What is there for casuals?

[Thunderball]

Same as every other expansion. WoW have never had hardcore-only activities outside of high rank pushing in vanilla. Having time constraints (and that's what being casual means) doesnt mean you're not able to participate in any activity that this game has to offer.

[czarek]

Apparently a game in which if you don't have a dedicated group of friends and all you see listed are 10+ keys or 2+ keys waiting for ilvl 260 geared folks is geared for casual players.

WoW forums have always been an echo chamber of people that play the game A LOT and who assume anyone who plays less than them is bad, anyone who plays as much as them is casual and anyone who plays more is elitist/hardcore.

BfA was PERFECT for me and I would say I was more hardcore during that expansion than ever before or since. I was not a cutting edge raider and had never gotten aotc legit prior to it. Yet gearing was so smooth and easy by 8.2 I could easily just do warmode weeklies, casual bgs and a mythic +1 or 2 and get geared enough for stepping foot into heroic raiding. It just took quite a bit longer. At no point did I do more than 1-2 islands each month. At no point did I feel I HAD to login weekly or even monthly to play catchup. The patch cadence was perfect for me. And eventually in the last patch, I got a personal solo challenge with visions that ALSO gave heroic raid level gear which again allowed me to catch up and get into Ny'alotha without ever having to climb the ridiculous ladder of mythic +, spam rated bgs or arenas or work my way through normal raiding to get into heroic raiding.

What? Im playin atm as DH doing my own grps. Made all dung +8 i one week from the bottom garbage ilvl. Im playin like few hours per week. Done KSM in same way on my shadow priest in S1 and S3. Its no a really mandatory to have dedicated bunch of ppl like guild or friends to do this. ALL i have done i done with pugs...

[Osmeric]

After the initial leveling? Nothing.
So do what the rest of us does and quit WoW. They don't care about you.

Indeed. I ask casuals: if you're not having fun, if the devs are treating you like shit, why haven't you quit??

[Lolites]

high pvp, high m+ keys and mythic raiding is all that is NOT for casuals, everything else is for casuals pretty much...

[Osmeric]

I guess it will not be differerent in Dragonflight,

Unless the SL experience has made those players believe it will now not ever get better. In that case, they're done permanently.

[Skildar]

I guess it will not be differerent in Dragonflight, even if the devs do not implement any new feature like Warfronts, Islands and Torghast, which means, they infact take away gameplay from their casual gamers. In the end the only gameplay casuals will have is dull world quests, some tamagochi like dragon feeding and filling bars for renown and the new factions.

My take on this is that these new game modes don't integrate themselves properly enough with the rest of the gameloop to be iterated upon.

I'm a bit sad that islands weren't tweaked with Shadowlands to make them automatically accessible to any new character. It would be in concurrency with dungeons, but they could very well push the some weekly-daily activity choice between a random dungeon and a random island expedition.

Anyway we will see what comes during the expansion

[potis]

WoW forums have always been an echo chamber of people that play the game A LOT and who assume anyone who plays less than them is bad, anyone who plays as much as them is casual and anyone who plays more is elitist/hardcore.

People figured out this rhetoric by now so this was changed to "People that do any sort of group content are elitist/hardcore, and people that dont are casuals", fits their arguments better nowadays since the last few expansions exposed them massively.

Frankly the discussion has gotten really boring, its just the echo chamber people patting each other on the back whether its on reddit, on here, or official WoW forums.

I still remember how the then CM exposed them by simply pointing out at one of them at the 3rd-4th month of BFA, and they instantly exploded to cancel culture to get him fired. (He basically checked the guys character that he complained he had nothing to do as a casual, and he had only finished 1 quest line area (Zuldazar), 2 dungeons on Normal and that was all he did for 4 months), so he asked him, "What do you want us to add, that you have nothing to do, when you have done 5% of the active content".

[munkeyinorbit]

Well I think that's a small price to pay for a great game.

You could even argue that it encouraged players to get into more challenging content, which isn't a bad thing in my opinion.

Also the very same thing still happens today with the Vault awarding easy Mythic ilvl loot, the only difference is it takes slightly longer and is a purely timegated way to gear.

