What does a casual wow look like?

[StillMcfuu]

WoW is already incredibly casual, what are you really asking?

[Lochton]

Welcome to MMO Champion where half the feedback is " I played X game..what if it was wow"

Eh, what? *adjusts glasses* Let's see, the thread asked for casual, not my fault FFXIV is casual as fuck compared to. And only a little under half the things on the list has a version in FF.

[Gurahk]

Remember when WoW was considered "ultra casual" and we needed the classic servers for the hardcore players?

[Mysterymask]

Eh, what? *adjusts glasses* Let's see, the thread asked for casual, not my fault FFXIV is casual as fuck compared to. And only a little under half the things on the list has a version in FF.

I mean it isn't just you

"I just played Elden Ring what if wow was super unforgiving and had dodge rolls"

"I just played guild wars what if wow had horizontal progression!"

"I just saw game of thrones what if they just stole this story"

[Glorious Leader]

To me it's more or less dungeons and raids that feed into one another without any alternative power system beyond gear.

How about you though?
I hear wow needs to be more casual constantly how does that look like from your perspective?

Almost the exact opposite. Instanced content starts to take a back seat with Raiding no longer the centerpiece. You'd get 1 or 2 raid bosses per tier at most. The difference in time and man power can put towards better open world content, stronger crafting, more things like visions and mage towers etc etc Players have a wide variety of means to obtain vertical progression,all paths become equally valid. Raid difficulty itself is reduced. LFR remains as will normal and heroic but the item level gap is significantly shrunk. Mythic raiding is eliminated entirely as its existence is a blight and in no way casual friendly (hence why you are not a casual despite protestations about "casual" mythic raiders). Vendors offer best in slot items for currency, which can be obtained from a wide variety of activities. Crafting becomes an alternate progression system in that it provides powerful weapons and the ability to upgrade gear for yourself and others. Mythic dungeons continue to scale but the timer requirement is relaxed. Much more time is provided and if you don't make the timer their is no downgrade and you still receive loot and currency from the chest at the end.

[Celement]

Remember when WoW was considered "ultra casual" and we needed the classic servers for the hardcore players?

No... even in everquest days a game with a subscription model was considered extremely hardcore.

People saying this are usually in their 30s and really out of touch with gaming in general beyond their niches.

[NineSpine]

The answer to this question is just to look at Final Fantasy XIV because it is just casual-friendly wow.

[ONCHEhap]

No... even in everquest days a game with a subscription model was considered extremely hardcore.

People saying this are usually in their 30s and really out of touch with gaming in general beyond their niches.

WoW literally built itself on being everquest but much, much more casual friendly

[Celement]

WoW literally built itself on being everquest but much, much more casual friendly

It didn't have a xp loss and skill degrading if that is what you mean... I was eight an I recall this... it never marketed itself as casual or hardcore...hell the terms didn't exist back then.

[Glorious Leader]

No... even in everquest days a game with a subscription model was considered extremely hardcore.

People saying this are usually in their 30s and really out of touch with gaming in general beyond their niches.

Tell me you're ignorant of the history of the game and the mmo genre without directly stating such.

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It didn't have a xp loss and skill degrading if that is what you mean... I was eight an I recall this... it never marketed itself as casual or hardcore...hell the terms didn't exist back then.

You also had alot more ability to progress as a solo player. You also didn't wait 8 hours on a boat.

[Biomega]

It didn't have a xp loss and skill degrading if that is what you mean... I was eight an I recall this... it never marketed itself as casual or hardcore...hell the terms didn't exist back then.

You know you don't have to actually SAY the label for it to work, right?

In fact, most advertisement DOESN'T name its target demographic. Quite explicitly so. Things wouldn't sell well if your ads were "Hi, we're the budget alternative, for the cost-conscious lower middle class person who doesn't earn a lot of money and doesn't mind sacrificing quality for price! That's us: not that great; but good enough".

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

No such thing. "Casual" is a term created by the community, not the developers. They do not make content expecting people to have no hope of completing it.
Its just about perspective.

[Celement]

You know you don't have to actually SAY the label for it to work, right?

In fact, most advertisement DOESN'T name its target demographic. Quite explicitly so. Things wouldn't sell well if your ads were "Hi, we're the budget alternative, for the cost-conscious lower middle class person who doesn't earn a lot of money and doesn't mind sacrificing quality for price! That's us: not that great; but good enough".

