What is considered hardcore/Casual in terms of hours played?

[LaplaceNoMa]

People who think that 'casual/hardcore' is about types of activities and/or skill are completely clueless.

You raid 6/7 5 hours per night and are sitting at 8 heroics? You're a hardcore player. A scrub, but a hardcore player.
You raid 2/7 4 hours per night and are sitting at 14 heroics since winter? You're a casual player. A good, yet casual player.

You do pet battles, archaelogy and level characters 5 hours a day? You're a hardcore player.
You play 1 hour per day while sitting on a gladiator-level pvp rating and 14/14 heroics? You're a casual player.

That's how it is, deal with it.

15 hours per week is quite casual.

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Heartstone is for 7 year olds. What a shitty comparison...

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I can't imagine progressing to 14/14H with 5 hrs a week. I wasn't talking farm...

In case you haven't heard, you can extend raid IDs. And yes, I know a lot of (and a part of) such guilds.

[Deleted]

I can't imagine progressing to 14/14H with 5 hrs a week. I wasn't talking farm...

Did last 2 tiers on 1 night a week. 4 hours, sometimes 4.5 to get an extra kill in. Extended for garrosh progress. Pretty sure there's more people like that. I do play more besides that on alts and what not, but if I'd want I could just log that one night a week. Not sure where you get the idea that you can't progress on 1-2 nights a week. Surely it'll go slower than 3-4 nights, but whatever really? Just make the best of it: be focused to oneshot all farm bosses without padding, don't clear last few bosses on normal if barely need loot from it anymore, and extend if needed.

[Morthulo]

Do you people really think you can play for four+ hours a day and in any way fit the definition of "casual"?
HOW CAN YOU KILL
THAT WHICH HAS NO LIFE?

Obviously trying to hide something with a comment like this, however it's okay, you can just sit there behind your computer... After all I'm sure that's the only place where you feel like a man.

[Chickat]

To be hardcore you need to both be good and spend a lot of time in game.

Hardcore- Can clear at least some Mythic modes and or spends a lot of time in game doing raids or high end pvp.
Casual- Does bgs and lfr/flex and spends any amount of time in the game.

[Deleted]

I've been both casual and hardcore player.

Got nothing to do with time tho..

If I spend 100+ hours each week with 10 characters just questing and doing nothing hard or challenging I am casual.
If I spend 20+ hours each week on just raiding I am hardcore because I am committed to a guild and raid time and don't waste my time in wow doing nothing.

[Pua]

5 hours a week is plenty to clear all heroic content.

Nobody did that during progression.

Absolutely nobody.

[KLPath]

Google dictionary results: Casual

Adjective

1) Relaxed and unconcerned.

Noun

1) A person who does something irregularly.

/shrug

[BenBos]

15 hours per week is quite casual.

.

It depends : I would consider anyone playing just one game for more than an hour per day is a hardcore player, because he spends around 10% of his avaliable precious and LIMITED life time on a single video game.

Anyone outside of video gaming will declare you nuts if you would say it needs to be 5 hours a day before it can be called hardcore.

That's why MMO's have a hard time these days, because we know very well we need to play 2+ hours per day on average to stay tuned or catch up.

Other games have it much more easy, you can play them much more irregular or just pick it up after 3 weeks etc ...

Hardcore is time related btw. It is never linked to a difficulty setting.

----> Because the chore thing is this !!! how much of your LIMITED real life time you want to offer for your hobby ?

So a Warhammer miniature player is hardcore if he paints and builds his Armies at 8 hours a week, just like an athlete or train set collector or fishing guy ... etc...

Anyone doing an activity at less than 8 hours a week is a casual.

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tldr : One hour per day is in my view the line between casual and hardcore for ANY HOBBY activity.

[Ciddy]

I see it more as how seriously you take the game. You could play 40+ hours a week, but if you're just playing for shits and giggles, not taking the game seriously, doing nothing but farming, LFR/random BGs/alts, flying circles around your main city, don't care about character optimization, don't really care if you win or lose, etc, I'd still think of you as a casual player.

"Hardcore" players to me are players who take the game seriously, spend time on things like character optimization (all the proper gems/enchants/professions/reforges), analyzing what went wrong when they lose at something, always show up on time for group stuff, would be willing to pay real money for things like faction/server transfers just because of a racial ability that gives you 1% more of something, and are constantly pushing to get better (whether that's in PvE or PvP progression, or even both). You can play 2 hours a night and still be that kind of player.

All I'm doing right now are random BGs. I take it seriously enough to make sure my character is optimized the best I can get him, but aside from that, I'd consider myself a very casual player. If someone in my group of Steam friends says "Meh, I don't feel like WoW tonight, let's do something else" I'm fine with that.

