Board Game Arena

I just signed up for the free account about a week ago to see how I like this. My question is…are ]all the wait times to play games forever or is that only because I’m on a free account? Is it different on a paid account? There are a few games where I can leave it searching for players for literal hours with not one other player

Depends on the game. Popular games fill more quickly, more frequently. Also depends if you're seeking real-time or turn-based. I mostly play the latter, but from what I understand real-time games are generally harder to come by and a bit moreso than usual due to some ongoing site reliability issues.

ETA: A quick browse of your game history suggests real-time, and probably nothing super popular (though some games, eg. Love Letter should be moderately popular I think?). So I am not the person to ask about real-time game availability since I rarely play it and don't have a good concept of wait times. Even premium members do have to wait sometimes though - ie. until enough players join who want to play with the same settings as you (ie. table speed, number of players, expansions or not, etc.).

VIKING HULK wrote: ↑21 April 2026, 05:37 My question is…are ]all the wait times to play games forever or is that only because I’m on a free account? Is it different on a paid account?

No, but… So when joining a table, BGA doesn’t prefer premium to non premium players. But if you want to play a premium game and are premium yourself, you are able to open a table of that game. Which means, other people willing to play can join. If only non premium players are searching for a premium game, no one will be able to play.

Please note that you don't necessarily have to pay for premium, there are other possibilities by helping BGA: https://boardgamearena.com/contribute

As nik592 has described, waiting time depends on the popularity of the game as well. That's why you can activate a notifation bell for games which have a low player base, in order to get a toaster notification if someone is looking for players in this game.

As for how to set the bell, go to that game's page, set select Play and Real-Time and you will see a message saying "Expected waiting time: >15 min" and underneath that message a box with a bell in it explaining how the bell works. So the threshold seems to be an estimated wait time of over 15 minutes. (Click the bell again to unsubscribe.)

You can see your monitored games here: https://boardgamearena.com/gamelist?isWatched=

Please also note that you can join several real-time tables at a time. The moment one of the tables starts, you are automatically unsubscribed from the other ones.

Otherwise, I suggest to make friends with players you enjoyed to play your favorite games with and invite each other.

cigma wrote: ↑21 April 2026, 11:50 Please also note that you can join several real-time tables at a time. The moment one of the tables starts, you are automatically unsubscribed from the other ones.

I’ll also note that, if you use “Play Now” at the top of the screen, you can join multiple tables of different games—for those occasions when you want to play something but don’t much care if it’s Toy Battle or Love Letter or Knarr. (Note: in that page you probably want to explore the options in the “gear” menu on each game. Or select “Manual” instead of “Automatic” at the top.)