I understand where you are coming from but what is the solution? What are you looking for? Granted there isnt enough 5 Man content yet but its still early and in the end that level of casual content isnt usually the top priority because of the speed of the game. This is the dilemma of a PVE game.. in the end your left with a large percentage of the populous at the max level without stuff to do.

What is the solution? Raids are a good way to keep the top level players busy.. but its for those that have the time and willinginess to invest that time into a large group of people. The casual player are left to look for pick up groups or small raids.

In the end IMO for casual players the only solution is PVP Servers or PVP centered games.. but in the end most MMORPG's simply cannot accomodate everyone and everyone's playstyles.. because until someone points out to me HOW I just figure there is no game mechanic to appease everyone.

In the end though when you look at it.

5 man/10 man

Strat, School, BRD, UBRS, LBRS

20 Man

AQ, ZG

40 Man

MC, BWL, AQ

Unsubscribe and resub when the expansion is released. If you have a level 60 and you are a casual gamer, you should proabably move on to another game. Oblivion, for example.

More people who are unhappy with the driection of the game need to stop paying Blizz. I think they would notice if people spend 6 months getting to 60, and then unsub after one month.

Plus, if all the casual 60 who complain would just stop playing, server performace wouldn't be such an issue for the rest of us.

When a game is no longer fun, move-on. That's what I do with SP games, and that's what I will do if it happens with WoW.

The argument always boils down to casual vs hardcore. IMO casual players want all the rewards that the hardcore get without any of the time and effort. In the end most online games REQUIRE some sort of time commitment to get the rewards.

Sure anyone can jump on and play BF2, CS whenever they feel like it.. but the true masters or experts of the game probably have logged hundreds of hours online at those games.. why should an MMORPG be any different?

Ironically so far WoW has some of the best rewards for the casual player.. one can simply log in and do some killing and turn in stuff for faction that will lead to some pretty nice rewards down the road.

I do agree that Blizzard needs to expand on the random epic world drops a tad.. I'm sick of seeing the same 12 or so Epics farmed over and over again.. I would love to see a much larger set of random epic world drops for casual players.

I think people forget.. we've come a long way.. in EQ you couldnt do jack squat as a casual player.

I think one thing that the folks who are upset about the "switch" to hardcore content are forgetting is time.

No, not player time; development time.
How long was the 1-60, casual-friendly part of the game in development?
How long does it take to create a single, balanced, challenging, fun, working instance for a given number of players? It's not a month, I'm sure of that. I'd bet on more like 3-6 months for a small team. You have to do the mapping, storyline, quest implementations, level balancing, group-size balancing, faction(horde/alliance) balancing, loot balancing, drop tables, scripted events, testing, rewriting/recoding/fixing, more testing, more fixing, more testing, more fixing. It takes a long-ass time to build just one "small" 5-man dungeon. Nax has been in development for over a year, IIRC.

This isn't a sudden "switch" to end-game content. They finished the main game, then they started work on end-game content for when the hardcores hit 60 and started wondering "now what"? All the while, other teams have been working on the expansion, still other teams working on patches, other teams working on the smaller content updates like holidays, the faire, the lunar festival, etc, etc, etc. Then you can add still more teams that are, I am positive, working solely on class-reviews for the patches, like the paladin 1.9 and the priest 1.10, others working on things like net-code, UI API improvements, the AQ event, which was probably a "separate" project from actually building AQ itself.

There was a post last month, I think, of someone saying there hasn't been much new content added(admittedly, from the end-game viewpoint, I believe) since release, and I found a list of all the patchnotes and extracted all the content that was added, and it was relatively impressive.

I'm not a fanboi, and I'm not defending the appearance that WoW seems to have been focused on the hardcore end-game with content additions lately, I'm just saying that there's probably been more non-raid content added than you think, and that the content that has been added and will be added doesn't happen in a couple of weeks. It takes months to design, build, balance, and test a new instance, its loot tables, and its events.

It's a different perspective once you realize that the statement "Blizzard has switched to focusing on end-game," is both right and wrong. They "switched" at release, but the results take months on end to make it from concept to implementation.

I've probably rambled, but hopefully it makes some sense.

@ Ducki:
I think you presented a valid set of points.

