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World of Warcraft: Casual Play: More of the Same
Stradden
Managing EditorMember CommonPosts: 6,696
Steve Wilson returns this week to talk a little bit more about the topic that seems to be on the mind of many Casual Gamers, The Burning Crusade. Wilson gives us a breakdown of what this game has to offer a non-hardcore audience.
Burning Crusade released last week and it turns out that like everyone expected it is more of the same. For many casual gamers however that is exactly what they were hoping for. More of the same when it caters directly to your playstyle is definitely a good thing. And from the number of people I've talked to who have a renewed interest in grinding through quests for that magic level cap Crusades is a great thing.
The number of quests available is insane. From the very starting zone there's more to do than most casual players could ever hope to finish. After moving onto the next zone there were easily a dozen quests in my journal that would be discarded in order to make room for the quests in the new territory. Just like in the original the quests have been breadcrumed constantly leading the player to areas that perfectly match their character's level. It was a brilliant idea in what many hardcore gamers thought was a dumb game. And while achievers may complain of quest grinding the massive number of small quests does have the advantage of giving casual players short easily achievable tasks to make them feel like they accomplished something. Even if there is no discernable difference in their experience bar.
You can read the whole column here.
Cheers,
Jon Wood
Managing Editor
MMORPG.com
Comments
Stupid article tbh on a biased site, all these news articles seem to be pointed at the writers views of mmorpgs. Tbh WOW is as much of a casual game as EVE or EQ2 or any mmorpg is tbh. You can play it as much as you want like another game, theres no such thing as casual games.
Most people i know who play WOW play it more than the so called "hardcore crowd" and there are things in the game to cater for the powerleveler anyways tbh. So calling a game Hardcore or casual is very stupid IMO.
Hardcore normally means annoying,tedious and a uncomplete buggy mess anyways.
Agreed, BC achieved what it set out to do, (more or less) provide new content that could be enjoyed by all players, both hardcore and casual. But your final statement may come back to haunt you....
"3 or 4 more months of the same? It seems that a lot of casual players look forward to that."
When you don't get another expansion for a year or more... we'll see how happy the casual players are with nothing to do but grind for faction, re-roll alts and run end game 25 man raids....
I'm already sure the hardcore players will exhaust the full content in less than 6 months...
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
From what I can seen BC is a buggy mess , Items in it are overpowered yes its an expansion, but the items in it should not invalidate items earned up to and including lvl60 from the outset. The land mass as usual for Blizzard is to small, PvP hah if by world PvP you mean the alliance and horde taking it in turns to cap the towers in Hellfire Peninsula then you have world PvP again as usual Blizzard have NO idea how to place PvP in a game that WAS designed around PvP.
I agree BC is more of the same and thats Sad , more rep grinds, more of the 3 standard quest types , more bugged instances, and even less of a new tier of materials to gather and craft with.
Whilst most of the additions were expected Blizzard should have mixed it up with better ways to individually customize your character, guild/personal housing, put in some new quests that don't follow the same old formula , fixed a lot of the pre-exisiting bugs with the game and actually introduced different rule sets for PvP/PvE instead of across the board nerfs (which appear to be PvP driven but affect PvE badly too).
Not one of the better expansions to a game i've seen come out, so far it kind of reminds me of TOA and DAOC.
Not one of the better expansions to a game i've seen come out, so far it kind of reminds me of TOA and DAOC.
ouch! I feel that. ToA was the worst expansion in DAoC history!
If you still enjoy that MMO though the Classic servers are heavy populated and removed the ToA expansion (incase you didn't already know). DAoC is still one of the best MMOs on the market after 5 years imho.
Also, I'm sure Blizzard will add new raid instances and other content without an other expansion, like they did with pre TBC WoW.
WoW really is a casual players game. Thats the reason I play it. I put in a few hours a week, thats it. I bought the expansion last week at release...only got to 19 so far. I have a full time job, active social life...WoW is a game I can play whenever I get the chance...and still have fun doing it.
