Casual vs Hardcore - is it black and white?
Posted 08-26-2008 at 02:37 AM by Shorty
Firstly, a recap, after weeks of struggling to fill raid slots (and please don't say recruit - we have 2 ally guilds in sunwell and probably only 3 more in MH/BT or end of T5), we called it. A couple of our officers have joined a different raid guild on their mains, as have some of our raiders. Almost all who have left have left alts in the guild and the rest of us are having a month or two of "quiet time" before WotLK.
So, what's led me to even contemplate a blog on one of the most infamous and dangerous of subjects? No single event or occurrence but rather a week where I've been directly or indirectly exposed to both extremes of the WoW population.
Hardcore
How does one define hardcore, I'm sure people in Nihilum, SK Gaming, DnT etc wouldn't like to be grouped with those guilds currently taking their first steps into Sunwell. Is a hardcore raiding guild one who finished BT and MH before Sunwell was released; one who cleared Sunwell within two weeks; one who perservered on Vashj even when they didn't need to? What defines hardcore - is it the loot rules; the signup policy; the attitude; the skill; the time-sink??
Here's a tale of two occurrences in raid guilds on my server:
For the sake of this blog, let me call an ex-guildie, "Bob". He's joined the top ally guild on our server - I think they are 2 down in sunwell, have recently reformed from mainly 2 hardcore raiding guilds. In MH this week he got targeted by an infernal and moaned at because he did something wrong (he would have moved to the infernal tank) but the RL refused to tell him what. Now I know you need your raiders to stand on their own two feet, but this style of leadership really confuses me. However, "Bob" is a raider at heart and a very good one, I love hearing about his adventures and am very glad he has the opportunity to see fights he dreamed of during those long frustrating days of dealing with guild drama and recruitment problems. I think he's loving the freedom of just doing his raid job and not worrying about assigning loot, healing assignments etc etc. Whether in a few weeks he will be happy to return to less hardcore raiding I do not know.
The second incident concerned one of our healers, lets call him "Steve", who left for a different raiding guild from which he got kicked this weekend. He was told he wasn't a good enough healer and didn't know the fights. He is a great one-on-one healer his biggest fault is that it does take him longer to "get" a fight than other people, but we know that and we've always worked around it. Is this what separates hardcore from more casual, a willingness to work around guildies flaws? Or does this willingness create more problems? I'm sure one of our guild's biggest problems is precisely this: after our two RL's had to step down/quit due to RL we were left with a group of officers who are all too nice, added to the fact that we were a casual guild gone hardcore, with friends who maybe weren't necessarily the best WoW players but they were and are friends.
I'm not putting progression guilds down, and maybe these two incidents aren't a fair reflection. I have a great amount of admiration for what hardcore progression guilds achieve but just once it would be nice for those same guilds and members who people like me admire to give us a break and understand that what we do running a casual guild, with rules which are so flexible that most of the times they don't exist, is also an achievement. There is nothing worse than constantly reading that it is casual players who are ruining WoW. Just because we didn't down Solarian (for example) pre-nerf, when we did down her it was still an incredible achievement, in a completely different way: we downed her with 25 people: no shadow priests; no real melee group; no shammys; no prot pally; three warrior tanks who never sat out a raid fight; seven healers, as that's the number we always had; five people with bad latency; two who cannot be on vent as they don't have headphones and can't have the volume up because of kids/siblings; five who can't talk on vent due to similar reasons; and 15 for whom english is a second language!
Casual
At the far extreme on the opposite scale is a tale of three hunters who I inspected while levelling leatherworking by systematically slaughtering and skinning every yeti in Winterspring.
- Huey was a dwarf level 54-ish with a level 48 pet, duel wielding ripsaw
- Dewey was a tauren level 67 in full lvl 60 pvp gear wielding a grey dagger -- leveling dagger skills I presume, but I'm still not sure why.
- And finally Louis was another tauren, level 58 or so, in normal greens and stuff except for his hat - a white, cloth one with 45 armour.