I'm really not at all upset or outraged over the percieved "switch" to a more hardcore/power gamer track, and I realize that it's highly unlikely that they can just throw 3 or 4 people in a room, say "design us a good 5-man dungeon a la Stockade/Ragefire/Dire Maul/Whatever," and voila! Instant casual dungeon.

Again, I haven't given up on WoW, and I'm sure there's lots of stuff either in development or on the drawing board that would resassure the casual players that they haven't been forgotten - it's just that no one's talking about it for whatever reason. I have a bit of Farscry's problem described above: a good enough amount of time, just not enough in one sitting.

At level 60, there are an equal number of 5/10 man and raid instances now (5 of each), which is at least a small step in the right direction.

However, the tough part for me is that instances aren't the only answer. I've done very few of the instances in the game at any level because I just can't give 3-4 hours to play through one.

Sure, with an experienced group who's done those instances before together can do them faster, but most casual players (like me) tend to get outleveled in any guild rather rapidly, so I'm stuck resorting to pick-up groups instead, which generally are far slower due to inefficiency. So I tend not to do instances at all, unless they're shorter ones like the Stockades.

What I want is more stuff that casuals can work on outside of instances beyond just rep grinding. More quests, more random world stuff to hunt for fun, like uncommon spawns and the like, more crafting (that doesn't require materials strictly found in those non-casual-friendly instances - yes, Dark Iron, I'm looking at you), more fun stuff like the Gurubashi Arena treasure and the fishing tourneys.

And, ideally, more short instances like the Stockades.

Does this have to be done instead of raid content? Not at all. It'd be nice to see equal attention given to both.

And no, PVP is not a viable alternative due to all the epic gear that can easily unbalance PVP and is not really available for casuals. Perhaps if there were alternative Battlegrounds that somehow didn't permit any better-than-blue gear? I don't think that'd really be possible to code into the current engine though, I'm just thinking pie-in-the-sky here.

I could probably put 20 hours per week into WoW easily; it just mostly has to be in 1-2 hour chunks.

But I've learned that no matter what the devs promise, there doesn't seem to be a traditional-style mmo available that's truly casual-friendly. So far, EVE Online is the best option for me, but it's nothing like WoW or EQ, which is what I miss.

@Guru: While my post surely was a "whine" i do not demand "epixs f0r fr33" nor do i hope that everything gets centered around my playstyle. I hope you didnt get that impression. I'm with neuromancer here, i want "something to do" and sure... rewards for what i do, but i generally dont care if this is an epic or not. I would even accept set with worser stats if there is a nice story or dungeon made around it.
(In fact, regarding epic stuff, a friend of mine tried to lure me into his guild by offering me a place in his MC-Group, every Cenarion piece would be mine since all their druids are full and they even have MC on 4 hours-farm-status now...but i had to be there every Wednesday, and damn... i cant promise that)

I fully understand the need for raids and the grind, what i not understand is why most development resources for a whole year only have been spent for raids. I know that they found the endgame lacking when the game was released and focused on that, and Ducki you are right when you say that that takes time and some of that stuff is in development until now, but still... there are a lot of things that they could have done different even with limited dev force. Its not only "we cannot", its also "we want not" in my eyes.

For example Darkmoon... from the description i hoped for a few interesting quests there, but its mostly "kill or craft for tickets", or Silithus revamp... they said they make something for soloers there, but in the end you still needed a raid group for some encounters.
Or now, Ahn Quirai... would it have been a problem to make the AQ20 Ruins a five man instead?, i mean theres still AQ40. And even the 40-man could have been done in "wings" like Dire Maul and the Monastery so a lot of the "i play a lot but not in long streaks" ppl would have had something.
And when they have a team for so many different things, why not an additional team for new quests? They surely have enough money to do that. And quests are easier done than dungeons.

I think a handful of new STORY-questlines, and one new 5man would have been enough to quench the thirst of most casual gamers. And they would have had a chance to make the gap between blue and epic equipment smaller, PvP is currently unfair because Tier2-People having a huge advantage. This is bad if PvP is meant to be content for casuals or non-raiders. (but i have to admit, im not into pvp in wow, im just saying what i read somewhere, but i believe its true)

Well i sense im sounding angry, altough im not... im just dissapointed because there is a game i like a lot and altough there is more and more new content, almost nothing of it is accessible for me because of personal restrictions and i watch the other kids playing with a new toy every other month and im stuck with the same stuff i got 2 years ago for x-mas.

