Did casuals ruin WoW and if so how?

[Celista]

No it wasn't. Healers had endless mana in Wrath.

We were talking about BC healing.

Yes, BC healing and Wrath healing were very different.

[Lord Blackmore]

Casual = Low time commitment - Associate this with any player who says they can't raid because they have jobs in the morning, or just don't play too much in the game
Hardcore = High time commitment - Associate this with any player who spends 30+ hours into WoW

No. Just. No. Casual alone can describe a variety of playstyles, not all of which have anything to do with the number of hours they play. There is no definition of casual that fits all of the possible ways someone can be a casual player.

[BatteredRose]

If something takes more time, it is by definition, harder.

Incorrect. Time consuming =/= hard. Silly goose.

OT: No.

[This name sucks]

RIP wow.

I used to be good at this game.

[Lord Pebbleton]

I wonder what the fact you had to fly to the instance by yourself has to do with being a casual player.

EDIT: I spend lots of hours in WoW, since i am on vacation and have nothing better to do. However, i don't raid. By the running mentality, am i a casual, or a hardcore player?

[Itisamuh]

Blaming the undefined and almost mythical "casuals" is just the cool thing to do these days, to show how hardcore and old school you think you are. Not just in WoW, but in pretty much any game. The MLG Halo players blame casuals for the sequels not being as good as Halo CE, despite the fact that most "casual" players I know loved CE. So no, casuals did not ruin WoW, because the playerbase is no more or less casual than it ever has been. The game has just evolved to involve more, and the once exclusively catered to are butt hurt that others get to have fun now. That is really all there is to it; oh, and pandas.

[vesseblah]

If something takes more time, it is by definition, harder.

Time-consuming is the adjective you're looking for.

Also, I take it you never actually tried 4 horsemen back in Vanilla

Hardcore raiders figured out 4HM strategy on day one, it just took them two months to gear up more tanks. This is great example of where the game was not difficult but simply had one of the biggest design fuck-ups of all times when all previous tiers and bosses required 2-3 maintanks and one fight in Naxx required suddenly six. It was a requirement not one guild could meet.

[Deleted]

If you just spammed one downranked spell you were doing it wrong.

What can i say... It worked. I don't argue that it wasn't the most effectiv way to heal but thanks to shadow priests and stuff like that it was more than enoguh to complete every encounter until sunwell. It probably would have worked in sunwell also but by then blizzard nerfed downranking multiple times because it was that stupid and easy.
Raiding in BC was all about attunments. You had to kill some harder bosses like Kael'thas Sunstrider once but after that Black Temple and Mount Hyjal was mostly freeloot again. The funny thing was after blizzard removed the attunments for BT and MH even casual raiding guilds managed to clear something like 3/5 MH and 4/9 BT in their first ID.
Raiding in BC was completly a mess.

[Evil Inside]

Sup everyone so ive been playing WoW since about the start of BC and I know back then it was harder trying to clear content and the game in itself was a lot harder since there was no LFR or group find for anything plus you had to flyout to the actual instance. So basically if you werent in a hard core raiding guild you werent going to see any content. Ive seen a lot of posts on other forums talking about how WoW has been dumbed down to the point where its unplayable now and everyone is blaming the casual player for this. My question is how exactly did the casual "ruin" WoW?

You do realize that "casuals" run the game right? Well more like they vastly outnumber raiders/pvpers and the lot. They bring the money in and thus blizzard will make sure those people keep playing the game.

[Glorious Leader]

By the way: wrong

He's not wrong or at least not entirely wrong. The raids were stupidly easy. Hyjal was a joke. I moved once every minute at most and had a basic 2 or 3 button rotation with no procs to watch. In fact I can remember afking through Azgalor. I got doomed, died at the second tank area and then afkd back to xbox while they finished up. It was retarded simple compared to today. Are you kidding me? A boss like Durumu is such a fucking HUGE step up from pretty much all of TBC that I can't think of an equivalent boss in terms of complexity throughout the entire expac let alone a boss that is only the halfway mark of the instance.

[Deleted]

Incorrect. Time consuming =/= hard. Silly goose.

OT: No.

Why not? Add in enough enough time-consuming stuff then you force players to display time-management skills. Time management was traditionally a core component to the gameplay of first generation MMOs and is still prevalent today. Some players will use their time more wisely than others. Surely that is just as much a skill as who can click their buttons the fastest. That's not even factoring in aspects such as patience, resource competition, efficiency determinations, etc.
Why wouldn't something that is more time consuming not be more harder?

[MrHappy]

casual is too loosely defined that it cannot be used in an argument imo.

Casual as in you don't raid heroic content or not in rated anything pvp wise?
Is casual mean you need to do less than X amount of hours a week and content is irrelevant?
There are a lot of people that play 20h a week and haven't set foot in anything beyond LFR and all they do is get all the mounts/pets achievements out in the world. Are they casual?
There are people (like myself) that play 8-12h a week and are 10/13h heroic ToT (or better). Am I casual?

