Did casuals ruin WoW and if so how?

[LeperHerring]

E.g. no longer being a student, changing jobs etc... People's occupations change.

What's your point? There has always been people of all kinds of backgrounds in WoW.

[Ronduwil]

You think you're "pretty good", but the reality is that you probably wouldn't have made it in my guild, for example. And that's fine too, you can either raid with groups more suited for you or improve your skills so you can make it in the top guilds.

Seeing as how you've never even played with me you have no basis on which to make that determination. I counter that healing through raids in which players constantly fail on mechanics and 30% of the group is undergeared/inexperienced is far more difficult than healing a group of consistent experienced players in proper raid gear. I'm willing to bet that my raiding experience has been far more challenging than that of any healer in your guild (provided your guild is as you described) and that I could, after clearing away some of that rust and gearing back up, go toe to toe with any one of them.

It's just that when you're less skilled and in a less skilled guild, you don't need as much content to fill your playtimes as highly skilled players in well run guilds.

It's just that your definition of "well run" is borderline sociopathic. In your eyes a well run guild in WoW is one in which players who are not as skilled are simply discarded like yesterday's trash so they don't slow everyone else down. I can't even fault you too much for that point of view because this is pretty much what Blizzard has been forcing on raiding guilds since Cataclysm. I'm sorry to say that (professional sports aside) this is not conducive to a healthy gaming environment. A MMO is supposed to be social. It's kind of hard to be social when social skills lose all relevance. Guilds can't raid with the nicest, most helpful, and/or most cooperative players. They have to go with the well-geared diva tank and the experienced jerk who pisses everyone off but pulls the most DPS. That's not a pleasant environment, but that's what most raiding guilds are forced to select for.

Anyway, the point is that the excuse of "I have wife and kids and mortgage and a supermodel gf on the side" or whatever is just an excuse.

And a pretty darn good one, I might add.

You can have all those things while still clearing content.

Yes, but you may not have them for long.

The critical factor is skill. Skill in playing your character, skill in functioning as a member of a group and skill in time/life management.

Skill doesn't mean a thing if there are only 5 decent raiding guilds on your server and they're all raiding weeknights from 4-6 pm or from 11 pm - 1 am. At that point you have to make choices:

• Pay $25 to move a character to a raiding server knowing that there's no guarantee you'll even enjoy playing that character after the next batch of nerfs
• Roll on a different server and remove all your friends from RealID so they quit begging you to help them raid on your old crap server
• Tell your wife/kids/boss to go to hell and adhere to established raiding schedules (which does not speak well for your time/life management skills)
• Realize that no game is worth this level of aggravation and simply unsub

I picked the last option, and given the recent sub numbers I don't think I'm the only one who did.

The game should have content for all skill levels (and dedication levels), but it should be different content. Because when you try to use the same content for everyone, you end up with a mess of compromises that really doesn't suit anyone (and as WoW has shown us, lose 2M subs/year).

This is pretty much the only thing you and I agree on. There should be content for everyone, not just content for raiders. Right now it's just content for raiders. These claims that LFR is content for casuals are off base. LFR is content for former raiders turned casual players, but that's about it.

[Deleted]

Masterful question dodging. You should become a politician.

The only aswer you expected was 'YES' or 'NO', while the situation was too complex for a binary answer.

If I replied 'YES', then you'd burst into tirade on how retarded my point of view is.

If I replied 'NO' then you would have dismissed my original stance on the grounds I was ultimately agreeing with you.

Now you are free to crawl back to whatever private vanilla-WoW-only server you came from to ruin the scent of air with your inane drivel.

[Arbs]

I don't blame casuals for eveything only minor things nothing that is really game breaking, Its more the whiners I believe are responsible for destorying WoW.

Whiners can be both Hardcore or Casual, but recently its been people who play casually that have been whining alot. It's the entitlement they think they deserve is what has destoryed the game in general. You are now handed everything as you don't have to work for anything anymore.

It just the feel of hardwork & accomplishment is now gone, because of a bunch of people whined that they deserved everything cause they paid the sub fee they demanded to have this and that & now they got almost everything handed to them and people don't stick around aslong as they get everything so easy.

Its really sad how people who don't wanna put in any effort destory a good game & now all those play F2P / P2W games so they can have everything all they need to do is throw money at there screen & get the useless junk the games have on their cash shops.

[Zafire]

If anyone in a position of authority, with market research and hard statistics at their disposal, thought that poopsock-mode raiding attracted or retained hundreds of thousands of players, poopsock-mode games would not be a "dying breed" as you put it. Oh wait, let me guess, you think that if WoW still catered to hardcores it would never lose subscriptions. There would just be 12 million people all sitting around doing attunements and staring at your epics for the next twenty years, right?

