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A timesink is a term used to describe things that consume a lot of time.
In massively multiplayer online role-playing games, the term is used disparagingly to describe a simplistic and time-consuming aspect of gameplay that was possibly designed as a thinly veiled attempt to keep players playing longer. Boring and lengthy parts of gameplay are merely an annoyance when found in most games, but in MMORPGs where players are paying for the time to play, they become controversial. Game designers must be prudent in balancing efforts to produce both involving gameplay and the length of content that players expect. Common timesinks are fights where you only have to press the same attack-button again and again or quests that require you to run for a long time to deliver an item from one NPC to another. Another time sink is the fact that life and mana regenerate in general much slower than offline rpg games, usually forcing the player to sit and wait for the life and mana to regenerate so that it is safe to continue fighting monsters. This is called "downtime" and is a component of MMORPG's that is heavily critized.
A timesink, much like a heatsink, can also refer to any project or endeavor that dissipates excess time, much the same way that a heatsink dissipates excess heat.
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