False dichotomy: hardcore vs. casual

[barrsftw]

Not many people care enough about the game to get on the forums and share their opinions....they have plenty of other games to play and actually enjoy. Those who suffer the most are those who only enjoy the MMORPG genre, like myself, and who still have not found a decent alternative to WoW.

There are TONS of great MMOs out right now. You haven't been looking very hard if you can't find a decent alternative.

[Aliven]

Sooo another thread about liking qol changes means you have mental illnes or are basement dweller.

How original.

[Eurhetemec]

Being good enough to do high-end content is already time-consuming enough. You have to bring your A-game and be up to date on the latest tactics, builds, stat optimization etc. Why make those players grind on top of having to train to be good?

I don't fundamentally disagree, but the claim was false, so your point is to the side of that.

Your original point is one of those sad cases of someone who was getting towards the truth, then decided to engage in creepy stuff about everyone being mentally ill, rather than looking at the real issues. There's no doubt WoW and MMORPGs in general have always attracted the people you describe, but undermining your point, they were clearly more common in Vanilla-WotLK than later. It's certainly true that the "social game" element has declined, but the idea that that's some sort of cunning plan, is a bit much, and it was crippled from the start in WoW, because Blizzard insisted on stuff like capping raids at 40 people, and then lowered that cap to 25, and then lower, which drove elitist pressures which are antithetical to MMOs surviving as "social games". People shit on LFR and so on, but if Blizzard hadn't got terminally obsessed with making raids harder and harder, more and more demanding in terms of resources, more and more exclusionary in terms of level of play required (from late Vanilla through TBC particularly), none of that would have been necessary. 40-man was less than ideal (other games of the era let you self-limit), but it let you have a lot of mediocre or bad at the game players, but ones who were a massive social asset. Who chatted and kept people together and so on, but who were part of the experience, not some excluded breed of "socials" (something which really only emerged too late itself). 25 killed that because guess what proportion of the raid could be bad/mediocre in 40? Yeah about 15 people (not true in Naxx, note, that was the worst of both worlds - you needed 40 players playing near-perfectly in several encounters).

Players drove this and Blizzard drove this. It was a toxic feedback loop. Anyone who played TBC remembers the toxic shit about "welfare epics" and so on, the staggering elitism and stupidity that was prevalent. Blizzard realized it wasn't working out when the looked at how few people even saw the inside of the Sunwell. That was shit for the game. Back then they used to put out figures, and Naxx and Sunwell both saw periods (in the EU) where WoW actually lost players, where otherwise it rocketed upwards.

And they never entirely recovered. Different difficulties and 10s and so on helped but the elitism was too embedded, and the exclusionary behaviour too accepted.

If we wanted to make WoW a social game again, we'd need to make it fun and accessible, but the elite wouldn't stand for it.

[chiddie]

I think the difference between casual and hard-core isn't time or level of gaming. It's about commitment.

Time matters. A LOT. I can barely play 1 hour per day when I’m lucky. It’s not that I don’t want to play more, I simply can’t.

This basically exclude doing 90% of group content. And also “socialize” is difficult playing this little time because every second matters and everything that makes you waste time is bad. If there would be no solo content I would have called it quits since Pandaria.

[Drusin]

I consider myself a casual because I don't do any high end content, shit I barely do heroic dungeons let alone raids lol. However I do play 8+ hours a day, my current schedule being ~10pm:start wowing -> ~2pm:end wowing

[woopytywoop]

In stead of picking one line I disagree with and invalidating your essay like most posters here, I'm going to agree on most things you wrote.

I personally quit myself as I was spending more time doing things I don't enjoy to not fall behind in stead of being able to do stuff I enjoy.
Probably it was always like this, but I have never felt it as bad as this expansion.

I think I became too old for this game. In the past I always could play my own pace while still being able to do heroic/mythic raiding, however now if you don't grind AP/mythic+/... you are holding back your raid team. Same for essences, none of them are hard to get, they just force you to spend a lot of time doing stuff you don't enjoy.

