WoW is casual and thus bad?

[Deleted]

No.
I just had a discussion about this topic with a few people and I came to realize something: What made World of Warcraft popular 11 years ago, was the fact that it was INCREDIBLY more accessible and "casual" compared to the other MMO's at the time. That is what made it huge to begin with! But nowadays people actually think that being casual and accessible is what dooms WoW. Compared to what? Itself? Because no MMO that's been "hardcore" has ever had WoW's subscription numbers.
That's right, WoW never was "hardcore" to begin with! But if you compare WoW to itself, you can argue that it's become quite a lot more "casual". But why wouldn't they keep working on that since that's what made its success to begin with?

Infact, I'm curious how many of the people who would raise those complaints have played anything before WoW or during WoW.
I've played Guild Wars 2, Wildstar and FF14. As bored as I am with WoW, I got so bored with those other 3 that I didn't even play over a month in any of them. None of them put out content faster or in greater quantity than Blizzard does.

So why am I bored with it? Well, playing the same game for 11 years should quite logicly become rather boring. People are fed up with MMO's now. It's not fun anymore. It's oversaturated and quite frankly no longer interesting.

[Mgann-Morzz]

Long Story Short most of the playerbase doesn't actually know what it wants, and barely understands what they are actually angry about. So they just yell "CASUALS" because it's an easy buzzword.

You know Wrath of the Lich King? that expansion that gets wanked endlessly by the ultra nostalgic? in many ways THAT was the most casual expansion the game ever had, and half of the things people claim to hate were introduced within it.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

Long Story Short most of the playerbase doesn't actually know what it wants, and barely understands what they are actually angry about. So they just yell "CASUALS" because it's an easy buzzword.

You know Wrath of the Lich King? that expansion that gets wanked endlessly? in many ways THAT was the most casual expansion the game ever had, and half of the things people claim to hate were introduced within it.

WoW players can't speak straight to save their lives. In that way I guess Mike is the best CEO for them, he can't seem to speak straight either.

"Blarg, Wrath babies ruined this game!" > "Oh no, the game is too hard now!"

"Too many dailies!" > "Not enough dailies!"

"We want yearly expansions!" > "Why is Hellfire lasting a year!?"

[Lisa Frank Succubus]

Long Story Short most of the playerbase doesn't actually know what it wants, and barely understands what they are actually angry about. So they just yell "CASUALS" because it's an easy buzzword.

You know Wrath of the Lich King? that expansion that gets wanked endlessly by the ultra nostalgic? in many ways THAT was the most casual expansion the game ever had, and half of the things people claim to hate were introduced within it.

Very much this. Its really shocking to me because I played since Vanilla, remember how stuff was in BC and then WOTLK made things so accessible that even my best friends who played a fraction of the time still had some raid pieces and even came along to raids for the weekly boss.

People talk about how casuals destroyed WoW but WOTLK was a very casual friendly expansion. Some of the heroics were a bit rough at launch, like Old Kingdom and Occulus but it was nothing on the level of BC heroics. The expansion also introduced death knights, an instant 50+ character and little Timmy's class of choice.

Was WOTLK a bad expansion? Not at all. I had some great times playing it.

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

WoW players can't speak straight to save their lives. In that way I guess Mike is the best CEO for them, he can't seem to speak straight either.

"Blarg, Wrath babies ruined this game!" > "Oh no, the game is too hard now!"

"Too many dailies!" > "Not enough dailies!"

"We want yearly expansions!" > "Why is Hellfire lasting a year!?"

I think a big problem is that blizzard's response to some of these complaints has been too binary

Too many dailies? Instead of lowering the amount of dailies...they almost eliminated them entirely
Game too easy or too hard? Let's overcompensate the other direction.

[Souflikar]

WoW players can't speak straight to save their lives. In that way I guess Mike is the best CEO for them, he can't seem to speak straight either.

"Blarg, Wrath babies ruined this game!" > "Oh no, the game is too hard now!"

"Too many dailies!" > "Not enough dailies!"

"We want yearly expansions!" > "Why is Hellfire lasting a year!?"

I personally think yearly expansions is a terrible idea if the quality suffers. Like most things in life, if you take your time and do it right, in the end, the rewards are far greater. I really wish Blizz would just design the game they want to play, like at the beginning. There is NO WAY in hell they can satisfy everyone and therefore, shouldn't try.

[Issalice]

I think a big problem is that blizzard's response to some of these complaints has been too binary

Too many dailies? Instead of lowering the amount of dailies...they almost eliminated them entirely
Game too easy or too hard? Let's overcompensate the other direction.

Exactly. My issue with MoPs dailies wasn't the amount, it was they were all tied to Golden Lotus. I wanted to be able to pick and chose which ti focus on for which alt, instead of having to do that grind every single time just to unlock the damn Celestials for my tailor, and the Shadow Pan for my enchanter. That was really my only complaint about MoP. Now looking back on it I would take that over WoD any day.

[Mgann-Morzz]

Exactly. My issue with MoPs dailies wasn't the amount, it was they were all tied to Golden Lotus. I wanted to be able to pick and chose which ti focus on for which alt, instead of having to do that grind every single time just to unlock the damn Celestials for my tailor, and the Shadow Pan for my enchanter. That was really my only complaint about MoP. Now looking back on it I would take that over WoD any day.

Yeah and the thing is, they fixed that, really MoP 5.1 and 5.2 had what I thought was pretty much the best model for patch outdoor content ever, and some of the most well presented and fun storytelling the game ever had. If the lessons of Isle of Thunder rather than Timeless Isle had influenced things more going forward, well I think we'd of been looking at a very different expansion in WoD. But even after things were basically fixed and all this stuff was much more optional, people were still bitter from the first few months and STILL complained about daily quest and constantly begged Blizzard to get rid of them, not realizing that hey, you know getting rid of what is essentially the main form of repeatable non-group content might not be a good idea! And Blizzard didn't have the fortitude to just ignore those shortsighted complaints.

On another note, The hilarious thing about Garrisons is that Blizz foresaw exactly what ended up happening with Garrisons shrinking the feel of the world and isolating the playerbase years ago, it was one of the reasons they kept saying "Player Housing is something interesting that we want to do, but aren't doing right now" because they feared that happening. But then when they went and did it, they made the entire expansion revolve around it for some reason and lo and behold, exactly what they predicted years ago happened.

[Deleted]

It was casual enough for people to start playing it over other grindier MMOs, but hardcore enough to remain interesting. I suppose.

[silverzrishi]

casual? what casual? are u calling raid or sit in ur garrison casual? are you f--king retarded?

[Marakesh]

This is more of a word game argument. If casual is always good then the best version of WoW should have an "I win" button, so you can instantly have max level and the highest ilevel gear, right? Does that argument work?

Hardcore vs casual is mostly a distraction, but I do think the base game needs more difficulty and definitely less linearity and a more wide open world again. I guess that makes me hardcore!? I always thought that was a word for elitist raiders and pvpers, but I guess any standards are too much for todays WoW.

And I really don't care what raiders and pvpers are doing, I think they are both catered to fine, even though pvpers always complain about class balance, I think its the same as always there. Its the rest of us that want something more engaging than LFR or garrisons.

[Orby]

WoW has been called out on being to casual since TBC.