The return of the casual?

[Unholyground]

WoW has always been casual compared to it's peers.

[crusadernero]

It was GREAT reaching 70 on my main in DF and not having to think about some dogshite system I gotta keep up with for 2 years. Now I can do what I want to do, when I want to.

If that means hardcore 24/7 wow players "have nothing to do"(Grind a currency all day), and end up just raidlogging - thats fine.

The renown system in DF is greate too. Its not power progression and I can pick what I want to work for. Or dont do any.

- - - Updated - - -

In order to get taken into groups, you were required to farm for every single BiS conduit for your spec, and constantly get more ilvl upgrades for every single conduit every single patch. You were required to have a maxed out legendary, so you had to constantly grind gold - you also had to grind soul ash and, later, soul cinders. You were required to have your covenant as high level as possible, so you had to grind for covenant rep. You had to grind on top of that for the anima to max out your covenant bonuses. Then you had to grind Korthia once that came out, and the mini-rep inside of it, if you wanted to stay competitive. You also had to grind Sanctum of Domination for the Domination Shards - and the ones you needed would rarely drop.

Every. System. Was. Mandatory. If you didn't do it all, you weren't competitive or considered for raiding / m+. The systems were built that way. The expansion was designed this way for a reason. If you don't think SL had the worst grind of any xpac (with BfA coming a close second), then you are genuinely either ignorant of the facts and systems of SL, or straight out lying.

There is a reason that 9.2 and 9.2.5 removed a lot of that. Because there was too much grind.

EDIT: To be fair, BfA had arguably longer grinds because of the infinite AP treadmill, and the corruptions system - and constantly having to replace your Azerite gear with higher ilvl Azerite gear that still had all of just the right talents (since talent trees were on gear in that xpac for some ungodly reason). It was still much more tolerable than SL grind.

Perfectly summed up. No one should want this back. I cant understand why anyone would.

We have had 3 xpacs with these systems. Its enough. In fact, its good to challenge Blizzard creating content and features beyond "Hey grind this for two years all day everyday. If you dont, you are fucked"

[Tyris Flare]

I They are simply not interested enough.

More likely there just isn't an audience for it compared to the effort required.

[chiddie]

More likely there just isn't an audience for it compared to the effort required.

Maybe. But we’ll never know because they never really tried and probably they won’t ever try.

[arkanon]

WoW has always been casual compared to it's peers.

I agree it was when launched, but is it STILL more casual compared to its peers? in 2004, absolutely 100% yes, agreed completely, but now? Im not so sure.

[Echo of Soul]

Dunno. I'm not against difficulty. But Wow has very small room for actual difficulty in outdoor content. It's more about mathematical difficulty. Like monster has more HP and you have lesser dmg, so it's just takes longer to kill it and there is higher risk to aggro extra monsters or run out of CDs, so you just need to be more careful. Or you used all your CDs, but still couldn't kill that big fat monster. What can you do to kill it? M? Well, nothing. Just try to avoid it. If you can't, cuz it's mandatory, then, well, it's one of "forced group content" cases. I.e. design, that promotes grouping via "Everything is easier in group" concept. But isn't whole point of playing outdoor content - to avoid relying on other players, queues, etc.? At the end such "difficulty" simply becomes annoying. And you just say "I like process of killing monsters and getting rewards itself - I don't need any difficulty".

That's not how you handle it, you go the easy and slow route with outdoor content.
You can offer the same rewards for both easy and hard content if the easy route is slow and the hard route is fast.
M+/mythic raiding would be the fast and hard route. Getting gear equal or slightly below from outdoor content should take about four times as long given its low difficulty.

[chiddie]

That's not how you handle it, you go the easy and slow route with outdoor content.
You can offer the same rewards for both easy and hard content if the easy route is slow and the hard route is fast.
M+/mythic raiding would be the fast and hard route. Getting gear equal or slightly below from outdoor content should take about four times as long given its low difficulty.

That’s why I would like difficult outdoor content.

