David Bowers lightly ribbed me earlier about being too lazy to read quest text. Avid role-player that he is, he considered skipping quest text a capital offense. He went on to tell me about some folks that even made sure to read every readable book or object in the game, like A Steamy Romance Novel or those books lying around in Stratholme. Role-players pride themselves in immersing themselves in game lore and the environment. I don't think I could be so involved or keep in character so well for so long. I thought to myself just how hardcore that was. On the other hand, some people would probably consider my dropping 375 Mining to level up Enchanting just for the ring enchants for PvP to be hardcore. I certainly think what Nihilum did by having a majority of their raiding crew take up Leatherworking just for the Drums of Battle was incredibly hardcore.
The more I thought about it, though, the more I realized that a lot of people are pretty hardcore in their own way. I mean, my wife continued to raid with us while she was pregnant, healing us through Serpentshrine Cavern while lying down on the bed. She would log on to fill our roster when we were short even though she was bedridden because of doctor's orders. One of her friends in-game who was also pregnant played a Druid and was actually tanking a Heroic 5-man when she felt contractions come on and had to excuse herself midway through the instance. It turned out to be a false alarm, but I think these women are pretty hardcore for playing in their condition.
After reading an announcement on the evening of March 31st, 2008 declaring that Nihilum, whom we recently interviewed, would be quitting the World of Warcraft forever, WoW Insider received quite a lot of mail surrounding the issue. Was it true, or simply another April Fools joke?
They even began disbanding their guild and joining others, and spoke of a plan to reappear together, perhaps in other games. There was an outpouring of love and concern from the community at large, and unlike the reaction to other jokes on April 1st, everyone was at least weary (ahem) wary that this one was not a joke.
Nihilum cited several reasons for their departure, including dissatisfaction with Blizzard's designs and methods, and an overall trend towards casual play while depleting much of the rewards, incentive and challenge for hardcore guilds, including changes made in patch 2.4.
At 12:01 a.m. on April 2nd, 2008, Nihilum confirmed that they were indeed yanking our chains, and even made a cheerful April Fools video. To quote, "Sorry for the scare everyone!" with a keen happy face at the end. We love you Nihilum!
V'Ming - who thinks that gnome warlocks are travesties of nature and need to be KOSed - shares thoughts and ideas on becoming deadlier at the Arenas. He also dabbles in the dark arts in Blood Pact.
You've formed your ideal Arena team. You have great expectations and diligently put in time and effort to claw your way up the ratings. You dust yourself off after defeats and trudge on, knowing that great things will come your way if you persist.
Gradually your team rating improves, and the sweet taste of victory more than makes up for the disappointment of defeats. You move past 1600, and 1700 eventually. You notice that victories are becoming scarcer, and defeats seem a lot more painful. Your team hits 1800 - woot! - and suddenly match wins seem to all but dry up - and your weekly matches start to feel like exercises in futility.
Welcome to hardcore Arena - where your opponents are much more likely to be decked out in full Season 3 gear and less likely to give you an "easy" win. You start to run into a lot more cookie-cutter comps - you know, the ones you read about here. The queues are long but the matches are short - and you've run out of encouraging or witty things to say to your team while waiting. It's almost an awkward, seething silence between matches, and the game becomes a test of patience. "Did I sign up for this?" You ask yourself.
If it were up to me, I'd call this "forum post of the month," but I guess March is still young and that would probably be premature. At 2,600 words, this is one of the longest forum posts I've read in its entirety, but it was entirely worth it. In fact, it was so well-written that it didn't feel like a wall of text at all. Alright, but what is it about?
Titled "Long Road Home - Vanilla to WotLK", this great post by Calian (of Norgannon-A) explores the history of the endgame in WoW, from the days when MC was the only raid and there were no battlegrounds all the way through to the forthcoming patch 2.4 and into Wrath. It focuses on the origin and development of the casual/hardcore divide, which has become one of the hottest topics in WoW discussion today.
You owe it to yourself to read the post, but in short, he comes back to the familiar conclusion that casuals need hardcores to inspire them, and hardcores need casuals to show off to; therefore the animosity between the two groups is very much misplaced, and they are in fact in a mutually beneficial relationship. I'm inclined to agree. What's your take on it?
Hardcore players are frustrated with game changes that benefit more casual players.Casuals are overwhelmed by the amount of play time required to be competitive in the endgame.This brings up the question of who deserves to see the complete story unfold.
Seraphina of Baelgun brought up the issue of accessibility to endgame content on the WoW official forums.Like all of the other Warcraft games, WoW has an interesting and compelling story line, with several sub-stories along the way.While all players pay for the same content, not all of them can experience it.In many role playing games, once you've played through certain story line elements you can access the endgame content.Relatively few players will be able to complete the Sunwell Plateau prior to the release of Wrath of the Lich King, just as relatively few players were able to down Naxxramas before Burning Crusade was launched.
