Where have all the hardcore players gone?

[shise]

They're still there, clearing heroic content several months before it's nerfed and the "casual baddies" can even try it (and still fail)

Yes, but remember.. many "casuals" are better players than the current "hard core" players, jsut don't have the time to be hard core anymore.

Casual doesn't mean bad, casual means lack of time to take it serious.

Bad players are bad players.. and they are on the casual side but also in the hard core side.. trust me

[Queen of Hamsters]

not dying for casual

dying for me, same result for me, stoped playing like my 40 other guildmates

btw do not arguing, i don't care

Oh wow, and me and my 50 guildmates keep playing just fine and dandy (none casually, mind you).

I don't care if you don't care, don't post on forums if you don't want answers to your statements.

This logic of "I see the world in a certain light, that must make it true for everyone else" is really making me hurl...there will ALWAYS be room for both hardcore players, casuals, people in-between and all that jazz in this game as long as they do not decide to scrap content and just have us play Darkmoon faire games all day long. They're even adding challenge modes, more challenging ways of killing raid bosses and so on this time around.

[klaps_05]

You people are talking like vanilla raiders are some incredible hardcore players with 200 IQ and involved in game design. I have been a hardcore raider since vanilla, but I know MANY people who have started in tbc/wotlk/cataclysm and are JUST AS good as me. You are implying no new player can be as hardcore as those in vanilla, but that is wrong as it only requires some dedication.

Think of it like this - if some amazing TV series is cancelled due to whatever reason, does that mean there will never be another TV series that will break its records? Please, stop putting vanilla raiders on a pedestal, we aren't as special as people think.

[Syran]

Saying that hardcore players have moved on is just moronic. They're still very much around, still clearing the hardest content whilst it hard and that's that. WoW ain't easier than any other mmorpg mind you, never has been. It has always been 12+, but you people seem to fool yourselves into thinking that it used to be 25+ and requiring a degree in rocket science. I must ask...for what?

If there was no competition, there would be no competing for world first kills. Unless you are on those world ranking kills, you can't really say zit about it being easy and something a 6-year old could do (nice lying there to prove your "point").

WoW has been significantly easier than most of the MMO's of the time back in 2004, it was always casual relative to others. Save from HC raiding /high end arena it's probably still one of the easiest games out on the market.

[Queen of Hamsters]

WoW has been significantly easier than most of the MMO's of the time back in 2004, it was always casual relative to others. Save from HC raiding /high end arena it's probably still one of the easiest games out on the market.

I've tried all mmorpgs currently on the market, and no...I wouldn't say that. Some bring different mechanics, but in the end there's content for all types of players. Be it stomping bees nests for a reward, or killing the hardest pve content possible. WoW was however very accessible from the start (and that's saying something considering how grindy it was) and that's part of why it became so HUGE. If looking at the amount of guilds downing the hardest content whilst relevant, it's plain to see that hardcores NEVER made up a majority of the playerbase, nor built this game which is why it's incredibly hilarious when some people state that "If hardcore players stop playing, the game will die!".

[Deleted]

No it's not, because the second is reminding a fact while the first is a way to paint an entire population as being kid that were hardcore only because they never had any responsibility.

So the second is a fact because you say so and the first can't be a fact because you view the term in a negative way?

So no one ever grew out of the game according to you? Or just no one "hardcore"?

[Queen of Hamsters]

You people are talking like vanilla raiders are some incredible hardcore players with 200 IQ and involved in game design. I have been a hardcore raider since vanilla, but I know MANY people who have started in tbc/wotlk/cataclysm and are JUST AS good as me. You are implying no new player can be as hardcore as those in vanilla, but that is wrong as it only requires some dedication.

Think of it like this - if some amazing TV series is cancelled due to whatever reason, does that mean there will never be another TV series that will break its records? Please, stop putting vanilla raiders on a pedestal, we aren't as special as people think.

Amen to this. Some common sense and humility, finally!

[Grym]

Why does everyone instantly go "go kill DW with no buff before you allow to call it easy"?