[Beefhammer]

If you play WoW on a regular basis - you are not a casual. It doesn't really matter what you do in it.
Similarly, if you don't grind AP and similar shit (most of your free time) to be at the peak of your performance - you are not hardcore - no matter if you raid or not.

You are most likely just a Core player (a.k.a. Midcore). The one this game was designed for.

Raiding doesn't make you hardcore, not raiding doesn't make you a casual.

A guy who plays AH 20+ hours a week (on average, not just once in a tier) - is the most hardcore player of all mythic raiders.

I disagree. If I played wow regularly, 30 min a day and all I did was do a coupe of quests and a pet battle while slowly leveling a character, That would be pretty casual.

[Craaazyyy]

In stead of picking one line I disagree with and invalidating your essay like most posters here, I'm going to agree on most things you wrote.

I personally quit myself as I was spending more time doing things I don't enjoy to not fall behind in stead of being able to do stuff I enjoy.
Probably it was always like this, but I have never felt it as bad as this expansion.

I think I became too old for this game. In the past I always could play my own pace while still being able to do heroic/mythic raiding, however now if you don't grind AP/mythic+/... you are holding back your raid team. Same for essences, none of them are hard to get, they just force you to spend a lot of time doing stuff you don't enjoy.

i don't think it's just because you're too old.. back in MoP, for example, you could raid log if you wanted to and do nothing more essentially.. obviously if you wanted to play more you could, there was other stuff to do and it was also way more enjoyable because they haven't ruined the classes yet

now when you log in after even a small period of not playing the game you feel overwhelmed by the insane amount of daily/weekly stuff that you essentially need to do if you don't want to fall behind.. i'm not even gonna talk about flying

the daily/weekly chores are seriously out of hand..

[Asrialol]

I can't fathom why people care about this shit. It's a game. Play if you like it, if you don't - don't. It's not rocket science. How other people play the game is irrelevant. Whether other people like this or that is irrelevant.

I really don't get why some people seem to think it's a big deal.

- - - Updated - - -

I consider myself a casual because I don't do any high end content, shit I barely do heroic dungeons let alone raids lol. However I do play 8+ hours a day, my current schedule being ~10pm:start wowing -> ~2pm:end wowing

What do you do ingame during that time? Achievements, pets, questing, etc?

[Wavebossa]

Sure you can, just not at the highest level (high m+ and mythic raids). Could you please show me which game you can play for one hour a day, and be at the high level in it ?

For some reason in WoW (moreso than any other game i've played), the playerbase always uses World First mythic raiders as their example as someone being "good" at the game.

That's like me using the world record Super Mario 64 runners as a benchmark of "good" and then complaining that I cant be good unless I invest years of theorycrafting and work.

You don't have to set 1 foot into a raid to enjoy WoW
You don't have to do a single m+
If you personally see these accomplishments as a requirement to enjoy this game, then that's a personal issue

Either get better, devote more time, and change your outlook.

[Battlebeard]

We really need a clear definition for each type of players, cause eveyrone, including me, has their own definiton.

For me, this is a Casual player.

First off, Casual has NOTHING to do with skill, the best players in the would could still be casual.

Secondly, Casual has nothing to do with how much you play. You can play many hours every day and still be casual.

Thirdly, Casual has to do with how you play the game. If you do organized raiding with guild or recurring pugs, you are not casual. If you pre-dedicate time to do content you are not casual. If you let WoW come before other activitities you are not casual.

But if you have this mentality, that you login whenever you feel like it, play whatever you feel like, with no planning and the ability to just shut down the game at any second, cause you have no commitments, THEN, you ARE a casual player!

[Seranthor]

.

Wow's target audience is people that will give them money. You cant keep up? then learn to prioritize what is important to you. If you really are as unhappy as you pretend to be perhaps you should look for other things to do with your time that do, in fact, make you happy.

[reauxmont]

Being good enough to do high-end content is already time-consuming enough. You have to bring your A-game and be up to date on the latest tactics, builds, stat optimization etc. Why make those players grind on top of having to train to be good?

What do they really have to grind though? Hint: nothing.

