What's new in 8.3 for a player like me?

[Ange]

My understanding of "casual" was always whether or not someone participated in the higher tier end-game content.

This would turn every pvp player into casuals and the highest mythic+ players with 18hours/day to casuals aswell.

I would just call players that only participate in the LFR/WQ/TW - without any evil intention - "noobs".
I would call a casual player someone who min-max in their limited time the game, just as the most hardcore players would do, but since the gametime is limited there are choices to make what you do and what you skip in this game.

There is nothing "casual" about players with 18h+/days farming gold millionaires or the not-raiding but 5000+ dungeon running mythic+ community, dont you think?

Time fits for the game genre much better, since its an 24/7 MMO without a finish line.

[CrawlFromThePit]

My understanding of "casual" was always whether or not someone participated in the higher tier end-game content. Non-casual would be Mythic raiding, competitive Mythic+ dungeoneering, or high-end PvP. Casual is more like running LFR, doing the weekly Mythic and/or Timewalking runs, WQ's, and so forth.

That's a "by-product" of playing casually. Usually not playing a lot (being casual) means you can't get far in a game. In the case of WoW, a lot of players used to play a lot and now simply carry knowledge and skill from back in the day, still able to perform at a very high level but without the need to throw countless hours into the game. So it is possible to play end-game casually in WoW (of course not competing for world first and shit but you get my point). You can play barely 7 hours a week and easily keep up now, do your +10 and your 5-6 hours of raiding and you have access to all the top gear imaginable.

Casual players who never got anything done and typically play pretty badly made the gaming community believe that casual = bad, but that's not the real origin of the word. As a developper when we make a game or content or feature targetted at a casual audience, making it hard or easy is not the priority at all, it's all about designing content that can doesn't require a ton of time commitment, we never use the word casual to determine a skill level in players, it's only about play time.

[Aucald]

This would turn every pvp player into casuals and the highest mythic+ players with 18hours/day to casuals aswell.

I would just call players that only participate in the LFR/WQ/TW - without any evil intention - "noobs".
I would call a casual player someone who min-max in their limited time the game, just as the most hardcore players would do, but since the gametime is limited there are choices to make what you do and what you skip in this game.

There is nothing "casual" about players with 18h+/days farming gold millionaires or the not-raiding but 5000+ dungeon running mythic+ community, dont you think?

Time fits for the game genre much better, since its an 24/7 MMO without a finish line.

Everyone draws their lines in the sand in different places, I suppose. I consider running high-keystone Mythic+ content to be the same as Mythic raiding, the same being true of rated or ladder PvP (Arenas or RBG's). I don't espouse a category for "noobs" beyond actual beginners at the game, as it were; and I don't think there are many of those left.

Time is a good metric, but like the above it's got issues. RP'ers can dump hours and hours into the game while accomplishing nothing in terms of raiding, dungeons, or what have you - and no one really call them "hardcore" I doubt. I also know some Mythic Raiders who only put like 6-10 hours into the game per week - since raiding is all they do. All depends on how you slice it, I suppose.

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That's a "by-product" of playing casually. Usually not playing a lot (being casual) means you can't get far in a game. In the case of WoW, a lot of players used to play a lot and now simply carry knowledge and skill from back in the day, still able to perform at a very high level but without the need to throw countless hours into the game. So it is possible to play end-game casually in WoW (of course not competing for world first and shit but you get my point). You can play barely 7 hours a week and easily keep up now, do your +10 and your 5-6 hours of raiding and you have access to all the top gear imaginable.

I consider myself casual anymore, though I was once a hardcore raider back in Classic until MoP. I usually run LFR, do the weekly Timewalking/Mythic stuff, collect xmogs/mounts/toys, and gear up primarily through crafting, WQ's, and weekly quest stuff (currently Timewalking, Mythic week, and Heroic Warfronts). I know my class and play the game well, but I no longer have the time to devote to hardcore raiding, nor can I really set aside days for raiding as I once did due to my work requirements. I usually perform well for my iLvl regardless of what I'm doing, and I've gotten very good at solo'ing content.