Were they doing anyone any harm? Will they cause chaos in PUGS they may join at a later date? Were they having fun? Would they have been having more fun if they knew more about their class? I don't know.
But I do sometimes remember earlier times: when I tanked Strat as full arms, not having a single piece of +def gear, when a holy priest healed us, a holy pally dps'ed and backed-up healed and when no one complained or moaned when we wiped and no one watched agro meters or dps meters as none of us had them. Why, because we enjoyed playing together. But on the other hand I love what Shorty has become: a respected tank and someone who others turn to for advice and help.
Pvp'ers
If this topic could get even more controversial, it's when you enter the realms of pvp. Does an individual who's spent the only 5 hours a week they play grinding battlegrounds (and not going afk) for a full set of battleground pvp gear not deserve similar respect we give to people in full arena gear? Sure he may not be a great player, but to me that's an achievement in it's own right. It saddened me this week to hear someone who I deeply respect rip off a pvp'er in a battleground because he had shocking mid-level 60 greens except the four or so pieces of battleground pvp gear. Sure he may be clueless and try and pve in full pvp gear, but he may genuinely enjoy pvp'ing in the few hours he plays a week - since when do we assume the worst of people?
Kaleidoscope
So where do I stand in this kaleidoscope: in an instance or raid I give 120% of myself and expect the same from those I am with; outside of WoW I love reading the number crunching and learning how to improve but even if in two months time the same healer "Steve" takes a week to get a boss fight I hope this blog serves as a reminder to breath deeply and remember why I play WoW and that there's a real person behind the character, complete with RL loves, work, family, quirks, eccentricities, weak points and bad days.
At the end of the day, what makes WoW, no matter where you stand is the people - would it be anywhere near as much fun raiding with 24 npcs, who do everything perfectly, but who don't joke, laugh, celebrate and cry with you? Those at the casual end of the spectrum need to remember that it is the hardcore guilds which ultimately make the progression track what it is, who quite literally smooth the way to enable more casual guilds to see more of the game. They are the game's heart, the thing that keeps WoW going and for this they deserve respect. Those at the hardcore end of the game need to remember it's those casual players who are the WoW's soul - Shattrah would be a lonely place without them and boring if every character had the same Sunwell gear. Some of them choose to follow in harcore guilds' footsteps facing different obstacles along the way, many log in just to have fun, some are alt-aholics and some are just starting their WoW adventures and may one day turn into hardcore raiders.
Hugs
I rescued a level 58 tauren from a forge camp in hellfire over the weekend - I may have sighed heavily and wondered how he had managed to pull half the forge camp instead of systematically clearing one side, but I rescued him nonetheless, I got a "thank you", I gave him a "hug" and he "blushed" in return - I can safely say I have never hugged an npc, and this comes from a person who in WoW who lives off hugs and takes every opportunity to hug friends, strangers and horde alike!
So if you're a horde, hug an ally a day (preferably a gnome), and if you're an ally hug a horde a day - no matter if they are wielding war glaives; mallet of the tides; S1 staff; thunderfury; whirlwind axe or nothing at all!
So, what's led me to even contemplate a blog on one of the most infamous and dangerous of subjects? No single event or occurrence but rather a week where I've been directly or indirectly exposed to both extremes of the WoW population.
Hardcore
How does one define hardcore, I'm sure people in Nihilum, SK Gaming, DnT etc wouldn't like to be grouped with those guilds currently taking their first steps into Sunwell. Is a hardcore raiding guild one who finished BT and MH before Sunwell was released; one who cleared Sunwell within two weeks; one who perservered on Vashj even when they didn't need to? What defines hardcore - is it the loot rules; the signup policy; the attitude; the skill; the time-sink??
