"Hard Core Raiding and a Social Life Oh my"

[gd_void]

Last night on my server (thrall - us) a guild got Server first Heroic DW, Congrats to Censored. However after this the trade chat Trolls were in full swing. Hardcore raiders 'have no life', Hardcore raiders never leave the house, Etc etc.
having raided full time in the past these comments, didn't make much sense to me for a few reasons which incited me to do a tiny bit of research. and it honestly appears to me that Hardcore raiders have more of an Opportunity to have a 'social life' then say a casual. eight of the top ten guilds on my server do not raid on Friday, Saturday or Sunday. However most of the 'Casual' guilds raid exclusively on those days. Perhaps i'm just being troll-baited but it seems to be a very wide spread thought that hardcore raiders have absolutely no life out side of the game, and some how are 'bad at life' because they are good in the game. I know personally when i raided Progression in WotLK i was always able to go have a drink with my friends on a Friday night, and have movie night with my Girlfriend on Saturday. What are your thoughts on this? In my mind it just seems like a narrow minded View that Gamers are social reject, a view that should have died ten years ago with the rise of the Gamer into the main stream.

[leethaxor]

No actually its pretty true. As you approach the top end of WoW you find people with social lives. My guild is dead during farm. We raid about 4 hours a week because we actually do things with our lives (during farm).

But the majority of players happily perpetuate stereotypes. Of anti-social gamers. But as gamer's get more mainstream there will be more social interaction. The stereotype is dying but it isn't dead.

[Theotherone]

I've been in not so good guilds and, now, a very good guild - no world firsts or top 100s or even 1000s but we can hold our own, and I have to say there's much more free time now. Especially, like Leet said, now that DS normal has been on farm. Unless we feel we have the group to make progress in heroics, we just clear the place in an evening, giving us 6 days to do what we want. Attendance is our issue these days.

In the not so good guilds, it was bang your head against the wall every night; extend raid lock outs, etc.

[Dreador]

It's really up to the individual person. Even during farm months there are some who farm mats on all their alts or work toward other goals aside from raid achievements. On the other end of the spectrum there's the guys/girls who log in 2 times a week for the 3 hour raid nights and you don't see them again until Tuesday.

[Aggathon]

I'd like to echo what Dreador said. For me, it's a balance between all things. During college, I kept a pretty decent GPA, while hardcore raiding most of the time, but I also had a social life and went out most weekends. The one thing I didn't manage well while still playing WoW was my health. I hate "faster" foods and never exercised except for the random extremely casual ultimate frisbee game maybe once a week. I gained a lot of weight over 7 years of playing wow because of it, but I definitely had a booming social life as well.

And actually, now that I've quit and am focusing more on my health, I think I have less of a social life than I did when I was playing wow because I'm a little more relucant to drink a lot or go out to eat, especially on a week night, lol.

But ya, basically those people were super jelly and you were kinda troll-baited. You've got the long and short of it covered. There are still some people that even though there's no raids on weekends, will be on PvPing and truly DON'T have a life, but I think a lot of high end raiders really do have actual lives.

[Papapaint]

I have to admit, it's pretty funny how people cling to stereotypes.

I had a tremendously active social life while I was raiding. Going out on weekends, hanging out late nights post-raid. Farm weeks were 1 day clears, and I'd have 6 days a week to go around doing whatever with friends.

And yet, the stereotype still existed, even amongst my friends. Playing WoW somehow automatically meant I was antisocial.

Then, I joined a band. We practice two days a week minimum, play roughly 2 or more shows a week, and any time not spent doing that is spent in the studio, working with promoters, booking shows, working on press kits, developing contact lists, etc etc. I have less of a social life than I've ever had in my life. Even when we play shows, so much time is spent loading gear, selling merch, etc. that the interactions hardly feel like a social life.

And yet, when I tell people I'm in a band, they somehow assume that I have a huge social life. Even people who knew me when I was gaming seem to think I somehow have a huge social life, even though I barely hang out with anyone outside of my bandmates. It's tough to change stereotypes.

[gd_void]

On a related note it has occurred to me that quite a few people use that very stereo-type as an excuse for not being 'good' at the game. I cant spend the time to learn my class, learn not to stand in fire, learn the fights because i 'have a life'. I don't know perhaps it just bothers me that it's apparently accepted that by being good at a game, you are automatically bad at everything else

[Aggathon]

On a related note it has occurred to me that quite a few people use that very stereo-type as an excuse for not being 'good' at the game. I cant spend the time to learn my class, learn not to stand in fire, learn the fights because i 'have a life'. I don't know perhaps it just bothers me that it's apparently accepted that by being good at a game, you are automatically bad at everything else

Ya, it's weird. I knew a guy that sucked at WoW and failed out of college twice because he played too much. There's really no correlation what-so-ever between "having a life" and being good at video games, imo.

[Tengenstein]

I don't realy get this whole having a life malarky. Am i meant to be partying on a work night or something? frankly when i had to work i didn't have the energy to have a social life on a week night and turning up to work with a hangover seems to be a biger social faux pas than playing videogames.

[Dreador]

Ya, it's weird. I knew a guy that sucked at WoW and failed out of college twice because he played too much. There's really no correlation what-so-ever between "having a life" and being good at video games, imo.

Exactly. Casual WoW addicts doesn't necessarily = gamer.

I don't realy get this whole having a life malarky. Am i meant to be partying on a work night or something? frankly when i had to work i didn't have the energy to have a social life on a week night and turning up to work with a hangover seems to be a biger social faux pas than playing videogames.

