Seeking help from the more casual WoW players

[Merixa]

So after played WoW from the start as an avid raider I've decided that I can no longer do the whole "be online at this, this and this time for x amount of hours" thing. The problem is, after raiding for so long everything else in the game feels like a waste unless I'm going to be raiding by the end of it.

Now I know there's loads of people who play who don't do progression raiding or ranked pvp, and you're the guys I'm calling out to for help. I don't want to quit WoW (I still very much enjoy it) I just want to move away from the whole, raiding being like a job thing, and feeling like it's the "do all and end all" of the game.

What kinds of things do you guys do that keeps you playing, and doesn't require you to have set times to be online?

Any advice to kill this mindset of "pointless unless raiding" for those who have stopped raiding themselves and now play more casually?

Old habits die hard I guess but with how my life is changing, becoming a casual gamer is the way I need to go.

[Sinndra]

its not so much about what you do, but who you do it with. find others that are not so focused on end game raiding, and just enjoy spending time with friends.

[Deleted]

I stopped raiding endgame content on february due to lack of time all im saying is do achievement if you havent raise reputations and shit..But i really do feel you mate i'm pretty sure after summer i'll focus on doing endgame content again since i've done everything else reps and stuff and it's boring for me...

[xskarma]

Best option is to do pug raids when you have time. Still raiding, just not the mandatory hours or schedule.

[Spunt]

Use oqueue or openraid. Probelm solved.

[Merixa]

Best option is to do pug raids when you have time. Still raiding, just not the mandatory hours or schedule.

I've tried PuGing but the issue is they always seem to be.... just really bad. People constantly leaving, running about with no clue to what they are doing. Even when I out gear the content, I still can't finish a raid in a PuG. Maybe I've just been super unlucky.

[Lochton]

Well, I'm in a raiding community. Pulling in from pugs and real ID, as well as the guild.

[Amywef]

Outside of casual raiding with my guild I do many different things. Leveling different classes and reading all the quests, Archaeology, Pet Battles, occasionally a bit of fishing, running old raids for gold, chatting with friends while aimlessly jumping around, and my favourite, exploring every nook and cranny of the world to find interesting Easter eggs, mysteries and secrets.

There is a bunch of other things I can't think off the top of my head but the main thing to do is experiment, go try things and see if you get enjoyment out of doing them

[Merixa]

while aimlessly jumping around,

I did that even when raiding ;P Love your avatar btw.

I think my biggest problem is that I've pretty much "done it all" as I've played for so long. The only aspect of the game I haven't tried was rated PvP, but that would end up the same as raiding where I'd have to be online at certain times of the day. Casual PvP I guess could be fun, if I could find any like minded people to do it with.

[thorvath]

I think you may have opened many eyes OP! Truly no one in the history of this site has ever had these insights!

[Merixa]

I think you may have opened many eyes OP! Truly no one in the history of this site has ever had these insights!

It's almost like you've not even bothered to read anything I've said, seeing as what you've said makes no sense in comparison to the questions I've asked.


Oh wait, you probably haven't. You may move along now and try and find somebody who actually cares about you're opinion... if such a person exists in this world. I find that very doubtful.

[Gamerloin]

So after played WoW from the start as an avid raider I've decided that I can no longer do the whole "be online at this, this and this time for x amount of hours" thing. The problem is, after raiding for so long everything else in the game feels like a waste unless I'm going to be raiding by the end of it.

I'm in the exact same boat as you are. Started raiding fairly hardcore in wrath, and I loved every minute of it. However, I never liked being forced to be online for several hours a night, several days a week, without interruptions. My personal and social life suffered severely from this. So I decided to give it all up. I took a lot of breaks from wow after making that decision. The "need" to play was gone, which was somewhat of a relief, yet also made the game feel empty.

