Loosing Track

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.