Depends on how shitty the job is. One of the positions I held was high risk and setup for failure (had to leave that dept when I could), so I was drunk every night for about a month and hungover all day. Depends on the environment I guess.

[Destruyen]

From my experience on Thrall I wouldn't consider any of the guilds "hardcore", but the last time I was on that server was back in the summer. I quit playing a few weeks after Dragon Soul was released and only being 3/7 heroic, but I heard that they nerfed the content twice already. "Hardcore" guilds do have social lives during farm, it's just the first few weeks after new content is released when they are in progression mode that they drop some offline activities in order to get as close to world first or top 10 as possible.

Honestly the "hardcore" guilds have already had 8/8 heroic on farm for at least a month by now, but I guess that depends on what you would define as "hardcore"...

[Libellus]

I agree it is not wise to cling to sterotypes, but then you do find the examples which reinforce them.

When launched, on the server I played on, pretty much all the raiding guilds had one or more nights on a Friday or Saturday. For someone with a social life outside of WoW and a partner who doesn't do "gaming", this pretty much killed raiding for me. Most the raiders I knew at the time were either a) in school or college b) single or c) had a partner who also played the game.

It wasn't until I moved servers and joined guilds who raided Sun-Thurs, that I got my chance to raid. Even then, this was a long time coming, because my job simply didn't permit me to be home at time for when most raids started.

This all said, there are still plenty of examples of hardcore raiding guilds out there who raid 5 nights a week for a full 4hrs or more. But then, there are plenty of other hobbies and interests out there which you can devote a similar time commitment to. Hell, I used to exercise more than that in the course of a week and that created its fair share of problems for me.

[Bung]

Let's put it like this..If you had other obligations from Mon-Thurs you might not be a hard core raider. I started playing wow 5 years ago and was pretty hard core then. I never missed a raid and played every night and weekend. It was this way for a few years. Then 2 years ago I got married. Around that time I only played on raid nights (which is something I worked out with my wife). Now I have a 7 month year-old baby. So I hardly play at all. I'm not a geek and I really don't beleive gamers in general are nerdy. It' all about where your life is....That's why I believe that many hard core gamers are anywhere from 18-25 years old. Those are the years of life that people are less likely to have real life obligations around work or family that would prevent them from being hard core raiders. The average age people get married is around 26-29 years old. I think the casual raiders probably have steady jobs that might start early in the morning Mon-Fri so they tend to raid Fri night and play on weekends. It's the only time they really can play. I've played the game with people who have kids but those kids tend to be a bit older (10-12 or up) so they have the free time to play again like they did before having kids. Don't buy into stereotypes Real Life>MMO's....it's what separates the hard core and casual player most of the time imo.

[feralminded]

I play this game 8 hours per week, am 6/8H (7/8H should be tonight), and consider myself extremely hardcore. Hours invested does not mean hardcore, hardcore is the amount of time and personal effort I put into being the absolute best (I am not happy unless I am at a minimum the best class/spec on the server ... 2nd place is 1st loser to me). That said ... it's ONLY 8 hours a week across 2 nights. I have a very full life that includes a very successful professional career, girlfriends, other major hobbies, physical fitness, and considerable time spent with friends or out at events. The stereotype is useless and needs to be put to rest now.

[Slyvar]

No actually its pretty true. As you approach the top end of WoW you find people with social lives. My guild is dead during farm. We raid about 4 hours a week because we actually do things with our lives (during farm).

But the majority of players happily perpetuate stereotypes. Of anti-social gamers. But as gamer's get more mainstream there will be more social interaction. The stereotype is dying but it isn't dead.

Lets be honest, though; A guild who is JUST NOW getting 8/8 is far from the "top end of WoW." Ridiculing them as being so hardcore they have no life, is a bit odd.

Also -- There was a documentary that actually followed around the several of the world top-10 guilds. There were obviously people who never left their house and were in WoW 60 hours per week. But Blood Legion was a great example of hardcore raiding with a social life. Several members of BL actually went out and hung out with friends at the bar on a pretty regular basis, etc. One of them had kept up his social life enough that his friends had no idea that he even played WoW, let alone was in a guild competing for world firsts...

I myself was in a world top 200 guild (I RAN the guild and was raid leader). I had a social life, worked out 3 nights per week and worked a fulltime job on top of that. I don't raid on a schedule now, but it's not because of scheduling. It's because I'm just bored of raiding. :P

[gd_void]

For simplicity, I view 20+ hours a week spent raiding as a 'hard-core' raider. that being said i was more interested in the stereotype then i am about weither or not they are in-fact 'hard-core'. The fact of the matter is it does appear to be wide spread that hard-core = shutin, and logically it doesn't really appear to be that way. Faster Clears = more free time = (possibly) more time off wow. Also after you finish a Final Teir, what's left to do in a pve since, farm for better gear that you will replace shortly? sell runs to make gold? i've friends who (in wotlk) simply up and quit playing after h-lk, nothing more to do for them.

[chubtohd]

well...I'd say if you're just killing DW:HM you're not as hardcore as you assume...granted it is a feat worthy of congratulations, but if it's taken this long, then I'm guessing you're spending more time raiding than the casual.

During progression races, top guilds have no social life spending hours and hours at their computers. 1-2 months later they raid little or gear up alts for the next progression race.

However, now that he's dead, you will have most everything on farm and you can go to the 1-2 nights per week and your theory will be proven correct

edit: besides, if you're hanging with friends online, isn't that social?