The return of the casual?

[Ange]

He's not completely wrong, though. WoW is now a raid- and dungeon-grinding game designed to let peacocks show off their numbers to each other. Everything else is window dressing that exists solely because it's expected if you're going to call something an MMO. This is Celement's game now, everyone who's not into hardcore group grinding should honestly "shove off" and go to a game that's actually designed for them.

Blizzard has all but shown you the door and kicked your ass through it, why aren't you willingly walking out of it and shutting the door behind you, at this point? Anyone sensible would have done so, by now. It's what I did and I'm far happier playing games that actually want me to be playing them.

I don't see a change in this since vanilla WoW, nearly 2 decades ago.
* Endless grinds, like the 6+ month R14 grind were there
* just as PVE raiding requirements for player performance starting at least with AQ / NAXX

Casuals were stuck at repeating leveling of new chars to do anything, while the situation today is much more hiding the real endgame from the casual point of view.

People hit max-level and have something to progress, even if the real endgame is blocked with community requirements for time spend and player skill.

WoW was never different and much more unforgiving in the past, because the old-school MMO players were just used to hardcore grinds from other MMOs and it was expected that you like it or can deal with it (available time).

The latest retail WoW version still adds more and more casual focused changes and keeps up the illusion for casual gamers that there is something to do that impacts their character progression in a meaningfull way.

=> with the high ilvl jumps for endgame, it doesnt work that way, we all know it, but its a nice illusion and keeps everyone happy for the next months

[Celement]

Its not a chore list for the people who enjoyed it.
It wasn't necessary to play at the difficulties you enjoyed. You could just take it slower.

Telling people to do boring trivial content for dozens or hundreds of hours to play the difficulty they want isn't acceptable.

[Koollan]

Then your memory might be hazy or you did only play the later patches.

BfA and Legion grind was waaaay worse than SL. It's not even a fair comparison.

I can concede to the idea that BfA's grind was technically worse by a margin. Azerite armor and the Heart of Azeroth did that expansion no favors, nor did the Corruptions system. Legion, however - beyond getting all of the perks in your weapon with the artifact power, it simply wasn't needed to grind more AP at all. I think the projected DPS increase was a double-decimal per level? Something like 0.04, 0.05? I'm forgetting off the top of my head. That's why I don't consider Legion a grind-heavy expansion. The only system to interact with was the artifact weapon, and the legendaries you would get just by playing normally.

BfA was absolutely a grindier expansion than SL - but SL was just worse to play by all accounts. At least people enjoyed BfA's zones. The only zone people generally enjoyed in SL was Ardenweald, only because it was pretty. Genuinely, going to any of the SL zones gave me splitting headaches because of how badly I hated every one.

If the grind is more intolerable, then imho, it's grindier by that account because the 'grind' suggests work you typically don't want to do but must in order to progress. I wanted to do SL's grind much, much, much less than BfA's, and that's saying something. BfA's was a gargantuan waste of time. There were enough positives in that expansion to at least keep my attention slightly more than SL, though.

[LordVargK]

I can concede to the idea that BfA's grind was technically worse by a margin. Azerite armor and the Heart of Azeroth did that expansion no favors, nor did the Corruptions system. Legion, however - beyond getting all of the perks in your weapon with the artifact power, it simply wasn't needed to grind more AP at all. I think the projected DPS increase was a double-decimal per level? Something like 0.04, 0.05? I'm forgetting off the top of my head. That's why I don't consider Legion a grind-heavy expansion. The only system to interact with was the artifact weapon, and the legendaries you would get just by playing normally.

The traits of the Legion Weapons had major damage effects. Especially the 3 gold traits, which in some scenarios contributed like 30% of your damage each (e.g. the execute damage in the affliction artifact in m+ aoe). You also not only had to grind AP, but also Artifact knowledge (which increased your AP gain) each week, which meant you needed to farm order ressources each week. Ontop of that you needed to grind each of your specs individually, meaning Legion was not only extremely alt-unfriendly but also offspec-unfriendly on levels previously only seen in classic.

BfA was absolutely a grindier expansion than SL - but SL was just worse to play by all accounts. At least people enjoyed BfA's zones. The only zone people generally enjoyed in SL was Ardenweald, only because it was pretty. Genuinely, going to any of the SL zones gave me splitting headaches because of how badly I hated every one.

