Of all the mmorpgs I have played, Saga of Ryzom and Guildwars are probably by far the most casual friendly base on some of the comments made up threads (never played UO tho so I don't know about that).
Guildwars - instant travel time, henchman to group with if you can't find a group, you can complete quests in short bust of time. You can hop in for a quick PVP game. There's still that lvl differentiation problem though. You stop playing for a week and your buddies will be futher along on the quests chain than you.
Saga of Ryzom - instant travel time with teleportation ticket to "hubs". Freedom to play with level any skills you want so even if you have cap 250 lvls in say, 2h sword, you can still group with your lvl 50 dagger buddies and level your lvl 50 heal up by playing the healer. There are basically NO quests line (except a handful of lores quest) and no "End Game Content". There're goals, but they're not subtanstial like a full set of teir 1 armors or downing rag. You have to basically come up with it on your own (get all the tps in Prime Root, stock up supreme mats to craft quality items, role playing goals, finding new digging spots, finding new recipes for a better dodge stats chest, be an expert jungle digger, etc). The down side to all that is... well, to the hardcore-questing-uber gears crowd, the game basically have no "contents", meaning contents that they want. So it remains a niche game and doesn't appeal to the popular mmorpg mass.
I just like to add that while you can "play all games casually", some games are made so that it's more casual friendly. Usually those games provide you with mechanics to just "live the world", as oppose "playing a game and win". I think most casual players tend to either just want to play with friends, or just like to live the world and be immerse in it. Saga of Ryzom provides for this, GW not so much. EVE can be for this too. The game mechanic allows you to simple "live the EVE universe", be a space pirate or a tractor trailer driver hauling goods from places to places. You can imagine yourself just simply existing in the world and be part of it, as oppose to playing a game and beating it.
Anoter example, when I trek with a group of people from one capital city to another (quite a long trip, hours+) in Saga of Ryzom, I actually feel like I am adventuring with a group of people. The game world with its seasons and weathers changing, the feel of traveling and avoiding/over coming dangers and mobs, the night and days cycles as time passes, makes it like I am actually doing a trek with other homins to reach a new land. Or say when I logged on to go hunt some ocyxs or harvest a bunch of moonresin in the Spring, it feels like I am living in the world and just going about my business.
You cant say as much for game like WoW. In WoW, when you run MC... it's more like an arcade rather than going adventuring with a group of people into the fiery bowel of Blackrock Mountain (oh how I wish). You pretty much have to know the mobs behavior and have to play it like an arcade game. You have your pulls, your tanks, your dps and dots, your boss down to 10% run away now! You are beating bowser allover again in supermario.
Same with crafting... I am not a "crafter making things to sell", I am either skilling it up or making it for friends. I don't feel like I am actually a leatherworker or a tailor. It's just a skill, not a trade.
Originally posted by nomadian I think to be honest, there are some mmorpgs which strive to do this. Ryzom people cite as a different kind of mmorpg with more of an emphasis of rpg, though I could be wrong. CoH allows a sidekick system so that two friends can easily group. Guild Wars/DDO although are heavily instance based are along this model of ease of grouping. Traveltime, Guild Wars/DDO/CoH and maybe AC(portals?) has this quality of low travelling time.
I love Ryzom.
But it is really NOT a casual game. To be able to get from one land to another requires a "Trek" that needs at least one experienced player (who knows where he is going) and is going to take you, at best, about 90 minutes, if not more. Once you get there, you can get a "teleport" pact... But trying to get there solo is an excercise in what most players would call extreme frustration (though there are some hardcore sorts who love it).
And it's not just travel. Harvesting takes hours and hours to level... And that is only after you have found the resources. Finding the resources can take days, weeks... some of the resources are only available in winter at night, for example. If you want that resource, you have to get to it just then (and you need to know where it is before hand, which of course means you had to do a bunch of searching previously). Crafting requires not only massive amounts of harvesting I just mentioned, but on top of that, you have to keep track of which resources and resource combinations give you good "recipes" to get the types of effects (armor bonuses, etc) that you wanted. A casual player could probably grind to the top of these profs (harvest, craft), but would not end up knowing any good resource spots, or any good crafting recipes.... and without that, it's just a plain grind.