[CrawlFromThePit]

Everyone draws their lines in the sand in different places, I suppose. I consider running high-keystone Mythic+ content to be the same as Mythic raiding, the same being true of rated or ladder PvP (Arenas or RBG's). I don't espouse a category for "noobs" beyond actual beginners at the game, as it were; and I don't think there are many of those left.

Time is a good metric, but like the above it's got issues. RP'ers can dump hours and hours into the game while accomplishing nothing in terms of raiding, dungeons, or what have you - and no one really call them "hardcore" I doubt. I also know some Mythic Raiders who only put like 6-10 hours into the game per week - since raiding is all they do. All depends on how you slice it, I suppose.

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I consider myself casual anymore, though I was once a hardcore raider back in Classic until MoP. I usually run LFR, do the weekly Timewalking/Mythic stuff, collect xmogs/mounts/toys, and gear up primarily through crafting, WQ's, and weekly quest stuff (currently Timewalking, Mythic week, and Heroic Warfronts). I know my class and play the game well, but I no longer have the time to devote to hardcore raiding, nor can I really set aside days for raiding as I once did due to my work requirements. I usually perform well for my iLvl regardless of what I'm doing, and I've gotten very good at solo'ing content.

Well there's not just casuals and hardcore. There's at least 50 shades of grey---uuuh I mean 50 different levels in the spectrum from top casual to top hardcore. Someone playing 8 hours a day doing everything is not "as hardcore" as someone playing 12 hours a day, you know what I mean. There's not a specific word to label every type of players out there and only making 2 baskets to classify them is kinda naive, it's much more diverse than that. We all fall somewhere in there yet we all play different amoutns of times and at different levels.

[Aucald]

Well there's not just casuals and hardcore. There's at least 50 shades of grey---uuuh I mean 50 different levels in the spectrum from top casual to top hardcore. Someone playing 8 hours a day doing everything is not "as hardcore" as someone playing 12 hours a day, you know what I mean. There's not a specific word to label every type of players out there and only making 2 baskets to classify them is kinda naive, it's much more diverse than that. We all fall somewhere in there yet we all play different amoutns of times and at different levels.

That's true, I generally treat them as labels or as positions on a sliding scale. Everyone falls in a different place on said scale, and there are probably people more casual than I am (I know a few of them). Hardcore/Casual is just an easy dichotomy for people to handle, although as with everything it's sometimes taken to ludicrous extremes.

[Raugnaut]

Technically, it's not new zones, but rather re-used zones. Both Vale and Uldum have the assaults going on, which is a new set of WQs with side-mobs - Closer to mini-warfront zones then the Assaults we saw in Legion/8.1.

Plus the new Visions, which do reward some gear, and are basically IEs 2.0.

[scelero]

How about you go read the patch notes for it, since you believe it came out yesterday.

[FlubberPuddy]

Vulpera! And eventually the N'zoth raid on LFR a month or so from now.

I'm sad it'll probably be week 2 or so of 8.3 before I get Vulpera (was lazy during WQ week to log on and do daily WQs lol).

[Casperite]

wait the new patch is today? I thought it was next week. guess that just shows how little i care about this patch, only thing i'm semi excited for is vulpera and mechagnome but idk if i really care that much to play it anytime soon since i can play one down the road.

Patch is exactly when you already knew it was, which in itself shows exactly how much you care. Then the fact that you know what comes with the patch and are commenting in a thread about the patch. Sure, you really dont care at all.

[Kyphael]

I'm sad it'll probably be week 2 or so of 8.3 before I get Vulpera (was lazy during WQ week to log on and do daily WQs lol).

You'll get there. I got Vulpera done as soon as they were confirmed. lol I was already almost revered anyway. Now Mechagnomes I did the same as you. I'm just barely now almost exalted, maybe 2,000 rep away so I'll probably get it tomorrow or the next day, but still haven't done the Mythic dungeon because I'm not part of an active guild and my highest ilevel is like 383 since gear hasn't been a focus of mine since Mists. People look at my ilevel when pugging and take a hard pass.