[ek0zu]

In stead of picking one line I disagree with and invalidating your essay like most posters here, I'm going to agree on most things you wrote.

I personally quit myself as I was spending more time doing things I don't enjoy to not fall behind in stead of being able to do stuff I enjoy.
Probably it was always like this, but I have never felt it as bad as this expansion.

I think I became too old for this game. In the past I always could play my own pace while still being able to do heroic/mythic raiding, however now if you don't grind AP/mythic+/... you are holding back your raid team. Same for essences, none of them are hard to get, they just force you to spend a lot of time doing stuff you don't enjoy.

This is exactly my case!

[Mardux]

tl;dr for those who misunderstood the point of my original post.

There are 2 categories of gamers that Blizzard can target:
1. social gamers
2. anti-social gamers

WoW used to be a social game. Organizing 40 man raids, spamming trade to find a group, waiting for longer BG queues because you could only play with your realm ate up a lot of time. But the payoff was that you interacted with other people and formed friendships.

The problem with targeting social gamers is that their continued subscription is heavily dependent on the networks that they formed as well as the overall quality of the game. Take Cataclysm for example. Many people quit because they didn't like the game's core design anymore. Others, while they liked the game's core design, started to quit because their longstanding friends / guilds quit and they felt discouraged. Designing content for social gamers is inefficient from business PoV because how well they integrate into the game's social structure is an externality the business has no control over and them liking a particular expansion is influenced by subjective factors as well as the objective state of the game.

Anti-social gamers, on the other hand, don't give a shit about the game's social structure. They effectively play WoW as a lobby / singleplayer game. To them it DOESN'T matter if others quit. Designing content for them is efficient because you can be assured they won't quit en-mass because of network effects. Plus they tend to be mentally unwell and exhibit compulsive behaviors. Hence instead of aiming to design quality content, you can just pump out addictive crap to keep them subscribed.

WoW's core audience is essentially the second group now.

Blizzard's shifting direction for WoW was never about casualizing the game. If anything, it's more hardcore than ever now. It was all about their conscious decision to start targeting anti-social, addicted and otherwise mentally unsound people.

TL;DR for the point of this post.

I made up some bs and got called out for it. Now I'm trying to backpedal.

- - - Updated - - -

In stead of picking one line I disagree with and invalidating your essay like most posters here, I'm going to agree on most things you wrote.

I personally quit myself as I was spending more time doing things I don't enjoy to not fall behind in stead of being able to do stuff I enjoy.
Probably it was always like this, but I have never felt it as bad as this expansion.

I think I became too old for this game. In the past I always could play my own pace while still being able to do heroic/mythic raiding, however now if you don't grind AP/mythic+/... you are holding back your raid team. Same for essences, none of them are hard to get, they just force you to spend a lot of time doing stuff you don't enjoy.

Except, you have to literally not play the game or not anything but pet battles in order for your character to be at a point that you hold back your guild while raiding heroic.

[glowpipe]

tl;dr for those who misunderstood the point of my original post.

There are 2 categories of gamers that Blizzard can target:
1. social gamers
2. anti-social gamers

WoW used to be a social game. Organizing 40 man raids, spamming trade to find a group, waiting for longer BG queues because you could only play with your realm ate up a lot of time. But the payoff was that you interacted with other people and formed friendships.

The problem with targeting social gamers is that their continued subscription is heavily dependent on the networks that they formed as well as the overall quality of the game. Take Cataclysm for example. Many people quit because they didn't like the game's core design anymore. Others, while they liked the game's core design, started to quit because their longstanding friends / guilds quit and they felt discouraged. Designing content for social gamers is inefficient from business PoV because how well they integrate into the game's social structure is an externality the business has no control over and them liking a particular expansion is influenced by subjective factors as well as the objective state of the game.

Anti-social gamers, on the other hand, don't give a shit about the game's social structure. They effectively play WoW as a lobby / singleplayer game. To them it DOESN'T matter if others quit. Designing content for them is efficient because you can be assured they won't quit en-mass because of network effects. Plus they tend to be mentally unwell and exhibit compulsive behaviors. Hence instead of aiming to design quality content, you can just pump out addictive crap to keep them subscribed.