You “have” to have a time between the seasons during which you feel op. If you finish to catch up with the fast&hard 1 week before a new race begins, you’ll give up because you’ll feel you’ll never really catch up.

As I said, it’s not an easy task for devs to accomplish properly without putting someone in bad mood.

[Osmeric]

I agree it was when launched, but is it STILL more casual compared to its peers? in 2004, absolutely 100% yes, agreed completely, but now? Im not so sure.

FFXIV is almost surely more casual, isn't it? Not to mention upcoming games like Palia...

[Tyris Flare]

ESO, Swtor, FF14, GW2 - wow is easily the most hardcore of all the larger names

[Unholyground]

I agree it was when launched, but is it STILL more casual compared to its peers? in 2004, absolutely 100% yes, agreed completely, but now? Im not so sure.

Just because they made the game machanics more annoying doesn't make it less casual.

[Palapop]

What didnt you understand?

You needed more time than 1 hr to farm "Click 20 souls and do 2 WQs" for your 2 renown per week?

Conduits what? They passively drop cause you know, do +10-15s from the second week?

"Legendaries", what? I have 3mil gold and each torghast run took 10mins before the changes with the retarded score that delays me, leap, pull 20 mobs, cleave, do 12s from the start, therefor Wednesday 15-20mins and back to M+?

Legendary recipe, you mean those that had 100% drop chance after +10? Therefor you had them all either way the 2nd-3rd week?

Second legendary what? Okay okay, 10mins per day for 25 days for Exalted instead of the belt.

Some of you need to understand that not everyone is bad at this game, or some classes have it much easier.

And once you decide to level an alt you do all that again?

The fact that you HAD TO do it in order to be able to play is BAD.

What about those who didnt play m+ and yet they were required to do certain boss fight or m+ in order to get their bis legendary? Which was REQUIRED in order to play their class on designed lvl?

You have to understand that "borrowed power systems" bled this game for 50+ % subs.

I'm glad its finally over. ALready seen MASSIVE amount of players comeback.

[Caprias]

Describe it then, to do what did you farm every day.

Maw in 9.0 and Korthia in 9.1 for additional sockets and conduit upgrades needed to be done for several weeks, Torghast as well for legendaries, all of that for every character you wanted to stay competitive on.

I agree with you that those things didn't take a lot of time per day or as for torghast per week, they were just annoying as hell to do though especially if you wanted to also have a optimal second character and because you would irreversibly fall behind by just missing a single day.
Also no cop out especially for 9.1, additional sockets and conduit upgrades (you couldn't even get all of them maxed out of mythic) can easily be 5%~ performance depending on spec.

9.2 was completely fine.

This game doesn't need systems like that, if people start being bored in 3-4 months as you said that's a good thing in my book, playing something else and taking a break from WoW until the next patch for a month or two is so much more sustainable and will lead to less burnout for most people.

And if Blizzard needs 7-8 months for their first content patch again? That's on them.

[Doombringer]

A lot of the casual players never left, not completely. These players keep their sub open even if they only play a little each week. Sometimes they take longer breaks but still keep the sub up. They're not chasing anything but a little distraction or completion of a reasonable goal within the time they have to log in.

Someone said casual is a time definition and not a skill definition and that rings true. Casuals can skew more toward lower skill compared to bleeding-edge, but you can still have a very competent player who is time-limited and realistic about their goals. A good work-life-WoW balance.

[arkanon]

Just because they made the game machanics more annoying doesn't make it less casual.

That wasnt the argument though - the argument was not "casuals can enjoy the game" the argument was "WoW has always been casual compared to it's peers."
You have neglected to respond to my question, which was is it STILL more casual than its peers? You have replied, but not responded to anything i have raised, why not? Just answer the question, which aligns with your initial statement - is wow, recently and currently, more casual than its peers?

[WowIsDead64]

A lot of the casual players never left, not completely. These players keep their sub open even if they only play a little each week. Sometimes they take longer breaks but still keep the sub up. They're not chasing anything but a little distraction or completion of a reasonable goal within the time they have to log in.