This idiot notion, that the decline of the game is due to the hurt feelings of hardcores (and not F2P competition or the sheer age of the game) is the death-cry of "raiding culture" as a relevant part of mainstream MMO gaming. It's the pleasing fantasy that the hardcore culture has bought into as it's been marched off to the retirement home.

Where are the hardcore games? Why isn't anyone making them? Are they all dumber than you? Do they, with their consultants and their stats and research, just not understand how popular exclusive raiding is? If it's so popular, why are you guys practically exiles in your own game anymore?

You're taking my "idiot notion" out of context.

Vanilla WoW was NOT "hardcore". I like a game that drifts between casual and hardcore. Back in Vanilla WoW I could log in every day for one or two hours and could somewhat progress my character. It wasn't really hard at all until you got to raids and had to try and coordinate forty people. The reason I praise it so much is because it was immersive while still having challenging attributes. You were always in danger of death if facing more than one enemy, pures/hybrids existed, specs didn't completely define you, you had to travel all over to find profession trainers, the world felt huge, and you couldn't really have an alt without severely crippling your main. THAT is the kind of game I want to play again.

FFXI in 2005 WAS a "hardcore" game, though. You had to find 5 other like-minded people to kill monsters over and over to gain experience, and even in good parties after level 50 it could take upwards of six hours or more of doing the same thing to gain one level. You generally could make no progress at all unless you had at least four hours to play, and maybe not even. Soloing was out of the question, even good solo classes taking five+ minutes to kill something of equal level. You'd sit around competing with 3+ other "guilds" for one 21-24 hour spawn mob, sometimes taking upwards of 2+ hours to spawn and you likely wouldn't get it anyway. I wouldn't go back to something like that ever again.

In late 2005 they lowered experience needed after level 50. FFXI started dumbing the game down in 2008 with one of their expansions,making levels 55 until cap go much quicker with easier and quicker spawning mobs. It still took a LONG time to go from 55-cap, and it didn't make the rest of the older content useless, as some of the older content equipment was still BiS. There was more low-man content available to get great gear, and I really felt the game was in a good place at that time.

[Cereal Killer]

I blame the community, not a sub-genre. WoW is still an amazing game, once you take a step back for a couple of weeks you really come to realize why you loved it so much in the first place.

Unless I don't remember my PRE-BC (I refuse to refer to it as vanilla, because it sounds fucking retarded and always has) days correctly, there were about 60 levels where no body knew shit about a "raid" or strived for that to be the ONLY out come of the game.

[LeperHerring]

It's just that your definition of "well run" is borderline sociopathic. In your eyes a well run guild in WoW is one in which players who are not as skilled are simply discarded like yesterday's trash so they don't slow everyone else down. I can't even fault you too much for that point of view because this is pretty much what Blizzard has been forcing on raiding guilds since Cataclysm. I'm sorry to say that (professional sports aside) this is not conducive to a healthy gaming environment. A MMO is supposed to be social. It's kind of hard to be social when social skills lose all relevance. Guilds can't raid with the nicest, most helpful, and/or most cooperative players. They have to go with the well-geared diva tank and the experienced jerk who pisses everyone off but pulls the most DPS. That's not a pleasant environment, but that's what most raiding guilds are forced to select for.

First you accuse me of baseless "determinations", then you proceed to make baseless determinations yourself. There's nothing "sociopathic" about it. It's a private group that has certain criteria for the players. Ours happened to be very high skill level, because we wanted to clear all the content in 2-3 nights of raiding (which we did). If you didn't match that expectation we wouldn't accept your application, and if you lied in your application you wouldn't pass your trial. There's nothing nefarious or unhealthy about it. We weren't some cold psychopathic machines that you'd like to think of us as being. We had a group of very nice, helpful and cooperative players, had great fun in raids and even had multiple real life meetings to get drunk together. You just can't imagine that people can be nice and very highly skilled at the same time. You have to believe that the well-geared tank must be a "diva" or that experienced player must be a "jerk", and that the raid environment must be terrible just because the people are skilled and only want skilled players in the raid. Well, I'm sorry to disappoint you but that's not true. You might want to turn those keen psychological analysis skills towards yourself and ask yourself why you have the need to believe that.

[Deleted]

I don't blame casuals for eveything only minor things nothing that is really game breaking, Its more the whiners I believe are responsible for destorying WoW.