WoW's core audience is essentially the second group now.

Blizzard's shifting direction for WoW was never about casualizing the game. If anything, it's more hardcore than ever now. It was all about their conscious decision to start targeting anti-social, addicted and otherwise mentally unsound people.

Anti-social gamers, on the other hand, don't give a shit about the game's social structure. They effectively play WoW as a lobby / singleplayer game. To them it DOESN'T matter if others quit. Designing content for them is efficient because you can be assured they won't quit en-mass because of network effects. Plus they tend to be mentally unwell and exhibit compulsive behaviors. Hence instead of aiming to design quality content, you can just pump out addictive crap to keep them subscribed.

Source on this ? Show me this study please. Because this is basically one of the dumbest things ive ever heard

[Mardux]

For some reason in WoW (moreso than any other game i've played), the playerbase always uses World First mythic raiders as their example as someone being "good" at the game.

That's like me using the world record Super Mario 64 runners as a benchmark of "good" and then complaining that I cant be good unless I invest years of theorycrafting and work.

You don't have to set 1 foot into a raid to enjoy WoW
You don't have to do a single m+
If you personally see these accomplishments as a requirement to enjoy this game, then that's a personal issue

Either get better, devote more time, and change your outlook.

You act like they are unwell simply because they enjoy a different aspect of the game than you do. Just because someone needs to raid or run keys to enjoy this game, doesnt mean they need to "get better".

Now, on the other hand, someone who thinks others cant enjoy the game for reasons they dont share with you, maybe you're the one who needs to get better.

[Raelbo]

-AP and similar endless progression grinds-
There is nothing casual about having to follow a set routine every day in order to progress your character. World and daily quests encourage you to log in every day and do the same repetitive tasks in order to increase your character's power.

There is no "have to" in following that routine though.

And no, they don't encourage you to log in every day. What they do encourage is that you generally complete your emissary quests. That means 10-12 world quests every 3 days, leaving it up to you to decide how you want to manage that. Even if you're a player who only logs on twice a week and does all your available emissaries, that's less than 2 hours a week to still remain reasonably effective (clearing 6/7 of the available emissaries)

World quests, on the other hand, encourage repetition over the course of the entire expansion. There is no big power reward upon achieving revered / exalted. Rather, minor power rewards are spread over the entire set of world quests that you could potentially do over the course of the expansion. By skipping a day of world quests, you are not postponing your power reward. You are actually missing out on your daily power reward that will disappear at the end of the day forever. As a result, many people feel like they're "falling behind" if they don't actively do world quests.

Sorry, but it's utterly absurd to suggest that, by design, the WQ and AP systems encourage anyone to do every single world quest or risk falling behind. If you analyse the design that's pretty much the complete opposite of what it's encouraging.

Firstly, if you look at WQs, the reward structure places a very strong emphasis on completing your emissary quests, with significantly diminishing returns thereafter. Essentially you can get 80% of the potential rewards from WQs for 20% of the effort.

Secondly, if you look at AP system, the reward structure also places a strong emphasis on the proverbial "low hanging fruits" with significantly diminishing returns thereafter. This is because of AK which makes it much cheaper to go for higher ranks later on instead of pushing for them early. Your assertion that you're going to be "falling behind" because you missed out on a few WQs is utter nonsense. Over the course of the expansion, those "missed" WQ's end up meaning practically nothing.

What is important when considering AP is to be consistent at it so that you don't land up miles behind everyone else. If you're putting in double effort of the average player in terms of AP grind that only keeps you 3 amulet levels ahead, and only for as long as you keep putting in that effort. That is only important if you want to be cutting edge, it's in no way compulsory.

Who does this feature appeal to? WoW addicts who feel like they need to get their daily fix of WoW. What does this feature induce? Compulsive addiction towards logging in daily to get your "fix" aka minor power rewards from world quests.

Nonsense, nonsense, nonsense.

