I think wow needs to become casual again.

[Koffeekush]

14 year player...

People think world quests are “grinding” these days...

World quests ARE world of warcraft essentially. You quest. You ride. You pvp a little. You gain an AP level maybe...

When people complain about questing... It’s time to quit.

Aside from warfronts, the game is the best it’s ever been. The problem are players who need to quit, now, but can’t due to addiction.

It’s really sad because less players would mean a better game I think.

[Lasting Journey]

Yes, and even after doing all the quests, you still had to farm lots of normal dungeons.

Go play on TBC warmane and find out for yourself. You clearly do not remember correctly, or are just trolling, because you're weird that way.

I did Arena for my OH in TBC. I saw that as another grind requirement, because it was the best OH I could get.

You really,really didn't ... you are somewhat right on arena especially with sword rogues and druid tanks.

[Nebron]

I wouldn't have dull content rewarding absurd ilvs to trivialize interesting content. Making difficulty null and void is a tenant of the hardest of hardcore players the ones willing to afk a warfront or lfr for months on end to get upgrades.

A casual is simply someone with limited time to play usually residing in mythic guilds that clear within the tier raiding a couple of nights a week. This entire concept of post poor content being propped up by redicoulsy over powered rewards or slot machine mentality needs to end. You simply have the terminology confused. Many terrible hardcore players try to claim to be a casual to shield themselves from criticism.
As for quest rewards... well it depends on the difficulty of the quest involved I have nothing against a quest such as the mage towers rewarding a 370 weapon but the idea of something like a cache offering that is absurd.

Basically what I am trying to say, is that WoW is getting less demanding and intellectually challenging. Half the content in BfA is purely copied from Legion and covered up in a new colors. Warfronts are really boring and have no future at all. It'd be better if we fought for the zone control to gain access for some quests etc.
Heritage Armor for other races has been announced today as a part of 8.1 content. And it's a reward for what? A quick questline available for every 120s... Wouldn't it be better if you had to fight for it like for Mage Tower appearences to show off your skills? It would. And even better if the ilvl for such a challenge would be fixed, so it would not be a matter of a good gear.

And back to the terminology. Actually casual player is not the term that refers to the time, but to the skills. Those are gamers that aren't demanding at all. They love playing a game the easiest way possible. As far as it's fun, that's okay. But as my experience has shown me, if only the game becomes less difficult, the game as a whole losses on that. Same happened to WoW.
Hardcore players are on the other hand are the players dedicated, working hard to achieve the toughest challenges. They are rewarded adequately to their commitment, but first of all, to their skills.
What strikes at the first sight, is that WoW has actually it's priorities upside-down. I am not a good player at all, basically quite average - going for normal Uldir with my guild. But I am geared as well as some of the mythic raiders. What's the point for going normal Uldir? I feel bored already
WoW developers HAVE to change it's course, but as I said, the damage has been done, and it'd be hard as hell, to bring it back. Maybe that's the problem? The entire philosophy is propped up by a simple business model - no passion at all. And in long term it's killing the game.
But those points should be obvious to people.

[Laqweeta]

My artifact necklace begs to differ.

So do your garbage computer specs, but we're not talking about that.

[Aquinan]

Become? It been casual-ified to death already.

[Kithelle]

In what way is it a casual mmo? Everything seems to be heavily timed gated to me or require a extremely large amount of repetative actions.

Just because it's a bit time gated doesn't mean it isn't casual...I take it you haven't played a mmo with a real grind...or vanilla wow.

[Thimagryn]

In what way is it a casual mmo? Everything seems to be heavily timed gated to me or require a extremely large amount of repetative actions.

Timegating is in the benefit of a casual player. The idea is you don't have a lot of time to play so their allotment of 'stuff to do' is capped weekly.

If they didn't time gate, then players who grind continuously would reap rewards and the power gap to casual players would be more inflated. A large power gap makes it difficult to maintain relative balance for BG's, Warfronts or even pug Raiding.

Besides, if you are a casual and you can't get all your weekly stuff done within a week, you are the type of player doomed to fall behind no matter what system is implemented.

[SirBeef]

IMO the only thing that has changed is that casuals have become more aware of the "higher end" game and that awareness has driven a desire to keep up to some degree. In the original iteration of WoW, whole raids were designed for a very small subset of players and most people didn't know anything about them.

Ignorance is bliss. Play how you want to play and ignore the rest.

That plus raids were made more accessible to everyone.

- - - Updated - - -

Just because it's a bit time gated doesn't mean it isn't casual...I take it you haven't played a mmo with a real grind...or vanilla wow.

Vanilla was still pretty casual. Rested exp, no requirement to group to level. Instanced dungeons, relatively fast leveling. WoW was considered baby's first MMO when it was released among every MMO player at the time.

[Kithelle]

That plus raids were made more accessible to everyone.

- - - Updated - - -



Vanilla was still pretty casual. Rested exp, no requirement to group to level. Instanced dungeons, relatively fast leveling. WoW was considered baby's first MMO when it was released among every MMO player at the time.

Perhaps, but if you compare the two...vanilla is a grind compared to live.

[SirBeef]

Perhaps, but if you compare the two...vanilla is a grind compared to live.

Not saying it wasn't. It was so much easier and less of a grind of something like EQ. Where if you died and lost experience, you could lose a level, and be locked out of a zone due to level requirements, and be stuck without your gear until you leveled back up.

[einaschern]

14 year player...

People think world quests are “grinding” these days...

World quests ARE world of warcraft essentially. You quest. You ride. You pvp a little. You gain an AP level maybe...

When people complain about questing... It’s time to quit.

Aside from warfronts, the game is the best it’s ever been. The problem are players who need to quit, now, but can’t due to addiction.