Whiners can be both Hardcore or Casual, but recently its been people who play casually that have been whining alot. It's the entitlement they think they deserve is what has destoryed the game in general. You are now handed everything as you don't have to work for anything anymore.

It just the feel of hardwork & accomplishment is now gone, because of a bunch of people whined that they deserved everything cause they paid the sub fee they demanded to have this and that & now they got almost everything handed to them and people don't stick around aslong as they get everything so easy.

Its really sad how people who don't wanna put in any effort destory a good game & now all those play F2P / P2W games so they can have everything all they need to do is throw money at there screen & get the useless junk the games have on their cash shops.

The 'recreational chore' model was good and reliable back in the days of early Contra. Nowadays- -lawl, not so much. With so many games out there, the 'supply' is much less of a factor than 'demand' as of now.

[Ranganathan]

You mean those bastard players who pay their monthly fee but don't strain the servers or clog up the queue by constantly being logged on? Those bastard casuals who go through content slowly and generally don't bitch about "nothing to do" because they're still leveling a toon through old content, or just getting to Thunder because they can't raid twice a week or even once a week, but can run LFR whenever it suits them? Those damned casuals who don't know how to PvP so are always easy pickings when they show up undergeared in the battlegrounds? Those lame-ass casuals who, without even trying, float the guild xp, contribute to the guild vault, and buy and sell regularly on the AH? The dastardly casuals who account for the vast majority of players in WoW, without whom more servers would be dead, realm economies would be basically non-existent, and you could never find a decent pug again?

Yeah, those jerks really ruined the game.

[Deleted]

You mean those bastard players who pay their monthly fee but don't strain the servers or clog up the queue by constantly being logged on? Those bastard casuals who go through content slowly and generally don't bitch about "nothing to do" because they're still leveling a toon through old content, or just getting to Thunder because they can't raid twice a week or even once a week, but can run LFR whenever it suits them? Those damned casuals who don't know how to PvP so are always easy pickings when they show up undergeared in the battlegrounds? Those lame-ass casuals who, without even trying, float the guild xp, contribute to the guild vault, and buy and sell regularly on the AH? The dastardly casuals who account for the vast majority of players in WoW, without whom more servers would be dead, realm economies would be basically non-existent, and you could never find a decent pug again?

Yeah, those jerks really ruined the game.

You just wrote my WoW-specific biography.

[enchanted]

vanilla? casual as hell

bc even more fucking casual

wrath casualpalooza

cata? hardcore twist turn fail

mists CASUAL MIS CASUAL GONE MO CASUAL CASUAL @_@

Please explain how wow was casual back in vanilla and tbc.

Wow isn't ruined.

Depends on the way you see it. In my eyes yes, I do believe its ruined but its the players who did it. Blame the community and not blizz.

OT; I think this post sums up my thought on your topic:

I don't blame casuals for eveything only minor things nothing that is really game breaking, Its more the whiners I believe are responsible for destorying WoW.

I think this is just another casual bashing thread but you changed the title to make it seem a little less obvious. It's the whiners who ruined it. Casuals are just a type of people and some aren't even reading these forums demanding changes as they are just enjoying the game. Overall blizzard got confused on what people wanted which lead to the downfall of the community in wrath and the birth of casuals. After realizing their mistake and trying to change it in cata caused much more confusion when they realized that the community has mostly been casuals at the start of cata. Whiners are the ones changing the game and casuals are only responsible for minor things.

On a second thought, it could be the player base that has changed. Not everyone since vanilla is playing atm as they either have found jobs,got married,etc... so now comes the younger generation which needs everything instant without taking time or effort to do. And overtime made people get used to getting epics with minimal effort.

[Paarthurnax]

It was ultimately Blizzards shift in policy from "its okay that some people won't see all the content" to "everyone has the right to see all of the content" that is to blame for how the game is today. Sure id say that casual players didn't help with all the demands to see and experience all the fruit wow has to offer w/out having to put forth any real effort or learn the intricacies of their class in the process.

So what we end up with is everyone expects to get everything every patch, and see everything whiles its current regardless of how much or little you play the game. The game itself has very few true challenges unless you go out and look for them, and as a result the game does a substandard job of properly teaching players how to be effective in a non LFR raiding environment.

I think this video does a good job of highlighting some of the issues that arise with the new overall game philosophy Blizzard has: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zLP-ugJP7g

[Tomana]

What's your point? There has always been people of all kinds of backgrounds in WoW.

The point is that people can move from a situation where they can raid to another where they no longer can. Is it such a bold statement?

