Honestly to me the time where WoW was the most casual friendly was classic. Endgame was easy if you knew what you were doing. There were ways to min-max if you wanted to but you didn’t have to. There was a lot to do in the world, a lot of farming. Dungeons mattered but you didn’t run them into perpetuity. There was weird gear that was fun and interesting. There were ways to leave a mark on a run by being prepared without being the best dps. Back in the day people liked me because I always had the Mallet of Zul’Farrak or Scepter of Celebras or Hakkar’s egg to help with runs.
Etc.
Warlords was very casual friendly too as I recall but had the issue of nobody leaving garrisons. It was unfun for different reasons.
As someone who is between what you describe as casual and “skilled” I think WoW is catering to parse lords primarily these days. The rotations are not intuitive at all. Everything is timed and performance oriented.
Casual and world content players need something besides world quests and named NPCs to farm (i refuse to call something a rare if its spawn timer is less than 24 hrs)
Rares these days have a spawn timer of like 5 minutes! Sometimes an hour if it is super rare. Or not at all if it’s a day where they don’t spawn.
I tend to main beast mastery and I kinda miss the very rare spawn beasts. I’d devote a lot of time to getting them even it was mostly just staking a spot out while I worked in another tab.
Getting a chance to replay vanilla-wrath again has changed my perspective a lot that I had from my memories.
I went into it thinking Wrath > TBC > Vanilla, but playing them again it’s been the complete opposite.
Vanilla is great, pretty casual, but very fun (I know fun is subjective). I think it’s the slower leveling and more traveling makes the world feel like you’re going on an adventure. Then some raids have short 3 or 5 day lockouts so it’s not always just Tuesday rests. Also having 1 just version of every dungeon and raid and item has is charm. An item is just the item, no 373893 different item level versions of it. A dungeon is just the dungeon, a raid is just the raid.
The way hunter pets worked in the past was awesome. It is sad they just got rid of the entire system. Hunting down rare tames was so much fun. Hunting for pets to learn their skills was fun too.
Another example of a system removed in favor of trying to pander to elite players.
^^^ This a 1000 times. Play your own game. I was active in SL. More than usuual. Now I am pretty much back to leveling by doing pet battle trainers in WoD and the weekly profession KP quests every Tuesday. Plus an occasional LFR wing or two each week.
It’s summer and there are a lot of other things to do. WoW will still be here in a year.
Define “casual” for the purpose of your post please. Everyone defines it differently. I consider myself to be very casual but I still do M+ and (this season) the raid (a few times). I do world content. I level alts. I’m also able to have fun with the game while maintaining a healthy IRL ratio with my family.
Something people always seem to miss in this discussion is that WoW no longer has a leveling experience, which used to be the journey and casual way of playing the game.
“What do you mean? You can still level!” yes, but it’s not an experience. It’s mindless, boring, fully solo non-stop questing with no adventure, no world, no socialization, no grouping, no meaningful gear progress, no challenge.
Only if that’s how you choose to do it. If you were brand new to wow, there’d be plenty of adventures and things to figure out, opportunities to socialize if you’re interested are there, you still get gear as you go without looms, etc.
This is huge for me too, even though I’m not a casual player right now, I’m a casual player at heart. I wish the game was HEAVILY RPG focused, much like ESO, I hate the addictive qualities of current WoW, and love the addictive qualities of other MMOs, single player games, and Vanilla WoW. Exploring and getting gear feels great in Vanilla, and getting gear in BfA thru Dragonflight has been a chore, with 0 rewarding feeling for me. iLvL creep is an awful feeling. RPG “I got a cool sword that does a bit more damage, now I can progress to the new area without being killed as easily” feels incredible, every time. Simple, basic progression. Not too many systems, currencies, difficulties, phases, daily and weekly duties, reputations to grind, etc. Grinds have a place in an MMO they just never felt good in WoW
With vault of the incarnates I would have said yes to this but I came back with aberrus and they seem to have course corrected. I blew through aberrus on lfg like it was a joke then did the same with normal. Very casual friendly. VoTI was a nightmare by comparison. For every hardmode out there for the elitist there is a lfg mode for the casual. All seems pretty balanced.
I realize this may be an unpopular opinion, but back in WoD… with the way the Garrison leveled with you, the leveling perks and special skills for each zone… that was easily my favourite expansion to level up in.
Still can’t replace oldschool Elwynn Forest and Duskwood and all that though.
Casual as in… what?
I work on a ranch with very little time to play. Still log on to do odd keys, raids, and pvp sporadically. It’s much more enjoyable now than in past expansions.