Bottom line is that WoW has (and will) evolve in a direction that the developers want - story wise - with some elements to please the masses. WoW from day one had encounters that majority of players (less than 1%) never even saw. Imo that was a bad game design. Today Blizzard is smart. They believe exclusivity is fine as long as there are alternatives. In the past the alternative was to either find another guild or not do the content at all. Why bother investing hundred's of thousands of dollars developing awesome content when the majority of the player base will end up looking at YouTube videos of the kill vs being there. Today wow has something for everyone. The audience to which wow appeals is much broad than it was before. That is a good thing. To those that want to see the story and the big baddie but do not have the time/skill/people/coordination/computer/whatever else to do have LFR. Those that like a challenge have CM's Heroic Raiding, Brawler's Guild and upcoming Proving grounds. Those that want the lore and achievements/pets/mounts (like my wife) have lfr, scenarios, quests, dungeons.

Just because other people want something different from the game than you does not mean your opinion >> their opinion. I'm not obligated to run LFR when I'm in 545 ilvl or do dungeons or scenarios. I enjoy my content and why would I care that other people want to enjoy an easier version of the same content like LFR. They do not get same rewards as I do...they do not feel as powerful as I do. I don't understand why people want for 10-25 people to be in all-out epics and rest be peasants in blue gear gawking at your awesomesause. That is just not fun.

I think people just get upset that other people get shinnies after 6 months of easier work when you got yours through "hard work" in 2 months. The fact that you had your special snow-flake status for 4 months does not mean other people should not catch up. The main problem with people is greed. They want to be #1. They want to have the mounts and gear and "their precious" and have other people oooh and ahh staring at them in your local city hub.


WoW was not ruined. WoW evolved into something bigger and better. You either accept it and keep moving forward or move on to pastures which you think are better.

[Suggs]

What would be funny to watch is if every single 'casual' left the game so the only people playing would be hardcore and elitist cocks....let them have what they want....for a short amount of time before the game fails goes ftp and eventually shuts down.

[Mortal Strike]

If something takes more time, it is by definition, harder.

Also, I take it you never actually tried 4 horsemen back in Vanilla, or KT, or M'uru, etc etc.

Completely not true.

Writing down the alphabet 1000 times in a row is not hard, just time consuming. There are many things that are more difficult that can be completed in much less time.

[Deleted]

Completely not true.

Writing down the alphabet 1000 times in a row is not hard, just time consuming. There are many things that are more difficult that can be completed in much less time.

Something that asks more of people is by definition harder. Writing the alphabet 1000 times asks people to have more time, use more patience, maintain focus, manage against hand strain. It's harder than just writing it once. Go on, try it. "Hard" is a very broad term which encompasses a lot. When you say something is not as hard as something which takes less time you need to be more specific.

[vesseblah]

It's harder. Go on, try it. "Hard" is a very broad term which encompasses a lot. When you say something is not as hard as something which takes less time you need to be more specific.

When more explicit adjective is available you should be using that to avoid confusion. For example using "hard" or "difficult" to describe farming shit in WoW are too ubiquitous when there is better alternative available, "time-consuming".

[Deleted]

If something takes more time, it is by definition, harder.

Depends. Taking mobs for example: killing an elite or a even a group of 2-3 normal mobs back in the day was harder...because you had to manage your health/mana etc. and use class skills to stay alive due to the higher health of the mob (and extra damage if it was a group of 2-3 normal mobs), whereas a lone normal mob would die before you had to consider such things.

Fast forward to nowadays, with simpler combat mechanics, top-tier abilities/talents given at lvl 10 and mobs that hit like a wet noodle: killing an elite or a group of normal mobs is NOT harder, as you don't have to manage anything or even use any class skills outside your dps rotation...even with a group of 4-5 it just takes longer, not harder. (the only exception being attempting to solo mobs that are intended for groups, as these are more akin to the old elites from the old days)

[Deleted]

When more explicit adjective is available you should be using that to avoid confusion. For example using "hard" or "difficult" to describe farming shit in WoW are too ubiquitous when there is better alternative available, "time-consuming".

Why? Killing mobs while farming isn't the hard part . Getting the most value from your time while farming is the hard part. Throw in some other "time consuming" components which force the player to consider what the best use of their time is and you do have something which is time-consuming, hard and difficult.
I'm not advocating it as attractive game design, and I'm neither equating it's difficulty with other forms of difficulty but all I'm saying is the longer something takes the more "harder" it becomes; depending on how long it takes it can can ask different things from a player than something with a short time investment.
Simply saying something isn't hard but is just time consuming when one of the traditional game mechanics of first generation MMOs, and one that still lingers in WoW, is asking players to consider how they use their time is erroneous.

[vesseblah]

Getting the most value from your time while farming is the hard part.

Pfft... 99% players check it out from some website (like MMOC) which farming gives the best value for time spent, and the other 1% can figure it out for themselves. Googling "fastest wow valor" or something like that is not exactly hard, or time consuming, just pointless housekeeping which is being pruned out from the game.

[Deleted]

Yes Casual's ruined wow, and I will tell you how.
Our being in the game has caused the elitist jerks to scream and shout and cry so much about everything that we casuals enjoy, that it spoils the enjoyment of the game of everyone else. so you could say that we have ruined it by proxy.