- - - Updated - - -

Please explain how wow was casual back in vanilla and tbc.

It was more casual than its competitors at the time (EQ/LA/UO) which was enough to draw large crowds.

- - - Updated - - -

Whiners can be both Hardcore or Casual, but recently its been people who play casually that have been whining alot. It's the entitlement they think they deserve is what has destoryed the game in general. You are now handed everything as you don't have to work for anything anymore.

And yet, it's the whines from wannabe hardcores that gave us early Cata and early MOP. Ironic, isn't it?

[Deleted]

WOW was from Day One the most casual MMO thats why they had so much success. I think in TBC they realized that players who stop playing stopped because they didnt have the time to play. Back then you needed to play a lot more than today even as casual. So they changed the gameplay to hold the players that would otherwise unsubbed. In WotlK they reached the peek with subnumbers. I think they did the right thing untill then.
In Cataclysm everything went downhill, i think the problem was that there was no new continent. It felt boring and not like a full addon. They just tweak the game since then to keep the subnumnbers. I think many would have stop a long time ago, if they still needed to put the insane hrs like in tbc.

For me the game is old now, i would never ever do the stuff like back in tbc where i was younger, had more time and motivation. A lot of the players (millions) will think this way. I like hardcore games and hard games but therefore i play other better suited games. WOW is just the casual game where you meet some old friends from back in the day and raid casually as long as we have some of us playing. Many stopped long time ago, just to move on not because the game was bad.

And i really dont get the peeple who says vanilla was the best and everything after that is bad and still playing? are you masochist? just change to a game you would like more, maybe? ^^ This game has changed along time ago, it will not go back, never.... You dont get more subs, when you make the game more time intensive. Time is money ^^

[Deleted]

It was ultimately Blizzards shift in policy from "its okay that some people won't see all the content" to "everyone has the right to see all of the content" that is to blame for how the game is today. Sure id say that casual players didn't help with all the demands to see and experience all the fruit wow has to offer w/out having to put forth any real effort or learn the intricacies of their class in the process.

So what we end up with is everyone expects to get everything every patch, and see everything whiles its current regardless of how much or little you play the game. The game itself has very few true challenges unless you go out and look for them, and as a result the game does a substandard job of properly teaching players how to be effective in a non LFR raiding environment.

I think this video does a good job of highlighting some of the issues that arise with the new overall game philosophy Blizzard has: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zLP-ugJP7g

Thing is, World of Warcraft's general gameplay model and engine doesn't allow much flexibility- -you either have practically gated content OR effortless dungeon crawling. Button-mash a few skill slots and WHAM! victory! isn't too flexible, either.

[Ronduwil]

First you accuse me of baseless "determinations", then you proceed to make baseless determinations yourself. There's nothing "sociopathic" about it.

I'm sorry, but my accusation was not baseless. It's an impression I formed from your previous posts. Let me acquaint you with Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Its symptoms, as defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders are:

• Envies others and believes others envy him/her

The problem is that the self titled "casuals" (who are often in reality "bads" rather than "casuals") are not happy that there's content for other play styles than theirs. These are people who cannot be happy even if the game has more content for them than they could every consume, as long as someone else is doing content that they're not good enough or dedicated enough to get into.

• Is preoccupied with thoughts and fantasies of great success, enormous attractiveness, power, intelligence

For me it's not about *taking* a shortcut. It's the fact that a shortcut exists that makes the content meaningless to me. What makes me enjoy a gaming experience is a hard challenge that requires great skill and effort, and that you can't just skip to through easymodes or overgearing etc.

• Expects to be recognized as superior and special, without superior accomplishments
• Expects constant attention, admiration and positive reinforcement from others

It's perfectly fine and normal to want to be special. Why would I want to play a game that makes me feel like I'm just another drone on an assembly line?

• Has expectations of special treatment that are unrealistic

My point is that I want the progression style of TBC (before they started breaking it down with nerfs and "accessibility" nonsense).

• Is arrogant in attitudes and behavior

It's a private group that has certain criteria for the players. Ours happened to be very high skill level, because we wanted to clear all the content in 2-3 nights of raiding (which we did).

• Lacks the ability to empathize with the feelings or desires of others

If you didn't match that expectation we wouldn't accept your application, and if you lied in your application you wouldn't pass your trial.

There's nothing nefarious or unhealthy about it. We weren't some cold psychopathic machines that you'd like to think of us as being.

Except that many of your posts indicate otherwise.