I came back to wow for a multitude of reasons, none of which were raid related (I think i've only done one normal highmaul run this expansions, and frankly, i don't care about it). Late MoP, the guild me and my 2 wow buddies were in disbanded and my friends got offered a raiding spot in a better guild on a much more active server. So they transferred. They also asked me to come along, but rather than transferring, I left my characters behind and started out fresh on a new server. When I went to create my character, I based my decision on one thing: Challenge mode gear. The warrior set looked amazing so I set a goal to level a warrior and tank the Challenge mode dungeons and get my set before the expansion was over. Two months later I achieved my goal.

The great thing about challenge modes is that they require raid style strategies, but come in bit size chunks. So rather than spending 2-3 hours to clear a raid, you spend 20 odd minutes to clear a dungeon.

WoD came around and I set a new goal. Since I started out fresh on a new server I had 0 gold whatsoever. So my next goal was to hit the gold cap before the expansion ended. Currently I'm sitting on 920k and I love doing it. Farming transmog loot, playing the auction house, making spreadsheets to calculate profits and what not. And I dont even play that much. I maybe log in 2-3 times a week on average, but it's more than enough for my playstyle.

I occasionally level alts for fun ( and profit ), do mythic dungeons, do old school raids. Its a big game, the problem is that it doesnt give you clear directions on what to do. The sky is the limit. My two wow friends and me all have different goals in wow. one is among the worldwide all-star ranks on warcraftlogs, while the other is one of the biggest pet collectors in all of Europe. and me? I'm raking in the dough.

TL;DR : Set goals, the game has much more to offer than just raiding. Try the challenge modes, do mythic dungeons as every role, get all 11 characters to 100, go for gold cap, get all professions to max, give pet battles a shot, try soloing content, collect mounts, titles, tabards, toys, achievements, transmog gear.

Or you can always go to Goldshire on a RP server....

[Deleted]

There's no point even trying. If you don't just quit you'll be back raiding sooner rather than later. Just quit, it's the best option.

[Demeter]

Pugging is hard man but that's something I've started doing in order to get myself some equipment. Its hard to find guilds that are casual enough to invite you when you do get on but they are out there.

[Panta]

Well, I play since 2006, I have NEVER made "actual expansion raid", and I have been a few times more than 4 months without logging in, so I guess that kinda qualifies me as a "casual"...

I enjoy leveling characters, fishing (I have draenor angler achievement at lvl 91, normally), respecting (I like rotate specs every two or three levels) to see how the classes feels on every spec, pet leveling (I dont know how much I have, but I know I have several at level 25, none of them power-leveled), I have all my professions at max level, I shop and sell on the AH (I have ilvl 680 or so on some of my chars, all through updated crafts or BoE in the AH... which, if you don't raid, is more than enough to anything you wanna do), I do some old raids to know how they are (well, not eanymore, as I have done all the raids up to Pandaria at least once), and repeat the ones I like the most (I love ICC, mostly)...

Actually, you can have a lot of fun with the game, as long as you are not "worried about being left behind", by loggin in once a week (or even less)

[goblingirl]

Now I know there's loads of people who play who don't do progression raiding or ranked pvp, and you're the guys I'm calling out to for help. I don't want to quit WoW (I still very much enjoy it) I just want to move away from the whole, raiding being like a job thing, and feeling like it's the "do all and end all" of the game.

Here's my experience. I used to be a hardcore progression raider in EverQuest, and moved to WoW during its closed beta period and have stayed with it since. I progression raided in Classic, BC, WoTLK, closed my account for awhile in Cata and then returned to raiding. During Classic, I also did a metric ton of PvP, earning a Field Marshal title. In short: I played a lot, most evenings.

My life during that time gradually changed as well - marriage, then a child, and a busy career. By the end of Cataclysm I had two problems: first, my server was dying, guilds were shutting down or transferring to higher pop servers and server merges weren't yet a thing. My raid guild faction switched and moved to Area 52 and I didn't want to go. So I went from being on a High pop Wrath server to being on a low pop server by early MoP. Eventually I transferred all my characters to a high pop server, but by then my second problem became: my real life didn't allow for me to raid 4-5 nights a week anymore on a rigidly fixed schedule.