That's a matter of taste. But in SL you could just ignore the anima grind, which only meant you were at most 1 week behind in your covenant progress. You also could entirely ignore the Maw grind. And there were no dungeons locked behind main campaign progress like there were in BfA and Legion.

If the grind is more intolerable, then imho, it's grindier by that account because the 'grind' suggests work you typically don't want to do but must in order to progress. I wanted to do SL's grind much, much, much less than BfA's, and that's saying something. BfA's was a gargantuan waste of time. There were enough positives in that expansion to at least keep my attention slightly more than SL, though.

Again, probably a matter of taste. I quit Legion early on, because I could not stand having to play the game with skeleton specs (WL was gutted going into Legion). Every major ability trait was locked behind a grind. Not fun at all. BfA was slightly better in that regard, but Island expeditions spam was just... bad. So I liked SL the most. Because I actually liked Torghast most of the time. And I just ignored the maw. Anima I got running m+ and only used it on the weekly quest. So aside from Torghast SL had no grind for me.
I grinded Korthia rep for the crafters mark recipe to make millions of gold early on in the patch, but that was it.

[potis]

I don't see a change in this since vanilla WoW, nearly 2 decades ago.
* Endless grinds, like the 6+ month R14 grind were there
* just as PVE raiding requirements for player performance starting at least with AQ / NAXX

Casuals were stuck at repeating leveling of new chars to do anything, while the situation today is much more hiding the real endgame from the casual point of view.

Its the delusion of progression that exists from combination of low time and low skill, which is what classic nostalgia was about, they cant comprehend how some people play productively and not simply braindeading pixels.

If they made the total exp to 70, x1000%, forcing side quests, multiple dungeon runs and all that jazzle, you would have 95% of these idiotic comments disappear, because it would take them months to level up, according to their "timetables", obviously it would make others require longer but it wouldnt matter, people that will do it the first day, will do it the first week and nothing would change for them.

Majority of the same repeat posters are just bad at the game and cant even play it correctly, but even those, when the pointless crap content is simplified so much like DF, would end up compaining the second week, instead of 7 months earlier, which was clear as day it was gonna be a WoD 2.0 and a raid logging expansion from the time the alpha started.

I dont mind really, feels annoying now that its early, but down the line its gonna be amazing.

[Koollan]

The traits of the Legion Weapons had major damage effects. Especially the 3 gold traits, which in some scenarios contributed like 30% of your damage each (e.g. the execute damage in the affliction artifact in m+ aoe). You also not only had to grind AP, but also Artifact knowledge (which increased your AP gain) each week, which meant you needed to farm order ressources each week. Ontop of that you needed to grind each of your specs individually, meaning Legion was not only extremely alt-unfriendly but also offspec-unfriendly on levels previously only seen in classic.



That's a matter of taste. But in SL you could just ignore the anima grind, which only meant you were at most 1 week behind in your covenant progress. You also could entirely ignore the Maw grind. And there were no dungeons locked behind main campaign progress like there were in BfA and Legion.



Again, probably a matter of taste. I quit Legion early on, because I could not stand having to play the game with skeleton specs (WL was gutted going into Legion). Every major ability trait was locked behind a grind. Not fun at all. BfA was slightly better in that regard, but Island expeditions spam was just... bad. So I liked SL the most. Because I actually liked Torghast most of the time. And I just ignored the maw. Anima I got running m+ and only used it on the weekly quest. So aside from Torghast SL had no grind for me.
I grinded Korthia rep for the crafters mark recipe to make millions of gold early on in the patch, but that was it.

Torghast was the only thing in SL that was even marginally fun, and it was because you got stupid overpowered every single time - especially for mage and shaman, where you could get .1 second casts on everything because of how much haste you ended up getting.

Also, missives made me 6 months worth of WoW gold when legendaries released. I straight up bought 6 months immediately with that gold after I made all of it through the battle-high.

I have never regretted anything more. Ever.

- As far as Legion goes, the traits were what mattered, yes - but the artifact knowledge system was pretty much what made the catchup so easy. Well - 'easy'. I will concede that having alts was more or less impossible, even though they advertised the expansion as 'alt friendly' somehow, when Legion-BfA-SL was the most alt unfriendly trio of expansions to date.