I think i have to quit and come back in 9 months for the expansion.

PS: Guru, while there are more smaller instances than raid-dungeons, the last NEW small content was Dire Maul over a year ago. (and parts of Silithus, i forgot that) Thats what i meant, not the sheer amount of dungeons.

Whatever happened to their arena concept?

I seem to recall that you were supposed to be able to watch guilds battle it out in pvp from the stands.

I also recall you were supposed to be able to watch a group take on big monsters. "Buy a ticket" was Blizzards phrasing.

I know what you mean and i agree... for example if they really did AQ20 as AQ5, you may not give out reward better than MC, altough AQ is set as "higher difficulty". But im not sure its that black and white.

There was a pretty good post at the wow-boards concerning Item-Level of blue and purple items. Throughout the game, item-levels scale up with the encounters. There are a few lowlevel purples which are better than all other stuff for their level, but of course higher level blue stuff exists which is clearly better, because it has a higher item-level.

That post showed in a good way that this scaling went out of hand with the big instances. There are item-level 70+ purples out there (its clear, you need 40ppl for that), but no blues of that level, so you not only have the gap of having epic>blue, but also a lot of blues of higher item-level missing.

This is in my eyes the point where you can fit in rewards for smaller groups. Higher level blues. Currently there is still room for blues under the Molten Core level, but eventually, they will have to cross that bridge, at least with the expansion.

Im with you when you say its not easy... i even think that this dilemma is the main reason of raising the max level to 70 in the expansion. Those 10 levels allow for a lot of char progression regardless of itemization.

But to add another viewpoint... i would do a lot of things completely without reward, and im sure im not alone. Give me a nice storyline and a civil robe without stats as reward or a handful of gold and im happy too.

Yes, it will... except now (as of 1.10) you'll get gold so it won't so much... which is awesome because I definitely have very little to do if I don't get into my guild's nightly raid (which usually starts too early for my married-with-children self to get in on) and I don't want to waste time with a PUG taking 2-3 times as long to get through Strat or UBRS as I'm used to with guildmates on Ventrilo. In short, I think that WoW veered off course slightly but they're starting to right the ship. I was briefly tempted to start on one of the new "we've got brand-new hardware" servers opening this week but I'm not willing to give up my friends on Frostmane... so I created a new hunter last night. We'll see how long that lasts....

I think we need to look back to what the purpose of RPG's used to be.

The reason RPG's existed was to level the playing field between the skilled and lesser reflexed action game players. Stats, experience, and computer dice rolls allowed for casual players to be more than complete push overs because while reflexes still dominated, there effect on combat became a much smaller percentage.

Hence, those skilled in reflexes could use their smaller percentage advantage to accomplish difficult tasks at an earlier time point in the game. This doesnt mean that the casual gamers couldnt accomplish difficult tasks. They just needed to work on lesser challenges until their stats improved enough to make difficult challenges less frustrating.

The WoW 1-60 game accomplishes this balance between casual and hardcore. Difficult tasks have a wide range of levels in which to complete them. And while a skilled person can complete them solo and perhaps ahead of their intended time, a casual player can wait and/or complete them with cooperatively.

The problem at post 60 with WoW is that the game takes away all of the advantages of the casual gamer. Casual gamers are less likely to band together and they are less likely to be able to devote the minimum time requirements. Banding together is also more restrictive for the casual gamer post 60. The casual gamer cant level more to increase stats. In fact, the way to increase stats has been changed from gaining more experience to finding rarer equiptment. Also, this rarer equipment cannot be found in a collection of smaller bursts of time that would benefit both the casual and skilled player.

Hero classes and the expanded level cap will help alleviate some of these problems. However, I think the real solution is to break up the bigger instances into smaller hour long chunks. As a matter of fact, it is in Blizzards interest for replayability and longevity for them to have more, smaller dungeons that a new large dungeon every 3 months.