Now that doesn't mean I don't sometimes spend all night playing...just haven't in a long time.
My only queston is: What about those old instances? The ones whose only purpose was for the endgame gear grinders. Do they idle empty from now on, as wasted content?
http://erickveil.com/
Casual = For gamers that dont have the time or patience for anything with depth.
Shallow games are easier with less thought and imagination required. Simple tasks that allow you to autopilot through the "content" and get that cookie that is waiting at the end.
Critical thinking is a desire to seek, patience to doubt, fondness to meditate, slowness to assert, readiness to consider, carefulness to dispose and set in order; and hatred for every kind of imposture.
I also think the rep grinding is getting out of hand. I'm a casual player, switching to hardcore (18-20 hours a day trying to powerlevel) during some parts of the summer, and I remember the first time I ever had to grind faction. It was a quest in desolace, killing some sort of centuar. After 45 mins, I was bored out of my mind, and dying was far more frustrating. How can anyone stand killing the same mob over and over for hours on end? What are there, 5 to 8 new factions in BC? That's ridiculous. I guess it's for the truly grindcore player to cut through while waiting for their weekly raid.
Which Final Fantasy Character Are You?
Final Fantasy 7
It's funny... I have time (ok, more or less...), I have patience, and I think I'm interested in "anything with depth"... and I lead "a casual guild" in WoW. Oh, geez, I must be an autopilot
! Steve's article is correct (mostly): TBC is for casuals, and that's all. Those who are (and have been) really in a 'casual scum' know what this exp. means for their own communities.
Once everyone starts hiting 70, which has actually already began, we are back to the exact same endgame as before with raiding being the only meaningful progression. The ten levels of content may be fun, but it's a joke. It's a HUGE insult to 'casuals".
"You waited two years, now here is ten more levels.... and in 6 months you are back where we left off!'
EDIT: 6 months is kind of generous, most people will be 60 within 3 months.
More of the same definately sums it up, very disappointing from a company that used to be such a forerunner in producing original and innovative games.
Its been said many times before, TBC just brings the casual players back to par with the raiders for a few months until most people are 70 and once again those with the stamina to grind out faction and raid zones will gain the upper hand. Its a shame most people cant see TBC for what it really is, a way for Blizzard to squeeze another couple of hundred dollars out of their customers without bringing anything new to the table.
Isn't it funny how people define 'casual' player vs. 'hard-core'? I bet there are about a million definitions of those two. I prefer to think of it simply as "those with a life" and "those whose life is WoW". Everyone claims the former, but many are definitely the latter.
The only reaosn to grind faction reputation is to purchase items the factions quatermaster sells, so before you feel the need to grind a random faction, go to the quatermaster of each and see what they have to offer, see sumit you like then you have to work for it, yes it means grinding mobs but its still a choice and not forced on you. And when ya grinding faction ask in General chat or Guild if any 1 else is grinding faction, im sure you can get at least 1 guy to group with.
Hardcore = For gamers that have nothing better to do than to kill 10 rats and then kill 10 more.
See, I can make up shit too.
http://www.greycouncil.org/
-Semper ubi sub ubi!
always wear underwear
I do like the expansion because it does help out the casual gamer. I don't have to worry about getting in the good graces of someone who DOESN'T have a full time job and 3 kids to take care of. I can play at my pace. This expansion gives me a ton of stuff to do so that I won't get bored in the next 18 months til the next expansion. Yes you have a full tier 3 set. Yes it is being put to shame by the newer stuff found in outland, you know what though? you have the sense of accomplishment from breaking your guild's time record on AQ40 or taking out all of the big dragons, content that is stil out of my reach. I cannot play by anyone else's schedule because if my daughter needs something, I am up and helping her....sometimes I come back to a corpse sometimes I don't . Sometimes I hold up my friends in a dungeon because I have to make popcorn for the kids' movie night...they understand because they are in the same boat.
