I am confirming something I think I already knew; I can't play multiple MMOs. I'm trying to play Guild Wars 2 and on Saturday I just couldn't remember the path I set in-game. The fact that I'm only playing one day a week doesn't help. Usually when I play a game I play every day. I thought I had broken the cycle of depending on playing a game every day with Eve Online. Over the course of the past two years I've taken business trips where I have not even logged into the game for 2 or 3 weeks. When I got back I just picked up where I left off.
Is Eve special in some way? I guess the advent of the skills queue and EveMon helps. With EveMon I set up a training plan for a year at a time. In other games skills advancement is based on actually playing the game, which in the case of GW2 has meant a lot of grinding. Grinding breaks the flow of the quest trail (another feature missing in Eve) and then I forget where I am when I log back in a week later.
Another feature is the crafting system. In Eve, everything ship and ship mod (excluding rigs) needs tritanium, the first mineral a new player in Eve can extract. Other games make players collect different base metals depending on the tier of content. Guild Wars 2 is even more complicated with its discovery system. Don't get me wrong, I like it better than the crafting in other games. The system actually reminds me of the tech 2 production chain, except less complicated. But I keep forgetting what I want to accomplish.
I think the big difference is in Eve I don't have to worry about doing things to advance my characters abilities in-game. That leaves me free to pursue things I want to do, like bookmark low security systems or scan down signatures, without feeling I'm somehow falling behind. With every other game I almost have to log in every day just to keep the momentum up to advance my character. Trying to only play once a week feels strange. The only game I've really succeeded in doing that is Eve.
With no subscription fee, I can go back to Guild Wars 2 anytime I like. I do want to continue the experiment to see if I can play a game for one 2-3 hour play session a week. Maybe I can figure out how to yet.
