Did casuals ruin WoW and if so how?

[RickJamesLich]

"Are," as in present tense. Just because they are casual now doesn't mean they've always been casual. Also many players who self-identity as casual then follow up with "I only play 20 hours a week." Sorry, but spending half as much time playing a game as you would at a full time job isn't playing casually. The type of person who goes to a third party web site to discuss a game is also the type of person who would be curious enough to try raiding. Believe me, the non-raiders aren't visiting any WoW forums unless they have issues with their game crashing. From what I've seen "casual" players on this forum fall into two categories: former hardcore players who don't have the time or desire for that lifestyle any more and players who delude themselves into thinking that spending almost an entire day per week (12% of their life, if you do the math) playing WoW is casual.

That was part of my point though - people are saying "virtually nobody ever raided"..... doesn't ring true from everything I've seen and I've played since launch, does that mean everyone is raiding all of the time? No, but saying 1 to 5% does sound like a silly number, who at some point hasn't tried raiding, besides people that don't hit max level and pvp'ers?
To be fair, I've seen real casual players go to the forums for all sorts of stuff, like collecting pets, rare spawns, or just to talk about weird stuff in the general forums.

[vesseblah]

WoW started to lean towards "casual" when WOTLK came out.

When vanilla came out. WoW was the most casual western MMORPG available in 2004. And in 2005, and in 2006, and in 2007... Notice a pattern?

Vanilla WoW = Epics were only available from raiding 40-mans.

Bullshit. World drop epics happened all the way from 20's up, and Molten Core belts and bracers were dumped into AH for few hundred gold even in low population realms.

The average WoW player during this era had blues.

In late vanilla AQ20 and ZG were doable by whole lot more casual guilds than MC/BWL/AQ40, and dropped epics like candy.

BC = Epics were available from Heroic 5-mans, but these were hard. You NEEDED cc on almost every trash pull and the dungeons took 1 hour++. The raiding dungeons were fairly hard (Gruul before he was nerfed -- omg) and towards the end of the expansion they started handing out epics from daily quests.

TBC introduced us to the world of "welfare epics" you could get from losing in arena or with badges of justice you could farm in heroic five-mans without any weekly limit. The heroics were hard for first two months because of overtuning, same goes for Gruul.

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I've seen plenty of people say they are casual wow players here

And every single one of those have been caught from a lie when they define their casual. Raiding "only" for three days/week is not casual.

and there's quite a few that aren't raiding normal mode right now

"Right now" is the key there. As I said, people who are hardcore or have been hardcore is the type who frequent fansites.

Believe me when I say this forum is very very far from hardcore

Raiders from all world top 20 guilds post here frequently.

What isn't hardcore is the moderation policy which is a travesty imho, letting the scum of internet roam free here without any bounds.... Start a troll thread or ten and all you get is a slap on the wrist with locked thread...

[Ronduwil]

To be fair, I've seen real casual players go to the forums for all sorts of stuff, like collecting pets, rare spawns, or just to talk about weird stuff in the general forums.

A player who goes out of their way to collect pets and/or camp rare spawns is not really casual. They may not be raiders, but they're not casual players either.

[wych]

A player who goes out of their way to collect pets and/or camp rare spawns is not really casual. They may not be raiders, but they're not casual players either.

That depends on your definition of casual, not everybody plays WoW to raid.

Some people log in and mainly go around farming old raids and pets, in fact I have a couple friends who are similar to this.

If somebody logs in for a few hours a week to play with pets I don't see how they're not casuals. Being a casual does not mean not doing anything in game

[Raysz]

First off, I've been playing since Vanilla. Raided till the end of Wotlk, quite heavily. Casuals, whatever that may entail, haven't ruined anything. Yes, the game has become easier levelling wise, not raiding wise. I'll go by what the hardcore raiding guilds have commented on that.

The simple fact of the matter is, Wow is old, and it hasn't evolved a lot in all those years. Some things have been added, but the core never changed (raiding, dungeons, bg's/arena's). Wow hasn't changed a lot in all those years, and that's both a good and bad thing. It's a good thing because you don't want to alienate your playerbase, and a bad thing because not evolving is standing still to a certain degree.

People that say Wow is boring, easy, casual/not interesting anymore, are mostly just worn out cause they've been playing the same game for too long.

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[Ronduwil]

What isn't hardcore is the moderation policy which is a travesty imho, letting the scum of internet roam free here without any bounds.... Start a troll thread or ten and all you get is a slap on the wrist with locked thread...

To be fair the moderation on these forums is pretty good in comparison to the Blizzard forums. Pretty much anything goes on there. There are posters on this site who are constantly getting themselves banned. They'll post for a few hours and get banned again. I'm not going to name names, but I think that those of us who pay attention already have some idea of who they are. In contrast I remembered players in the game who only logged on to troll trade chat. You'd see the same people day in and day out spewing their non-game-related nonsense (controversial political positions, strings of obscenities, improbable tales of their sexual exploits, etc.). Reporting them didn't seem to make a difference. Even though these people were on my ignore list there was no escaping the anguished cries of the many players who reacted to their idiocy day in and day out.

