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The Casual MMO?

posted 2009/01/20 at 5:30 PM by Malgayne

Allakhazamhttp://wow.allakhazam.com/story.html?story=16670here on the blog

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Comment by Blackboy0 Wow... big post...
Lol'd at the cats =P Comment by Fingulfin Is it just me, or is EVERYONE here posting about the exact same thing?
WoW: The Schizophrenic MMO
Village of Warcraft: Small Scale Story Telling
Diabolocles, Tormenter of Children

Sure, everyone spins it a different way, but everyone is saying the exact same thing... WoW is a funny little game, the storyline sux unless you make it good yourself, it was hard to get end-game gear without sacrificing RL, but now its easy.

Ala finè? Comment by Carimm pwyf doesn't spell check Comment by Nukedoom Luckily we have the power of Queggy and a sleek black background. Comment by TheMediator The thing about WoW is its story is more like a book for the most part, the story is there and you access the story at your own rate. Sure you can decide to skip specific parts of the book and only read other parts of the book, but the book is the book.

I don't know why everyone is discovering this at once though, maybe its because the endgame raids are more accessible and now people are really seeing the pages of the book instead of hearing someone else recount it to them, I don't know. Comment by ZaneLlag Personally, I am an FF XI vet. I still play FF XI and WoW is my "casual" game. I joined WoW at the end of October for the first time, and I am currently 9 bars away from 80.

Comparing that to my experience on FF XI... I played FF XI since NA PC launch in late October of '03. It took me until early '06 to finally hit level 75 with my first job. Although, my second job followed very closely just one year later.

I like both games for completely different reasons. WoW is my pick up and play game. I can actually do fun things SOLO. The fact that I was able to hit 80 in 3 short months of very casual play is evidence to the amount that can be accomplished in such a short time. Instances don't normally take more than 2 hours tops, most of which end within the hour, very good end game gear is easily obtainable. (Yes, I said easily. If you have a problem with that statement, play FF XI and you'll know why.) Crafting is fun. And again, all of this takes relatively short amounts of time. The downside is sadly, the community. I have never met so many rude, impolite, immature, and selfish people before. Of course, that's not to say everyone who plays WoW is bad since I've met many nice people, including members of the opposing faction on a PvP server.

Now, for FF XI's dissection. Community is the absolute best I've met in an online game, next to an old MUD by the name of Gemstone III. Most people are are very polite, very concerned about how they treat others, are helpful, and generally good people. This may also be due in part to the much smaller community of players, so once you do something underhanded you're black listed by a substantial part of the server, and getting into a good linkshell or EXP party is difficult. Again, not to say everyone on FF XI is a saint because I have sure met my share of people I wish I hadn't. -_- But about the group thing... nearly everything in FF XI is group oriented which is a time sink in and of itself.

If I want to level, I need a group. Good 20 min. minimum putting that together. If I want to do a mission, group. I've often spent upwards of 10+ hours shouting for a group (6 people) to complete a mission. Any activity that rewards end-game gear? Group. Luckily, if you are in a good linkshell, these things are scheduled and gather time is usually no more than an hour for the big events like Dynamis (Up to 64 people). Oh, by the way, if you don't have a linkshell that does those events, you can pretty much kiss any chance at end-game gear good bye.

Crafting is much more... random. 100 levels, every time you craft an item below it's cap you have a -chance- to get a 0.1 - 0.2 skill up. I personally haven't seen more than that since I gave up crafting a long time ago. Not to mention crafting isn't a guaranteed success. So, you spent hours trying to farm up items for that recipe that's 10 levels lower than your crafting level and you got a crit fail? Well... you're out a lot of gil and time.

Endgame activities... They've gotten better, but they're still time sinks. Dynamis with a good group is 4 hours not including gather time. Salvage is around 2. HNMs are the worst bottle neck to have ever happened to FF XI, where you look to risk 3 hours for a 21-24 pop that you probably won't get the claim on unless you're botting (read: lowest of the low), and the item you want probably only has a 20% chance of dropping. Rinse and repeat for your entire Linkshell.

Oh, and if you want the best possible gear for your job, you are looking at dropping a few years on one item: The Relic/Mythic weapon. Imagine if every elite mob in Nax 25 had the chance to drop 1-4 of a piece of currency that the entire Nax raid could roll on. Only, it's a chance, most will drop 0-2 pieces if that. Now, you have to collect about 20,000 of these things for your weapon, along with several other very annoying items to get. Oh, and this is marginally better than the next best weapon which has you camping the before-mentioned HNMs.

Let's look at the FF XI schedule next:
Sunday 2-6: Sky
Sunday 6-9: Nyzul
Monday 9-10:30: Limbus
Tuesday: 6-10: Sea
Wednesday: 9-1:30: Dynamis
Thursday: 9-10:30: Limbus
Friday: Off
Saturday: 10-2:30: Dynamis

That was just a sample of what I did, casually foraying into the end-game scene. Obviously, if you camp HNMs, do Einherjar, Salvage, ZNMs, or any other assortment of end-game activities, your schedule will be much more full. All for the very meager chance that a piece of gear -might- drop and you can duke it out against 5 - 63 other people.

