Thank you, Tony, for speaking the God's honest truth about casuals. They are a pox upon our game - nay, our very community! Without your shining example, I don't know how we would be able to maintain the purity and immersion of four-hour Raids or weekend marathon Arena sessions! I, for one, could never have explained my love of the game on a limited schedule without your highly rational, riveting yet compact analysis of 'casual behavior.'

/sarcasm

"Hardcores" aren't going to be satisfied until every mob in the game takes a 100 person raid to kill and a single green item takes 6 months to get.

Idiot.

Did you even read the article?

I'm so glad that Blizz are breaking from the mould that has formed from previous MMO's in spite of selfish and short-sighted people like this one.

That was a reply to TonyMotorola (greyed-out post) by the way, in case it was unclear. :)

Wow, exaggerate much? Yes, I really want to be able to buy my epics from a vendor in the starting area for 1c a piece. /sarcasm.

Sheesh! If that were true I could go and do it right now on somebody's private/custom server. I enjoy the sense of accomplishment gained from earning something through my own hard work as much as any hardcore player does.

The so-called "casual" players like me aren't stupid. We aren't petty, immature, lazy, or selfish (at least not purely by virtue of our casual status). We're just casual. Why does it bother you so much? Go off and be Mr. Hardcore, nobody's getting in your way!

@Linkage
""Hardcores" aren't going to be satisfied until every mob in the game takes a 100 person raid to kill and a single green item takes 6 months to get."

Wait I thought Final Fantasy 11 had already come and gone?

Once TonyMotorola gets kicked out of his parents basement, I'm guessing he will be come a casual WoW player real quick...

lolsweepinggeneralisations.

HaHAI GUIZ IM A CASUAL AND I WANT TO BE AS GOOD AS OTHER PEOPLE WHO PLAY 5 TIMES LONGER THEN ME! I DESERVE TO BE IN T6 PAR GEAR FOR THE HOUR THAT I PLAY PER WEEK I R GOOD EL O EL , fucking dick

get a life dude and realize we are not all 15 years old ppl or unmature old persons that put aside real life matters to kill a fantastic dragon on a fantastic cave after 5 real hours every day... Personally i don't care if you have the time or wish to go after these stuff, if you do, I hope you enjoy doing so my only problem is that I don't like the next time we meet on the arena or a bg to one-shoot me because of your uber gear you earned after pressing one button for 5 hours every day. To my view if you enjoy wasting 5 hours for every encounter do so just don't demand to get extra bonus for something stupid as I don't expect to get any bonus for playing 100 arena games per week with 50% wins to maintain around 1800 rating while others do the same with just 10 games... I like it I do it I don't demand others to do so

"Raiding guilds never have to touch the 10 man raids if they don't want to."

I really, really hope so. Forgive me if I'm skeptical, but it's Blizzard after all.

The problem I see is that doing 10 man raids is going to gear the guild faster than doing 25 man raids.

Joe: 10-Man Raids will provide gear faster, but Blizzard has also established, in several recent interviews, that 25-Man Raids will provide *BETTER* gear. So, your investment in putting together a bigger group and facing a greater challenge will be returned to you tenfold. ^_^

As been mentioned, the 25 raids will have higher level gear than the 10 counterparts. If you have 25 people, it's still beneficial to go to the 25 raids.

@Angry Joe

Well look at the positive things to come out of 10 man versions. First of all you will gear up faster for improvements yes, that's simple math because you can run 2.5 parallel raids compared to a single 25 man. However also consider that the 10 man should be somewhat easier to coordinate, and that raid training mode won't require hand holding 10 people at once through a 25 man. For the most part people will probably be able to learn some of the basics in the 10. Also if there is a gear disparity people will probably have the option of running the 10. I can only imagine the nightmare of running Molten core after you've geared yourself because everyone ELSE needs gear. And if you've got at least 40 people running something, there is ALWAYS someone else...

Totally agree, ZA is hard stuff. It'd be nice if they had a T6 level 10 man, so small guilds could actually progress in the game and see a bunch of stuff, and still be able to go to BT via guild alliance or what-not. I think the Wraith raiding idea is spot on. Short 5mans (ala SM), easily accessable, 10 mans at all tiers. This is all win.

I feel sad for those who struggled to get to BT through the tradition path with attunement, but they know what they've done and can feel proud on server-first kills and the like.

I think most of the frustration over this issue comes from the assertion that casual means unskilled, and hardcore means skilled. As far as I'm concerned skill, and dedication to time played are two different qualities.

I know people who are completely hardcore about WoW but despite their desire to raid, will never be able to. They are just completely unskilled, and no amount of practice seems to help them. Instead they spend countless hours playing the game leveling every class, and all of their toons have epic fliers, and they are still sitting on piles of gold. One guy in particular I knew was like this, but was also constantly demanding spots in guild raids (but could never pull his weight), and talked about how things were in the beta and back when he raided MC. I'm sorry, but you don't get to come if you are mage and refuse to learn that arcane missles are not a good choice on curator. I told him countless times, and he acknowledged me countless times, and he continued to use them countless times.

Now, on the other side of the coin, I know people who approach WoW very casually with limited and unpredictable play times who are very skilled at the game. These people will not be helped by allowing 10-man versions of raids because they can't commit to a 10-man raiding schedule any more than they could a 25-man one. If they could raid at all, they would have no problem in a 25-man.

The people who will be helped the most from 10-man progression will be the semi-hardcore skilled players in smaller guilds who don't want to deal with the logistics and recruitment issues of fielding 25-man raids. These are the guilds that clear ZA without having stepped in a 25-man raid, and are sitting there twiddling their thumbs now wishing there was more to do. Believe it or not, having 10 good players and trying to recruit 15 more good players of the right classes is not trivial. Still, these players are not casual. My guild is in this situation, and to fight the boredom we have been banding together with other similar guilds for joint 25-man outings. I have to say that 25-mans don't feel all that special to me. I prefer the 10-man because to me it is a much more challenging experience. The smaller the group, the more your individual performance matters. The only thing I've noticed is the complexities of the fights are often more interesting in 25-man raids, but that is just a choice on Blizzards part, and not a consequence of having 24 people along with me.

I guess my point is that 10-man raids in WotLK won't appeal to casuals unless they are so easy and quick that LFG would be a viable tool for approaching them. I only say easy because no one will PuG something if it is just going to be a wipe-fest, and unless lots of people are PuGing, casuals wont be able to find groups that meet their playtime needs.

Things that appeal to casuals are things that can be done quickly at their convenience. Some of these things should be easy for unskilled casuals, and some of them should be challenging for the skilled ones.

For unskilled hardcore players, there needs to continue to be obscure rep grinds for useless rewards.