It’s really sad because less players would mean a better game I think.

Uh, what? Stormsong valley is 5 phases. Quest hub-> attack X mob. Back to hub. Attack more of the same x mob. Back to hub. Attack more of the exact same mobs. Back to hub. Guess, what attack more of X mob.
X mobs = Naga, pig people, cultists, treasure hunters, veco.

Questing is poor. Island expeditions are a joke and awful filler as they stand right now. AP grind is monotonous hot garbage, as are the traits and azerite gear. At least the artifact weapon had real traits you could see empowered to provide a carrot.

M0 and raid feel fine, but the rest does not. Which means we have WoD 2.0, this time with World Quests!

[Niwes]

i dont think op is that much away from the truth. also it seems a lot of ppl derailed the first few statements and the „form“ of the grind and the meaning of casuality, op stated, here a bit.

i personally think op is right in the perspective of:

1)
in TBC i max raided and maxed out 1 char and also was able to play 1 or 2 alts to a relative high power degree. this is not possible when you really really max out today on 1 char. there i defenitelly feel a difference today.

2)
in TBC stuff was not endless. you had an amount of things you could do in a week (i.e. valor cap, raid lockout), but after that, it was done. today the grind is endless, regardless how small the dps/hps improvement is. in TBC power progression had a clear cap.

3)
TBC (and all expacs until Legion) had no power progression outside of gear at all. also the more older xpacs like TBC had a more „static“ behaviour, in terms of what you could do with one character. therefore alts were a more big deal then. today blizzard pull out way more stuff you have to do with one character, to keep ppl playing, because most ppl just play 1 character. this started very obviously in MoP with the Legendary questline. on older xpacs it was more of a „go with char through leveling and some starting stuff, after that its raid or die and you cap valor points and get gear. thats it“. today you have to repeat endless shit and millions of quests and questlines and pre-stuff and catch ups and and and, so alt playing becomes more a pain in the ass, but playing one char do not become boring and nothing to play that early. it is just a different form of how the game plays out.

4)
i think the title of this thread is a bit misleading, even when in the real end it is somewhat correct. for ppl reading it, and going „w0000t?“ and type in stuff here, without thinking too much, it derails stuff a bit.

all in all i am not saying OP is right in everything he said, but i, as a player playing since 2005 without any interruption, can not say i dont get where he is comin from. if i would, i would lie.

i definetelly understand the mindset behind op‘s statements and can not really disagree.

[Nutri]

So do your garbage computer specs, but we're not talking about that.

Yeah that is totally related to the subject. That’ll change my mind on the matter.

[Guardian Bob]

In what way is it a casual mmo? Everything seems to be heavily timed gated to me or require a extremely large amount of repetative actions.

That is the definition of casual content. You take skill away and use time to fool people into thinking they did something hard. If it took 3 weeks to accomplish something, you feel like you did something hard, even though you just logged in and hit the equivalent of a pinata. Repetitive actions are the result of doing something easy. Making it difficult would make it not seem repetitive but you don't want that cause you're casual.

What you want is instant easy gratification which won't happen cause making that sorta content is hard to do, since you need so much of it, and time sinks are what keep you playing and more importantly paying that monthly fee.

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So do your garbage computer specs, but we're not talking about that.

Why do so many people here resort to ad hominem?

[Deleted]

Why would that be a negative?

I don't get the notion that giving everyone bland boring content is somehow superior to just allowing people to progress at there own rate.

Sorry what? You just complained about WoW being too hardcore, which is hilarious in itself, and now you propose a change where casuals would have NO chance of catching up to people? Sorry but ayy lmao.

[kamuimac]

14 year player...

People think world quests are “grinding” these days...

World quests ARE world of warcraft essentially. You quest. You ride. You pvp a little. You gain an AP level maybe...

When people complain about questing... It’s time to quit.

Aside from warfronts, the game is the best it’s ever been. The problem are players who need to quit, now, but can’t due to addiction.

It’s really sad because less players would mean a better game I think.

people are whiining for sake of whining.

its because their fragile ego cant stand the fact how many people dont give any fucks about hardmodes and have a blast playing wow casualy.

finally casual crowd got content to do in game and mythic crybabies cant stand it that after 15 years of catering only to them blizzard finally gave casuals stuff to do in game.

[Lasting Journey]

Sorry what? You just complained about WoW being too hardcore, which is hilarious in itself, and now you propose a change where casuals would have NO chance of catching up to people? Sorry but ayy lmao.

People shouldn't be equal. The concept that just doing the same thing over and over without change remaining rewarding isn't good for the game. WoW was at its strongest when most people didn't see all the content and had their own portions of it to focus on.

[Loveliest]

I think you both have 2 definition of casual. The OP is talking about casual in terms of time invesment. You are talking about casual in terms of difficulty of the content.

Yeah. I think OP should have used a different term to avoid confusion. People probably see 'casual' and think - it has LFR, it's as casual as it gets.

[Lasting Journey]

Yeah. I think OP should have used a different term to avoid confusion. People probably see 'casual' and think - it has LFR, it's as casual as it gets.

I didn't know casuals as a term changed to meaning being utterly awful at something. I thought people who were awful simply claimed to be casual.

[Loveliest]

WoW was at its strongest when most people didn't see all the content and had their own portions of it to focus on.

Pretty sure WoW was its strongest in Wrath, when everybody and their mother was raiding ICC, there were 3 catchup dungeons with the equivalent of the previous raid (232, ToC 10m) and LFD was a thing and you didn't need to look for members to do a silly heroic. Also, stuff awarded frost emblems that even causal people used to buy 264 gear (10 hc ICC / 25m normal ICC). Also, Archavon 'raid' awarded 264 tier pieces to boot - pretty sure everyone was doing that as well.