Generally speaking, we have 'trilogies' of expansion ideals from what I can tell. Classic, TBC and Wrath all held similar goals, Cata, MoP and WoD tried to push the envelope in certain ways and push small innovations and changes (mostly in how the raiding environment was handled) and Legion, BfA and SL were the 'systems era', which means many different things to many different people.

I liked Legion. I would never want to play it again, though - I was ignorant to its downfalls. Though, as a first 'iteration' of the 'systems trilogy', it was absolutely the best of the three imho. Once you had your artifact maxed out, you were done. Any more AP after that was moot. Then they complicated it in BfA to make it more horrifying and time-wastey. You gotta make sure your Heart was high enough level or else this one gear piece was bad for you! Hell, most gear pieces were bad for you if they didn't have the trait your spec needed. Which, in many class cases, was only on one or two pieces of gear.

... Torghast though? Keep that, bring it forward. They sorta did a little bit with the Cobalt rep in DF.

[Glorious Leader]

Telling people to do boring trivial content for dozens or hundreds of hours to play the difficulty they want isn't acceptable.

Nobody expressly told you this You simple cant help yourself and must lever every possibile advantage.

[Tyris Flare]

As casual i have 381 illvl now and this feel very good. I hope Blizzard team will keep gear progress from open world comparable to raids and M+ in future.

Bad news, everyone will blow past that in a few hours on tues

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This was a very well-thought-out post and I agree with it fully. The funny thing is that as you described your unnamed MMO I could think of several that fit the bill on many of the points you brought up. There are so many very good MMOs for the casual player out there and, as you rightly point out, WoW is not one of them.

People need to stop expecting the game to change to suit them and instead seek out the game that is actively designed for their wishes already. WoW is what it is, it's not going to have housing, it's not going to be casual-friendly, there will never be any decent overworld content, and progression is only for those who seek challenge over fun. The only caveat is for the folk that just want to RP in some corner of the world, that's totally do-able in WoW. But, again, there's also better games for that, too.

Only semi related but I tell D&D players this really often heh. Same thing in the tabletop world where people are sucked into this vortex of The Thing even though there are 100 other versions that are superior to their needs

[VMSmith]

Only semi related but I tell D&D players this really often heh. Same thing in the tabletop world where people are sucked into this vortex of The Thing even though there are 100 other versions that are superior to their needs

You're right, it is good advice for D&D as well. Why stay at a table that's not suited to your needs and desires? It would be very wrong to demand that the players at a D&D table change the way they play solely to accommodate yourself. The correct response is to go find a table that DOES conform to your needs.

[Biggles Worth]

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.

Those hardcore grinds you speak of were not fun to do.

[Darkeon]

Not enough World Quests to keep me happy as a casual player.

Nothing worse than wanting to play more and feeling like there's nothing to do.

[Lei]

Its the delusion of progression that exists from combination of low time and low skill, which is what classic nostalgia was about, they cant comprehend how some people play productively and not simply braindeading pixels.

If they made the total exp to 70, x1000%, forcing side quests, multiple dungeon runs and all that jazzle, you would have 95% of these idiotic comments disappear, because it would take them months to level up, according to their "timetables", obviously it would make others require longer but it wouldnt matter, people that will do it the first day, will do it the first week and nothing would change for them.

Majority of the same repeat posters are just bad at the game and cant even play it correctly, but even those, when the pointless crap content is simplified so much like DF, would end up compaining the second week, instead of 7 months earlier, which was clear as day it was gonna be a WoD 2.0 and a raid logging expansion from the time the alpha started.

I dont mind really, feels annoying now that its early, but down the line its gonna be amazing.

Just how do you expect people to complain 7 months earlier when "casuals" are not invited to the beta? I got invited exactly after when I reached 34k achieve point, which might have beeen a coincidence, I don't think so.
They might read about something, they might hear about something, but to feel the expansion, they think they have to play it.
I brought up this problem here months ago. What did I get? Downplaying, ignorance, shunning.
Why do you need to be good at the game to enjoy outdoor content? Raids, dungeons, m+-es are "in a safe place".
Up until mop low time and low skills were enough to get progression. Valor upgrades to the LFR gear. Runnig heroics for valor. Outdoor factions gave normal raid ilevel gear for emblems. Stop with this "blahblahblah classic nostalgia" nonsense, mists is not classic. Interestingly that was the last time outdoor content was "good".
Wod was the transition but what we have now is from Legion and m+-es.