You just can't imagine that people can be nice and very highly skilled at the same time. You have to believe that the well-geared tank must be a "diva" or that experienced player must be a "jerk", and that the raid environment must be terrible just because the people are skilled and only want skilled players in the raid. Well, I'm sorry to disappoint you but that's not true.

You're twisting my statement. I said that the game favors the well-geared diva tank over the socially adept newly dinged level 90 tank. There's a big difference between favoring and mandating. On a highly progressed server it is much easier to have a well-geared socially adept tank because there are many to choose from. Unfortunately, most servers are not highly progressed. If you want to get anything done beyond LFR you have to make sacrifices. That's why the all-raid-all-the-time model doesn't fit everyone and why low progression servers are rapidly dying while the queue on Stormrage grows ever longer.

You might want to turn those keen psychological analysis skills towards yourself and ask yourself why you have the need to believe that.

I think I did a reasonable job of establishing the criteria on which I based my opinions. I chalk it up to mere logic. Casuals didn't ruin WoW. Narcissistic attitudes on the part of players and game designers did.

[Paarthurnax]

Thing is, World of Warcraft's general gameplay model and engine doesn't allow much flexibility- -you either have practically gated content OR effortless dungeon crawling. Button-mash a few skill slots and WHAM! victory! isn't too flexible, either.

Flex raiding is their attempt to fix the damage that LFR ultimately has done to the raiding community. The gulf a new player must cross to get from 5 man's to 25 man normal mode raiding so so massive most people don't make it. I liken it to the proverb about giving a man a fish vs teaching a man how to fish, in a sense blizzard is currently only giving people what they want, not teaching them how to get it themselves. This is echoed in the steadily decreasing sub numbers as well, people come back for new stuff but don't really stick around long since you can be given everything it offers in such a short time, and with little to no effort to boot.

[Osmeric]

Flex raiding is their attempt to fix the damage that LFR ultimately has done to the raiding community.

Hmm, that has an error in it. Let me fix it for factualness.

Flex raiding is their attempt to fix the damage that overtuned normal modes have done to the raiding community.

[Dch48]

The people who say it's unplayable now are the ones who have been "dumbed down" not the game. The game is as hard as you want it to be and that's how it should be. As for the "casuals", they've been around since day one. Thank God the BC days are gone with their exclusivity. They should never return. The more "hard core" whiners the game loses, the better off it will be.

- - - Updated - - -

It was ultimately Blizzards shift in policy from "its okay that some people won't see all the content" to "everyone has the right to see all of the content" that is to blame for how the game is today. Sure id say that casual players didn't help with all the demands to see and experience all the fruit wow has to offer w/out having to put forth any real effort or learn the intricacies of their class in the process.

So what we end up with is everyone expects to get everything every patch, and see everything whiles its current regardless of how much or little you play the game. The game itself has very few true challenges unless you go out and look for them, and as a result the game does a substandard job of properly teaching players how to be effective in a non LFR raiding environment.

I think this video does a good job of highlighting some of the issues that arise with the new overall game philosophy Blizzard has: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zLP-ugJP7g

What you describe is exactly how the game should be. Everybody should be able to see everything while it's still current. Blizzard has done a great job of ensuring that.

The game is as hard as you want it to be.

[Deleted]

Really? Do we really need arguments on psychology in this thread?

The simplest and easiest reply to put forward in this thread is as follows:

The "casual" player-base in WoW cannot be defined as being a singular unit of players who are all the same. Neither can it be judged based on the perceptions of the word "casual" and what it means...

Casuals have existed in WoW since day one. Believe it or not, it's true. Back then, the player-base was much less diverse due to content not being very diverse. As WoW "diversified" over the years, the Casual/Hardcore player-based began diversifying too. There are many types of "casual" - from the casual-Vanilla players to the casual LFR-once-a-week people.

"Casuals" didn't ruin this game, that is an absurd, black-and-white statement. Let's be honest here: WoW has changed, neither for the better or the worse and you know why? Because some people like it, some people don't. I say that if you don't like what WoW is today, quit. Is that so hard to do?

People who claim "LFR made the players stupid" are still ignoring the fact most LFR players never raided before. Funny how they always choose to ignore this fact, as stated by Blizzard many times.

And what's worse is the way elitist people judge casuals as being less intelligent/kids etc etc...pathetic! These people know nothing of the very diverse player-base they are insulting! I'm casual, I don't go around being rude, playing badly or griefing others. None of the casuals in my family-run guild did that either (or, well you know - they'd be G kicked!!!) so PLEASE, give it a rest with the hate. DO this and you're no better than the casuals who claim hardcores are "no-life loosers in their moms basements". Urgh.