game statistics.
Against the Sicilian I have the Smith Morra (excellent book out there called “Mayhem in the Morra” I highly recommend)
- e4 c5
- d4 cxd4
- c3 dxc3
- Nxf3
And of course against the French I have the Tarrasch Variation which I outlined earlier in this comment. I try to stick to the same openings every game and I try to learn more about those openings. This way over time I’ve picked up many many sidelines of openings and I know the best move to strange or unusual sidelines.
So… to finally answer your question.
It’s both. I study and I play. At the end of the day, you need to play otherwise you will never improve. However, you also cannot just play. You can play mindlessly for years and you will never get any better.
There are people online with tens of thousands of bullet games and they are rated 1000 still.
You need to study and analyze your games, as well as outside material, in order to be able to take that practice and internalize the lessons.
Dang dude, that’s some dedication. I’ve started playing a year ago and just reaching around 1000 now. Mainly blitz and bullet as with kids it’s hard to focus on longer games. I really enjoy puzzles though - not sure if that helps me much. Apparently my puzzle rating is 1750 for whatever that’s worth.
I find it really satisfying when I improve again though as I’ve definitely plateaued or taken breaks a few times. Any advice for someone at my level?
2100 Binding of Isaac Rebirth
I passed 520 hours last night in Stardew Valley
This is over the course of 9 years. I haven’t played in a couple months now, (the aug 22 last played was just me entering my house so it doesn’t get demolished) but the itch will come back. It always does.
Yeah I’ve got about 6k hours in FFXIV as well