Blizzard has said in multiple occasions that players do not rise to the challenge. This is a myth created by players. Blizzard has said, that even with the introduction of LFR and then later with mythic dungeons, players will not step up and do more challenging content. Even the players who were raiding normal (at the time) and today's heroic, players would rather leave the game intead of "stepping up".

This is the challenge blizzard has. They've tried many ways to nerf the game to keep players interested.

Theyve tried badges, valor points, raid buffs, titan forging, player power, no tier sets, tier for non LFR only, no tier, random legendaries, crafted legendaries, timegated legendaries, and plain straight nerfs to content and there has always been some backlash. The only thing that players actually agree in is that the game was better in the past.

[pahbi]

Something I was wondering recently. Assuming theres no new big features to be announced.... what is there for casual players in Dragonflight? It, as of now, just looks like another WoD-esque: We only care about what hardcore players do. But at least WoD had the Garrison which, while kinda shit, was at least something that all players could take part in.

Casuals get a revamped crafting system.

So please stay in your kitchens and only come out to pick flowers or cook us food for raids.

That should be plenty casual

[exochaft]

Blizzard has said in multiple occasions that players do not rise to the challenge. This is a myth created by players. Blizzard has said, that even with the introduction of LFR and then later with mythic dungeons, players will not step up and do more challenging content. Even the players who were raiding normal (at the time) and today's heroic, players would rather leave the game intead of "stepping up".

There's several ironies in this, but it's at Blizz's expense.

Trying to remember when it was said (think it was Ion), but their goal with raiding was to get people who were normal raiders to want to try heroic raiding, and heroic raiders to want to try mythic raiding over time... all while constantly increasing the difficulty of the raids. Yes, players will tend to not rise to the challenge, but they will if there's enough incentive to do so, as well as feel like it's worth their time and actually fun/engaging. However, the game's design (raids included) feel like they're meant to waste your time, so there's no hope for raiders trickling up the difficulty ladder with the current game design if you couple that with increasing difficulty.

While you mentioned that players would rather leave the game instead of 'stepping up', the following is probably even more true: players would rather leave the game or quit raiding if the content they're used to doing gets increasingly harder or feels like it's wasting their time. I'm certain there's mythic raiders, current and former, who would or did just stop raiding instead of going back down to heroic/normal if they can't raid mythic. Even out of my friends group, pretty much everyone quit raiding over the years when they got tuned out of raiding due to time or skill constraints instead of doing a lower difficulty. I've lost count of how many guilds I've seen fall apart because they can't maintain a roster. Part of it is that there's people who just want to raid, another part is that there's not much else to do besides raid (especially if you're not keen on PvP and M+), so when raiding's off your menu there's not much for you to do but quit.

Ultimately, I think that the issue Blizz has is that they're trying to constantly fix or adjust a system that has fundamental flaws and/or is based upon outdated or flat-out bad design philosophies. Until there's some changes to the base ideas and design upon which the rest of the game is developed, we're going to get more of the same... maybe just a different flavor.

[Skildar]

Blizzard has said in multiple occasions that players do not rise to the challenge. This is a myth created by players. Blizzard has said, that even with the introduction of LFR and then later with mythic dungeons, players will not step up and do more challenging content. Even the players who were raiding normal (at the time) and today's heroic, players would rather leave the game intead of "stepping up".

This is the challenge blizzard has. They've tried many ways to nerf the game to keep players interested.

Theyve tried badges, valor points, raid buffs, titan forging, player power, no tier sets, tier for non LFR only, no tier, random legendaries, crafted legendaries, timegated legendaries, and plain straight nerfs to content and there has always been some backlash. The only thing that players actually agree in is that the game was better in the past.

I've only once read that from Ghostcrawler and I'm pretty sure he stated quickly after that that the data was missing context completely. And that with established engagement, players do rise to the challenges they have opportunity yo face. In example of a game which every activities are challenging, the audience of players overcoming these will be niche.

[Unholyground]

Dragon Riding exploration is going to be a huge feature for anyone who enjoys collecting and exploring. There is going to be areas you can only reach with Dragon Riding that you cannot get to without upgrading it even when normal flying is eventually unlocked.