[BenBos]

I see it more as how seriously you take the game. You could play 40+ hours a week, but if you're just playing for shits and giggles, not taking the game seriously, doing nothing but farming, LFR/random BGs/alts, flying circles around your main city, don't care about character optimization, don't really care if you win or lose, etc, I'd still think of you as a casual player.

"Hardcore" players to me are players who take the game seriously, spend time on things like character optimization (all the proper gems/enchants/professions/reforges), analyzing what went wrong when they lose at something, always show up on time for group stuff, and are constantly pushing to get better (whether that's in PvE or PvP progression, or even both). You can play 2 hours a night and still be that kind of player.

All I'm doing right now are random BGs. I take it seriously enough to make sure my character is optimized the best I can get him, but aside from that, I'd consider myself a very casual player. If someone in my group of Steam friends says "Meh, I don't feel like WoW tonight, let's do something else" I'm fine with that.

BS. The only thing objectively defined as hardcore is TIME you invest. Time coming ... from your ticking biological clock.

That's the only thing that counts when defining hardcore in a hobby: how much TIME do you spent on a hobby.

The reasoning above is a kid's mentality : nobody is good at anything as trivial as an MMORPG or a game of football played by 7 million or 700 million people.

It is time devoted of your Life that counts to define hardcore activity, nothing else.

I would draw that line at 1+ hour a day, for that represents 10% of your RL time available per day. The rest you sleep, eat and work. (168 hours in a week - 40/50hours work - 10 hours eating - 60 hours sleep).

So only 50+ hours available per week to have some fun or chat or do RL things.

7-8 hours per week of any hobby is the limit to define hardcore.

[ItachiZaku]

Hardcore / Casual is a playstyle for me.

Same. Hours played per day average would probably be 2. Quick daily on a toon or two, maybe quick PVP match, check auctions. Longer stretches on the weekends.

[BenBos]

Same. Hours played per day average would probably be 2. Quick daily on a toon or two, maybe quick PVP match, check auctions. Longer stretches on the weekends.

Well consider yourself a hardcore WoW player then, as ... how would you call someone who played with his train set for 15+ hours per week ? Or someone who rode his bike/jogged for 15 hours or worked on his stamp collection for 15 hours per week?

And ask yourself then one question: how would these guys look at you ?

[Valenthiel]

Wow, this thread is weird. So definitions really are shifting huh?

WoW used to be understood, as a social activity that required team participation. So it required a lot of interaction, and you were expected to be around a lot, because it was a place for nerdy people to make friends. None of us really had any hesitations about that, we all knew we were nerdy as fuck and that's why we were playing an MMORPG in the first place. I met my fiance on WoW, I met a couple people who turned into good, real life friends on WoW.

Hardcore back then, meant you spent a lot of time getting your characters together. If we're talking early vanilla, your rogue would have a barman shanker, even if it took 42 runs to get, like it did for me. That was what hardcore meant, in or out of raids, you did the repetitive, annoying crap, that made your character better than anyone else's. That doesn't happen anymore, gear is too balanced, and you can't show up in a badass high fire resist dps set, while half the group has 3-4 blue pieces for FR. I think the term is out of date in that sense. A hardcore DPSer used to do roughly 5 times the damage of an "average" dps. That doesn't happen anymore, and it probably shouldn't.

WoW has changed a lot, and now people often don't view it as a social experience. You can blame that on all kinds of things if you want to, (Or LFG and LFR if you want to be accurate) but ultimately, the old definitions don't apply. Hardcore used to mean, you went the extra distance to be as effective as possible, because everyone played too much. Now people are trying to bridge what Hardcore might mean for a non-WoW player, relative to MMO players. Weird.

People used to play WoW a lot, because you needed to make friends to do dungeons or raids. Not real friends maybe, (Though they can certainly become real friends) but at least internet friends. So someone playing 4 hours a day way way back, really wasn't doing the same things as someone playing 4 hours today. You were participating in a group activity, like playing shitty touch football, except you were a nerd. It's so strange to see people approaching something like WoW this way.

Do WoW players think of themselves as macho jarheads, like CoD players now? Are we actively petitioning to have the RPG removed from MMORPG? If so, we're really in trouble. We are nerdy weirdos, whether we accept it or not. My vote is accept it, get in shape and stop worrying about it. If we all pretend to be jarhead assholes, we're all going to hate each other, you know, like hardcore raiders!

[Shaani]

Well consider yourself a hardcore WoW player then, as ... how would you call someone who played with his train set for 15+ hours per week ? Or someone who rode his bike/jogged for 15 hours or worked on his stamp collection for 15 hours per week?

And ask yourself then one question: how would these guys look at you ?