Someone said casual is a time definition and not a skill definition and that rings true. Casuals can skew more toward lower skill compared to bleeding-edge, but you can still have a very competent player who is time-limited and realistic about their goals. A good work-life-WoW balance.

Finally good post. Casuals aren't lazy or bad players. They just tend to pick REALISTIC goals. For example grinding Anima in SL wasn't realistic goal and therefore wasn't casual-friendly content, even if it was super easy.

- - - Updated - - -

That's not how you handle it, you go the easy and slow route with outdoor content.
You can offer the same rewards for both easy and hard content if the easy route is slow and the hard route is fast.
M+/mythic raiding would be the fast and hard route. Getting gear equal or slightly below from outdoor content should take about four times as long given its low difficulty.

What kind of "slow" content? Local or global? It's ok to get the same rewards later, than hardcore players. For example in next content patch, when they're already irrelevant. But we talk about "locally" slower content. Content like "Further progression is ilvl-gated - you have to sit in a queue to find group or to do 20 heroic dungeons first in order to overgear it". Another reason, why casual players hate forced group content - because they like to replay old content. For example they do content so slowly, that they can't complete it within one content patch. Next content patch arrives, that makes such content obsoleted. So, other players no longer want to do it and it becomes very hard to find group for completing it. It simply destroys content, while it still could be viable for some players.

[potis]

And once you decide to level an alt you do all that again?

The fact that you HAD TO do it in order to be able to play is BAD.

I'm glad its finally over. ALready seen MASSIVE amount of players comeback.

I am not disagreeing, i refuse to acknowledge a problem from sub par players that play for 1 month and think the game has a problem because they struggle at the basics.

Are those systems annoying?

Yes but playing 1 hour every Wednesday for 8 Wednesday beats any fucking 35 days of dailies for hours since 2007, then AP for Legion and BFA which required a few hours per day if you wanna stay competitive bla bla.

I rather have SL than those fucking "log on every day" systems that somehow people miss, I LOVE RAID LOGGING.

I do not experience any of the problems the average mmo-championer experiences, but i also know what i want from the game and i play the absolute minimum required to have a competitive character, which after the first month where the game is new and you want to play a lot, i average 5hr/week and thats it.

I also didnt break my connections and i am a tank, i have 20 people begging me to carry them every patch, and therefor my alts get carried also when i want, not when i ask, when -I WANT-.

Its called being a responsible adult being towards other humans, if you play for 1 month, and unsub and destroy guilds and no one gives a fuck about you, ye, struggle, you deserve it, you wanna bunny hop 20 games per month? Good for you, WoW was never designed for those players.

[Unholyground]

That wasnt the argument though - the argument was not "casuals can enjoy the game" the argument was "WoW has always been casual compared to it's peers."
You have neglected to respond to my question, which was is it STILL more casual than its peers? You have replied, but not responded to anything i have raised, why not? Just answer the question, which aligns with your initial statement - is wow, recently and currently, more casual than its peers?

Compared to FF14 and Guild Wars 2, yes it is MUCH more casual lol.

[Lurker1]

With most time grind systems being killed and cheat gear that far out scales its difficulty level being heavily restricted...

Will be see a return of the long extinct casual player? The guy who logs in and slowly progresses a character throughout the game maybe does mythic two or three times a week then logs?

I admit I thought this class of player would never return after legion but I think its poised for a comeback now that all the hardcore grinds seemly are removed.

That is me but i sometimes do hard stuff aka fated lfr ext if it exist again ill probably will do it again.

[arkanon]

Compared to FF14 and Guild Wars 2, yes it is MUCH more casual lol.

In what way is FF or GW2 "MUCH" more hardcore than wow?

[Koollan]

In what way is FF or GW2 "MUCH" more hardcore than wow?

You have to spend over 100-200 hours in FF to actually get to the endgame, and it gets even longer with every expansion. Sure, all of the content is scaled to you as you go through, but you need to dedicate months to the game (which also runs off of a sub model) to even get anywhere close to playing current content.

GW2: no idea on that one.