[Osmeric]

I've only once read that from Ghostcrawler and I'm pretty sure he stated quickly after that that the data was missing context completely. And that with established engagement, players do rise to the challenges they have opportunity yo face. In example of a game which every activities are challenging, the audience of players overcoming these will be niche.

Yeah, I'm going to call bullshit on that. We do have the following statements from Ghostcrawler (on twitter):

"We offer hardcore raiding b/c it's fun not because it's popular."

"there definitely was not as large an audience for challenging dungeons as we hoped."

"But there is not a great business model for a hardcore-only MMO with WoW production values."

"This sounds like the myth that hard content forces players to rise to the challenge and not quit."

"There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite. "

[Dastreus]

What is there for casuals?

Play trial mode only and RP mostly.

[david0925]

Not sure if this is just another bait thread, but outside of Mythic Raiding and very high rated RBG and Arena everything is casual friendly. Heck, even the things I mentioned can be played by a casual crowd IF they can play at organized time (there are plenty of 2 day 6-8 hour a week guild out there, most casuals play far more than that, just in fragmented time slots)

What the "casuals" are asking for are player power comparable to Mythic Raiders. In that case, no you don't get those, and you don't need those for content you are doing. You will be able to progress your character at your own pace each patch too.

My question for the "casuals who are dissatisfied": what are you looking for? Solo content that provide player power comparable to group play? Things to do? How much do you play a week? If you're playing 20 hours a week, but cannot/would not do it in an organized fashion, I don't really think you're actually casual. You have group content you can join/make your own group if inflated ilvl is such an issue.

[Teriz]

Questing, dungeon running, exploring, loot collecting, LFR.

That's enough for me.

[cparle87]

Curious what you actually want as "casual content"? Crafting is getting a massive overhaul to the point that it's basically its own endgame, you still have all the old raids to solo and all the new mounts and transmogs to farm for. What else do you need?

Toppy doesn't consider anything to be content. Considering WoD had plenty to do and he's sitting here lying to us and saying it was a "raid or nothing." I only play one toon and there were days I went to bed with things from my daily checklist undone.

[Skildar]

Yeah, I'm going to call bullshit on that. We do have the following statements from Ghostcrawler (on twitter):

"We offer hardcore raiding b/c it's fun not because it's popular."

"there definitely was not as large an audience for challenging dungeons as we hoped."

"But there is not a great business model for a hardcore-only MMO with WoW production values."

"This sounds like the myth that hard content forces players to rise to the challenge and not quit."

"There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite. "

You're right it's not on the same twitter thread, I'll try and find where he talked again about this. Maybe I'm confusing this with someone else that corrected him, but I remember that his original statement "There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite. " is completely idiotic and missing context and that thankfully Ion manages to make distinction between such things.
Don't know if it's a character issue or workflow dev that enable more discussion and analysis today than it did back then, but Ghostcrawlers' comment shouldn't be taken as gospel, it is a misguided understanding of data.

[Yriel]

Yeah, I'm going to call bullshit on that. We do have the following statements from Ghostcrawler (on twitter):

"We offer hardcore raiding b/c it's fun not because it's popular."

"there definitely was not as large an audience for challenging dungeons as we hoped."

"But there is not a great business model for a hardcore-only MMO with WoW production values."

"This sounds like the myth that hard content forces players to rise to the challenge and not quit."

"There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite. "

Should hardly be a surprise.
People tend to forget that this is a game among many. There are many other quality MMOs out there, many other online games with big communities and many games in general. People buy more games than they can reasonably ever play because they are cheap and they are interested in them. Right now is a steam sale.
Why would anyone "step up" into a gamemode that is stressful and/or unfun for them. What would be the ultimate goal of that.

Funnily enough if people buy a shitty game on a sale, try it and find it unfun they don't try to "step up" and still power through it, they refund it. But for WoW this is somehow considered unmanly...

[erifwodahs]

Collections/achievements + normal/hc raiding and pvp/m+? Casual =/= bad.