When people say that WoW "is too casual" what in the world are they talking about?

[Baneador]

First, I inspect their achievements and items, then i ask them "if is too casual/easy, where are your mythic and top pvp achievements?"

[Blizzhoof]

That argument is inflationary used by people that haven't accomplished anything meaningful in their real life yet And/Or need the game as a substitute for challenge and affirmation.
In all rational thought, WoW is a game, just that. And anything that happens within this game has absolutely no meaning or value whatsoever.
Anything one accomplishes within, it's gone the moment the computer shuts down. It's a leisure tool, to have something to do in ones spare time. It isn't suppose to be difficult.

Most of what you said is 100% true. Only thing I disagree with is writing off the comment that WoW is a casual game. It should be clear that it is, and the majority of the content is super easy (this is why people use the terms interchangeably). You can kill all of the bosses in every raid, clear every dungeon, and participate in every form of PvP regardless of your skill level and by only playing a few hours a week. That is both casual and easy.

The thing is, there is very challenging and rewarding content for those who want to invest the time and effort. Prior to becoming a filthy casual, I raided at a very, very high level for a few years. It wasn't cheapened by the fact that shitters can kill everything on LFR either. Beating other guilds raiding the same content on similar schedules felt great, and just having such a tight knit group of 25-30 people was also a reward in and of itself.

So yeah, game is casual and easy, but it shouldn't matter to anybody. There is no reason to lie and say that it isn't, but there is also no reason to whine about it. There is a lot of fun and difficult content out there that also has better rewards. Play however you want as long as you aren't ruining other people's experience.

P.S. - I know that there are some mythic only phases/bosses. Those are rare. Get over it.

[Deleted]

Why does every single "its not casual!" person bring up only end game PVE and PVP?

You dont judge a games difficulty based on its last stage and boss, why would you do that in this particular game? Do you judge the last world in Mario and the last Bowser encounter as the game's final difficulty?

Archimonde mythic is harder than Ragnaros. But can you with a straight face tell me that WoD is more difficult than Classic? Classes practically play themselves today with little input from the player, gearing is super fast and the key word is always convinience.

Games like Super Mario were built around a difficult that gradually goes up. This is how WoW was originally designed. CC was not needed in Wailing Caverns because few classes had it at that point. But in Strat? Yeah. The game was designed to make you more powerful but also make the world more powerful. Now you are powerful from the get go, and the world is stagnant.

[Raetary]

great thread necro.
10/10

[Holofernes]

wow = casual means that 3 green newb level 100s have a chance to kill my lvl 100 full epix geared warrior in pvp. This is something that in a hardcore game would never happen, a good geared char should be a demigod that wipes out all the newbie shit in this world with a fingersnap.

wow = casual means that random idiots that dont use interrupt or cc and do low dmg are able to clear a dungeon without wiping 50 times and get owned by mob respawn because they need to long.

wow = casuals means that people can do pet battles and dont get a instant debuff that says "if u do this shit only once more, your account is auto-banned and your name is filed and taken to police and all authorities, and u wont be able to get any government job in your whole life, and dont even try to get a travel permit for any abroad country, because u are a pet-battler in wow, u should be very happy that human rights exist, so we sadly cant shoot you down like a dog that has rabbies, because thats exactly the right way to treat a pet-battler"

wow = casuals means that u can level your professions to max without needing at least 2 month of farming mats for it, and going to instances were nobody wants to go in order to learn the recipes for it.

wow = casuals means that u dont need nearly half a year to get enough gold to buy your first fast mount.

it really depends, on what is seen as casual, but mostly its a combination of the hyperbole examples i gave in more or less heavier intensification.

[clevin]

First, I inspect their achievements and items, then i ask them "if is too casual/easy, where are your mythic and top pvp achievements?"

yawn... not this bullshit argument AGAIN. Squiss got it right, above.

My goal is to see the end content, and feeling like it's an achievement.
I dont like the fact you can choose the difficulty, what's the point running a dungeon you've already done many time in CM? I can't get it.
it's like: ok, I know how to do the content. now let's try with one hand in the back with my eyes closed. and only with panties. It's kind a faked difficulty to me.
What's the point of collecting stuff if in the end, everything is downgraded when enter those CM.
You cant compare old heroics to CM.

