Yes. It’s more viable than it’s ever been for casual players.
There are people who farm trivial content for 12 hours a day upset that they don’t get the best gear rewards for doing brain dead content and calling themselves casuals when the truth is that they’re just bad.
M+ is peak casual content and you can gear at a rapid pace doing it. Guys that only have a couple of hours a night and maybe a raid night on the weekend are able to gear up by playing at a mid level without having to deal with endless power grinds to accommodate bad players. This is a good thing.
An gameplay experience no other ranged class offers me. I have a warlock, doesn’t feel the same. I have a hunter, mage, druid, and shaman. All feel different. Shadow is home for me.
I guess from a casual perspective, what do you feel they’ve done to homogenize in class design? I really feel my spec’s flavor compared to others, and I’m a heck of an altoholic.
I’d level another DH, Priest, or monk again then anything else because of how they feel. And as much as I love my priest, nothing feels half as fun or unique as playing a havoc DH in the open world.
IDK, I don’t do much in the way of group content, especially at any sort of competitive level. What does this have to do with casual gameplay anyway?
But to answer your question, what other DPS has mind games, leap of faith, or vampiric embrace? Also, based on forum discussions from higher tier players, it sounds like our unique ability “power infusion” brings about a lot of discussion. I’d say that’s unique at the very least.
Give me an example of how I possibly think MY $15 is more valuable than YOUR $15.
I don’t pay $15 a month btw, I pay $12.99/mo. But with that said, YOU have access to everything I do, you just DO NOT PLAY THE GAME. At least I’m going to assume you don’t because you are hiding behind a hidden profile.
WoW IS A GROUP game. Yet everybody in these forums who argue against it, somehow thinks that WoW is a solo player game. And that it has NEVER been EVER. You don’t believe me? Go download WoW Classic right now and play it solo and tell me how far you get. Do you think leveling solo 1-70 makes this game a solo player game? If that is all it takes to make a game a solo player game, then every game is a solo player game cause I’ve never played one that does leveling differently.
Explain to me what started you guys to play WOW if you hate Dungeons so much? Did no one ever explain to you that WoW IS a dungeon looter?
People are QUICK to scream WOW is an MMO but explain to me where is the M M and O when you are a SOLO player? What does a solo player even do in an MMO? You log in and then do what for the next 12 hours? You aren’t doing Renown grind cause I see people whine too much here about it. You aren’t doing Fyrakk open world content cause if I go there now its empty. You aren’t doing Elemetal Storm open world content, Cooking Event, Hunting Event, Siege on Dragonbane Event , Forbidden Reach is empty, Zaralek Caverns is empty, the zones in Dragonflight are empty…
To the Casual Players I would add another group, the Solo Players.
Wow is a fantastic game and my wife and I enjoy it greatly. We are more than casual in time perhaps, but are solo players that enjoy wow together. At some point in each expansion we find ourselves forced to leave the game. Because we do like the game we come back some time later when new soloable content is added.
Wow is what it is and we accept that, but wonder about a design philosophy that purposely excludes and drives away much of the potential player base.
You’re implying that someone that’s a solo player shouldn’t get a vote but it doesn’t matter if someone stares at the screen and drools or does mythic raids on 5 characters.
Both are paying $12.99 so both people “should get a vote.” Which, doesn’t make any sense anyways since this isn’t a democracy but I think I get what you mean. Soloers shouldn’t be asking for anything.
My profile is hidden but my 10k more achievements points than you isn’t.
For some people this is true, for other people this is not true, and that has always been the case since the game was released back in 2004.
Massive. Multiplayer. Online.
Massive and online are self-explanatory, multiplayer just means it supports multiple players.
The word group is nowhere in that acronym, nor is it a requirement for multiplayer. It’s all about a shared interface.
Let’s play your game. What’s massive about instance play? When you look at 4 other players in the same static instances over and over again, where’s the massive?
when they made everyone go up to level 70… would be the kick in the pants for me… also the raid loot… as asmogold would say… all loot should be acquired by normal… raid… have higher raids let you get bonus loot drops… and levels on the loots level…
Raids… should Always be Hero teir… while raid finder should be champion… while its max is 440…
Example… Raid finder… Champion… level 1 to 4 out of 8 (max is 440 item level) (legendry’s have a 15% drop chance)
Normal: Hero Level 4/8 (max is 447 item level) (legendry’s have a 30% drop chance) +1 items.
Heroic: Hero Level 6/8 (max is 447 item level) (legendry’s have a 60% drop chance) +2 items.
Mythic: Hero Level 8/8 (max is 447 item level) (legendry’s have a 100% drop chance) +4 items.
While the mega dungeons are always: champion Level 8/8 (max is 440 item level) +2 items.
The new item upgrade options and love for professions are steps in the right direction, but the infinite scaling M+, the WoW token, the mythic raid nonsense… unless they begin to claw back the post-Legion changes to the game that made it way less accessible to average gamers and embrace more of the Classic design philosophy it’ll remain the failed e-sport they tried to make it back then.
It’s turning more and more about cash not gold building strong characters. Even if you don’t pay a third party things, professions have become quite expensive.
This is frankly crap. One of the main activities associated with so-called “casuals” is collecting, and there is so much stuff to collect in this game at this point that even if you JUST played WoW in your gaming time, you couldn’t likely get it all in less than a decade.
Haha, not all professions are created equally, I’m finding. Alchemy and of course the gatherers are like, “here’s free gold, some more free gold, some more free leveling, and some additional free gold to go with the free gold” while of course things like JC and enchanting are endless useless pits where gold goes to die, lol.
But the raids were brain dead by comparison, so it worked.
Now it’s like ok, let’s do my M+20s and provide 5 forms of identification and an essay on my self-worth to get into a decent mythic raid guild if you want the best gear. The two games aren’t even in the universe.
WoW is incredibly casual friendly if you want to do 2 things – 1) only play solo world PvE content 2) Farm old content
The problem is that after 19 years they needed to add more content to engage with. Housing, mini games, more story content… The Blue Dragon Flight story was amazing and I wanted more of that added everywhere. But it is what it is, so no, they don’t hate casuals, they just don’t know what casuals want.
As someone who has been playing casually since Vanilla, this expansion is actually one of the best experiences I’ve had from a game technical experience.
That being said, the removal of borrowed power I feel has revealed how much Blizzards newer designs for content were contingent on the hamster wheel and when you take that away…their just isn’t a whole lot actually there.
That said: It feels like they are pivoting for much better experiences for players like me, but WoW is an oil tanker the size of Alaska so changing direction like they are will not be quick or graceful.