'You have been playing for 1 hour.' Message - Update?

"You've been playing for 1 month, turn off your computer and rejoin the real world"

that is pretty wierd seeing a message like that pop up every hour. Anet is being the psychiatrist here...

I hope this isnt going to be some sort of time enforcement.

I dont want to see:
"You have been playing for 6 hours, we are now going to disconnect you!"

Im normally on for a good 4 or 5 hrs at a time sometimes a lot longer on the weekends.

A Clock would get ignored, or turned off in the options..

The health & Saftey law in the UK states that any company cannot force an employee to look at a VDU for longer than an hour without a 10 minute break, this protects the employee's Eye health.

there are also RSI risks..

along with the law's regarding online play in the far east ANET are making every effort to protect themselves from international laws which are there to protect you and me from very real health hazards.

I dont mind this at all and its a very sensible thing to implement.

ahhh the almight powers of OSH
they can shut down any business if they don't implement ergonomics.

I think the only funny thing here is the fact that so many people are annoyed by the fact that they cant turn a blind eye to the number of hours they are wasting behind their computer monitors.

utterly incorrent analogy

more players = more bandwidth used = more money spent

Some couple in far-east forgot to feed their baby because they were too busy with World of Warcraft. The baby died. I think this is a good idea, to snap out of it and take a break.

I dont mind the message... it will definitely be great to know hey I've been sitting here 2 hours I better take a break and eat/clean/shower, whatever. Just some people leave their GW on when they go do other things, I think most ppl are worried they might get kicked off after so long. Otherwise I think its a good idea, especially for the eyes to relax and the legs to get some movement!

meh anet are just covering their own arses... if someone has a seizure or develops poor eyesight of rsi and trys to sue anet is covered because it took reasonable steps to ensure players didnt play too long.

guess its an american thing as any such lawsuit wouldnt make it far here in england

when I first heard of it, I recalled the whole apple ipod volume thing and thought this was a pre-emptive measure also...

I have a fiancee in the other room that does pretty much the same thing as this update, so it doesn't really bug me any.

Can't we all agree that at some point things stop being related to "addiction" and the like and are more just a function of extreme irresponsibility? I mean, come on, if they were that clueless, they'd have almost certainly killed the kid some other way eventually anyhow.

I would love a clock option

I agree - they no doubt had neglected the child before. Its not the games fault, its the people who PLAY the games fault. I can understand for the eyesight problems and blood clot problems and stuff sitting so long staring at a computer screen could cause, but no one should blame the irresponsibilities of parents on a game!

No way in heck that happened.

Kids scream bloody murder... where they in a sound proof room?

I am sure that the parents required food and drink themselves... they would have heard the child screaming.

I am sure that they needed bio breaks... they would have heard the child screaming.

Even if the child died because it was not fed there is no way I blame that on the game not having a freaking CLOCK or warning of how much time you have been on.

If it did happen I hope the parents get sentenced to life in a labor camp.

is it character specific.. im guessing it only works when the game is logged in.. so me swapping chars to do the 2 new quests wont help??

thankfully i dont have kids
and my sig other spends about teh same ammount of time in gw as i do

Correction, they parents were playing in an internet cafe and their baby suffocated at home. There are also reports that people die of malnutrition because they can't stop playing.

Actually, the parents ran off to an internet cafe. Somewhere in South Korea (why does it always seem like it's the Asians that are totally fixated and in the media? Like the guy that suffered heart failure from playing three days straight or something...okay, well, there was that one exception of the Evercrack guy.) This is, like, old, old news from last year.

http://arstechnica.com/journals/thum.../2005/6/21/547
http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/06...s_6127866.html
(can't find link to original source, these are as close as I can get)

Neverwinternights already had something like this. On loading screens it would say "Even though the characters don't need food and sleep, the players do." or something like that.

Baldur's Gate has that "tip" in it too. Says something about not wanting to lose any good players.

This is a good feature. For people who want to keep playing, keep playing.

For those of us (like me), who do sometimes get caught up doing a quest and don't realize it's 3 in the morning, it's a good way to keep track of how long you've been playing.

(of course, most of the time my wife lets me know through her customized high pitched verbal warning system...)