[Glorious Leader]

That was part of my point though - people are saying "virtually nobody ever raided"..... doesn't ring true from everything I've seen and I've played since launch, does that mean everyone is raiding all of the time? No, but saying 1 to 5% does sound like a silly number, who at some point hasn't tried raiding, besides people that don't hit max level and pvp'ers?
To be fair, I've seen real casual players go to the forums for all sorts of stuff, like collecting pets, rare spawns, or just to talk about weird stuff in the general forums.

Christ your kidding me right. Do you understand that what you know as experience is so fucking limited in the scope of the total number of players who played the game. It's so limited that it's basically MEANINGLESS. Once again we have you saying 1-5% is a silly number based on your experience and we have the developers telling us it's exactly that.

[Grimble]

Are they down to the part where they go "Sure only a pathetically small proportion of players ever raided, but the very existence of raid content somehow magically kept people who couldn't even do it from cancelling!"

Really? You guys expect anyone else to listen to that with a straight face?

[Ronduwil]

If somebody logs in for a few hours a week to play with pets I don't see how they're not casuals. Being a casual does not mean not doing anything in game

Camping a rare spawn often involves sitting in one spot for hours watching for the spawn or logging in at ungodly hours to be the first to tag the target the moment it spawns. Neither activity is casual behavior. Engaging in pet battles a couple of hours a week is casual. Killing foxes for hours on end and camping for minfernals is not. Here are examples taken from the comments at warcraftpets.com:

Got my common-quality level 15 H/H Minfernal (finally!) this morning a little before 6am server time. He was just south of the southernmost burn pit. I caught him with my level 25 Terrible Turnip and killed both cockroach adds with my level 25 Amethyst Hatchling.

Finding him when I did, sadly, means my husband (the early bird) proved me (the night owl) wrong. Looks like checking in the morning paid off.

Thanks everyone here for your most helpful comments! The rat-killing strategy works! It took a little over an hour of rat massacre and some battle pet rats came up first. Finally the little minfernal spawned running across the grass towards the green pond. Your sage advice saved me days of camping, and I am most grateful. Good luck to everyone hunting this pet!

Does that look casual to you?

[Glorious Leader]

Are they down to the part where they go "Sure only a pathetically small proportion of players ever raided, but the very existence of raid content somehow magically kept people who couldn't even do it from cancelling!"

Really? You guys expect anyone else to listen to that with a straight face?

Yea they've been retelling that one for a bit now. Hey it's better writing than Metzen at any rate. All the fantasy and none of the filler.

[wych]

Camping a rare spawn often involves sitting in one spot for hours watching for the spawn or logging in at ungodly hours to be the first to tag the target the moment it spawns. Neither activity is casual behavior. Engaging in pet battles a couple of hours a week is casual. Killing foxes for hours on end and camping for minfernals is not. Here's are examples taken from the comments at warcraftpets.com:




Does that look casual to you?

For some this is the end game, if somebody spends a few hours a week hunting pets/spawns then does little to nothing else in game then i'd call them casual.

Minifernal can be farmed quite easily in a few hours unless you're very unlucky, it's hardly hardcore

[Ronduwil]

Minifernal can be farmed quite easily in a few hours unless you're very unlucky, it's hardly hardcore

Most heroic raid bosses can be taken down quite easily in only 15 minutes by an experienced group. I guess heroic raiding isn't hardcore either.

[wych]

Most heroic raid bosses can be taken down quite easily in only 15 minutes by an experienced group. I guess heroic raiding isn't hardcore either.

You're being deliberately obtuse.

To kill most heroic raid bosses you need to spend a lot of pre-timed plans every week with a bunch of other people and this includes weeks/months of wiping.

To go get a Miniernal you have to type "Minifernal" into WoWhead and fly to Felwood and spend a couple hours max during any time frame you want (over a year if you really want) farming for it.

[Ronduwil]

To kill most heroic raid bosses you need to spend a lot of pre-timed plans every week with a bunch of other people and this includes weeks/months of wiping.

Not literal weeks. A good group will take out a heroic boss that they've encountered for the first time in hours. Lesser groups may take weeks or months, but that's only spending 2-3 hours per week on the boss. From what I recall, Heroic Morchok took my crappy guild about two hours to kill the very first time. Also keep in mind that the minfernal is only one of many pets to collect. Collecting all the pets takes far longer than two hours. Weeks and months, in most cases.

To go get a Miniernal you have to type "Minifernal" into WoWhead and fly to Felwood and spend a couple hours max during any time frame you want (over a year if you really want) farming for it.

Yeah. To kill a heroic raid boss you just have to download Deadly Boss Mods, type "Icy Veins" into google, and find nine other people who have done the same. Any activity can be trivialized.

[DrSteveBrule]

Are they down to the part where they go "Sure only a pathetically small proportion of players ever raided, but the very existence of raid content somehow magically kept people who couldn't even do it from cancelling!"

Really? You guys expect anyone else to listen to that with a straight face?

