The difference is that many of the players that want change is that they just want the game back to the way it USED to be. So is that really a change?
In Vanilla, you could take 40 people. Maybe 20 needed to be competent. the other could just tag along and do end game.
Now if you take 10 or more, every single person must be on the top of their game. Casuals had a place in regular raiding in Vanilla. They dont have a place in raiding now.
They still do. Normal raids can still very easily be done even with half the raid being casual. Hell, Iād consider my guild pretty casual and we are even 2/9 mythic. Just because mythic exists for people who want a challenge doesnāt mean we have to dumb down every part of the game to suit just you
This isnāt true, but granting at least a little truth to it, that is a player/social issue, not a game design issue.
Your idea of what is casual may be skewed though.
Skilled Warlock in Vanilla? Can you stand in one spot and spam shadow bolt?
Non skilled player in Vanilla. Can you show up and look in the general direction of the boss.
Name one current raid (including LFR) where half the players only function is to stare at a boss and kinda dps. NOTHING else required.
Wait, my idea of casual is skewed, but your idea of casual where people literally afk the fight is the correct definition of casual?
Do you not see the irony here?
Well I have used 2 examples to illustrate why I said what I said.
EQ INVENTED the concept of raiding.
WoW copied it (look at the devs notes where there were level ranges for raids) Riads simply meant more than 5.
I also included what THIS GAME considered raiding as.
So my concept of casual is what EQ thought of it and what Vanilla WoW though of it. I am looking at raiding over the course of 20 years. Not just well I want it this way
Iām just attacking your single statement from before. You said ācasuals have no place in raiding in WoWā now.
I refuted saying even in normal you can carry many people.
You argued back that the true definition of casual is literally AFKing until other people killed the boss for you.
You said my definition was skewed. I really want you to understand the irony of you telling me my definition was skewed and yours was correct.
Nowhere did I say people could AFK. AFK = away from keyboard and doing nothing.
I said you could have people AT THEIR KEYBOARDS, standing in a single spot, trying to figure out what buttons to push to do damage and still succeed.
I can say this because almost no one used damage meters back then. We had threat meters. Your damage didnt really matter. No one had to move out of fire. Some just stood there to buff. Or to cast lust. Thats it. That was your entire role in a raid. And that the hardcore back then.
What you call a casual today I would say was the hardcore of the hardcore back then. People didnt know what to do and the game was set for people who didnt know what to do. Maybe get some fire resist gear and show up Friday night.
Take a normal today.
Imagine your DPS not having to know a rotation? Still was hardcore in Vanilla.
Imagine your healer wanding 1/2 the fight and only throwing out a heal every few minutes.
Imagine you paladins doing nothing but buffing, than medding up waiting to buff again.
Imagine every raid NO character ever has to move. There are no positional requirements. No moving out of fire.
Imagine you mage still wearing their starter robe and still expecting to DPS.
All of these WERE hardcore raiders with the above rquirements. Now imagine what a casual would be like. A casual back then would be dead in the first fire on the ground. 1/2 your raid gone. Most likely all of your healers. Can you other 5 carry the normal raid today at current gear levels?
I am not sure the OP is right. To me, WOW is not meant to be a hard core game. I think raids and mythics are defined as harder content but the rest of the game is easy.
You have several types of players. Raider, mythics, pvp and questers. People can be a mix and match of these and or just one
The problem is that wow is the jack of all trades and master of none.
To eliminate any of the types of gameplay could eliminate a large portion of the audience. So they try to push players into the different sectors to give them something else to do. Adding lfr and lfd just gave access to content that some players might have never seen. My issue is that they are forcing questors to do dungeons and raids, even if they are easier versions
There is nothing wrong with keeping each type of gameplay separate
I mean half of these are anecdotal. I raided in vanilla, those addons did exist back, regardless if you personally did not. No running out of the group on baron geddon did indact kill everyone else. I think you are really romanticizing what raiding was like then.
Is it relatively harder now? Sure, but the game is also 15+ years old. Do you really not want it to evolve? Do you think people would actually still play if all we did was wand a boss 1/2 the fight?
They do. In EQ. EQ is actually bigger now than it was 4 years ago because people want to play an MMORPG like EQ and old WoW and not the E-Sport game for 2019 teeny boppers.
I know, I am there. My guild raids 4 nights a week (and they claim they are casual lol) This is thy I say its peopleās perception. In EQ if you are not on call on the batphone 24x7 ready to raid once a boss pops, you are casual. Thats in addition to regularly scheduled raiding 3-4 nights a week. And my role is to buff and slow. I med the rest of the fight after buffing players and casting slow on the boss. At least now I can look at the boss, not just my spell book.
In WoW, that crazy because we have instances. In WoW if you show up 2-3 times a week to raid you are Hardcore. Could you imagine having to show up from a text @ 2 am or getting kicked from the guild?
If/when Pantheon comes out, WoW players will get to try a current day hardcore MMORPG. I may try it, its not my cup of tea but I have friends going there.
If you donāt like it, dont do it how is anyone forcing you.
Donāt understand why you people want to ruin others for something that you donāt do or affects you.
You donāt need to spend timeless hours anymore raiding. An example in MoP during SoO Heroic (pre-mythic) I was in a guild that raided 2 nights a week at 3 hrs a raid. Cleared Heroic mode well before the change happened. Plenty of Mythic guilds today still only do 2 nights a week at 3 hrs a night and clear it before the next tier. I donāt consider 6 hours a week to clear hardest mode content to be timeless hours. If you think it is then anything you do in the game is timeless hours.
I have no clue how any of this pertains to the conversation at hand.
I want to expand on this because this is a major thing I think people miss.
The draw to raiding in EQ (as I play now) is getting gear (so like WoW) and the community within the guild. The fun is in discord. The fun is the other players. The fun is the COMMUNITY. Not going there is a level I need to beat.
In WoW, raiding is about getting gear. Its about achievement (I beat super mythic heroic raid XYZ. so I am SOOO much better than you). Some have fun with their groups. But if a members were causing a group to not succeed (which current WoW does) those players were be replaced. Yeah people may like their friends but the vast majority either only are friends with like minded people or theyjump to a guild made of like minded individuals. Family and friends raiding is gone.
I mean it sounds like you just want WoW to be EQ. Ok then. I guess you just want a soap box to talk on, cause I donāt understand the point of anything you are saying
This game has never been more friendly to the average player
LFR and LFG have made it a cake walk for people to engage in activity. The game has gone away from raid or die. If you think itās built for the hardcore then youāre just trying too hard to play the victim
Are you serious?
Islands, WFs and WQs are so hardcore.
My cousin told me that in wow everyone was max level and I, while playing runescape, was astonished