Poll: Have You Ever Bought Gold?

A few weeks ago I asked the question "Are Gold Farmers Really All That Bad?" and I have to say that I was really impressed with the discussion that post generated. I was also surprised just polarizing that subject was with my readers, many of who were completely against the entire idea of gold farming and thought the idea was morally reprehensible. While others took the side that in a free market economy anything goes, if there is demand then enterprising people will provide the supply.

So let's tackle a simple topic this week, have you ever bought gold for an MMORPG before? I also added a few other answers in there besides the standard "yes" and "no", but it will be interesting to see just how many people have taken part of this practice.

And for the record I have bought gold in WoW as research for a piece in a past Gaming Steve podcast episode. I did it twice and I have never done it since ... so there we go. Let the voting begin!

Have you ever bought gold?
	Yes, I have bought gold for WoW
	Yes, I have bought gold/money for another MMORPG
	No, but I plan to in the near future
	No, but I would if I had more money
	No, buying gold is evil

Poll Results: How Many Hours Have You Spent Playing World of Warcraft?

I asked a little less than two weeks ago "How Many Hours Have You Spent Playing World of Warcraft?" and the results were a bit surprising (at least to me). When I was making the poll I never thought that anyone would really answer more than 2000 hours. But yet 11% of the people who voted claim that they have spent more than 2500 hours playing WoW, which is pretty mind-blowing if true.

But then I started to think about it a little. Personally I have spent around 500 hours total playing WoW since the release -- I forgot to include time spent playing my Alt characters last time, but that does not include my time spent playing the "Blizzard Friends and Family WoW Beta" for one year (in which case my grand total would be well over 1000 hours). And most of those 500 hours were played during the first two months after release when I was playing WoW like crazy. So let's say that in just two months time I played about 400 hours of WoW in total. And when I was playing I was also working fulltime, so I could only at night and during the weekends, yet somehow I managed to squeeze in 400 hours of gameplay. That, in retrospect, was totally crazy (I think I can see why my wife was starting to get a bit peeved at me playing this game all the time).

Now I can only imagine how much you could play this game if you had a fair amount of free time on your hands. I have one friend who was unemployed and he would easily play 80-100 hours of WoW ... per week. So I guess I really shouldn't be that surprised that there are people out there pumping 2500+ hours into this game since its release.

What I want to know is what are you doing during this time? Once I hit level 60 a lot of the "buzz" faded from the game and it just hasn't had the same hold over me since. What are you people who are playing WoW (or any MMO for that matter) hundreds of hours a month doing? What is keeping your interest in these games?

Look for a new poll tomorrow!

Poll: How Many Hours Have You Spent Playing World of Warcraft?

Tonight I was speaking to a friend who was contemplating quitting World of Warcraft because he was starting to get "bored" with it. So I asked him what level his characters were and it turns out that he has two level 60 characters, one level 50 character, another level 35 character, and several other "miscellaneous" characters. In total he said that he's played around 1500 hours (and he's just starting to get bored?).

The crazy part is that my other friend, who was also present during this discussion and just recently quit WoW, managed to build up three characters to level 60 as well as "at least one character of each class to at least level 35". When I asked him about his timed played he wouldn't give me a definitive answer but he said that "all together it was over 100 days in total".

That's 2400 hours playing just WoW ... and he just quit ... and he said he was going to start it up again when the expansion came out. Wow.

I myself am a mere novice compared to my friends as I've barely logged 400 hours into the game. I don't know about you, but to me spending 400 hours on any one game represents a huge amount of time, but my commitment to WoW pales in comparison to them (as well as most of my friends).

So my question to those out there who are pouring your gaming hours into WoW, how many hours have you spent in the land of Azeroth? (FYI, you can determine your total time playing with any one character by issuing the "/played" command.)

This poll is now closed, but you can view the results.