Daily quests have come a long way from when they first appeared. They first seemed to be the perfect solution for those stuck at level 70 with nothing to do, the casuals who really didn't feel like moving on to the 10 and 25-man game, or just didn't have the time to. They were a great way to break up the monotony of making money by grinding mobs with lucrative drops or mining and herbing. They also let you progress slowly and steadily towards that magical 5000 gold mark and your own epic mount. Sure, they're still good for all that, but they've also gotten to be so much more.
So really, what's the deal with dailies now? Let's look at it after the break.
Yesterday's post about summoning stones on PvP servers sparked an interesting discussion with quite a few comments. You all got me thinking about a possible difference in culture between players on PvP servers and those PvE severs. I got the impression that PvP-server players tend to enjoy the more "hardcore" aspects of things, the heightened difficulty, the extra learning that prevents you from just coasting through any part of the game on any sort of autopilot. This isn't to say that PvE players can't be hardcore too (or indeed, very good at PvP) -- it's just that in the regular course of gaming they don't have to worry as much about interruptions from other gamers. I myself have times when I want to get at game rewards with the least amount of effort possible, as well as other times when I wish that the game required a bit more thought on my part in order to make it interesting.
Which leads to my question: Are any of you "casual" gamers on PvP servers? Whatever you understand "casual" to mean is up to you, but for me, it's probably someone who spends 10-20 hours playing WoW per week -- if not less than that. If you are a casual player on a PvP server, do you view yourself as both "casual" and "hardcore" at the same time? Do you have characters on a PvP server for times when you want a real challenge, as well as characters on a PvE server for times when you just need to relax?
The Nielson Company -- the uber-powerful organization which tracks the viewership ratings by which TV programs live (like Lost) or die (like Studio 60) -- has determined that World of Warcraft was the #1 most played PC game during the period of April - November 2007.
According to the group, residents of Azeroth and Outland averaged 17 hours of play per week -- 12 hours more than the nearest competition, players of The Sims. So when my family and friends suggest that I'm crazy for playing WoW more than 15 hours a week, I can point to this and say, "Well, if I'm crazy, then so are at least 4.5 million other people!" Yeah, kind of a lame defense, I know.
17 hours seems like a good estimate to me because it falls smack dab in the middle between your casual players (who probably play up to 10 hours a week) and your hardcore types (who probably play 30+ hours per week).
Let's take a poll. If you consider yourself "casual" raise your hand. Yes, even you in the back-and you thought that webcam was off (and put some clothes on for God's sake).
Ok, that's quite a bit of you. Now, if you play more than 20 hours a week keep your hands up.
That's what I thought.
At the last two Dragon*Cons I've asked that same question on my panels. The numbers come out like this: 90% of the room raised their hands at the first question and 80% of them kept their hands up for the second.
You are not a casual gamer if you fall into that spectrum. Since I am laughably a games journalist, I am eminently qualified to use the word the industry uses to define "casual gamers": Peggle. We also have a word to describe people who play Peggle too much, but since AOL owns us I probably can't use it here.
When you wonder why Blizzard doesn't do enough for the casual player, or why they focus their attention on the hardcore raider, the answer is simple: Blizzard doesn't have a clear delineation between the two groups any more than you do. It used to be that casual players refused to put in the time to get ahead, while the hardcore raiders were a bunch of catassers who had no lives. WarCraft has drastically blurred those lines. Robin Torres wrote an excellent piece on the differences between casual and raiders here. Let me say I agree with her, but she was a tad too polite.
World of Warcraft is successful largely because it is such an accessible game. You can get started without being a gaming-genius, and you can make progress in it without playing all day. There are advanced challenges to overcome if you want to excel of course, but for most people, WoW is a just a place where you can have a bit of fun without much chance of a negative experience. You don't have to pay a huge penalty for mistakes such as death, and you're likely to find variety of meaningful things to do in a relatively short period of time. The fact that there's not much actual risk in WoW is one of the things that lets so many people see how fun it is and sets it apart from other MMORPG games.
I can understand the reasons some game designers and players may wish there were more serious risk of failure versus success in their video games. We are taught from real life that great success requires one not be afraid of failure, or at least be willing to take the chance. In real life, you may lose a lot of your hard work and all your efforts may come to naught, but if you don't try anyways, you'll never reap some of the great rewards that this world has to offer.
But to apply this rule in a video game doesn't make any sense, because the majority of people, no matter how good a game is, are wisely unwilling to invest a lot of time and energy into it if it may end up to be a waste of time. It is just a game after all, and its rewards are only real within its little game world.
Tobold linked to a new blog about MMO gaming called Hardcore Casual, and the first entry is a nice one-- it's all about the differences between a "carebear" game like WoW, and the much more hardcore games of the past. His big example is Ultima Online, where players could gank each other and actually loot the corpses. Playing a game where others could steal your armor is very different from playing a game where BoE means it's yours forever.
But you don't have to go back that far to find a really hardcore game-- in Blizzard's own Diablo 2, you could play "hardcore mode," which meant that when your character died, that was it. Game over, no respawns, nothing. Either you lived and beat the game, or you died and lost the ability to play your character and everything with it.