Now, there are many subtleties and nuances to Ryzom, that make it complex, interesting, and, as a result, fun for me. But I would not in any way, shape, or form, call it "casual."
COH/COV, is on the other hand very very casual friendly. It can easily be soloed... Travel time (after level 14 at least) is pretty trivial, and grouping is very flexible (with the sidekick system). Mission instances are usually pretty short (15 minutes to an hour, tops, with the exception of a very small number of annoying outdoor ones that take upwards of 2 hours if they are 'defeat all', but these are rare).
Likewise GW can be played casually, with short-ish instances and fairly short travel times... Though grouping with people of vastly different levels can be somewhat problematic.
Originally posted by Pantastic I think the real problem for a casual player isn't so much 'keeping up with the Joneses' as 'discovering there's no one to do stuff with', I'll use WOW for an example. Going along at your own pace works pretty well on a new server, but once a server is developed there just isn't anyone to do low-level stuff with; pretty much everyone is in a raid guild or being powerleveld to get into a raid guild. You have a hard time meeting and staying in touch with friends, because if they play a different amount than you there's not much you can do together, either the high-level guy makes the content trivial or the low-level guy can't do anything effective. You end up pretty much stuck with solo questing and chatting, and that's quite possible with a single-player game and instant messenger program.
Having no one to do stuff with is one problem.
However, also, the absurd experience curve in the upper level game is another problem. Let's take COH as an example. I said in an above post that it is pretty casual, and the real-time gameplay is in fact so. However, they also built it so that in the level 30-50 range, the levelling curve is just obnoxious (especially the late 30s for some annoying reason). It takes literally thousands of villain defeats to gain a single level in the 30s, where it took a few hundred in the lower levels.
As a consequence, what happens is this: friends I have who are casual gamers never get out of the low 30s. I know one girl who has all 12 of her alt slots filled with heroes and villains. She has been playing the game since launch. She has one level 40 hero, one level 44 or so villain, and every other one of her characters is below 35. Often she gets characters to around 30, then deletes them to make room and starts over. Why does she do this? Because at the rate she plays, and the levelling curve being what it is, going from level 1-30 is faster than going from level 33 to 36. The XP bar goes from visibly increasing after each short mission, to barely budging after an entire evening of play (I admit: this is an exaggeration, but you get the idea). And she'd rather get a new character with interesting powers from level 1 to level 30 every couple of months, than spend 2-3 months getting an old one from 33 to 40 or something.
Add to this, you have most of your powers already selected by 32 or so, and after 32, instead of getting powers every other level you get them every 3rd level. So now, instead of gaining say, a power every few days, you gain a power every few weeks -- and your character feels pretty stagnant in between those times. People get bored with stagnation, and give up.
And I think this is a major hurdle for the games of the future. To keep people playing, it has to be long/hard enough that progress doesnt' come instantly and without any effort... but it also has to be short enough, and the curve shallow enough, that you don't feel like you are stangating either. They have to find some way to make it so that casual players can advance in a way that feels appropriate... and gaining a level every 6 months is, for most people, not appropriate (regardless of how many hours of actual play they put in).
To date, game companies only focus on the # of hours it takes to get something, but I really think the total amount of real time also matters.... And that generally is ignored.
I think some games are starting to realize this and make provision for it though. See, for reference, the recent spat of games (SWG has been, and COH is about to start) that offer "Veteran Rewards." Right now these are blatant attempts to get people to keep subscribing when they would otherwise cancel, but think about the logic behind it... That if you have been subscribing to a game for 6 months, that's a long time, regardless of how many hours you play. Now, I'm not going to say you "deserve" something for that, because presumably the fun of the game is its own reward. However, if your character has stagnated during those 6 months, you're far less likely to keep subscribing... so the companies have to do something. I wouldn't argue that Vet Rewards (as currently implemented in SWG and COH) are the right thing to do, but they are getting at an important issue for casual gamers.