I don't really see how your formula hasn't been implemented. Blizzard seems to offer both options in this regard. You could do Onyxia, the Emarald Dragons, or the Demon in Blasted Lands quickly it just takes a lot of effort to get the 40 people together and strategy to take them down. Conversley you can now not only run MC, BWL, etc but also do a long quest chain involving mostly five man runs and soloable quests to get pretty good gear at 60. The same thing sort of applies to PVP everyone seems to complain that the rep decay makes it impossible for casual players to get good pvp rewards, well they implemented rep rewards that don't decay and yet people still want both.

Also there was a thread a while back where they stated they will be implementing more 5 man dungeons as well as 1 man instances independent of the expansion, they also just had a preview up of a large 5 man instance in the expansion. Further there are tons of quests to do solo until 60 and usually even well into 60. My mage just hit 60 and I never even did the quests in Feralas or Sillithus just off the top of my head. Beyond that if you still feel there is nothing to do for a casual start a character on the opposite faction, there is tons more content you haven't seen built for casual players on the other faction side.

What I would like to see is more varied types of things to do. For instance one thing that would be awesome is if they built upon the race track in Shimmering flats. Imagine being able to collect parts in the game world and build cars and race them and then have other players wager gold on the races. Expand the pvp Arena with tournaments that are held daily. Things like that are what I really want to see in the game, I think there is already tons of content for both casuals and raiders, and they have already stated they are making more for both.

Well, no, those were the successful side effects.

RPG's were created for a few things:

It was a natural extension from board games.

They hadnt figured out how to develop realtime controls for a party.

Home computers werent powerful enough to handle the tactics of large amounts of monsters working collectively. (remember early gold box games that had the computer take minutes to complete the moves of the enemy force?)

Most action games, at the time, played faster or slower depending on the speed of the computer, thus altering gameplay dramatically.

I consider myself a casual gamer.

While I do get 3 hours or so a night to play it is often not uninteruppted so I can not go on raid and stuff usually any more because what raid wants a guy that needs to go afk at the drop of a hat for 10 minutes because his kids are having trouble sleeping for example.

I think the problem with WoW is that it starts out great for the casual gamer but it starts to change in tone in the 50s.

So here you are doing your thing having a good time with small groups and suddenly you find yourself needing raids to do much more then you seen already. I think this problem is compounded by the fact blizzard is as fast as a galcier in putting out content.

While in some ways I agree with GG about PvP content being a good way to help I just think the RPG crowd is generally too social and the general misfits attracted to the PvP side seem to clash. Also add in the inherit disadvantage a casual player has over a hardcore player (levls and gear) and it can make the problem worse. At least with most FPS it comes down to 'skill' and you lost because your twtich skills where not as great as the other guy not because he had the bfg which you can only get after playing 500 hours with the help of 60 other people.

I sort of liked how DAoC did PvP where you could do it or not as you liked which is why I am looking forward to see the Warhammer online they are working on. I know WoW added battlegrounds but those always seemed about getting status points more than just playing and man can twinks at low levels with super enchants scew that those things.

I am waiting to see what direction the expansion takes the game and then I will decide for sure if it is the right direction for me. Until then though I cancelled my account yet again as for whatever reason my server is so unstable it makes playing painful and maybe by the expansion they can get it all fixed and working.

First of all if you are trying to come across with an antagonistic tone, you are succeeding.

Second, I dont need a source as I was there to experience all of these games first hand just as you were. And I might add as well that I spent a considerable amount of time with each of these games as Im sure you did. It doesnt make me right, but I do have an informed opinion.

Third, having not played a Gold Box game (Pools of Radiance, Champions of Krynn, Secret of the Silver Blades) will make it more difficult to understand what Im talking about. The origins of the Gold box series is Shard of Spring that came out after Wizardy but near the same time as Bard's Tale. These games are the foundation of any turned based tactical RPG. (Disgaea, Advance War, FF Tactics) The gameplay mechanics are still quite popular today. The only thing remotely close in gameplay mechanics to Wizardry and Bard's Tale today is the Pokemon games.

Fourth, Bard's Tale and Wizardy had absolutely no tactical coordination within the players group nor within the groups of enemies fought. They are much more transparent with their text based roots. My point still stands that stats, levels, and experience were created as a way to control a group without having to focus 100% attention on each member of the group. This in no way represents a cabal. It is in my opinion the natural progression of RPG's.

Argh, work time!