I mean... elden did and so did wildstar though to the detriment to the second.

Knowing your audience isnt a weakness.

[exsanguinate]

wheres the deal with playing hardcore games casually? I love hardcore games I even play new games on the hardest difficulty, always with no exceptions. I'm a casual player since I started touching any game and never had problems.

[Tiev]

A "Casual" WoW to me might not be the same to you. To me, "casual" is about time, you can be a "casual" mythic raider to me, as some only do Mythic once or twice a week, hardly anything else.

To me, a "casual" game would though be something to capture players, features, and features galore. We're talking more investment in the world than in planned content (Raid/PvP/M+).

- Things like puzzles, in the form of treasure hunts, special themed dungeons with tasks to solve, things to prepare for through professions.

- Island expeditions but without the AP, more themes, breadcrumbs for lore.

- Things like housing, actual housing, not just a mono-copy without any actual feats or features within.

- We're talking about a return to PvP bounties all over the world.

- We're talking bounties on special mobs (with Blizzard's AI system, so there's no pathing or figuring it out, the mobs are released on a continent, happy hunting (Could be scarlets, mercs, criminals, scourge packs, whatever).

- Add World Quests to the whole world(s).

- Rewrite and reintroduce archaeology, with its own world content other than digging around, but explore, missions from the Reliquary or Explorer's League.

- Merge mining and herbalism, opening up a 3rd profession slot.

- Portals at the end of dungeons for fixed groups or solo runners, easier to get out (some have you trekking the whole instance back of teleporting).

- More events the runs at certain times of the yeah, of course with rewards befitting them (If you miss them, there's always next year).

- Currency added to random dungeons/LFR only, giving you a chance to achieve a piece of gear, the more points, the better piece (These pieces of gear won't come from the loot table of already planned content).

- Multiple adjustment trees:
- - Class talent trees (Coming)
- - Racial core trees (Add points and achieve the combination of racial you would want).
- - World Utility tree (Make access to tools that make traversing the world more enjoyable (Covenant utility abilities, random teleports, waypoint unlocks).

- Bodyguard system:
- - Hire Tank/Healer/DPS from Alliance or Horde faction.
- - - Hired NPC selection of races, and genders within the factions
- - - Hired NPC can be equipped with gear of your own (BoP), looted (BoE), or purchased.
- - - Hired NPC to be able to be customized with transmog of their own.
- - - Able to hire special bodyguards after achieving a reputation high enough to certain factions.
- - - Hired NPC can carry 1 bag.

- Reputation system to be account-wide after reaching honored with them.

- Cross-faction systems:
- - Cross-faction groups (Coming in 9.2.5)
- - Cross-faction guilds.
- - Cross-faction random content (LFR/Dungeon finder)

- Scenarios returning:
- - Scenarios filled with lore bits we normally miss from books.

- Lorewalker/Storyteller/Researcher briefing:
- - An NPC will stand ready to tell/show you the conclusion of a story already completed.
- - An NPC will stand ready to tell/show you the conclusion of an expansion of old (bring people up to date before a new expansion).
- - An NPC will stand ready to show you all"memories" (All cutscenes and cinematics).


The list could keep on..

I love these ideas. Let's implement them in WoW. Who do we have to bribe?

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- Longer/Harder Quests, like the Class Quests back then you have to do for get your Druidforms, your Shamantotems or your Warrior Stances. I mean, yeah, they where kinda annoying, cause you have to WALK through big half of the World, dont have flying points and get killed by high level Mobs, but in the end it was fun, it felt rewarding and RPG like. Or when i think back to Redridge Mountains, where you entering the Orc Castle in the end. Many strong mobs, dieing multiple times, but it was fun. But today its just run/fly from questmarket to questmarker, pull some mobs, cleave them, loot them, done. Its boring.

- Longer/Complex Dungeons, like rockrock spire, mauradon etc. Something where you can be very lost. On one hand its annoying, on the other it was fun to find the right way, explore the dungeon etc. Tazavesh was a good dungeon aswell, could have been a bit more complex.

- More Focus on Professions

- Give us Vendors that actually sell usefull Gear/Items. I Really like it back then to have enough silver/gold to buy a a new weapon from some stormwind NPC and doing more DMG.

- Put more focus on exploring the world again, more group quests to take down some "hard" hitting bosses. Was kinda to fun to group up with people to take down Hogger back then.