Chessack, me think your definition of "casual play" and mine are different
But partly my fault because I use WoW as a yard stick.
Basically I asked, do I need to gather up 40 people and run an instance umpteenth # of times for 5 hours a night to advance? Or ,
Do I need to PvP 10 hours straight a day every day to advance?
In SoR, you *can* grind/hunt/trek with 40+ people and play for 12 hours straight if you choose to, but you *don't have to*.
In WoW you basically do have to.
For a 3 months stretch last year I only logged onto SoR for a few hours of hunting or harvesting a week and attend a few events ... very casual and under no obligation to play all night, and I still had a good time playing that way.
If I logged into WoW and play for 2 hours, I won't be able to run any instances. At level 60 you basically have to play for 4hours+ stretch to get anything worthwhile done.
The more "shortcuts/advance now" buyable content a game has the faster it becomes casual.
I always thought games were supposed to provide hours of gameplay but I guess when you run a business the bottom line is the only thing the team leads are worried about.
Don't be terrorized! You're more likely to die of a car accident, drowning, fire, or murder! More people die every year from prescription drugs than terrorism LOL!
I think CoH is one of the best casual games I've ever played. For me its because I can progress thru the game and experience a realy rich storyline alone or in groups equally easy. Its one of the few games I can actualy zip thru missions and get to the end thru stealth just as effectively as brute force. They also balanced amazingly well so that if you zip thru a bunch of missions you get just as much exp. as time in a bunch of short runs as a few long runs getting all the enemies along the way. Frankly Im more like a hitman. I go in, do the objective and get out. That why I have well over 300 finished mishes versus the 120 most my friends have at level 30.
Working from the angle that 'casual' translating to 'play time spent', I say that it can exist... with a few MMO games out there now catering to casual players.
Two off the top of my head are WoW and EQ2 with the rested XP and ?Advanture Vitality?. These features put a decent dent in the grind factor for casual players. True they wont advance at the same rate as hardcore players (hardcore=players who play every day for 3+ hours) but they do advance much quicker than previous MMOG's allowed.
I hope future MMOG's take this feature to heart in their designs.
But it is really NOT a casual game. To be able to get from one land to another requires a "Trek" that needs at least one experienced player (who knows where he is going) and is going to take you, at best, about 90 minutes, if not more. Once you get there, you can get a "teleport" pact... But trying to get there solo is an excercise in what most players would call extreme frustration (though there are some hardcore sorts who love it).
And it's not just travel. Harvesting takes hours and hours to level... And that is only after you have found the resources. Finding the resources can take days, weeks... some of the resources are only available in winter at night, for example. If you want that resource, you have to get to it just then (and you need to know where it is before hand, which of course means you had to do a bunch of searching previously). Crafting requires not only massive amounts of harvesting I just mentioned, but on top of that, you have to keep track of which resources and resource combinations give you good "recipes" to get the types of effects (armor bonuses, etc) that you wanted. A casual player could probably grind to the top of these profs (harvest, craft), but would not end up knowing any good resource spots, or any good crafting recipes.... and without that, it's just a plain grind.
Now, there are many subtleties and nuances to Ryzom, that make it complex, interesting, and, as a result, fun for me. But I would not in any way, shape, or form, call it "casual."
Ah right, have to admit never getting past the trial. Always interesting to hear more about the game as it is quite a different game.
if they implement a system where u only can play a limited numbers of hours per day and after they expire u get less exp.but allot of ppl would then just play for the items......so actually a casual game cant exist since u will always have the lifeless ppl that play 10+hours a day
Sorry for my bad grammar English is not my native language
Originally posted by lifeform86 if they implement a system where u only can play a limited numbers of hours per day and after they expire u get less exp.but allot of ppl would then just play for the items......so actually a casual game cant exist since u will always have the lifeless ppl that play 10+hours a day
All a game needs to be causal friendly is to be actually fun to play. If it is fun, and fun ALL THE TIME, then causal players won't care what their level is. It's actually very simple.