To tell the truth, I'd love to see a server like that in WoW. Not because I'd love to play it (what are you, crazy?), but because the stories coming off of that server would be terrific-- we could all just stand in awe of the character who made it to 70 on the Hardcore server. Or would that even be possible? Especially if the server was PvP (and it would be, wouldn't it?), it seems like an impossible challenge to keep a character alive that long, especially since the other side would be gunning for anyone who got too high. Would you play on a hardcore server, where you could lose your life (and/or your gear)?
Gamasutra has a few Father's Day week tidbits up about game designers who are also fathers, and how that affects their work. One of their interviews today is with Rob Pardo, who is VP of Game Design with Blizzard. He talks about how he plays with his daughter, who apparently plays a mean 54 warlock. Maybe that's why they're overpowered? I'm joking, I'm joking!
Seriously, he says that watching his 5-year-old daughter play lets him in on what's "fundamentally fun" about the game-- he and his team may be working hard to tune raid encounters, but when he sees that his daughter is jumping around buildings or trying on outfits, he's inspired to put a little more flavor into those seemingly mundane experiences as well (I'm a huge fan of putting on items in the dressing room, so I know right where she's coming from on that one). WoW has always been a game that balances the hardcore with the casual very well (in the early and mid-game, if not in the endgame), and apparently the way Rob Pardo makes that happen is by playing with his daughter. Neat.
Didn't that seem a little fast? The original WoW content took a few years to "beat," it seems, and now Burning Crusade (and the 2.1 patch) has been beaten by players in a matter of months. Is the endgame going too fast? From Boubouille's wrapup of the Illidan defeat yesterday, we get this post on the Elitist Jerks forums by Tigole. He says Blizzard is very happy with the way Black Temple is tuned. He also takes a look back at Naxx, and says the Four Horsemen were an example of an encounter that was well-tuned, but players at the time didn't have the gear they needed, so it took much longer for guilds to finish them off. The biggest hole in WoW content right now, Tigole says, is the lack of options after Karazhan for 10 man raids-- but, he says, "we're fixing that." So /cheer for more 10 mans to come.
But is the endgame dropping too fast? In my estimation, not at all. In my estimation, Nihilum is not a normal guild. If you're willing to give them the benefit of the doubt on gold buying (and frankly, I am not-- I believe they're cheating), they clearly play the game more than anyone else, driven by both their own determination and the fact that they are basically raiding celebrities in Azeroth. They are the hardcore. And if you're asking me whether hardcore players should finish the endgame content quickly, I'd say they should.
Why? Because that means it will be that much easier for casuals to get there, too.
As you may have heard by now, the faction rep grind for the Netherwing epic mount will require players to complete "Daily" quests-- that is, short collecting quests that can be done only once per day. When players first heard about that, a lot of them felt the same way that Oddig of Skullcrusher did-- they saw the time limits on the quests as just another way Blizzard was trying to turn WoW into a timesink, in order to make spend more time playing less game.
Which is not exactly wrong, if you're a hardcore player who usually grinds rep for hours every day. But as Drysc says, the Daily quests are meant for players who don't have a lot of time to invest all at once. They're meant "to provide greater reward for smaller investments of time." Basically, this is their answer to giving the casual players their own content. Just like rested XP (which is a great idea that rewards you for not rushing through content), the rewards at the end of these "Daily" grinds can't be rushed to by hardcore players who play in huge chunks of time.
When you put it that way, I'm all for it. Hardcore players still won't be happy, but it's there's plenty for them to grind away already-- if you guys have already grinded every single reputation in the game so far that these daily quests are the only ones you have to do, then try playing another game for a bit (I've been liking Titan Quest a lot lately). Some players argue that the casual players expected to do these quests probably won't have the 5,000g needed for the epic riding skill to even start them, to which I say-- err, good point.
Of course the other note here is that, as players have noticed on the PTR, the quests seem to reset every time the server restarts. So if you're really hankering to get to that mount quickly, you don't really have to wait for every day-- hotfixes and restarts can give you a few more quests to do every week.
Sorry GuildWatch is running a little late this evening-- my guild, Gothic Bunnies on Thunderhorn-H (see above) came *this* close to finishing off Rajaxx this evening (we're casual, you hardcore raiders-- no comments from the peanut gallery, please). The good news is that while sites like NotAddicted give you theoretical guild drama, we've got the real thing-- and we're even making some ourselves.
If you want your guild (or tips about a guild you know) to show up here on Tuesdays, drop us a line at wowguildwatch@gmail.com. You're the ones out there fighting, downing, and recruiting-- we just want to report it. This week's GW is... well, you know the rest.
Hardcore players are frustrated with game changes that 
Daily quests have 
Let's take a poll. If you consider yourself "casual" raise your hand. Yes, even you in the back-and you thought that webcam was off (and put some clothes on for God's sake). 
Tobold linked to a new blog about MMO gaming called 
Gamasutra has a few Father's Day week tidbits up about game designers who are also fathers, and how that affects their work. 
So 
As you may have heard by now, the faction rep grind for 
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