This feature is designed to cater to players across the board, all the way down from those "WoW addicts who feel like they need to get their daily fix" to the ultra casual-log on twice a week for an hour or so player. The game gives you the bulk of its rewards for relatively little time investment, so even though we continue to get more rewards no matter how much we play, the reality is that those rewards soon become worth so little that no one has any excuse to feel "compelled" to pursue them.

-Titan/Corruptforging-
There is nothing casual about having to repeat the same content in order to get the best reward.

Again, there is no having to repeat the same content, because there is no requirement to get the best reward. Seriously, what actually drives such an absurd requirement?

The only real requirement (as imposed by the game) is getting sufficiently good gear to beat the content. That does not require BiS. Not even close. Beyond that there may be a requirement by you to have an advantage over a competing player. Aside from the glaringly obvious fact that this is a self imposed demand (not of the game), it still doesn't require you to get BiS, it simply requires you to put in more time and effort than the person you're choosing to compete against.

Yes, I get that some players are obsessed over getting BiS. But don't pretend that it is driven by the game or any requirement imposed by the game on anyone. If anything, the whole point of the "infinite grind" is to discourage trying to get BiS and to set your own goals according to you own context. You should not be targetting BiS. What you should be targetting is a maximisation of your power given the time and effort you're willing to put into the game.

This obsession with chasing the best gear possible is entirely a personal objective that is entirely within your own power to control and regulate.

Titan/Corruptforging broke the exhaustability of content. With these systems in place, the person who farms the MOST content is the best geared rather than the person who follows the progression path from easy to more difficult content.

I disagree. The people who are best geared are still those doing the hardest content. While it is mathematically possible to get an amazing piece of gear from lower level content, it's not the optimal way to spend your time if you want the best gear.

There is one point I'll give you here: M+ is essentially infinitely farmable. Combined with TF/Corruption I'd agree that there is a bit of an incentive for players to go overboard. Even so, that's still not really enough to compel such behaviour unless the individual in question has a problem with OCD.

Who does this feature appeal to? WoW addicts who feel like they need to get their daily fix of WoW. What does this feature induce? Compulsive addiction towards repeating the same content ad nauseum to get your minor power increase from titan/corruptforged gear.

Again, false. While this feature might result in this behaviour from inherently OCD players it doesn't induce it in normal players.

I can't call myself a casual anymore. I have to dedicate at least two hours a day and that's WITHOUT raiding to just staying relevant with all the endless grinds.

Sorry but that's just plain BS. Two hours a week is enough to stay relevant. Two hours a day is what you have to do if you want to be elite. And that has nothing to do with the game at all, it has to do with the mathematical fact that you're competing with other people who also want to be elite. Which means that the same would remain true even without WQ's, AP, TF/Corruption in the game. Those mechanisms are simply the de facto means of competing with other players, but that doesn't mean they're drivers of competitive behaviour. And if you take them away, it wouldn't solve the problem. It can't. Because competitive players will still want to be competitive and they'd find other ways to convert time played into a competitive advantage.

With all this bonus shit that I have to do on top of holding down a job, looking after myself and maintaining my hobbies and irl relationships, I don't see myself being able to keep up with these grinds much longer. But Blizzard doesn't care because their addicts will keep giving them endless $$$ as long as they keep pumping out infinite, boring, repeatable, grindy content.

Good news! There was never a requirement to keep up with those grinds to that level in the first place. Figure out how much time you enjoy spending on this game. Figure out the stuff you like doing. That's the basis for how much effort you should be putting in. The only other requirement on you is to figure out, based on that effort, what are achieveable goals and to adjust your expectations accordingly.

[CrawlFromThePit]

To me it's all time based with how much one invests into the game. You can have a hardcore scrub that plays 24/7 or a casual Mythic raider that only plays a few hours a week.

First reply is 100% accurate yet there's 3 pages of this, why?

Hardcore and casual are term to define the amount of time players put into the game, absolutely nothing else. A lot of things come from the amount of time played(generally, playing more will make you better at the game) but that's just byproduct, it's not the definition.

[Raelbo]

First reply is 100% accurate yet there's 3 pages of this, why?

Because the first reply has nothing to do with the content of the OP (as those of us who read it in its entirity would know).