Tue 9 Sep, 2008
I hate the term hard core. Its kind of hard to define really. Hard core is kind of like saying drinking to excess. What is too much and what is just right for various people. Now I don’t want you to think that I’m advocating drinking. I drink about one night a month if I’m lucky. Its not a personal, “I hate drinking” thing, its just not something I do that often for whatever reason.
Blog Azeroth had an interesting shared topic and I thought I’d chime in. Its something kind of near and dear to my heart. As you can see, I’ve deemed myself the “Casual” Raid Leader. I should give you some background on my play habits though. I consider myself a casual player for a lot of reasons, but for me, I play probably 6-7 days a week for anywhere from 2-5 hours a night. I can already see some of you going, “Oh my god he plays a lot!!!” ”There’s no way he’s a casual.” I’d have to agree.. that’s where I insert the term “Hobbyist”, but from a raiding perspective I will only dedicated two days a week at most to raiding so from that perspective I’m very casual as a raid leader.
However lets look at it this way. I have a wife and three kids. I plan my play time around nothing. I never assume I’ll be able to dedicate 4 hours to anything except for a few days a week. Two nights a week I plan raiding nights. I won’t dedicate more than that so I can avoid doing things like, missing my kids sports events, missing my kids school events, missing well… my kids lives. The same applies to stuff I do with my wife. Any night has to be ready to change plans if need be.
Casual Players
In my opinion (which it is my opinion…) casual players are people who log in and play to play. Some days they want instances. Some days its arenas, but honestly it isn’t about some very driven goal that must be constantly worked on. Some days/weeks its dedicated toward getting that epic flyer. Some days/weeks its dedication toward getting that epic crafting pattern’s mats. It doesn’t mean you won’t have goals, but it does mean that you know your time is more limited and you don’t feel consumed by a goal.
Casual players tend to have a very different approach to the game. You either want to make the most of the time you have online (meaning you are time constrained) or you want to keep it very low key. And you recognize that your progress compared with people who dedicate more to a goal will always lag. You’ll get there, but it will take you more time.
Hobbyists
Hobbyists are ones that a person I met actually introduced me to the idea. A hobbyist basically has made the transition from a casual approach to one of treating it as more of a hobby. The game is a hobby to them so they tend to treat it as such. It can be set aside as need be, but generally they like to play more than not. It doesn’t mean they aren’t fervently dedicated to some aspect of the game, but the game is a hobby not life. They do it most days they can.
Where I think Hobbyists and casuals differ is that the hobbyist tends to take a deeper dive on the content. They tend to try to follow all the quests lines. They tend to dabble in most of what the game has to offer and they tend to try almost anything. Casual’s tend to be limited on their time or some other aspect.
Hard Core – Highly Dedicated
I don’t want you to think that everyone who’s hard core is highly dedicated, but that’s roughly how I equate them. Hard Core is I think a term that’s gotten bad press in many respects. I used to use the term losely, but now I consider it a very inappropriate term in most cases. People get these bad images in their brains of people who are like Nihilum or other hard core raiding guilds who take entire weeks off work and spend 18 hours a day raiding. There are plenty of hard core raiding guilds who only raid 4 days a week.
I guess from my perspective the differentiating factor for hard core people deals with their dedication to a specific goal. Hard Core people have a tendency to have a single area of focus that consumes large portions of time in the game. Hard core raiders tend to either spend large portions of time raiding or in functions supporting their raiding. They farm mats, they work on gear all dedicated to raiding. Hard Core PVP people spend time in practice and training and working on their PVP. The game revolves around that one or two types of activities. Hard Core people tend to put that aspect of the game though over their personal lives. They will plan personal activities around their in game activities and are willing to cancel personal activities in favor of an in game activity.
So what are you??? Casual, Hard Core, or a Hobbyist? Or do you completely disagree with what I’ve stated here???
Rhad says:
“Hard Core people tend to put that aspect of the game though over their personal lives. They will plan personal activities around their in game activities and are willing to cancel personal activities in favor of an in game activity.”
Boy, did you hit it on the head, or what! God, I’m an adict. Intervention time!!!
Thank god my life is simple enough that I can have WoW higher than most RL. And thank god I have a wife who understands and loves me anyhow.
Idahoe says:
Starman- great post! I post on this topic in one form or another as the main subject of my blog. I’ve been bantering this idea around in my mind and loosely agree with what you have said here. However, I think that the play-styles in WoW can be thought of as more binary (disclaimer: everything has exceptions). The reason they are more binary, is that I suspect that there is a bimodal distribution of play times in WoW, with one large bell curve of players below raid-content and few in the raid content.
Casual players are those that play instances, level and do some PvP. Casual players can be found in Karazhan occasionally, but are unlikely to run it enough to have the gear necessary for the 25-mans, at least in TBC. Dedicated players are those that have the time to get past the 10-man hump. They spend the time necessary to get “purpled-out” and can then progress into the 25-man content. Again, there are certainly exceptions to this outlook.
When you mention that you raid twice a week (I’m assuming 25-man raid), this pretty much puts you into a more dedicated category. Unless you have a super efficient guild that cleans up in Kara for a limited time twice per week, I don’t think you can claim a casual playstyle in a binary system.
I very much like your system of the hobbyist. Perhaps there is room for a group of people to get together in small groups, say 10, to efficiently work through the WotLK content.
I also like the notion that a casual player will drop WoW for family, etc. I’ve seen some posts and had some in-game friends who clearly couldn’t tell RL from WoW. One acquiantance developed and pulmonary embolism and was coughing blood. Put the game aside folks!