What I liked back in TBC, vanilla is, if I wanted to see the end content, I had to put effort in it, and it was rewarding with great loot. Now I can pug LFR, see the end content, bosses, and all while watching TV and chatting with friends. And the point in doing the same bosses in other difficulty modes? better loot? more epics? yes no doubt.
More fun? No way because I already know the fights.
Well that's my point of view.

I know many will disagree or may not understand. And I wont try to make you change your mind about it. you experience the game as you want, you feel it's better now. Im happy for you. But for me, it will never be as great as it was before, in the old days.

Doing something on a harder difficulty just to flex isn't interesting to many of us.

[solarfallz]

First, I inspect their achievements and items, then i ask them "if is too casual/easy, where are your mythic and top pvp achievements?"

and then they direct you to the post right before yours

[Deleted]

I see people say this all the time. A vast majority of people. Most of their argument is basically "compares to BC and Vanilla wow is too casual. "

...and it's true. But, in my opinion, that's not a bad thing. I'm not complaining about it.

Now, when you break that down, what in the world are they talking about?

Hardly. The encounters aren't hard - they're just about being able to put in enough time to learn them, improve you char etc.

These days in both PVE and PVE you can find extremely difficult challenges. You have bosses that only an incredibly small number of players defeat, and the rest do it only after it has been nerfed to death.

Uhm, no. You have bosses that an incredible minority of players defeat ON MYTHIC. The problem with that is that for the average player, mythic just isn't worth the effort. It boils down to a choice between "should I raid for 2 days a week, 2 hours per day in a casual guild and clear heroic or should I have to raid 6/7 with a bunch of hardcore people that play for 10 hours in a row"...and the difference is negligible.

Of course, mythic loot is somewhat better. Some ilvls above the heroic one. And those are useful for...? You need them...for?
To be clear, in vanilla, when you got "proper" loot, you could at the very least one shot people in pvp. All the mythic raiding gear in the world didn't help with that, so...what's the point? Kill mobs for quests in 5.1 seconds instead of 6.2 seconds?

The skill level is PVP is also incredible these days.

Not incredible, just people with more tools and more time invested in it. Of course, some vanilla PVPers weren't as good as more recent ones. Of course. Or perhaps they were, but just didn't have twitch to show it. Not that it really matters - compared to vanilla, it IS casual. Anyone can get the season weapons nowadays. Only high rank players could get them in vanilla (and those had to nolife it for months to get them). Reaching rank 14? Hah, a few people per server could do that.

I'm not saying I miss that - I don't, it was too time consuming and hardly rewarding (after all, someone in PVE gear would kill you in seconds). I'm saying that by comparison, bc-wod were too casual.

Go watch any of the tournaments or PVP streams, and you see people in a match for a long time. Watching these people play is a joy, since their reaction time is just amazing.

You had the same in vanilla. It's just that people didn't have a bunch of addons, a bunch of spells, a bunch of options. It was somewhat limited - and that's partially what made it great.

I get that levelling is easier, you can buy boosts and whatnot...but how does that make the game casual? Just because it allows other people who don't have as much as time to play, that ruins the experience for you?

Here's a hint for you: medallion of the legion. Try to find a similar vanilla version. Or even BC. Yes, compared to vanilla it's casual - REALLY casual. But I like that, I've used about 20 of those.

I had this discussion with someone in my guild yesterday, and I have had the same argument countless times. They are never able to give me an answer.

They probably haven't played vanilla then.

Do these people REALLY want to go back to grinding one level for hours, or farming mats for a minor upgrade for weeks on end?

No. Nobody wants to do that. Nobody wants to farm outdoors dragons and ZG for Huhuran. Nobody wants to do a lot of things that you "had to" do then.

There are, however, a number of things that everyone that played vanilla wants to do (myself included). Like feeling rewarded when getting a new piece of loot.

Like feeling ultra-terra-mega-imba-overpowered when completing a set. Any mage that PVP'd in full netherwind in vanilla can tell you what that's like. Anyone that FINALLY got their thunderfury in vanilla can tell you what it's like.