And no, WoW is not a good example of fun all the time.
Originally posted by GreenChaos And no, WoW is not a good example of fun all the time.
WOW does a pretty good job of that pre-60, especially at lower levels it's very easy to log in for a bit, mess around with some quests, go poke around a new area, kill some stuff, or in a longer session run an instance. It's only when you start getting up around 60, where you can't run the appropriate-level instances because people only want to run them with 60s, non-instance quests mostly dry up, leveling gets a lot slower so killing stuff for a bit barely moves your xp bar, there aren't any new areas, and so on.
I think BG twinks cost them a lot of casual players, sure you get the occasional 60 who isn't raiding and grinds out a level 19 or 29 superman and the enchants for him and enjoys that, but how many people who would like to do a little PVP with their legit level 24 guy give it up completely after getting demolished by a rogue with +50 agility on his daggers? The lower-level BGs are an example of something that has a lot of good casual features but one very bad feature.
One thing I'm shocked at is the almost complete lack of new quests in WOW. There are numerous quest chains that come to a screeching halt, and plenty of places with no or only a single faction quest. One writer coming up with storylines to fill in bits of the world would really add a lot for casual players to poke into, and quests don't need special bosses (or can use existing bosses) and don't need have to have super-loot for people to have fun with them. When I started, I figured things like the burned out inn in dustwallow would be filled out by the time the first expansion came out a year after release, and these kinds of things are great for people who like exploring or reading backstory stuff.
CoV/CoH are the most casuals friendly. Also the most PvE grouper-friendly, even if you are hardcore, a good basic is better than a screw up system...and the accolades shaft slightly the casuals, yet again, nothing as bad as WoW.
They made a few mistakes, but nothing as bad as WoW.
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
Originally posted by Pantastic Originally posted by GreenChaos And no, WoW is not a good example of fun all the time.
WOW does a pretty good job of that pre-60 ...<snip>...
If it wasn't for the travel times and time spent on professions and trading, and time spent (for me anyways) looking for groups, I would agree with you.
Originally posted by Anofalye CoV/CoH are the most casuals friendly. Also the most PvE grouper-friendly, even if you are hardcore, a good basic is better than a screw up system...and the accolades shaft slightly the casuals, yet again, nothing as bad as WoW. They made a few mistakes, but nothing as bad as WoW.
I agree and I'm a big fan - my only issue with CoV was my system is a bit old for it, but I'm building a new one this weekend and CoV will be the first thing I install. If I dont F up my build that is.
Originally posted by GreenChaos If it wasn't for the travel times and time spent on professions and trading, and time spent (for me anyways) looking for groups, I would agree with you.
I'll give you travel time (a big part of the 'pretty good' instead of 'good'), and grouping I'll give because of the glaring lack of a LFG tool (but you don't really need to group for most content anyway) but I don't get the others. You don't even need to mess with professions if you don't want to, so I can't see how something that's truly optional was not casual friendly, just don't even learn them if they're taking too long. Trading was easy, you could pretty much just drop greens and crafting stuff at the AH at a bit less than other people list them for and do fine, or spend longer playing the AH if you want to. The only real non-casual bit of trading in my mind was the travel time to and from the AH when you fill your bags, which I'd class under travel and not trade. What did you find 'noncasual' about them?
Comments
Of all the mmorpgs I have played, Saga of Ryzom and Guildwars are probably by far the most casual friendly base on some of the comments made up threads (never played UO tho so I don't know about that).
Guildwars - instant travel time, henchman to group with if you can't find a group, you can complete quests in short bust of time. You can hop in for a quick PVP game. There's still that lvl differentiation problem though. You stop playing for a week and your buddies will be futher along on the quests chain than you.