Starman says:
@Rhad… yeah well you at least admit it. You and your wife if history reminds me enjoyed playing Diablo on Hardcore and that takes some serious dedication and effort. Its certainly an effort I’ve never been able to put into anything.
@Idahoe
Yes sir I guess its all a matter of perspective. I actually do one day a week in 10 man content and one day a week in 25 man content. Between our guild (3 nights per week of 10 man content) and our guild alliance (3 days a week of 25 man content) I’m really a very very casual player when it comes to raiding. For our 10 man content we are always in our high end runs clearing 100% of Kara in 2hour 45minutes to about 3 hours 30 minutes. For 25 man content I just get to be content with whatever we can clear in one night. The other nights just fall into my family time and I don’t want to make my kids wait for me or be unable to tuck them in 4-5 nights per week. For me its a good balance. For others 2 nights per week is a ton of dedication for raiding.
Twisted Nether Blogcast » Blog Archive » Shared Topic: Casuals, Raiders, and PvPers says:
[...] Casual Raid Leader [...]
It’s all about your point of view. « Dechion’s Place says:
[...] guild to guild but from player to player within the same raid group. Starman at the aptly titled Casual Raid Leader puts forth a third perspective in the form of the hobbyist, someone who is in the middle. Even I [...]
PsychoChris says:
I would have to prefes my post with saying I am probably a “Hardcore-Hobbyist”. I only raid 1 night a week (3-4 hours), but I have on occasion avoided RL plans with friends and such because it was raid night. I equate my WoW raid night to say “poker nights” of yore! I have a hard time conveying this to my wife who can’t wrap her mind around “online friends” just yet…they aren’t real people right??? Anyway, I am working on her. As for content, usually ZA or SSC depending on our turnout.
My question to the readers of “CasualRaidLeader” is: What is a better name for a player whose RL is WoW?
I have a friend who loves everything WoW and plays probably more than what is considered by most to be average/acceptable. He is also involved in many aspects of the WoW underworld I don’t really understand (making movies, comics…etc) I would say he is “Hard-Core” but at the same time he is a great person, a responsible husband, and successful professional. I guess I don’t like the term hardcore because of its roots in the adult film industry and the ideology that a person is completely committed without concern for themselves or others. I think there are simply people out there that have structured and built there “real life” around activities that are related to WoW. Is that so bad? Ask my wife and you will hear a resounding YES, but ask me, and I just can’t decide. I always fall back on the TV vs WoW issue here. (avg American watches 35 hours of TV a week…that’s including all those WoW addicts who don’t log any TV time) At least WoW players are interacting with others and working toward a common goal, regardless how nerdy it is. There is simply a sub-society of video gamers that are largely and publicly abused because the masses don’t understand them. So I ask, can we please find a better term for the “over passionate” players of WoW?
mavfin says:
I would have to say that I’m definitely in the middle with the Hobbyist. I have two toons tricked out for ZA, but don’t have the time in my life for 25-mans. 4 kids, a wife, a job, and other things leave very few uninterrupted 4 hour blocks for raiding. The key word is *uninterrupted*. That’s what’s hard in my life. I can play for hours the nights I’m not working, but there are interruptions, and my wife does like some attention, as do my daughters. I work 4 nights a week from 6 PM-4:30 AM, and love it, and then I play quite a bit from Thursday-Sunday. My wife gets the remote, I get the mouse. Easy.
Starman says:
Welcome to my little corner of the world Mavfin. Yeah finding time is difficult. Fortunately for me I typically put my kids to bed early. They are completely unreasonable if I don’t get them to sleep by 7:30 at the latest, but they are only 7, 4, and 1.8. So it works out pretty well. After 7:30 I’m usually free. I like you’re way of putting it. The wife gets the remote and I get the mouse.
Gordo says:
I maintained that there were 4 types: Casual, Hardcore, Neo-Casual and Griefer.
Vanilla WoW screwed over the real casuals and most hardcore PvPers. Instead rewarding massive playtime over skill in most circumstances. BC’s intent of rectifiying those injustices was admirable but so poorly implemented. Instead of giving those people a progression path they created GTA “cheat codes”.
Those players I consider casual simply don’t have the time or desire to play large blocks of time. But the time they do is an investment. More than half of the best skilled players I knew played 20 hours a week tops. But they researched every quest, maxed every skill and tried everything they could in PvE and PvP.
I developed the term neo-casual to describe the influx of people who ruined much of BC for me. Players for whom their characters were nothing more than “Mario” or “Zelda” with little to no time invested or care. They paid the $15 bucks a month so darn it they want their uber gear too. But for what? Heroic Mech in blues was challenging, doing it in S2 not so much. Generally speaking you could figure these people out quickly, be it the rogue with zero LP skill or the guy in your AB group telling you to just “let them win already” in a 1500-1650 game.
Griefers are the more insidious version of the neo-casual. Yeah there used to be that rogue that everyone knew camped BRS. And yeah there was always a handful of goobers who would camp Darkshire or Sun Post. But because we were all in Azeroth eventually someone would get some folks to come help. But now you have these tards who take their AFK gotten S2/3 gear camping lowbies thinking that they are PvP gods.
To me the recent zombie plague is a perfect example of this griefer world. If that event had occurred in the original Naxx, it would have been absolutely terrific. But in the current WoW all it did was get Westfall camped by level 70 zombies who often didn’t even bother chasing players, and instead simply chain killed the quest NPCs and the flight-masters.
Shared Topic: Casuals, Raiders, and PvPers | World of Warcraft says:
[...] Casual Raid Leader [...]