If someone bikes or jogs for 15 hours a week or collecting stamps for 15 hours a week, they're not necessarily hard-core to me.
The biker isn't necessarily a super athlete if he bikes 15 hours a week. There could be a biker spending less time but being a lot more skilled and knowledgeable with all things biking. They would seem hard-core to me, even though they spend less time with biking.

Stamp collection: if someone does that 15 hours a week just for the sake of collecting, they wouldn't seem hard-core to me.
But if someone spends only 5 hours a week for it but has an extremely vast knowledge about the topic and buys ridiculously expensive stamps, then I'd consider them hard-core.

It's about the skill you have and the knowledge gathered (which does not necessarily mean 50 or more hours spent a week for it), and in case of gaming also the level of competition you go for, not so much the raw time invested into it.

As for gaming, only people that min/max and take every aspect of the game to the extreme seem hard-core to me.
People who do not bother with any of that just don't seem hard-core to me.

[Zarillion]

Raid-wise I consider 7-10 hours a week to be semi-hardcore. Less is casual and more is hardcore.

[Valenthiel]

Well consider yourself a hardcore WoW player then, as ... how would you call someone who played with his train set for 15+ hours per week ? Or someone who rode his bike/jogged for 15 hours or worked on his stamp collection for 15 hours per week?

And ask yourself then one question: how would these guys look at you ?

Wow, this needs a little reality. Hi! I've spent my life feeling horribly out of place, and trying to fit into every social niche, I found remotely appealing. I'm 5'9", I've weighed 135 pounds, I've weighed 210 pounds, in really "good shape".

Being a weight-lifter (Let alone, say a bodybuilder) requires a complete life-orientation choice. Food is different, social activities are different, EVERYTHING changes. That's what being hardcore means in that context. You don't eat fast food, not because you're afraid of calories. You don't eat it, because the metabolic changes associated with heavily processed foods have a negative impact on your overall metabolic health. You also do not want "Bad fat" because bad fat is hard to lose when cutting.

Sure, you may only spend a max of 2 hours at the gym 3-4 days a week, but the overall physical and psychological demands require so much more devotion than something like WoW, I mean are we being serious? WoW is like watching TV, not like intensive physical training that comparison is hilarious.

[Sesshou]

Google dictionary results: Casual

Adjective

1) Relaxed and unconcerned.

I think its more like that. Time isn't the important part, what makes you hardcore or casual is your mind set and your approach to the game. I think the 10 hour a week guy who spends lots of time grinding out stuff and min/maxing for his progression raid guild is far more hardcore than the 3-4 hours a day, 5 days a week guy who levels alts and raids nothing but lfr.

I'm currently playing ~4 hours a week to clear 14/14hm. Our full schedule would be 12, and aside from the bit of extra crap I need to do at the start of tiers outside of raids, thats pretty much the most I've put in a week for MoP.

Or someone who rode his bike for 15 hours per week?

Actually thats a perfect example. I spent a year in Japan without a car, so I got everywhere by bike. I would easily be in the 10-15h a week range just from commuting on bike which I would consider to be casual. I'd consider some one who takes 3, 3 hour strenuous bike rides a week to be hardcore though. Time isn't really relevant. No matter how much time I spent a week on a bike just going to the places I needed/wanted to go to, that is casual. Some one who goes on mountain roads or pushing for max speed the whole way on a 3 hour trip multiple times a week, that is hardcore. It is the same thing with wow. Time spent isn't important.

[nekobaka]

It's not the time played. It's how you use the time you play.

So someone who spends over 50 hours a week in the game is casual, but someone who plays with friends 2-3 hours a week to do group based content in what they find to be fun and relaxing gets labeled a hardcore? If that was the definition of casual then WoW wouldnt have gutted so many grinds to cater to casuals. A no-lifer is just that a no-lifer. But hey why bother segregating the community when everyone has different needs and wants with the "casual" playerbase not all wanting the same thing. To draw lines just shows

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Google dictionary results: Casual

Adjective

1) Relaxed and unconcerned.

Noun

1) A person who does something irregularly.

/shrug

The funniest part of the adj is many of those who base their arguments as a "casual" do take the game seriously and even play the game consistently.

[Raiju]

Nobody did that during progression.

Absolutely nobody.

Ofcourse they did, they just didn't progress as fast as those putting more hours in (generally). Some are still progressing for that reason. Some are still progressing on 4-5 days a week on whatever boss tehy're on.

[mickybrighteyes]

stopped reading when someone hinting at playing 40~ hours a week and claiming they're still 'casual'..

5-6 a day. 7 days in a week. 35-42 hours a week. A full time job is classified as 40 hours a week minimum. 8 hours a day, 5 days a week roughly.