I could go into a million more comparisons between the two games but I will say this:

SYNOPSIS

WoW is casual, and I like it. FF XI is hard-core MMO, slowly adding more casual elements and it has it's own crowd as well. There is nothing wrong with a little more casualness in your game, and I think it's healthy to log on for half and hour and get something done. Casual games are the future since any survey will show: WoW is more casual than most other MMOs. WoW also has a much bigger subscription base than any other MMO. Wii is more casual than 360 or PS3. More people own a Wii than 360 or PS3 combined. Downloadable games on the Nintendo Store, Marketplace, PS Network, and iphone outsell full fledged disk games.* If you're a budding video game designer casual games are where the money's at.

*Not to say any game/system/etc is better than the other, only comparing subscription base/units sold.

EDIT: Fixed some minor typos. Comment by Tchaalina Luckily we have the power of Queggy and a sleek black background.Comment by Gemrin Love the pic!
And it is a very interesting topic!

I was wondering could I use the pic? Comment by pmpage I don't think any MMO can be casual if there's consequences for things going wrong. For example, a typical online FPS like Team Fortress 2, worst that comes out of a bad session is you don't score as much, big deal you can come back the next day and do better.

In WoW, a bad day can leave you with a 40g repair bill, no loot worth having and some serious stress that you haven't managed to complete an instance that you've run successfully 50 times before.

It's not to say however, that WoW isn't more casual than other online MMO's, for example my experiences in Eve: Online where I eventually ended up loosing 3 years worth of work to a retard who thought it was funny to blow random ships up. At the end of the day though, WoW gives back only as much as you put in, if you don't commit some time to the game to run the end level content, then you don't get the best rewards. Comment by amagaim Community is the absolute best I've met in an online game, next to an old MUD by the name of Gemstone III.lifeComment by Doofman I think this contrasts nicely with our conversation from the other day about persistent vs. "respawning-static" MMOs, in that it's fairly distinct from the casual vs. hardcore argument.

One of the mistakes that most MMO creators made before Blizzard was to assume two things:

1) You could only run an MMO on a subscription basis
2) Only "hardcore" fans will pay a subscription for a game.

Whether or not #1 is true in the long run (I actually don't know the answer, but I suspect that it's probably true barring a dramatic change in the gaming industry), WoW has proved #2 is completely false. There are a few key points to make about this, however. Blizzard's real secret has been its low barriers to entry (and particularly re-entry). By allowing users to create a large number of characters on many realms, while guaranteeing that those characters will still be around if/when a player gets burned out and lets their subscription lapse for a month or even a year, it makes it that much easier for people to start up in the first place, or come back when there's something new.

The one important question that I don't have the answer to relates to something else discussed the other day:

I think a large part of the story is just that WoW happened to come along at a time when people were still convinced, based on the promise of persistent player-generated content, that MMOs were different and therefore okay to pay a subscription for. In a sense, WoW promised us one thing and gave us something different (albeit better, in my opinion), and it was that bait-and-switch that allowed them to package a fundamentally non-massively multiplayer online RPG, a traditionally non-subscription game genre, with a subscription model. WoW was the first such bait-and-switch that I know of, and I'm not sure if that magical market ignorance can be recreated.Comment by MacTarnahan Is WoW "casual?" Of course it is. Why else would it have 8 million subscribers. There aren't 8 million hardcore players in the world that would converge upon the same game for any reason. People who are "hardcore" find too many flaws in the games they won't play, or too many good things in the games they will.

"Hardcore" gamers like smaller communities because it ups their chances to dominate, and call themselves hardcore.

I didn't get into WoW until late BC, and even so, I can say that WotLK has had some significant weakenings to the work involved. While it's nice that I get that epic mace after 2 or 3 runs in a heroic, that causes a lot of people to not want to run that dungeon... zomg... I already have everything from there.

As I leveled my toon in BC, the LFG chatter for high level dungeons and heroics was constant. Getting geared and properly specced for Kara was an achievement in and of itself. Now an achievement is finding a group that knows what they are doing enough to get past a boss. Comment by Malgayne Is it just me, or is EVERYONE here posting about the exact same thing?
WoW: The Schizophrenic MMO
Village of Warcraft: Small Scale Story Telling
Diabolocles, Tormenter of Children
Comment by TweFoju interesting article, its been going on since the 1st day of WOTLK release

i too as any other ppl on this forum, is a casual player ( or i would like to say so ) that maybe get on just for Raids and logged off after

unless i have a free day which results in me staying at home and maybe i will play for the whole day, but again, for that to happen its Rare

many ppl came across me and do a check on my gear, lots of ppl was like " &*!@, u got the Calamity's Grasp" how fvckin awesome is that

i was like wtf, why would u be surprised?, i own it without even giving it a big effort, i just go with my guild like usual, dps dps dps without any strat ( with most of the WOTLK boss strat being dont stand on fire and run away when u got debuff" thing ) surely me as a DPS is having a simple life here on WOTLK

unlike our days on BT, just getting a 1 T6 piece feels like im in Heaven, the satisfaction really paid off with the effort we made then, remembering that i dont have much time to play like my guild mates where they can get on for almost 1/2 a day everyday!