I like T11, I didn't managed to get 13/13 HC, I was only 8/13 HC, but it was good, I enjoy it, I enjoy how I can compare myself (and my guild) against others on the server, during T11, every kill counts, you can very easily tell guilds apart. T13? Not so much, nearly most of the raid guilds are 8/8 HC, can't really tell them apart anymore.
I am not in the world first league, but doesn't mean I cannot care about where do I stand on the server, and against other guilds on the server, in fact, that is pretty much what I find fun, and I am sure a lot would agree, especially those who hated all the nerf and made everything seems trivial.

Just accept the fact there, there are people that are NOT in world first league, that cares about where they stand on the server league, and for those, the current state of WoW sucks, as pretty much every guilds are 8/8 HC now. I don't mind Cata difficulty, in fact I prefer it to be "bashing head against brick wall", as long as you can see distinctive difference between guilds I am happy.

I didn't clear 13/13HC in T11, but I felt I have acheived more than the 8/8 HC in DS.

[Akka]

So the second is a fact because you say so and the first can't be a fact because you view the term in a negative way?

So no one ever grew out of the game according to you? Or just no one "hardcore"?

Oh okay, you're just trolling and purposedly pretending to not understand.
Sorry to have wasted time trying to communicate. I guess you feel proud about the massive accomplishment of playing dumb on a forum

[Vulryth]

everyone here is copmletely ignoring the fact that most harcore players finished the content a half a year ago and are taking a break till mists of pandaria. you all need to try and think from different perspectives more often, my guild on my alt has everyone playing other games together since they cleared dragon soul on heroic months ago. no point in repeatedly clearing it over and over again. we will play again when there is new stuff to do.

[Syran]

I've tried all mmorpgs currently on the market, and no...I wouldn't say that. Some bring different mechanics, but in the end there's content for all types of players. Be it stomping bees nests for a reward, or killing the hardest pve content possible. WoW was however very accessible from the start (and that's saying something considering how grindy it was) and that's part of why it became so HUGE. If looking at the amount of guilds downing the hardest content whilst relevant, it's plain to see that hardcores NEVER made up a majority of the playerbase, nor built this game which is why it's incredibly hilarious when some people state that "If hardcore players stop playing, the game will die!".

What I meant was it was very casual relative to others then, today's there's more choice in that regard of course.

Hardcores were always a minority, but an important minority, the driving force of progress, raid testing, theorycrafting, big part of WoW-related media were memorable boss kill movies with millions of views (Illidan, KJ, Algalon, ...). Best players on the realms were always known well, people followed them around, changing servers because of them (the whole Nihilum craze is the evidence back in TBC). I know who the best Retri Paladins were on my server in TBC (the underdog spec), who the major PvP figures were, and so on.

The game will not die if the hardcores stop playing, there will always be some degree of hardcore because some people will differentiate from the mass and climb on top, but the issue (or not, depends on POV) is how the game and community will acknowledge that and what becomes of game reputation when everyone is averaged out and doing pretty much the same thing.

[vian]

I guess, they're hiding in their parents basemet, waiting for new content? ; )

[Hyve]

Another thread attempting to lure the World of Warcraft community into a discussion bound for terrible things.

Hardmode, Hardcore & Heroic Raiders are all still out there. There is also nothing wrong with casual players. Many of them I know personally kicked my ass to getting Heroic Deathwing before I did. Casual does not inherently mean bad.

---------- Post added 2012-09-03 at 05:50 PM ----------

I guess, they're hiding in their parents basemet, waiting for new content? ; )

Or Lofts / Attics!

[Crashdummy]

Then read your post in 2 years and cry on how blind and deluded you were. Ofcourse if you still will be playing WoW. Some people need to see things with their own eyes to believe.

Do you really think there is someone playing because of Paragon, vodka and other guilds doing stuff they cant?

Are you in that group? Because that would be so sad...

People play games for fun. For some people fun comes from challenge, for some others doesnt, there is a reason why casual games with almost no challenge are popular, very popular.

---------- Post added 2012-09-03 at 02:31 PM ----------

In mechanics, I tend to agree. In challenge, I disagree - some fights are indeed in the same league, but as a whole the game's challenge has plummeted. You can't just look at a few bosses in hard mode and consider than the game is more challenging, especially if we're talking about overall progression.