- Grind Rep/Actuall System should give just a SMALL amount of power, so i dont feel without that im useless.

- Making legendarys legendary again, so just some will have one.

- More Class/Spec only Content

- Pulling 10 mobs at once and burst them down while you questing shoulndt be the way to go. its fast/comfortable, but it doesnt feel really RPG like.

- For Casual/RPG Like Feel i miss the old Talenttrees. Many of the "everyone is picking up this talents anyway so you get it as a passive"-talents were fun to skill, while you was leveling. It felt rewarding. "Fck yeah, finally i dont lose that much rage when im switching stances!". "Fck Yeah, finally my Shout doesnt costs any rage at all!"

- And Gear shouldnt be that important. Ofc better items should make you stronger, but not on the level it is today.

I really like these ideas too. I don't necessarily feel like they make the game more casual but they're great ideas.

[Biomega]

I mean... elden did and so did wildstar though to the detriment to the second.

Knowing your audience isnt a weakness.

Congratulations, you've discovered the meaning of the word "most".

Of course some products deliberately use references to other products to distinguish themselves. That doesn't mean those that don't do that explicitly don't do so IMPLICITLY. Which was the whole point I was making - not that it doesn't happen, but that you don't NEED TO SAY SO for it to happen.

[Goatfish]

Casual is definitely a matter of perspective, and there are many elements of casual. I think WoW is already really casual in a lot of ways.

Story wise, it would help if we went back to being regular adventurers instead of having main character syndrome. Mechanics wise, it's already pretty casual. There is a pretty good spread of difficulty depending on your class and spec. Balance wise, it's definitely got some issues, though most of those issues are with class design in general and aren't easily fixed by just changing numbers.

A lot of the arguments I see towards making it a more casual game just seem to be ideas put forth to either reduce the barrier of entry or make it so you don't have to play the game as much to get the best stuff. The first has an issue of making most of the content useless outside of one-shotting a boss once a week and hoping for a mount, and the second seems antithetical to having many people playing the game and working towards goals.

If we wanted to make WoW casual friendly, all we really need to do is expand on non or low-skill based content that is still rewarding in other ways.
-Hearthstone probably could have been implemented as part of WoW with collectable and tradeable cards in game.
-Player housing or land management on a bigger scale than the tillers farms or garrison could be huge.
-More single player content like the Brawler's Guild and Torghast, but better fleshed out.
-I'd like to see viewable arena/battleground matches with a gold betting system, ideally with a lobby system usable for in game tournaments. Potentially the same for pet battles.
-Expansion of crafting. Customization options, maybe to the level of letting crafters modify or design their own gear within reason.
-A formalized in game mercenary system, such as offering gold to recruit players or npc's to help with quests/dungeons.
-More in game leaderboards for a lot of things in general. Speed runs, efficiency runs, solo challenges, etc. I'd like to see Bliz stop relying on third parties so much to give players the information they want to see. Fixing and adding to the statistics screen is also on this list, saving number of deaths to/kills next to bosses in the dungeon journal as an example of this.

Honestly the biggest problem with WoW in this regard is that the dev team has long seen fun as bad. This is why we see toys with huge cooldowns, the Darkmoon faire being a limited event, a near complete lack of fun mog or joke weapons like the Stinkrot Smasher, and world event and other mog being restricted (I can make swords look like maces or fist weapons, but I can't make daggers look like swords)... Just as a few examples.

[Jonnusthegreat]

wheres the deal with playing hardcore games casually? I love hardcore games I even play new games on the hardest difficulty, always with no exceptions. I'm a casual player since I started touching any game and never had problems.

This is where it's at. Slowing down and enjoying the journey.

[Elias1337]

This. Yes please. I can't understand how PvP hasn't been changed to this yet. I would definitely spend most of my time PvPing if this was the case. I hope one day we can have this in WoW.

Edit: I would also like to see solo queue RBGs.

They have done this in Legion and it completly killed pvp. Players has competly stoped playing bgs and arenas. Removing gear progression in mmorpg game is plant stupid. Go play compettive game if youwant fair enviroment.

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WoW literally built itself on being everquest but much, much more casual friendly

No it didnt. They just made mmorpg what developers though is gonna be fun. Nobady cared or though about if game is casual or hardcore.

[SR84]

For me it would be more story. More unique side questlines. I have no issue with linearity but include at least 50% more quests and way more story and character development.