Like having that moment of luck and finding that ultra-rare recipe and being the only one on the server who has it (think the BS helm plans in UBRS; I think lionheart was the name...or something like that). Being able to charge a fortune for one click.

Like fighting for hours, all starting from one herb or tagging one mob. Compare it to legion - I hear everyone's going to loot that herb. Everyone's going to tag that mob.

Like mass outdoors pvp starting from basically nothing.

Like a gauntlet of death in Blackrock mountain with 5 raiding guilds from opposite factions meeting there by accident and starting a mass carnage.

Like engineering being the upper hand in PVP (iron grenades, pet, reflecting trinkets etc).

Like many, many other things you can only dream of now.

Just look at what happened to the reputation system in WoD. They made it a fucking grindfest like the old days

Yeah...had to grind AH for about one minute to get exalted with every WOD faction...yeah, really hard...

Of course, I bought the medallions with money farmed by my followers while I was asleep - 11 chars with full scavenger/treasure hunter garrisons...Occasionally, I even farmed the herbs and ore nodes from my garrison...while other followers were crafting soulbound mats for my professions...which I then used to sell 11 hexweave bags at once on AH for 1k each...about 20 minutes/day...made millions. Of course, I also showed up for Kazzak on 11 alts (bringing my total played time to 30 times per day!) to get free epics and felblight and whatever, despite everyone in the raid dying about 5 times (probably). Of course, I've also used server hop to "farm" that "rare" mob or get an area to myself...

Yeah...really hard that WOD...are you serious?

Yes, you had very difficult 5 mans back in the day......and now you have very difficult 5 mans in the form of challenge modes. If you want to relive the "glory days of BC heroics", well there you go buddy. Go do CM golds where you need CC and coordination.

I've done every CM gold. It's not challenging at all. There's little to no execution involved, it's mostly about trying to memorize shortcuts (like everbloom) and knowing which pack(s) to skip. The rest is an AOE fest. And then you have vanilla, where breaking CC or failing to interrupt could lead to a wipe even for veterans. Those bloody UBRS summoners and their adds...

There's simply no room for comparison.

One other thing that is really baffling to me, is that when I have this discussion, and point all the incredibly difficult fights, competitiveness in PVP, and things such as CM to these people, they always say something like "well, that isnt my goal in the game"

That's not the problem. The problem is that things still require a minimal amount of brain/execution (MINIMAL), they require A LOT OF TIME (not as long as in vanilla, granted), but the rewards don't feel...rewarding anymore. I got full tiers for this expansion. They're MEH. Just MEH. Not terrible, just bloody MEH. Now, how about you watch a warrior in naxx gear pvping in vanilla. Or a mage in full tier2 pvping in vanilla. Once you got them, you rocked the bloody server, no IFs or BUTs. People from the opposite faction were actually leaving the area when they got word I was in there. Not a joke. Try telling someone "omg, there's that guy in full hfc gear around here". You'll get a "so...?"

Don't get me wrong, this isn't about feeling "relevant". This is about loot not feeling rewarding at all and definitely not feeling epic. Or legendary. Or whatever.

You have been literally complaining that the game is too casual, and that anyone can waltz in and kill bosses.

But....that is completly false. LFR is what is it, for people who just want to experience the content. If you feel like the game is too casual go kill Imperator on Mythic then...oh wait...you havent even killed him on normal since "that isnt your goal"

That's the problem. It's not worth the time and effort (and it requires effort to get into such a guild, not have 3-4 people constantly failing etc). And if you DO finally get in and the stars align and you kill that random mythic boss...what then? You get...what? Oh, that's right - a few more ilvls on some piece of gear (compared to the heroic version). Totally worth raiding night and day, right?

Then what the hell do you want? I am really trying to understand this argument here.

Those that aren't just faking being vanilla players "want" to feel that it's worth the effort. That at the end of that long raid, at the end of that PVP season, it will have been worth it. Currently, it's not.

and it has zero merit.

Well, I hope I've explained the merit.

I also love when they say shit like "Well look at Muru/C'thun/4Hoursemen, that fight proves wow is too casual now"

Seriously?

