I love WoW, often more than I should. I love the art, the story, the feel of accomplishment when a goal I reach is a long toil, but worthy in the end. Grinding Ogri'la to get my Vortex Walking Boots. Grinding out SV runs and buying up every available Coilfang Armament I could until I got my Cenarion Hippogryph. Pushing every day to get my Netherwing rep to exalted for a Netherdrake. Even grinding out the rep for Darnassus to get Medros a Saber instead of his tired old Charger. All of these have been enjoyable but long battles for rep and a bit of coin, to get the items I want in the game.
Some call me hardcore. Some call me a farmer. Different people, different titles. I have even been called the WalMart of Argent Dawn. Addict is a popular one, and one I am not even sure I can deny anymore. Me? I call myself casual. I don't spend hours on end mastering fights that can turn on the chance of a crit. I don't spend hours getting the rep or reagents for a raid. I don't spend days upon end running heroic after heroic to get the best gear in the game. I don't fret over going somewhere and wiping over and over, giving 30-50g worth of repair bills. It's a game, and not really worth all of that effort.
My question for you is this: can you be a hardcore casual? How about a Casual addict? Can you be addicted to the game and still play casual? I guess the base problem in the entire discussion is definitions and classifications. How do we define an addict of WoW? How do we define a casual player? How do we define a hardcore player of WoW? Can a casual still play 5-10 hours a day on a weekend? Can a hardcore play only 10 hours in an entire week? Is an addict someone who can't stop? What if you are a hardcore player who is addicted but only plays for 10-15 hours a week?
In the end it all breaks down to stereotypes and classifying people by our own biases. For someone who is struggling to get the time for their first character to hit 70, someone who raids Kara every week and does a 25 man or Zul'Aman on the weekends could be hardcore. Someone who has a couple 70s and sees the same guy RPing in Shatt every time he is near, wearing the same level 45 greens, could see that person as a casual n00b who can't play worth a damn. To that RPer, the hardcore who ridicules him, or even the one who just doesn't respond to the attempts to RP, those guys in all purples from Kara, ZA, or the 25 mans could be seen an elitist jerk raider who can't follow the rules.
You see how perceptions are? They only serve one purpose: to break up the community into divided camps, more easily picked off by other games and bad patches, leading to a fractured, aggressive, and volatile community. What keeps us apart as a community, what maintains the divide, is the fact that the patches seem to focus in one area at a time, making one part of the game good while seeming, from the player perspective, to break or sacrifice the other parts of the game.
I wonder, though, is there any way to repair the problem? Can we fix this growing divide between the different goals? Will we just drift apart until the game falls apart with players drifting to different games that fill their particular need more than WoW does? What do you think of this problem, of the stereotypes in WoW?
Some call me hardcore. Some call me a farmer. Different people, different titles. I have even been called the WalMart of Argent Dawn. Addict is a popular one, and one I am not even sure I can deny anymore. Me? I call myself casual. I don't spend hours on end mastering fights that can turn on the chance of a crit. I don't spend hours getting the rep or reagents for a raid. I don't spend days upon end running heroic after heroic to get the best gear in the game. I don't fret over going somewhere and wiping over and over, giving 30-50g worth of repair bills. It's a game, and not really worth all of that effort.
My question for you is this: can you be a hardcore casual? How about a Casual addict? Can you be addicted to the game and still play casual? I guess the base problem in the entire discussion is definitions and classifications. How do we define an addict of WoW? How do we define a casual player? How do we define a hardcore player of WoW? Can a casual still play 5-10 hours a day on a weekend? Can a hardcore play only 10 hours in an entire week? Is an addict someone who can't stop? What if you are a hardcore player who is addicted but only plays for 10-15 hours a week?
In the end it all breaks down to stereotypes and classifying people by our own biases. For someone who is struggling to get the time for their first character to hit 70, someone who raids Kara every week and does a 25 man or Zul'Aman on the weekends could be hardcore. Someone who has a couple 70s and sees the same guy RPing in Shatt every time he is near, wearing the same level 45 greens, could see that person as a casual n00b who can't play worth a damn. To that RPer, the hardcore who ridicules him, or even the one who just doesn't respond to the attempts to RP, those guys in all purples from Kara, ZA, or the 25 mans could be seen an elitist jerk raider who can't follow the rules.
You see how perceptions are? They only serve one purpose: to break up the community into divided camps, more easily picked off by other games and bad patches, leading to a fractured, aggressive, and volatile community. What keeps us apart as a community, what maintains the divide, is the fact that the patches seem to focus in one area at a time, making one part of the game good while seeming, from the player perspective, to break or sacrifice the other parts of the game.
I wonder, though, is there any way to repair the problem? Can we fix this growing divide between the different goals? Will we just drift apart until the game falls apart with players drifting to different games that fill their particular need more than WoW does? What do you think of this problem, of the stereotypes in WoW?