Saga of Ryzom - instant travel time with teleportation ticket to "hubs". Freedom to play with level any skills you want so even if you have cap 250 lvls in say, 2h sword, you can still group with your lvl 50 dagger buddies and level your lvl 50 heal up by playing the healer. There are basically NO quests line (except a handful of lores quest) and no "End Game Content". There're goals, but they're not subtanstial like a full set of teir 1 armors or downing rag. You have to basically come up with it on your own (get all the tps in Prime Root, stock up supreme mats to craft quality items, role playing goals, finding new digging spots, finding new recipes for a better dodge stats chest, be an expert jungle digger, etc). The down side to all that is... well, to the hardcore-questing-uber gears crowd, the game basically have no "contents", meaning contents that they want. So it remains a niche game and doesn't appeal to the popular mmorpg mass.
I just like to add that while you can "play all games casually", some games are made so that it's more casual friendly. Usually those games provide you with mechanics to just "live the world", as oppose "playing a game and win". I think most casual players tend to either just want to play with friends, or just like to live the world and be immerse in it. Saga of Ryzom provides for this, GW not so much. EVE can be for this too. The game mechanic allows you to simple "live the EVE universe", be a space pirate or a tractor trailer driver hauling goods from places to places. You can imagine yourself just simply existing in the world and be part of it, as oppose to playing a game and beating it.
Anoter example, when I trek with a group of people from one capital city to another (quite a long trip, hours+) in Saga of Ryzom, I actually feel like I am adventuring with a group of people. The game world with its seasons and weathers changing, the feel of traveling and avoiding/over coming dangers and mobs, the night and days cycles as time passes, makes it like I am actually doing a trek with other homins to reach a new land. Or say when I logged on to go hunt some ocyxs or harvest a bunch of moonresin in the Spring, it feels like I am living in the world and just going about my business.
You cant say as much for game like WoW. In WoW, when you run MC... it's more like an arcade rather than going adventuring with a group of people into the fiery bowel of Blackrock Mountain (oh how I wish). You pretty much have to know the mobs behavior and have to play it like an arcade game. You have your pulls, your tanks, your dps and dots, your boss down to 10% run away now! You are beating bowser allover again in supermario.
Same with crafting... I am not a "crafter making things to sell", I am either skilling it up or making it for friends. I don't feel like I am actually a leatherworker or a tailor. It's just a skill, not a trade.
With all that said... "Ohforf" in The Noob is definitely a hard-core casual player
http://www.thenoobcomic.com/
It always amuses me when people say WoW needs a longer leveling curve and then complain about grinding.
When that leveling curve gets adjusted more content doesn't magically appear. Pick your poison.
But it is really NOT a casual game. To be able to get from one land to another requires a "Trek" that needs at least one experienced player (who knows where he is going) and is going to take you, at best, about 90 minutes, if not more. Once you get there, you can get a "teleport" pact... But trying to get there solo is an excercise in what most players would call extreme frustration (though there are some hardcore sorts who love it).
And it's not just travel. Harvesting takes hours and hours to level... And that is only after you have found the resources. Finding the resources can take days, weeks... some of the resources are only available in winter at night, for example. If you want that resource, you have to get to it just then (and you need to know where it is before hand, which of course means you had to do a bunch of searching previously). Crafting requires not only massive amounts of harvesting I just mentioned, but on top of that, you have to keep track of which resources and resource combinations give you good "recipes" to get the types of effects (armor bonuses, etc) that you wanted. A casual player could probably grind to the top of these profs (harvest, craft), but would not end up knowing any good resource spots, or any good crafting recipes.... and without that, it's just a plain grind.
Now, there are many subtleties and nuances to Ryzom, that make it complex, interesting, and, as a result, fun for me. But I would not in any way, shape, or form, call it "casual."
COH/COV, is on the other hand very very casual friendly. It can easily be soloed... Travel time (after level 14 at least) is pretty trivial, and grouping is very flexible (with the sidekick system). Mission instances are usually pretty short (15 minutes to an hour, tops, with the exception of a very small number of annoying outdoor ones that take upwards of 2 hours if they are 'defeat all', but these are rare).
Likewise GW can be played casually, with short-ish instances and fairly short travel times... Though grouping with people of vastly different levels can be somewhat problematic.
C
The game should be fun.