Jesus christ

M'uru was in BC, not vanilla - and it was ... overtuned, to be fair. By that, I mean that guilds couldn't really kill him before the nerf - guilds that had perfect gear, save for glaives, perhaps. Version 1.0 was - I think - the most unforgiving boss I've fought. Sure, after the nerf, it was fairly easy...and after the sunwell nerf, even easier. But, again, version 1.0 was INSANE. Nothing I've seen since compares to it.

4HM was an insane gear check, not a matter of skill (having enough wars in t3 with the taunt bonus). C'thun was just buggy and unfair, with tentacles spawning inside walls, becoming untargetable, instagibbing the raid etc. C'thun wasn't hard, it was badly coded. 4HM wasn't hard, it was a matter of luck (nobody normally had that many warriors in the guild in raids and if they did, they didn't have the t3 pieces).

With that said, those encounters were certainly HARDER than you'd think, because you didn't have a bunch of skills you now have. Think "no mana regen" to begin with.

Vanilla wasn't as great as many people seem to think, if we are to be honest. But it was...great and it felt great. It's not about nostalgia, it's about feeling like time spent in front of your computer was WORTH IT. That's something I haven't felt since BC. To put things into perspective, if you "fought hard", you ended up being one of the few people that simply eradicated others (after all, it ends with pvp, doesn't it?). Say...6 months, perhaps (you have to remember drops were fewer per boss considering the raid size, not everyone was lucky etc).

By comparison, in 6 months of WOTLK/Cata/MOP/WOD I have accomplished nothing. I've felt nothing relevant has happened. I got the gear and it's just vendor-trash-in-waiting. Wearing it in PVP is completely useless and just gets you "rekt" in seconds. By comparison, wearing t2 in vanilla meant I could easily "own" 5 players if I got the drop on them.

Another thing was community. You say that some dungeons are harder and whatever. OK. I disagree, but that's beyond the point. What you have to remember is that in early vanilla, you didn't have PCT - you were "stuck" on your server. There were no cross realm battlegrounds either. You "lived" and played with people and had a reputation to "uphold". If you wanted to clear a dungeon, you had to travel there (each person, unless there was a warlock that got there first). Many people remember that as being incredibly unpleasant (compared to the LFG tool, group finder etc). BUT. But because you had to invest time in it and because your reputation was on the line, you stuck with that group (unless they were all idiots, of course), you tried your best, you didn't suddenly go afk for 30 minutes, you didn't fake-dc, you didn't ninja stuff (sure, it happened, but on a much lower scale; the good part about it is that you'd have a thread on the realm forum (which you no longer have now, right?) and you would basically sacrifice your character if you ninja'd stuff; no guild would invite you; no randoms would take you to a dungeon; you were stuck doing battlegrounds, maybe...or farming gold; that one asshole act would basically erase your character, no escape). Oh, you had to manage your threat. KTM was compulsory. Do you even know/remember what threat is nowadays? Is there even such a thing anymore? I can go full-nuke-mode from the first second, no problem. So can everyone else. While on that subject, do you even know what CC is nowadays? (a general "you", not you). I doubt it. Yes, compared to vanilla, it's very, very casual.

Compare this to the current situation. Dungeons and stuff. People expect to be carried, you don't say/get a "hello", xrealm, they don't care about you think of them (or the other way around). Precisely zero community "feeling". If they can roll "need" on something, even though they don't need it, they will (think 2 plate wearers, one of them rolling for their friend, just to double his odds). No consequences for bad behaviour and the consequence of that is...well, what you now call the wow community. I'm not going to describe it, I'm sure you know I'm talking about.

...of course, there was no 1-60 boost. Of course, 1-60 took quite a bit of time - and my mage could often be found while leveling in WPL gathering 20 skeletons to blizzard-nova-blizzard-aoe them down for faster xp. Of course, you couldn't buy gold from blizzard, as you can do now (as they say, from other players, tokens - yeah, right). Of course, there was no pay to win.

That's what people miss about vanilla.

I'd play vanilla again on an official vanilla server, if blizzard made one. No PCT, no xrealm, no...nothing. With all the pain, slow leveling of alts, high costs of whatever, I'd bite the bullet and do it.

Because it would be worth it. Gear/effort/community/rewards.