Here's a tale of two occurrences in raid guilds on my server:
For the sake of this blog, let me call an ex-guildie, "Bob". He's joined the top ally guild on our server - I think they are 2 down in sunwell, have recently reformed from mainly 2 hardcore raiding guilds. In MH this week he got targeted by an infernal and moaned at because he did something wrong (he would have moved to the infernal tank) but the RL refused to tell him what. Now I know you need your raiders to stand on their own two feet, but this style of leadership really confuses me. However, "Bob" is a raider at heart and a very good one, I love hearing about his adventures and am very glad he has the opportunity to see fights he dreamed of during those long frustrating days of dealing with guild drama and recruitment problems. I think he's loving the freedom of just doing his raid job and not worrying about assigning loot, healing assignments etc etc. Whether in a few weeks he will be happy to return to less hardcore raiding I do not know.
The second incident concerned one of our healers, lets call him "Steve", who left for a different raiding guild from which he got kicked this weekend. He was told he wasn't a good enough healer and didn't know the fights. He is a great one-on-one healer his biggest fault is that it does take him longer to "get" a fight than other people, but we know that and we've always worked around it. Is this what separates hardcore from more casual, a willingness to work around guildies flaws? Or does this willingness create more problems? I'm sure one of our guild's biggest problems is precisely this: after our two RL's had to step down/quit due to RL we were left with a group of officers who are all too nice, added to the fact that we were a casual guild gone hardcore, with friends who maybe weren't necessarily the best WoW players but they were and are friends.
I'm not putting progression guilds down, and maybe these two incidents aren't a fair reflection. I have a great amount of admiration for what hardcore progression guilds achieve but just once it would be nice for those same guilds and members who people like me admire to give us a break and understand that what we do running a casual guild, with rules which are so flexible that most of the times they don't exist, is also an achievement. There is nothing worse than constantly reading that it is casual players who are ruining WoW. Just because we didn't down Solarian (for example) pre-nerf, when we did down her it was still an incredible achievement, in a completely different way: we downed her with 25 people: no shadow priests; no real melee group; no shammys; no prot pally; three warrior tanks who never sat out a raid fight; seven healers, as that's the number we always had; five people with bad latency; two who cannot be on vent as they don't have headphones and can't have the volume up because of kids/siblings; five who can't talk on vent due to similar reasons; and 15 for whom english is a second language!
Casual
At the far extreme on the opposite scale is a tale of three hunters who I inspected while levelling leatherworking by systematically slaughtering and skinning every yeti in Winterspring.
- Huey was a dwarf level 54-ish with a level 48 pet, duel wielding ripsaw
- Dewey was a tauren level 67 in full lvl 60 pvp gear wielding a grey dagger -- leveling dagger skills I presume, but I'm still not sure why.
- And finally Louis was another tauren, level 58 or so, in normal greens and stuff except for his hat - a white, cloth one with 45 armour.
Were they doing anyone any harm? Will they cause chaos in PUGS they may join at a later date? Were they having fun? Would they have been having more fun if they knew more about their class? I don't know.
But I do sometimes remember earlier times: when I tanked Strat as full arms, not having a single piece of +def gear, when a holy priest healed us, a holy pally dps'ed and backed-up healed and when no one complained or moaned when we wiped and no one watched agro meters or dps meters as none of us had them. Why, because we enjoyed playing together. But on the other hand I love what Shorty has become: a respected tank and someone who others turn to for advice and help.
Pvp'ers
If this topic could get even more controversial, it's when you enter the realms of pvp. Does an individual who's spent the only 5 hours a week they play grinding battlegrounds (and not going afk) for a full set of battleground pvp gear not deserve similar respect we give to people in full arena gear? Sure he may not be a great player, but to me that's an achievement in it's own right. It saddened me this week to hear someone who I deeply respect rip off a pvp'er in a battleground because he had shocking mid-level 60 greens except the four or so pieces of battleground pvp gear. Sure he may be clueless and try and pve in full pvp gear, but he may genuinely enjoy pvp'ing in the few hours he plays a week - since when do we assume the worst of people?