Here's what I did to handle it:

1. I joined Openraid. There are excellent raid leaders there, and the best part is, you don't have to go every week. You can go when you have time, and weeks you are too busy for WoW, just don't sign up. I've progression raided Normal and Heroic all through MoP and WoD using Openraid. One week you can join raid leader A on Tuesday night, and next week if you are too busy on Tuesday, sign up for raid B on Saturday afternoon. Build your reputation on the site and people are HAPPY to have you in their runs because you are a good player, even if you can't sign up for every raid they run. Obviously it helps even more if you're a competent tank or healer and are willing to fill those roles. Again, I did progression every tier, including the special achievements for the mounts, using Openraid, for two expansions so far and it's fabulous. Nice people, no guild drama, clear loot rules that are honored. (Nice side effect: my friends list is ginormous, bigger than it ever was when I was in a raiding guild, and I can always find somebody doing something somewhere. I mean, basically, Openraid's community is my guild.)

2. A lot of us used to raid competitively to feel like we were "winning". Look around at other "completionist" activities you might enjoy. I am a bit of an achievement hound so I'm at 22k. I ignored pet battles in MoP, but in WoD I've had fun with them. When I got too busy to raid for awhile this spring, I'd log in each day and do a few pet trainers to level up a pet in about 15 minutes. Kept me in touch with the game. Now I'm working on getting my last 20 or so pets to "own them all", and trying to get them all to 25. I also continue to plink away at the BG achievements by doing random BGs here and there. Darkmoon Faire, Holiday events, etc. etc. Running old raids for pets and stuff to sell. I've gold capped a couple of times in the last 2 years just for fun, setting yourself a goal to get rich isn't bad. Buy a spectral tiger mount to celebrate.

It does feel weird at first, to stop caring about iLvL and server firsts and all that crap. But with a little thought and prep you can still indulge in current-tier raiding, without it being such a grind, and do other non-raiding stuff as well.

[Merixa]

"worried about being left behind"

I think this is probably that niggling in the back of my head. Every expansion I've always been one of the best geared, fully cleared the raid. I've never been behind, it was just always something that was sort of 'guaranteed' for me.

[Warcrafting]

For me, it's a lot of different things. One, I'm an altoholic. I have 3 alts at max level, and 4 more that I need to run through Draenor levelling. And that's just Draenor. I have plenty more I'm running through the old worlds. I find that each alt runs into a different experience, many of them having different skills that allow me to see new corners I never would have otherwise.
Also, I got really engaged in the lore of WoW. To me, what makes a game engaging isn't mechanics. It's the sense that I'm watching an epic tale unfold, and helping it along as I play. And the best part about WoW's lore is that there's so much of it. So many little side stories that branch off of a main one that's still being written as we play. It's wanting that next chapter that keeps me going.
So, my advice would be to make an all-new alt. Play through every level, reading the quests and bonus texts as you go. Really get to know the world you're in. Come to care about the why, not just the how.

[DarthMuffin]

I've been playing the game on-and-off for almost 10 years now without ever doing progression raiding. I think the key part of my still enjoying the game is the "on-and-off" part. I've never hesitated to unsubscribe and stop playing whenever I would start feeling like I wasn't having fun.

As for what I do in-game, I like to level alts. On my max level characters I set myself some goals every once in a while, like grinding out a reputation for a mount I'd like or farming for a specific transmog set. I also tend to do the raiding content once with the raid finder. Between my frequent breaks and my alt leveling sprees, newish content usually comes out frequently enough to keep me interested in the game (though at this point I've pretty much given up on WoD already).

[Vargur]

Best option is to do pug raids when you have time. Still raiding, just not the mandatory hours or schedule.

Wrong mindset, PUGing wastes MORE of your time than guild or OpenRaid organised raiding.