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Doing chores all day is more hardcore then raid logging friend. You desperately want the no life days back but can't honestly vocalize it.

Could you clarify a bit when was tihs no life era? I'm not arguing just wow has had at least 3-4 era o might be useful to know which one you absolutely don't want back.

[Celement]

Just how do you expect people to complain 7 months earlier when "casuals" are not invited to the beta? I got invited exactly after when I reached 34k achieve point, which might have beeen a coincidence, I don't think so.
They might read about something, they might hear about something, but to feel the expansion, they think they have to play it.
I brought up this problem here months ago. What did I get? Downplaying, ignorance, shunning.
Why do you need to be good at the game to enjoy outdoor content? Raids, dungeons, m+-es are "in a safe place".
Up until mop low time and low skills were enough to get progression. Valor upgrades to the LFR gear. Runnig heroics for valor. Outdoor factions gave normal raid ilevel gear for emblems. Stop with this "blahblahblah classic nostalgia" nonsense, mists is not classic. Interestingly that was the last time outdoor content was "good".
Wod was the transition but what we have now is from Legion and m+-es.

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Could you clarify a bit when was tihs no life era? I'm not arguing just wow has had at least 3-4 era o might be useful to know which one you absolutely don't want back.

The legion through sl alternative power grind... honestly I wasn't a fan of the wod ring or mop cloaks either.

[Lei]

The legion through sl alternative power grind... honestly I wasn't a fan of the wod ring or mop cloaks either.

Gotcha. And agreed.

[Yriel]

You're right, it is good advice for D&D as well. Why stay at a table that's not suited to your needs and desires? It would be very wrong to demand that the players at a D&D table change the way they play solely to accommodate yourself. The correct response is to go find a table that DOES conform to your needs.

You play D&D (or TTRPGs in general) with your friends, there will always be some common ground and easy compromises. Those are your friends after all. Can't really be compared to WoW.

[Johnjohn]

Not enough World Quests to keep me happy as a casual player.

Nothing worse than wanting to play more and feeling like there's nothing to do.

I hate world quests/dailies as a casual. I would rather log in and progress my character through normal dungeons, lfr or random bgs.

I really hope blizzard goes back to making those modes have more rewarding gear than dailies. It's best for literally everyone.

[Lei]

I hate world quests/dailies as a casual. I would rather log in and progress my character through normal dungeons, lfr or random bgs.

I really hope blizzard goes back to making those modes have more rewarding gear than dailies. It's best for literally everyone.

I love how this comment starts as a simple and subtle "I don't like this playstyle, I'd like that playstyle better", which is perfectly fine with me tbh, but then at the end of the second sentence there it is "more rewarding gear than dailies". Lol.

[Miffinat0r]

You play D&D (or TTRPGs in general) with your friends, there will always be some common ground and easy compromises. Those are your friends after all. Can't really be compared to WoW.

Also D&D by it's nature is not competitive. WoW has become the "Competitive Pro-Gamer" MMORPG.

[BrokenRavens]

Third - The last cutscene which dovetails the story into a dungeon or raid. Great. That is just what a casual wants to see, a big old "to be continued" element. To be done in a dungeon that everyone wants to rush through, so you never quite get to see what is going on. (and pugs are ALWAYS fun (/sarcasm). OR it's in a raid which means the player gets to watch the ending on youtube. Terrific. "But the casual player has LFR!", you counter. Yes but LFR is staggered out, so they get to see/experience the ending weeks/months(?) after Blizzard themselves posts it to their youtube channel. Nothing says casual friendly than have everyone discussing the raids ending while you are still weeks away from experiencing the first half of it. Also there is the Mythic raid ending which gets even better, because new lore elements are revealed in the Mythic ending. Some snippet of dialogue or an extra boss that the "lowly casual" is not deemed important enough to experience. And this goes into...

The moment blizzard releases the ending to youtube, they should just open the entire raid to LFR. Unbelievable.

If you are a casual player playing WoW... There are so many companies out there that respect you as a player so much better.