Kaleidoscope
So where do I stand in this kaleidoscope: in an instance or raid I give 120% of myself and expect the same from those I am with; outside of WoW I love reading the number crunching and learning how to improve but even if in two months time the same healer "Steve" takes a week to get a boss fight I hope this blog serves as a reminder to breath deeply and remember why I play WoW and that there's a real person behind the character, complete with RL loves, work, family, quirks, eccentricities, weak points and bad days.
At the end of the day, what makes WoW, no matter where you stand is the people - would it be anywhere near as much fun raiding with 24 npcs, who do everything perfectly, but who don't joke, laugh, celebrate and cry with you? Those at the casual end of the spectrum need to remember that it is the hardcore guilds which ultimately make the progression track what it is, who quite literally smooth the way to enable more casual guilds to see more of the game. They are the game's heart, the thing that keeps WoW going and for this they deserve respect. Those at the hardcore end of the game need to remember it's those casual players who are the WoW's soul - Shattrah would be a lonely place without them and boring if every character had the same Sunwell gear. Some of them choose to follow in harcore guilds' footsteps facing different obstacles along the way, many log in just to have fun, some are alt-aholics and some are just starting their WoW adventures and may one day turn into hardcore raiders.
Hugs
I rescued a level 58 tauren from a forge camp in hellfire over the weekend - I may have sighed heavily and wondered how he had managed to pull half the forge camp instead of systematically clearing one side, but I rescued him nonetheless, I got a "thank you", I gave him a "hug" and he "blushed" in return - I can safely say I have never hugged an npc, and this comes from a person who in WoW who lives off hugs and takes every opportunity to hug friends, strangers and horde alike!
So if you're a horde, hug an ally a day (preferably a gnome), and if you're an ally hug a horde a day - no matter if they are wielding war glaives; mallet of the tides; S1 staff; thunderfury; whirlwind axe or nothing at all!
Total Comments 8
Comments
 | Very very well said. |
Posted 08-26-2008 at 02:49 AM by Squeegiemama  |
| |  If more people followed what's written here, the game we all love would be even better than it already is. As it is, one of the biggest problems I have are people who constantly rip on others, who make people paranoid to ask a simple question in trade for fear of being lol'ed at and called an ignorant noob or worse, and who seem to forget that once upon a time, all of us were little nooblets, struggling to figure out wtf we were doing. Whether we're hardcore or casual, horde or alliance (for the horde!! :P ), pve or pvp'ers, night elf or blood elf, human or undead, first and foremost, we're all WoW players, and that should make all teh difference. |
| Posted 08-26-2008 at 05:28 AM by salihe Updated 08-26-2008 at 06:12 AM by salihe |
| | Well written and its the same I am having around and what I am thinking about aswell. I stopped being raid leader after my raid group broke due to people stepping down and just leaving etc.. I never knew if I am hardcorer or not. I can do heroics, raid and then do heroics again for 30+hours (no kidding) if I dont have anything to do. Aswell as I can be just whole week with iRL friends. I am either hardcore and casual "PC player", not just WoW player.. Pre-TBC I have played WoW around 40-60hours per week. Now, like 25-45. I give also 100%+ on raid, I can even lead it etc, but I am taking it as game. I usualy come on vent, seeing people who I know that having mic, greet them but they are shy to talk, they more likely reply in chat etc. Willingness to understand others is maybe problem with HC RGs. Probably it will be like... Hardcore simulates army or serious organisation, and casual simulates circle of friends making things they like or some kind of party stuff. Think we look at it from same point of view. |
| Posted 08-26-2008 at 05:49 AM by Lumirel |
| |  There is alot of gray area. Is the player with 6 level 70's playing 30+ hours a week any less 'hardcore' than the raider in BT/Sunwell? In some ways, no. World first, bleeding edge are a class all thier own, I think. Aside from that, you have many different types of players scattered all over the place. |
| Posted 08-26-2008 at 07:23 AM by Horacio |