so even a 1 T6 feels like so much achievement for me, compare it to the present situation, and i still remember how i used to adore the ppl whom are on full T5 even T6 then, now, i see a ppl with full T7, its like a normal stuffs

and getting a T7 is like getting a normal loots, non raiders can have a full 5/5 T7, just like that, with pugs, no efforts, T7 are being rolled, yeah try rolling a T5 on BC days, u will never get T5 with Rolls, like hell you will get 1

so all in all, yeah its; pretty much a Casual game now Comment by Bruce124341 As a relative newcomer to WoW (May 2008) I have noticed that things did get easier in some ways. Less xp to level between 60-70, mounts at 30 instead of 40.

But there have also been a few changes in the other direction. Faster re-spawn rates on some mobs, for instance.

And yes, Blizzard is first a business, and so they want to attract as many customers as possible. A player who only games three-four hours a week pays just as much as one who plays that much or more per day...and so is equally valuable to the company. Since there are more people who can spend a few hours a week playing as opposed to several hours a day...you see where this is going.

So, right now Blizzard is making your time online more valuable. Or, to put it another way, you spend less time to get cool stuff. This may seem like cheating to those who had to work much harder to get less valuable rewards. But since the new players only have stories (if that) to compare the current level of difficulty with the past, I don't think many of them really care.

If the game is fun for more people, then more people play. This is the model that Blizzard will be using. Comment by Azay What so wrong with being a casual player? What is so wrong with playing a casual game?

Has anyone ask these questions? Because I for one, do not have any problem with it. Maybe because I am one.

We all have priorities; work, school and/or children to name a few. What is so wrong with using what free time you have to sit and enjoy the game along with others?

I have played WoW since launch, and I have enjoyed my time. However in pre-BC time I was one who was outside looking in, or being used by others to boost themselves to the better guild. All along knowing that I would never have the time to join the MC/BWL/AQ40 people. And in that way the game was not fun. I would have loved to be apart of that, but life was more important. So I lived with it.

Now in Wotlk I can join in a Naxx run. I am enjoying my time so much, and still getting what my life needs done.

Thank you Blizzard for finally seeing that. Comment by TheMediator interesting article, its been going on since the 1st day of WOTLK release

i too as any other ppl on this forum, is a casual player ( or i would like to say so ) that maybe get on just for Raids and logged off after

unless i have a free day which results in me staying at home and maybe i will play for the whole day, but again, for that to happen its Rare

many ppl came across me and do a check on my gear, lots of ppl was like " &*!@, u got the Calamity's Grasp" how fvckin awesome is that

i was like wtf, why would u be surprised?, i own it without even giving it a big effort, i just go with my guild like usual, dps dps dps without any strat ( with most of the WOTLK boss strat being dont stand on fire and run away when u got debuff" thing ) surely me as a DPS is having a simple life here on WOTLK

unlike our days on BT, just getting a 1 T6 piece feels like im in Heaven, the satisfaction really paid off with the effort we made then, remembering that i dont have much time to play like my guild mates where they can get on for almost 1/2 a day everyday!

so even a 1 T6 feels like so much achievement for me, compare it to the present situation, and i still remember how i used to adore the ppl whom are on full T5 even T6 then, now, i see a ppl with full T7, its like a normal stuffs

and getting a T7 is like getting a normal loots, non raiders can have a full 5/5 T7, just like that, with pugs, no efforts, T7 are being rolled, yeah try rolling a T5 on BC days, u will never get T5 with Rolls, like hell you will get 1

so all in all, yeah its; pretty much a Casual game nowComment by dumac Well Wotlk is easy, they made it easy for casual players, i have no problem with causual also playing. But i do have a problem then blizz made it so easy it sucked the fun out of hard core players. THe only hard encounter so far is malygos and he is not that hard really.

In patch 3.1 i hoep it will get more fun fights and alot harder. I need some challenges:( Comment by Doofman What so wrong with being a casual player? What is so wrong with playing a casual game?

Has anyone ask these questions? Because I for one, do not have any problem with it. Maybe because I am one. Comment by james985 I am one of the newer people playing wow even though i have a lvl 66 Dk i only hade to wait months till WOTLK came out and Burning Crusade was it. i would have liked to be able to end the game in such betting it but know i have to lvl and some day i hope to be winning even if only for 1 day.

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