Again, you're talking about a minuscule amount of content. That some few bosses are hard to kill doesn't make the rest of the game challenging. Also, the artificial separation between HM and "normal" mode muddy the water a lot when it comes to progression - many see HM only as a very artificial and gimmicky addition.

Both Vanilla and TBC had raid bosses that were a joke. That always haoppened, they have more "challenging" bosses because they had more bosses.

Finally, I'd like to ask : what would magically make today's raiders better than raiders of the past ? I find the amusing coincidence of having people suddendly becoming better just when the game switch from a "progression" philosophy to a "everyone must win" philosophy rather contrived. People who started the game into LK have no more experience today than people who started the game at the start had in TBC, but somehow they would be better ? How so ?

Magically? Nothing, but they have more addons to help them (not talking about DBM here), more experience, more alts to stack classes, more balanced specs which means more valid specs which means more strategical posibilities.

People that started in LK is ussually not in the top, but they can, because the experience of the guild they are in or some other raiders (which probably comes from before) is transmitted to them, the organization and the general strategies.

The game never changed from a progression philosophy to an "everyone must win" philosophy, the game ALWAYS tried to be the most casual MMO in the market, it was when in Vanilla its competiros were EQ and UO, it was when TBC was introduced as a more casual friendly version of Vanilla, and it continued in Wrath.

Wrong on two accounts :
- GC never "mocked" people complaining, he explained why dungeons being slightly harder (they were still not "hard" by any means, and became very quickly easy through gearing) was better.
- The losses of subscribers were first reported in april 2011, while the massive nerf to everything happened in february. Certainly, a lot of these losses had probably happened sooner, but the fact they didn't stop once Blizzard switched back to the facerolling design of LK, doesn't really sustain the usual argument of "people left because Cata was hard".

He made a very big L2P blog mocking those making valid complains, so valid that they ended changing their minds when people drove in millons.

The serious nerfs started in Firelands, even 4.1 was launched with non casual fiendly 5 mans, i dont know what game you were playing, but it wasnt Cataclysm.

I didnt said they were hard, because hard is subjective, they were less casual friendly than the wrath ones, they WERE hard to casuals and they werent hard for other people, but making them less casual friendly is what cause the sub loss, which is why Blizzard after two patches and in the middle of an expansion made a 180ª turn and started making more casual friendly content, because they had the results of those subs dropped filling form survey that you fill when you quit.

[DreamCast]

Wow is meant to be played casually now, the days of being hardcore in terms of time and effort are over. I remember in 25 man raiding guilds there was community players besides gms and officers who were always willing to help you out and show you the ropes, but the reason they did it is because they wanted to build a stronger community with the players they would be spending a lot of time with.

Remember in vanilla and BC even the ave player needed to spend a lot of time in game so it was worth being hardcore and putting in effort because it felt like everyone else was too. Now if you putting in time the rest of ur guild don't need too since everything is handed on a plate.

So the 1% that gave a lot to the 99% are the players that have been lost through the casualisation of the game and been replaced by automated systems such as LFD and now LFR.

[Akka]

Both Vanilla and TBC had raid bosses that were a joke. That always haoppened, they have more "challenging" bosses because they had more bosses.

I never said they hadn't easy bosses, I even pointed at some of them, and I specifically said in the very part you quoted that the overall difficulty is not about individual bosses.
Who are you talking to ? Because your answer seems very unrelated to what I actually wrote.

Magically? Nothing, but they have more addons to help them (not talking about DBM here), more experience, more alts to stack classes, more balanced specs which means more valid specs which means more strategical posibilities.

You realize that all that goes exactly against "they are better" and directly support the opposite ("game is easier") ?

People that started in LK is ussually not in the top, but they can, because the experience of the guild they are in or some other raiders (which probably comes from before) is transmitted to them, the organization and the general strategies.

This part was also true during BC and latter Classic, nothing new in LK or Cata.

The game never changed from a progression philosophy to an "everyone must win" philosophy, the game ALWAYS tried to be the most casual MMO in the market, it was when in Vanilla its competiros were EQ and UO, it was when TBC was introduced as a more casual friendly version of Vanilla, and it continued in Wrath.