Whereas now, all my time and effort isn't (worth it).

Hope I've clarified this, since your guildies couldn't.

...but in the meantime, I'll happily buy medallions of the legion, different mounts, fly between unconnected flightpoints, buy books to level fishing for alts etc Here's to hoping Legion will suck less than WOD, though.

Frankly, most of the time, when I compare vanilla to what we have now, I think "You took away my rewards, my sense of wonder, my awesomeness, my community, my rank 13 (never made it to 14) and in turn, you gave me daily quests, recolored items, renamed bosses with identical mechanics, pet battles and titles like "Camel Hoarder"". Well, don't hate me too much, but I'm not happy with that trade.

[Deleted]

You can do everything in wow in very little time unless you really want to commit to pvp or pve. If you just want to tour the content you can basically play 5-6 hours weekly.

[Themanintobuildafire]

There's simply no room for comparison.

I don't want to quote your massive reply, but I wanted to say I agree with a lot of what you say.

I was around in Vanilla. There were two top raiding guilds on my server - one alliance, on horde. I was on the ally one. We raiding like 4-5 days a week. It felt like a job. When I wasn't raiding I had to do stuff to get ready for the raid like farm mats, or provide gold to the guild to buy stuff for the raid.

Honestly, I thought WoW was casual when I first came to it because I had played 1.5yrs of Lineage 2 and that game is truly hardcore when compared to WoW. In L2, when you died, you lost levels, xp, and items that could have taken you months to farm. Everything was a time sink, especially the higher the level you got.

In WoW, you died and lost nothing. NOTHING.

Anyways, pvp was awesome in Vanilla too because gear>skill 99% of the time and those who really worked for the gear were feared. I know exactly what you are talking about. We had a warrior in our guild who was lucky to get TF and he was the main tank and always got all the best gear first. In BGs, he'd carry our guild teams...people feared him. In WPVP, if people were harassing the guild, he'd come out and the other guys would run cause he could 2 shot pretty much anyone.

To be fair, you talk about ranking...I was a Lieutenant-Commander or something like that. Maybe rank 10? That was unbotted time and I played at least 6-7hrs a day just doing PVP...that was insane. My brother botted for the top rank, and people really had to do like 20hrs+ of pvp a day to get that as there were only so many allowed on each server. Definitely NOT casual.

If my life situation today was occurring back in Vanilla I wouldn't have picked the game up or gotten into WoW.

I really get your point about gear meaning something. Once green stuff in TBC's first zone dropped that was BETTER than the best raid gear that had dropped in Vanilla came out, I quit raiding. I quit PVPing at max level. All my hours of work was like getting a kick in the nuts. TBH they should have made the level 68-70 stuff equal in ilvl to the best raid gear.

I am not saying I want it to be like that today, I don't have time for it...but I almost lost my marriage trying to be the top dog in WoW back in Vanilla as it demanded SO much time investment. I had to quit the game to appease my wife. I came back promising I'd be more casual, but the reality is the game allows me to be much more casual. I can be a casual today and the difference between me and the top pvper or raider in terms of gear power isn't that big. The difference in achievements is pretty small too...I have over 21k achievement points on an account I started in Cata...that's pretty amazing!

What I miss about Vanilla isn't the game play or reward system: tbh I don't have time for that type of grind anymore. I miss the community I had. My guild was awesome. Having a reputation on the server was also pretty cool. Having people fear you cause of your guild tag was pretty cool.

I am also cool with how WoW is today. I can do some group stuff with a small time commitment and still have fun. I realize I won't be doing arenas or RBGs, but I can do random BGs and I can find normal raids easy with the group finder...IMO the quality of life changes WoW has made have been over all for the betterment of the game.

[MoanaLisa]

What are "they" talking about? Well, with respect to things like LFR and Blizzard's long-time approach to make the game easy to pick up and play, "they" are occasionally lamenting the fact that just about anyone can join up and play the game. That simple thing has always been the case.

Not most people though. Once you get past the forum clatter the basic thing is that the game at its best is what you make of it. The last expansion wasn't the game at its best for many. Legion looks more like it. It can be (and should be) good for the everyday player and good for the weekend-only player.

