My latest MMO addiction continues to consume a surprising amount of my evenings, though I have found a way to get at least some of my time back.

Simply put, I park my adorable butt in town, put myself into the dungeon finder queue, and then get work done while I wait on the chime that says I have a group available.

This has slowed my leveling way down. I made 52 last night, so I still have 8 levels to go until cap, and those are reputedly fairly slow even if you are making a concerted effort to chase yellow exclamation marks and grind quests. It’s going to take me a while.

This isn’t such a bad thing, however. I find that I’m really enjoying the dungeons, and rushing to cap would mean cutting myself off from many of the high-40s to low-50s instances. I already cut myself off from the low-20s dungeon before I realized it, so I’ll need to make one of those nasty alt things if I want to run it at level.

The instances definitely are getting a little more complex as I level. It’s still pretty basic stuff – this boss summons adds, this other one enrages and kills the whole party if he’s not defeated in time, this one drops barrels that explode, er, explosively if you hit them accidentally… It’s enough to make the fights interesting, but not so much as to be overwhelming. I’ve been able to finish every instance so far in a pick-up group with, at most, two wipes.

Compared to, oh, EQ2, where some of the “group instances” were nigh-impossible without having the perfect mix of classes and all members equipped with better gear than actually dropped in the zone, it’s night and day.