Hard not to laugh when you say that the game never changed from progression to "everyone must win" when it's so blatantly obvious it did exactly that. We went from "each tier requires that you did the previous one", a vertical structure that is really the definition of progression, to a philosophy stating OPENLY that everyone must see the content, and tweaking and nerfing instances specifically so that the percentage of people clearing raids is maximized.
Hard to take you seriously when what you say fly so obviously in the face of what actually happened.

It's also pretty ridiculous to say that TBC was introduced as "more casual-friendly" than Vanilla, while in fact the first version was so grossly overtuned that even bleeding edge raiders were complaining about it.

He made a very big L2P blog mocking those making valid complains, so valid that they ended changing their minds when people drove in millons.

The serious nerfs started in Firelands, even 4.1 was launched with non casual fiendly 5 mans, i dont know what game you were playing, but it wasnt Cataclysm.

Sending it right back at you, ZG and ZA @ 85 were pure jokes that were facerolled with disgust, so I'm not sure what game you played but it was certainly not Cata if you think they were hard in any way. The 180° from "let's keep at least a lil' bit of challenge outside HM raids" to "let's everyone faceroll everything save HM raids" happened at the 4.0.6, not after the Firelands.
And if you've memory troubles about that, you can look back at the patchnotes in february that nerfed all heroics into oblivion and reactivated the Luck of the Draw buff on top of that.

[Deleted]

Oh okay, you're just trolling and purposedly pretending to not understand.
Sorry to have wasted time trying to communicate. I guess you feel proud about the massive accomplishment of playing dumb on a forum

If I have to hold your hand to walk you though this, then I will, but again whether you like it or not some people left the game because they "grew up". You can't deny this, just like I can't deny that some people were already "grown up" when it launched.

The difference is that I can accept both of these premises, you seem to think that only one can exist, and that's wrong.

Do people use "people grew up" to mean something different, probably, but what difference does it make? You can't change the facts because people use them badly.

You seem to think that "people grew up" is limited only to age, can it not be attitude? priorities?

Let me put this another way, if you have someone who spends all their spare time logged in, and someone who only plays when they have free time and instantly remove half their playing time, who's playing experience will be changed more?

Stuff comes up all the time, from new girlfriends, new jobs, different working hours, different responsibilities all of which can be seen as growth (again, nothing to do with age) would you be happier if people said "their lives got more complicated" or "something came up" in which case it's just the phrase you're bothered by.

[Anonymitylol]

Does anyone have proof hardcore are 1% and casual baddies are 99%? Are these the only two playerbases? I'd love to see Numbers since I see people throw this Number around ever since bashiok used it once and wasn't even an official statistics post.

[Akka]

If I have to hold your hand to walk you though this, then I will, but again whether you like it or not some people left the game because they "grew up". You can't deny this, just like I can't deny that some people were already "grown up" when it launched.

The difference is that I can accept both of these premises, you seem to think that only one can exist, and that's wrong.

Maybe you should tone down the contempt in your post, and avoid the "you can't read so I'll hold your hand through this", because if we read what I actually wrote, and not what have read into it, you will not find any moment where I say that nobody stopped to be a "hardcore" because he had changes in his life. I only, and repeatedly, just said that not everyone was a kid before starting the game, and as such not everyone had to grow out of being hardcore.
And yeah, all that with a bit of anger, because seeing clichés and idiotic preconception is extremely annoying.

Everything else is just you arguing with an argument that exist only in your imagination. I'm responsible for what I write, not how you chose to twist it.

You seem to think that "people grew up" is limited only to age, can it not be attitude? priorities?

Actually that's exactly the opposite, what makes "hardcores have grown up so they're not hardcore anymore" offensive is PRECISELY that "growing up" is about attitude, maturity and wisdom, and as such "growing out of being hardcore" imply that being hardcore is immature.
Again, you show that what you're arguing against is spawned from your imagination, as what I was actually saying was the complete opposite...

Considering the rest of your post is going back on this and pretend that "growing up" is the same (and not considerably more loaded) than "something come up and I don't have as much time", I'll ignore it. You can't really say "growing up means a lot" in a sentence and then act as if it means nothing in the next.

[Sprucelee]

Get trolled.


Be constructive - Azshira