I play such "social" games less often because of this, and play online games more, since there's less downtime... except when I start to play with a group... DDO was all right, "before", because we were all getting experienced in the game at the same time, and accelerated about the same as we got further in...
Now, going back to get some newer friends into it, it feels painfully slow, and I alternate between zipping ahead and pissiing people off, or sitting around waiting for things to happen, staying back, and stewing. Had a bad night of it last night, and I know I need to get this impatience thing under control before next week's game.
If only there weren't "productive" feeling games that make waiting around feel inefficient.
(Edit: also, this impatience causes me to make tactical errors in games far too often)