It's very hard to believe when you extrapolate those statistics in that way.
Remember that "participation count" isn't going to show you how many other players had intent or hopes to raid.

Also, you have to remember these statistics are typically given in a short time frame. It's always within a patch cycle and after that period your participation "doesn't count." Take the Naxx40 example. They said something like 1% of players saw it when it was current but what about the other raids? Surely there was a much higher participation rate (which again, we shouldn't even be using this metric).

The Naxx40 statistic is probably being confused with overall raid participation on these forums anyways.

[wych]

Yeah. To kill a heroic raid boss you just have to download Deadly Boss Mods, type "Icy Veins" into google, and find nine other people who have done the same. Any activity can be trivialized.

I have no idea if you're being purposely dense or what.

I agree to reach heroic content you might not have to be hardcore, hell i'd say I was casual in TBC (played ~15 hours per week) and I saw Illidan die pre nerf.

However my point is that you can get the Minifernal with a couple hours maximum farming, it's not an activity that requires you to be a hardcore player. Especially when this is pretty much all you play for (farming pets).

Being a casual player does NOT mean you aimlessly play just flying around your faction's capital.

[PrairieChicken]

Not literal weeks. A good group will take out a heroic boss that they've encountered for the first time in hours. Lesser groups may take weeks or months, but that's only spending 2-3 hours per week on the boss. From what I recall, Heroic Morchok took my crappy guild about two hours to kill the very first time. Also keep in mind that the minfernal is only one of many pets to collect. Collecting all the pets takes far longer than two hours. Weeks and months, in most cases.


Yeah. To kill a heroic raid boss you just have to download Deadly Boss Mods, type "Icy Veins" into google, and find nine other people who have done the same. Any activity can be trivialized.

Even the world best heroic raiders take weeks to clear full heroic (and they run all day 7 days per week)
Don't know if you are serious or not

[Ronduwil]

Even the world best heroic raiders take weeks to clear full heroic (and they run all day 7 days per week)
Don't know if you are serious or not

I didn't say full clear. I said one boss. Method killed 6 heroic bosses within a day after the instance had opened. Going off wowprogress, Horridon only took them 39 minutes. They cleared all the way up to Iron Qon within the first week. Twin Cohorts the following week, and Lei Shen the week after that.

[Ronduwil]

If the game was nothing but LFR and pet finding, no one would play anymore.

That's all that needed to be said. Unfortunately, that's all the game is for casual players right now, and that's why casuals are failing to engage.

[Glorious Leader]

It's very hard to believe when you extrapolate those statistics in that way.
Remember that "participation count" isn't going to show you how many other players had intent or hopes to raid.

Also, you have to remember these statistics are typically given in a short time frame. It's always within a patch cycle and after that period your participation "doesn't count." Take the Naxx40 example. They said something like 1% of players saw it when it was current but what about the other raids? Surely there was a much higher participation rate (which again, we shouldn't even be using this metric).

The Naxx40 statistic is probably being confused with overall raid participation on these forums anyways.

Intent and hope are meaningless classifications that can't be corellated or analyzed. If intent and hope are frustrated enough they eventually go by the way side and then people just quit. Intent or hope of raiding and not actually raiding IS STILL NOT ACTUALLY RAIDING and ultimately still not being entertained. The content that is created in that sense is still not being used and still does not justify the enormous amount it took to create based solely on player participation alone.

The problem here is that you are confusing a desire on the part of the player base for continued progression with a desire to actually raid. The two are not the same. When people bought gear through valor they stopped raiding and instead bought gear through valor. Currently people do lfr for gear not because they have some insane desire to do the butchered raid content but because they seek pleasure and in this game that is directly tied to character progression (as it is in rpgs). If tmmrw say dungeons rewarded heroic raid gear then where would everybody go? Well what happened to that desire and intent to raid? It went out the fucking window didn't it? Ultimately desire and intent CANNOT be the justification for the creation of raid content because desire and intent do not extend to the actual activity of raiding. For one we know this because so few people ACTUALLY MADE THE JUMP a reality but we also because once given the alternative people will run kicking and screaming for raiding all desire and intent out the fucking window.

Now in so far as fufilling that desire to progress your character the developers have chosen to directly correlate that with raiding content but it is not a law of nature that this must be so and in fact for many players (throughout wrath and cataclysm for example) progression was a function of farming valor to buy gear. Well that wouldn't do to save the raids (which people had abandoned in cataclysm because of their over difficulty) and instead sought other means for progression. In mists all roads lead to raiding and if one were so short sighted one could confuse that as a sign of some great desire on the part of the populace to raid but the reality is we know that any content that could or potentially would draw from lfr is basically death to lfr (and to raiding) so any and all potential alternatives must be SERIOUSLY weak.

You can argue bullshit fairy tale myths or you can accept the reality that raiding HAS NEVER BEEN popular. PERIOD. In fact it's so bad the developers basically by their own admission have to BUTCHER the experience (and everything else surrounding the game) just to get enough people to play it to make it economically viable. That speaks far more about raiding than any fairy tale or myth you people are spouting here.