[Drusin]

You define that as casual?

A casual gamer is someone who plays a few hours a week and nothing but world quests.

I'm just a collector, everyday I get online and go farm xmog, pets, mounts, toys, achievements, etc but I play around 12 hours a day. Hardest content I do is heroic 5 mans, no M0, no M+, no LFR. I consider myself a casual though because I don't do competitive content.

[asil]

I don't believe there's much that's exciting for players like us. I don't plan on raiding so that doesn't leave much for me, personally. I heard legendary items are now transmoggable, which excited me slightly, but I'll get tired of running around with them after about 5-10 minutes.

I could be out of the loop (strong possibility), but it's absolutely not enough for me to be excited about and we sound like we tend to play about the same. Except I don't log in every night. Hell, I barely log in once a week these days.



So you read his entire OP and this is all you took away from it? Compared to a Mythic raider who raids 6 nights a week for 4-5 hours, his description is definitely that of a casual. You didn't even attempt to answer his issue. There's rules against that.

A casual has no objective definition, anyway.

Why do you people think mythic raiders raid 6 nights a week for 4-5 hours? Honestly, the amount of misinformation I see casuals throw out about raiding in this game is staggering. It's like they've just fabricated their own little reality and just repeat it everywhere.

[Powerogue]

They implied Horrific Visions take a while to progress on, you've got some new essences to work towards which also help with corruption resistance. Sounds like you'll probably stay the same setup of having your main focus on that stuff while the alts hang back. Though there is a set cap on that cape corruption resistance progress per week so you could theoretically "get it done" for multiple alts each week, it's not something infinite like azerite power.

Honestly all I want right now is my alpaca mount and vulpera shaman. Have you seen the alpaca's jump animation?!

[Th3Scourge]

8.3 content is massive. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. I'm glad we're not getting any new zones, I prefer to return to Azeroth instead of bloating it with more zones that you'll never go to one patch later.

Disappointed we're not getting any new dungeons as they could've done something good here like they did with the ICC dungeons in patch 3.3 but 12 boss raid is dope as fuck

[FlubberPuddy]

You'll get there. I got Vulpera done as soon as they were confirmed. lol I was already almost revered anyway. Now Mechagnomes I did the same as you. I'm just barely now almost exalted, maybe 2,000 rep away so I'll probably get it tomorrow or the next day, but still haven't done the Mythic dungeon because I'm not part of an active guild and my highest ilevel is like 383 since gear hasn't been a focus of mine since Mists. People look at my ilevel when pugging and take a hard pass.

Ahh, on the Mechagnome side at least with the new patch you'll be able to queue for Mechagon (last half) on heroic. Since the last part only needs a King Mechagon kill then you'll get it for sure, just need that rep!

[Kyphael]

Ahh, on the Mechagnome side at least with the new patch you'll be able to queue for Mechagon (last half) on heroic. Since the last part only needs a King Mechagon kill then you'll get it for sure, just need that rep!

I heard, that's why I'm not stressing about it! I had given up for a moment grinding the rep until I heard the part needed would be on queue!

[Shakana]

I heard, that's why I'm not stressing about it! I had given up for a moment grinding the rep until I heard the part needed would be on queue!

Isn't mechagon being an additional dungeon for m+?

[Kyphael]

Isn't mechagon being an additional dungeon for m+?

Yeah but in 8.3 the final part (needed to unlock those awesome Mechagnomes you love) will be available to be queued for.

[Shakana]

Yeah but in 8.3 the final part (needed to unlock those awesome Mechagnomes you love) will be available to be queued for.

Ah, getcha! Thanks. Oh, yeah, totallyyyyyy, love those mechagnomes *to death* blink blink

[Kyphael]

Ah, getcha! Thanks. Oh, yeah, totallyyyyyy, love those mechagnomes *to death* blink blink

Mechagnomes will not die, they will reboot!