How many hours a day?

A good friend of mine is temporarily giving up Aion. Two reasons led to this decision:

• financial issues (scary, no?)
• time issues

the latter reason (=time) being more important. He told me:

"After I stopped playing Aion, my day got 8 hours longer."

But this makes no sense, I thought. He did not really play 8 hours a day.

Oh wait..

He might not play, but he was connected for quite a lot every day.. After all, each day he had to:

• craft two heliotrops 
• log with each toon, visit trader to sell items
• do daily quest
• do other daily quest
• craft potions or food or scrolls

 And it is not just him, we all have to do those as often as possible.

And of course some of the days you have to:

• do Abyssal Splinter quest run
• do weekly quests

Yet those are "complementary" activities, none of them is *really* playing. Because when you "really" play, you will do an instance, dredgion, or some kind of legion activity. Time starts to stretch.

When you want to do an instance like Esoterrace or Besh, you need to:

• wait for group to complete
• wait for random-group-member-1 to eat before you start
• wait for random-group-member-2 to re-connect after dc

Ok this is getting serious - too much auxiliary time, lost time, noise, for each "real" activity.

As I think of the "to-do" list, the list keeps getting longer. I am worried.

 Xkcd demonstrates one way to make it.