| | Definitely a well written post. The casual/hardcore divide is definitely more of a gradient or gray area than anything. I'd consider my guild very casual (raiding twice a week for no more than 3 or 4 hours each, optional attendance, fights will be explained to newbies, etc.), but we have players that have hardcore tendencies (number crunching, reading and knowing the fights, knowing your class, etc.). So, we're somewhere in that gray area. I think one of the big things that separates hardcore from casual is schedule. Hardcore players are raiding 6 nights a week, for at least 4 hours at a time (probably more like 6). Casual players don't. They might log in every day, but it's not to raid. They might only be online during their lunch break that day. Or they might not log in at all on a particular day (I know I didn't log on yesterday). Anyway... great post. |
| Posted 08-26-2008 at 07:39 AM by Thireas |
| | I think the hard core / casual argument is ridiculous to be honest. There is no clear line that you can draw, either through play time, or approach to the game. If you want to try to draw the line on 'schedule' am I a hard core player, with 50% attendance as my guild raids 3 nights a week? (we're working on twins) or is the guy who's done Karazhan on 4 different characters 'hard core' because he's played 3 times as much? Or the guy with a dozen level 70s who just likes leveling up, but plays all day? Do you call the top ten guilds 'hard core'? Some of them are raiding for 2-3 hours a week right now. While some of them have high play time regardless, many of them only have high play time during progression, which doesn't last long. The whole attempt to clearly mark a difference is silly. It's a big game, and people can invest wildly different levels of time and commitment, and take their play time as seriously, or as jovially as they want, into a wide variety of play styles. |
| Posted 08-26-2008 at 09:29 AM by Kavtor |
| | Extremely well put. In the end does a label really affect how you play the game? Didn't we all start playing WoW for the exact same reason? Because it is fun and provides us enjoyment outside of our RL world which often times is full of stress, problems and headaches. Casual & hardcore are merely labels created by players to try and separate people by skill levels and drive to progess IG. But I ask, is there really only one way to play WoW to be successful and get what you need out of it? I don't think so. Some people enjoy PvP, some Arena, some PvE and others I know enjoy just questing. So who has more fun? And are the achievements of the "hardcore" raider any more meaningful than a "casual" PvPer? I guess that depends on who you ask. But I've had a similar discussion with friends & guildmates before. I don't believe there is any wrong way to play WoW. As long as your getting enjoyment out of it and having fun with your friends, then that is all that should matter whether its raiding, questing or doing PvP. Me personally, I came late to the party. I realize I'll probably never see the inside of BT or SWP, hell I'll be lucky to clear Kara before the expansion comes out. I certainly push myself hard as tank to improve and I also try to help others in my guild get better. I get frustrated at times like everyone, but I always stop and think this is just a game and there are real people on the other end of that toon. And while I may never be a "hardcore raider", I'll at least be some one who has "hardcore fun" in Wow and thats good enough for me. |
| Posted 08-26-2008 at 11:55 AM by dirt |
| | Well, i think the comparison between "Steve" and the 3 hunters might point part of the divide out. The 3 hunters are out in the world. the content is less challenging. designed in part to help you learn oyur character through trial and error, and experimantation.They are learning. This can be done through all extremes from opsessive unrelenting continuous play all the way to super casual 5 minutes a week casual. It is important to find out if you will fit a raid group. Some groups have different expectations and goals. "Steve" joins a raid guild that expects that he understand more than just the basics of his class. he should be ready, and prepared. If his guild is so focused , he should have read up on the fights too, watched a movie or two.They don't want someone they have to train. Some people just don't fit in some groups. |
| Posted 08-26-2008 at 09:19 PM by Calamity |
Recent Blog Entries by Shorty
- Introducing Gnummitz & raid concerns (11-20-2008)
- Of Walruses, Storm Giants and Dragons (11-17-2008)
- The challenge: Loremaster of Kalimdor (11-11-2008)
- Sunwell Experiences (11-10-2008)
- The last few days (11-04-2008)