Are you playing to have fun or are you to playing to advance in someway.
I find CoV/CoH fun no mater what my level. I play to play, not to advance. Advancement adds to the fun it doesn't
because my reason for playing.
Thats how you make a casual MMORPG.
And for the people that say, "Without high level incentive people
wont play very long." They will if the
game play is fun.
However, also, the absurd experience curve in the upper level game is another problem. Let's take COH as an example. I said in an above post that it is pretty casual, and the real-time gameplay is in fact so. However, they also built it so that in the level 30-50 range, the levelling curve is just obnoxious (especially the late 30s for some annoying reason). It takes literally thousands of villain defeats to gain a single level in the 30s, where it took a few hundred in the lower levels.
As a consequence, what happens is this: friends I have who are casual gamers never get out of the low 30s. I know one girl who has all 12 of her alt slots filled with heroes and villains. She has been playing the game since launch. She has one level 40 hero, one level 44 or so villain, and every other one of her characters is below 35. Often she gets characters to around 30, then deletes them to make room and starts over. Why does she do this? Because at the rate she plays, and the levelling curve being what it is, going from level 1-30 is faster than going from level 33 to 36. The XP bar goes from visibly increasing after each short mission, to barely budging after an entire evening of play (I admit: this is an exaggeration, but you get the idea). And she'd rather get a new character with interesting powers from level 1 to level 30 every couple of months, than spend 2-3 months getting an old one from 33 to 40 or something.
Add to this, you have most of your powers already selected by 32 or so, and after 32, instead of getting powers every other level you get them every 3rd level. So now, instead of gaining say, a power every few days, you gain a power every few weeks -- and your character feels pretty stagnant in between those times. People get bored with stagnation, and give up.
And I think this is a major hurdle for the games of the future. To keep people playing, it has to be long/hard enough that progress doesnt' come instantly and without any effort... but it also has to be short enough, and the curve shallow enough, that you don't feel like you are stangating either. They have to find some way to make it so that casual players can advance in a way that feels appropriate... and gaining a level every 6 months is, for most people, not appropriate (regardless of how many hours of actual play they put in).
To date, game companies only focus on the # of hours it takes to get something, but I really think the total amount of real time also matters.... And that generally is ignored.
I think some games are starting to realize this and make provision for it though. See, for reference, the recent spat of games (SWG has been, and COH is about to start) that offer "Veteran Rewards." Right now these are blatant attempts to get people to keep subscribing when they would otherwise cancel, but think about the logic behind it... That if you have been subscribing to a game for 6 months, that's a long time, regardless of how many hours you play. Now, I'm not going to say you "deserve" something for that, because presumably the fun of the game is its own reward. However, if your character has stagnated during those 6 months, you're far less likely to keep subscribing... so the companies have to do something. I wouldn't argue that Vet Rewards (as currently implemented in SWG and COH) are the right thing to do, but they are getting at an important issue for casual gamers.
C
Chessack, me think your definition of "casual play" and mine are different
But partly my fault because I use WoW as a yard stick.
Basically I asked, do I need to gather up 40 people and run an instance umpteenth # of times for 5 hours a night to advance? Or ,
Do I need to PvP 10 hours straight a day every day to advance?
In SoR, you *can* grind/hunt/trek with 40+ people and play for 12 hours straight if you choose to, but you *don't have to*.
In WoW you basically do have to.
For a 3 months stretch last year I only logged onto SoR for a few hours of hunting or harvesting a week and attend a few events ... very casual and under no obligation to play all night, and I still had a good time playing that way.
If I logged into WoW and play for 2 hours, I won't be able to run any instances. At level 60 you basically have to play for 4hours+ stretch to get anything worthwhile done.
The more "shortcuts/advance now" buyable content a game has the faster it becomes casual.
I always thought games were supposed to provide hours of gameplay but I guess when you run a business the bottom line is the only thing the team leads are worried about.
Don't be terrorized! You're more likely to die of a car accident, drowning, fire, or murder! More people die every year from prescription drugs than terrorism LOL!