[Deleted]

They talk about missing elite mobs in redrige. They talk about the tank who carried them through uldaman. They talk about how they soloed molten core.
They think of times when they killed gorillas in strangle and died multiple times even when they were on same level, just because they have not improved over 12 years.

[thewallofsleep]

I think the "casual" complaints have more to do with everything besides endgame raiding and pvp. It's more about the lack of investment in the actual world (of Warcraft), near lobby style gameplay, etc. Traveling to out of the way zones for an obscure crafting material, going to a random instance for a crafting recipe drop, that was all a big part of the game. Difficulty of the actual primary endgame content isn't really what people usually talk about. I personally think that starting either Cataclysm, bosses became far more mechanically difficult, especially on heroic (the original, real heroic).

What people really object to is the lack of requirement to immerse yourself in the game world and to make it your own. I understand this, but I see why a lot of changes were made. Many old school players are still subscribed and probably don't actually have the time and commitment for that level of engagement with the game world. I know I don't! I mean, we're talking about 10+ years ago for some people. I have far too many responsibilities these days and can't dedicate 6+ hours of my day to WoW (usually 12+ on my days off back in the day). What I do miss is the feeling of scope the game used to have. Just talking about it makes me want to do Loremaster and get explorer on my current main.

[Paulosio]

It's often people who don't play spouting off because it validates their decision to quit and make them feel superior that they played in what they consider the golden age.

Saw a youtube video of someone doing 1-100 in 2-3 hours and the comments were full of things about "this is why wow is rubbish now", "they ruined the game", "why would you play an MMO where you level this fast". It was a person using both 300%xp flasks, full heirlooms, the monk xp bonus thing, the darkmoon hat, recruit a friend and it was done in a group of 5 people. In other words it was done in a a way that is totally unrealistic for 99.9% of players and totally impossible for any new player levelling for the first time (you wont even have heirlooms as a new player let alone any of the rest of the stuff used) and yet this was used as an indication of where the game is at these days.

It probably takes longer to farm 1 of those xp flasks from the rare mob in dread wastes than it took to level (and that's even when the mob isn't camped all the time).

[Fitsu]

I think those that say that, are referring to a different type of casual. There not saying that the game is easy, but that the RPG elements of the game are super lax. There's no more "only 1 player on the server who has mongoose" or needing to find groups to clear certain quests, spend months leveling up, level professions, require reputations to enter certain areas etc.

Some people like this, and to those people the game that exists now where all of that content is pretty much handed to them the game is casual.

[Paulosio]

I think the "casual" complaints have more to do with everything besides endgame raiding and pvp. It's more about the lack of investment in the actual world (of Warcraft), near lobby style gameplay, etc. Traveling to out of the way zones for an obscure crafting material, going to a random instance for a crafting recipe drop, that was all a big part of the game. Difficulty of the actual primary endgame content isn't really what people usually talk about. I personally think that starting either Cataclysm, bosses became far more mechanically difficult, especially on heroic (the original, real heroic).

Well you will enjoy legion then... It had me going off to throne of thunder, Kara and other old raids and new and old dungeons and raids for skinning and leatherworking quests. Those are the only 2 professions I tried but presumably the others have similair stuff. And the game does have going off to raids for rare "crafting recipe"... I've been farming those transmog enchant illusions all over the place and that's basically the same thing in terms of game play.

[LovesToSpooge]

Problem: Some people take the game too seriously and think it's supposed to cater to THEIR needs and wants. Anything that differs from THEIR vision of the game is bad. Often associated with the phrase "that's casual."

Solution: Enjoy the game for what it is (a game,) stop trying to blow things out of proportion, and the game is a lot more enjoyable.

Played since Mid-BC, leveled (and still play) every class, roughly 100 toons created in that time (though, most deleted,) and I can still enjoy the game, even when the end-game content is...lacking.

Uh dont you know what casual means? And your post makes no sense

[Otimus]

It depends on where you're coming from.

Some people think it's too casual because there's no real penalty for dying, everything is instanced, grouping isn't required for most things, when you die your body can't be looted, and gear is readily handed out (I don't agree with those being bad things, but they are pretty casual in so far as the MMO-worldscape was)