For many years we’ve attempted to define casual and hardcore in World of Warcraft, although there is now the surge of a new label making its way around, which are the “casually hardcore” guilds and players. These casually hardcore players take the basic principles of of both being casual (easy going, “play how you want”, “play when you want”) and the hardcore (5 nights of raiding, loot distribution systems) and mix into one. Yet, is this veritable cornucopia of WoW ideals the path to raiding success or is the constant failures that churn out from the mixing of these rules one of the big reasons for the current WoW downtrend? I think it’s the later, for many reasons which we'll take a closer look at below.

The Casually Hardcore Carrot on a Stick

Let’s be honest about what MMOs really are. The deep dark filthy secret is that games like World of Warcraft are glorified chat clients embedded within the framework of an online game. In WoW, it’s a chat client with an RPG affixed to it. Like Facebook games, the goal is to gain the most prestige possible from the other users in the chat room, and to do that you have to go out and collect loot.

Does your calendar look like this but your progression is still at three bosses down? You might be casually hardcore.

The problem is that the loot that brings prestige does so for a reason: it’s very scarce and hard to obtain. While impressive, only a few people can get the very best on each server when new content is still relatively new. Casual players can’t obtain the loot due to their casual playing tendencies, thereby focus their efforts on gaining their prestige elsewhere - like non-combat pets - instead. Meanwhile the hardcore players strive day in and day out to get all of the loot and the associated prestige.

However, some guilds can find themselves to follow the casual principles and be compromised of mostly casual members but think that they can make the impossible possible (usually a guild leader and/or officers who want to push everyone into raiding). These “casually hardcore” guilds focus all of their attention on obtaining these prestige items, but don’t have the ability to actually complete the content or take forever in order to do so. The reason? They stick to the same tried and true casual principles while trying to be hardcore:

• Everyone has fun in different ways, so everyone should be allowed to have fun in the game the way they see fit. Example: Melee Priests, HealKins, and auto-attack Hunters/Rogues. Additionally, PvE players in PvP gear or healers with strength gems.
• The game is not serious, so no one should ever get upset, much less get upset at someone else. Example: Someone wipes the raid from not knowing the encounter. No one should get upset over it, it’s just a game.
• WoW is not a job. Example: Attendance doesn’t matter, whoever we can bring can come, first come first served.

Now, think about hardcore players who require everyone to be a raiding spec and in raiding gear, that everyone know their fights, and have at least 95% attendance for raids to get gear. Compare the two and you should be able to see why casually hardcore guilds fail: the hardcore rules are there for a reason.

Hardcore guilds want everyone to be in a cookie cutter or at least good raiding spec and in proper raiding gear in order to down content that pretty much requires it. Bad players with horrible gear need to be filtered out with PlayerScore, and you need to use it to make sure someone has the right gems and enchants in their gear. PlayerScore is a super valuable tool here because it can even tell you if their gear is good enough for a specific instance or raid.

Allowing players into a raid who don’t know the fights or have bad manners may seem like a “bro friendly” thing to do, but it drags the raid down and slows progress. Again, this is where PlayerScore comes in and can help tons by showing you specific ratings on each player and how the community has seen their performance over time.

Lastly, not forcing attendance causes an uneven distribution of loot and halts progression which is why a lot of casually hardcore guilds take months to down certain fights. If the core group each night is different then none of the gear obtained in the previous week matters and the new group has to learn all of the fights from scratch, which is why progression never moves from these guilds.

Curing the Casually Hardcore

The biggest thing guilds need to understand in order to start having more fun and less six hour raid sessions on an entry level hard mode is that they need to come to terms with who they really are. Is it a raiding guild that is actually trying to down new content or is it a casual guild full of players who just want to do their own thing? If it’s the first one then some rules need to be laid down, attendance needs to be required, and everyone needs to get into shape.

If it’s the second one then maybe everyone should come to terms on why raiding might not be their thing and stop the raids when it gets to that “sweet spot.” You know, where the loot flows, but that boss that takes 4-5 hours to down is the stopping point for the night.

If neither of these two options can work for a guild, then requiring players to at least have a certain base GearScore and meet certain requirements in PlayerScore (no PvP gear, all their gear gemmed/enchanted for their spec) and in proper specializations can go a long ways in turning a fail night into an epic win night.

Whatever the case may be, it’s true that everyone can play the game the way that they want to. If raiding more than hardcore guilds do for less loot and fewer bosses is the way some want to play the game, then so be it. But that’s just going to create burnout, make players bitter and tired, and cause an eventual split in the guild.

What do you think about the subject? Are you in a casually hardcore guild but can’t leave due to loyalty or do you enjoy it? Do you think the labels “casual” and “hardcore” are stupid? Do you even play WoW? Leave your thoughts in the comments section below.