I think CoH is one of the best casual games I've ever played. For me its because I can progress thru the game and experience a realy rich storyline alone or in groups equally easy. Its one of the few games I can actualy zip thru missions and get to the end thru stealth just as effectively as brute force. They also balanced amazingly well so that if you zip thru a bunch of missions you get just as much exp. as time in a bunch of short runs as a few long runs getting all the enemies along the way. Frankly Im more like a hitman. I go in, do the objective and get out. That why I have well over 300 finished mishes versus the 120 most my friends have at level 30.
Two off the top of my head are WoW and EQ2 with the rested XP and ?Advanture Vitality?. These features put a decent dent in the grind factor for casual players. True they wont advance at the same rate as hardcore players (hardcore=players who play every day for 3+ hours) but they do advance much quicker than previous MMOG's allowed.
I hope future MMOG's take this feature to heart in their designs.
D
Ah right, have to admit never getting past the trial. Always interesting to hear more about the game as it is quite a different game.
if they implement a system where u only can play a limited numbers of hours per day and after they expire u get less exp.but allot of ppl would then just play for the items......so actually a casual game cant exist since u will always have the lifeless ppl that play 10+hours a day
Sorry for my bad grammar English is not my native language
All a game needs to be causal friendly is to be actually fun to
play. If it is fun, and fun ALL THE TIME, then causal players won't care
what their level is. It's actually very simple.
And no, WoW is not a good example of fun all the time.
WOW does a pretty good job of that pre-60, especially at lower levels it's very easy to log in for a bit, mess around with some quests, go poke around a new area, kill some stuff, or in a longer session run an instance. It's only when you start getting up around 60, where you can't run the appropriate-level instances because people only want to run them with 60s, non-instance quests mostly dry up, leveling gets a lot slower so killing stuff for a bit barely moves your xp bar, there aren't any new areas, and so on.
I think BG twinks cost them a lot of casual players, sure you get the occasional 60 who isn't raiding and grinds out a level 19 or 29 superman and the enchants for him and enjoys that, but how many people who would like to do a little PVP with their legit level 24 guy give it up completely after getting demolished by a rogue with +50 agility on his daggers? The lower-level BGs are an example of something that has a lot of good casual features but one very bad feature.
One thing I'm shocked at is the almost complete lack of new quests in WOW. There are numerous quest chains that come to a screeching halt, and plenty of places with no or only a single faction quest. One writer coming up with storylines to fill in bits of the world would really add a lot for casual players to poke into, and quests don't need special bosses (or can use existing bosses) and don't need have to have super-loot for people to have fun with them. When I started, I figured things like the burned out inn in dustwallow would be filled out by the time the first expansion came out a year after release, and these kinds of things are great for people who like exploring or reading backstory stuff.
CoV/CoH are the most casuals friendly. Also the most PvE grouper-friendly, even if you are hardcore, a good basic is better than a screw up system...and the accolades shaft slightly the casuals, yet again, nothing as bad as WoW.
They made a few mistakes, but nothing as bad as WoW.
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
WOW does a pretty good job of that pre-60 ...<snip>...
If it wasn't for the travel times and time spent on professions
and trading, and time spent (for me anyways) looking for groups, I would agree
with you.
I agree and I'm a big fan - my only issue with CoV was my
system is a bit old for it, but I'm building a new one this weekend and CoV
will be the first thing I install. If I
dont F up my build that is.
I'll give you travel time (a big part of the 'pretty good' instead of 'good'), and grouping I'll give because of the glaring lack of a LFG tool (but you don't really need to group for most content anyway) but I don't get the others. You don't even need to mess with professions if you don't want to, so I can't see how something that's truly optional was not casual friendly, just don't even learn them if they're taking too long. Trading was easy, you could pretty much just drop greens and crafting stuff at the AH at a bit less than other people list them for and do fine, or spend longer playing the AH if you want to. The only real non-casual bit of trading in my mind was the travel time to and from the AH when you fill your bags, which I'd class under travel and not trade. What did you find 'noncasual' about them?