I believe the thing to understand here is that what everyone defines as an 'appropriate' timesink will vary from person to person, within a range. Too convenient and it won't feel like an accomplishment, too time consuming and it will feel like the game is artificially increasing the time required to complete something. All MMO developers are going to consider this when creating their games. It's impossible for them to create content as fast as their players will be able to consume it if they don't consider actual time to completion.
Your perspective on how timesink affects you is directly related to how much time you have to devote to the game. Blizzard looked at EQ1 and saw it's success, but knew that if they curtailed some of the timesink, their playerbase would increase dramatically. It's not the only reason they are successful, but it helps retain players in the long run who don't have a lot of time to play.
If Blizzard failed at a part of the timesink, it's that their timesink is completely game mechanics based, instead of part of the world. In EQ, rare mobs are not always available, which is a realistic assumption to consider. It also takes time and is dangerous to travel to some areas. In WoW, it's much easier to find every corner of the world that is interesting and complete the content, so they have developed systems like the 'badges' that you collect for doing instanced dungeons. This makes the game easier to play in small chunks, but loses a great deal of the immersion into the game.
|