An occasional treat as you explore!
The hourglass and its associated “Time Well Spent” quests for the Explorer and Reporter classes are meant to be a fun “secondary quest/reward” as you explore news, game and profile pages on the site. They appear at random times and won’t necessarily show up all the time.
Questing suggestion: If you make the “Time Well Spent” quests your primary focus, they probably won’t be very fun, so we would encourage you to simply keep an eye out for them. Think Alice in Wonderland, where occasionally she’ll discover a potion or treat here and there 🙂
Where is the hourglass?
After you’ve been browsing a news, game or profile page for awhile an hourglass may appear. When it does, it will appear in the lower-right corner of your browser. Don’t wait too long to click on it because it disappears after 10 seconds.
Each time you click on an hourglass you will get a little XP reward. Even after you’ve completed the quests, the hourglasses will still appear, giving you XP when you click on them.
Below are descriptions of the Time Well Spent quests.
Time Well Spent – Games
Explorer Quest
Click on the hourglass 100 times while browsing game pages
Time Well Spent – Profiles
Explorer Quest
Click on the hourglass 100 times while browsing profile pages
Time Well Spent – News
Reporter Quest
Click on the hourglass 100 times while browsing news pages
I agree with others about this quest. I visit the site fairly frequently, but I read fast and I am almost never on any one page for longer than 90 seconds. I have only ever seen 2 hourglasses.
I really like the Easter Egg idea. Make it appear on certain pages and maybe give clues on which pages it is on for that day. Now that would be exploring!
P.S. – while writing this message – I saw my 3rd hourglass!
My post is waiting for moderation forever..
So I´m gonna repost here without the mention
I understand now, but BG is a site for players mainly. It´s our nature to try to accomplish the quests. And since people are questioning the mechanism why don´t we try to make it better in some way.
BTW, I tought the ideia awesome.
But I honestly disagree when you say that it´s on a good spot. Users have patterns for reading and the spot that was choosen is the worst location possible for identify something, even if you stick it there. Imagine how worse it can be if is just for a few seconds of appearence.
I´m just trying to help based on my skills
What do you think?
Having a chance for the hourglass to take a long time to show up isn’t necessarily bad; I don’t need to see an hourglass on every single page I visit, especially if I’m skimming. But I do want to occasionally see an hourglass even when I’m flipping between pages a lot.
So I’m thinking the maximum time of 180 seconds is probably fine; it could maybe even be higher. But the minimum of 90 is way too high. I’d try more like 10 or 15 seconds at the low end, so I sometimes see it even if I’m not reading the page thoroughly.
Ironically, I read the article and every single comment with care and when I was on the 2d to last comment on the page the hourglass appeared.
Which makes me think it probably should be appearing faster, as commenters have suggested, because the little boon should be available for faster readers than myself, too.
And (I’m surprised I’m the first one to raise this issue) *please* make the hourglass bigger. Clicking on the hourglass shouldn’t be a dexterity contest for slow people.
Thanks for all the great work, guys.
I would agree with Granny – randomize both the location of the hour glass and the time, but make the time shorter than at what it’s currently set.
I’d like to add my voice to others that say the wait is too long. I’ve often read everything I want from a page without having the hourglass pop up. But I do really like the idea.
@Gil
It’s more of an Easter Egg kind of thing and the location is clean and easy to see. It’s in a unused area of the page. BG is not trying to “prove” that you’ve read the page, it’s not homework. 🙂 BG is trying to provide little nuggets to make browsing pages fun on top of being informative.
I´m an information architect and in my humble opinion the concept is great but the operational is not so good.
I like the ideia to have a mechanism to verify if I´m really looking and reading and researching on the site, not just with page opened in background. But this mechanism can improve. I believe that the hourglass icon must appear in a more appropriated location on the screen, and so it can be better viewed. The purpose still remains but the efficiency of the feature will be increased.
Anybody else agree with that? 😉
One possibility to solve the time issue could be if the hourglasses work more like Easter eggs… only on some pages (cycling about, and showing up after a much shorter period of time). This would create the desired effect of people exploring the site, but not staying on a page long after they’ve read it.
I just want to chime in that I don’t like this quest. I am a fast reader and I spend a lot of time on this site, but I never saw an hourglass until I started really looking for them, and I have never had one appear “naturally” while browsing a page…. in other words, the only time I find them is when I intentionally park it on a page to look for one, and the idea of sitting around NOT doing anything on the site to earn exp and quest rewards is very un-fun. 🙁 I like the IDEA of explorer quests, I just wish it wasn’t punishing me for reading fast.
I agree that the timing is too long. 60 seconds should be pretty good, in my opinion. I love the idea of these quests though!
135 seconds (2.25 minutes) on average is too long! I AGREE.
I would rather read more on other pages than sit around waiting for this
I HAVE DEFEATED EACH OF THE QUEST! HAHAHAHA! Ohhh look there it is again. Get it!
135 seconds (2.25 minutes) on average is too long!
I loved these little Hourglasses and am still working to achieve them daily!
I like them french fried potaters,… but I still have to wait a long time for the hourglass after I’m done reading. 🙂
Problem is that it usually takes about half that time to read news and profiles….timing on this needs to be cut just about in half. Case in point, read the article, read the reviews, posted….still no hourglass. Far to long unless you are Slingblade or something.
This one was confusing for me too.. thanks for the clarification.. now to wait for my hour glass for this page… :]
The best is when I’m watching a video and one comes up in the background… disappearing before I can shut the video down and click… click… click.
I’m waiting right now to get one…
… still waiting…
… still waiting…
… still waiting…
… still waiting…
… still waiting…
… still waiting…
Ah! Got you, you little HG!
Curse my speed reading and ADD! I sometimes feel like I’m waiting to click on something until the hourglass shows up, and then racing around to do something else. Which is why I don’t have enough of these yet!
I’d be calmer, but these are GAMES! If I can’t be way too excited about games, then what can I be excited about?