In the end, one simple fact remains, you don't like it? Don't play.
I guess I don't get it. Why do you have to get every faction to exalted? I've never had a 60 and my new BE might be my first one, but I do not plan on getting exalted in every faction. I mean, what is the point? Maybe I will learn why later on and will end up grinding them up, but as for now, there is no reason that I know of to have exalted in every faction. But as for grinding on the same type of mob for hours on end, that is the type of gaming I started with (DAoC) and to be honest, I prefer it over doing some fetch and kill quests. You get to stay in one place for hours, except when to empty your pack. No running around needed. I like it that way. But I am finding TBC to be quite fun the way it is.
MMORPG's w/ Max level characters: DAoC, SWG, & WoW
Currently Playing: WAR
Preferred Playstyle: Roleplay/adventurous, in a sandbox game.
Right on the money with this one. Its got more content than I can keep up with. I like having access to gear that makes it fun for me to kill things. I am sure there will be something I can't do at the end that people with time can, and I'll complain about that then.
Because its more of the same, its not even as addicting as the first time through, so I am not completely destorying my life to play it. I even like that.
It all started with a lantern, a sword, and a trap door...
Why do I see the same people over and over talk about how they “hate playing the game” , or “I can’t stand wow.” However these same players are the ones I see lined up at !2:00 am to receive the expansion. Or the ones I see logged onto the game 12 plus hours a day.
Is it for attention purposes that you down trod a game that you spend the majority of your days playing? I f you really do not enjoy your experience with wow why not move on? Why do you continue to troll the wow communities and voice your obnoxious opinion that 8 million others do not seem to have? If you hate the game so bad why do you not stop playing?
If the answer is simply because there is nothing better out there atm, then I simply say that is weak sauce.. If your favorite Pizza place closes and you cant stand any of the others instead of going to the others and complaining about how horrible they are and paying them money for crappy Pizza, learn to like something else. Maybe it is time to try Chinese food instead.
My point of this rant is if you hate wow so much, go play something else. Why stick with something you don’t like?
Well, we're seeing a typical run of posts up to this point, with a few chiming in on how the new drops are invalidating all of the hard work they put in to get their Tier whatevers, a few saying the grinding of faction is too extreme, and of course a few casuals saying this is an amazing expansion that has completely rekindled their love for the game. Guess what? This is EXACTLY the kind of response Blizzard is looking for. Casuals dominate the current player base, and there's no reason to believe it will ever be any different. Hardcore players will hopefully always be in the minority (because such players are typically poor contributers to the overall global economy), and regardless of how much they complain, they will still be shelling out their money and working hard to achieve whatever is difficult to achieve in the game sooner than anyone else. The reason they are so vocal is because they gain more personal definition from such achievements than the casual player (who tend to stress their real-life achievements more than their in-game ones), and thus take the lessening of their past achievements as more of a personal attack.
As for me, I no longer play WoW. It IS a good game, just not one I enjoy, but I admire how Blizzard seems to have distilled the essence of the player base and knows just how to wring more expansion sales and monthly fees from its players. It does this by providing gameplay that is enjoyable and sustainable for a fair bit of time, as well as providing enough sense of accomplishment for the hardcore players to keep them grinding away on things that the casuals will more than likely never experience and/or achieve. It seems to me that both the hardcore and casual players should be quite happy with this expansion, as it does provide rewards for both types of gaming. All it's going to take is for the hardcore players to let go of those past achievements and start working on the new ones. I'm sure they will find these new achievements equally rewarding if they just give it a chance.
- No really good additions to the character's races: No real breaking the mold. The Blood Elf and Dranai are not worthwhile races IMO. I was hoping more for a centaur -like, or naga-like race, not another Elf, and an ugly biped race.
It's why I quit WoW, got bored with the character selection. Would love RPing a dryad or Naga.
"Of all the things wrong with today's RPGs, 2D characters on a 3D background is the worst."