What pretty much astounds me is the attitude of casual gamers who want to be quantified on the same platform as hardcore ones, am I the only person on earth who knows this thinking is utterly ridiculous?

The reason there is a divide between hardcore and casual is simple, MMORPG’s should be thought of at least somewhat as a virtual representation of a fantastical real world, where one phrase rings true; You get out what you put in. The fact of the matter is, that when trying to cater to as many potential customers as possible, you can never ever please everyone, it’s impossible.

I personally believe that people like Darren and other bloggers who have agreed to some degree have a skewed view of the situation because of how they perceive hardcore players to be, they see them as doing things like raiding hardcore for fun, when this just isn’t true in the majority.

Hardcore players set out to achieve, now you can consider this fun if you want, but that’s essentially what they do, it isn’t a case of them having too much time on their hands or not knowing better, but that they strive to accomplish the extreme highend content (please note how I didn’t use the word endgame) so that they know they have, some feel the need to boast, others just find it cool.

I think it’s amazing that casual gamers can sit there and say things like how they believe it is necessary to give both raiders (hardcore) and solo players (casual) the ability to gather exactly the same rewards but without difficulty, coordination and things like class-dependence, this idea about how to change raiding dynamic particularly struck me.

That is to say ‘50 people form up to kill a dragon to free the damsel (trite I know but oh well), where as 5 people form up to free the damsel from the dragon but so it via stealth. equal reward for the same goal different experience for the players. This can be tailored by gm , or even better give multiple options for the quest / raid based on number of players entering the instance …

WHAT? This way of thinking is incredible to me; I cannot fathom how people have to ability to consider how things like this would even begin to be fair, for two reasons:

First of all, I think you’re overestimating (and I realise this will come off as a self-burn) the capacity of understanding, or even the nobility of the minds of hardcore raiders. As mentioned earlier we/they do not raid for pure enjoyment after the first 2 or 3 runs when the raid will be deemed on “farm status” it is simply a matter of gear acquisition, and to a lesser extent, helping the Guild as a whole get geared to enable more progression. So, do you honestly think people who are focused on personal character progression as paramount, are gonna gather in 50man raids to get –exactly- what they would if they did it in a fraction of the time, with a fraction of the people and a fraction of the effort? No.

Secondly, if casuals got their way, you would do raids once or twice and have all the gear you’d need, then progress to the next and rinse and repeat, biggest problem with is? What then? This is where business and pleasure clash in the worst way, companies like Blizzard have one concern, to keep you paying, if raiding was edited in such a way as suggested above, content would be cleared in a heartbeat and people would quit. If there is no challenge, if there is nothing for anybody who wants to spend more than a couple hours every 2 nights on the game, what are they supposed to do?

The human condition of opportunism and self-preservation prevents this idea and ideas like it from working.

My other gripe is how everyone assumes there is something wrong with how raiding currently works, there isn’t! If you play WoW, you will realise that it is very easy to play casually and plenty of content for those who want to do so and still offer decent character development.

Through the use of normal 5man instances, Heroic instances (also 5man), and easier 10man raids like Karazhan (which with 2.1 received a huge nerf across the board directly implemented for people who complained like this), there is a –lot- of things a casual player can participate in without getting far behind at all in terms of strength. If you argue the point that you want to be able to enjoy all content in the game you play for, then you suffer from exactly the same condition that you hate in hardcore users don’t you? The addiction to achieve, the addiction to experience, the feeling of loss from not participating in every nook and cranny of a game’s content.

I don’t believe raiding is broken, I don’t believe it needs to be changed, this is just a textbook case of “Entitlement and the lazy rabbit.”, where individuals, minorities or even in some cases majorities want to tailor make something to their own wanting, disregarding how much it effects others. Even if it ends up making them exactly what they want to eliminate.

On a smaller note, what also worries me, is how this will change the development of future games, if these people get their way, what place is there for me and people like me?

Maybe there’s a middle-ground, that doesn’t rely on personality and opinion to achieve, or is this purely something that is the hearts and minds of each side of the fence?

I apologise if I offended, I’m still new to this, and I’m sorry if I took all those posts completely wrong and made this
into a hardcore vs casual deal, but this is my view.

What is more important more pertinent to my own gaming and own experience is the very unknown cultural and more appropriately sense of attitude between the different demographical and in this case, geographical positions of players throughout different versions and locality of games that MMO companies create. The reason this is something I consider “fresh” is that there are very few cases of cross-contamination of playergroups such as North Americans and Europeans and how personality impacts each other.

I’d say the most important buzz-word to keep in mind here is -Attitude- and I’d think many would be surprised just how different they are from simply going across the Atlantic. There is a clear difference between these players that I have noticed from primarily playing for many years on American versions, then recently moving over to European servers of the games I played due to time constraints and no longer being able to stay up past-1am just to get hold of some decent exp/raid groups or more importantly PVP action.

Americans are generally MUCH more laid back in their way of approaching things such as defeat in a raid or loss in PVP. I clearly remember how me and my Clan/Guild could laugh about how we fucked up and how there was a much more relaxed environment while trying to achieve objectives. This isn’t to say that there wasn’t anger however, especially when talking about Lineage 2 where defeat in things like PVP and PVE brought real tangible loss to your character or Clan, but for the most part was much better dealt with in my opinion. Europeans on the other hand would become extremely enraged and dwell on things, holding it against you or other members for future encounters, I didn’t believe this was a good way to go about it, as worrying about the past does not give enough benefits in the future to justify people focusing on it, this also was the source of many emoragequits leading to breakups of groups, Guilds, or even years-long friendships.

This isn’t absolute of course; there are separate climates in separate Guilds whichever continent or country they hail from, but this is what I have observed for the most part. Years of this has made me battlehardened towards European Guild Leaders/Officers, and indeed between different continental versions of a game, this causes me to alter my real-life by tending to lean toward North American versions of new games. Although I am English born and bred myself, I –love- being around Americans 1000x more than Europeans and even other British players, this isn’t to say I haven’t met great friends in these players but for the most part I am definitely inclined to attempting to meet more American players and join American Guilds (especially useful for region-free games) as opposed to others.

Being in Vent with Europeans is like being in Vent with the Gestapo, very little joking going on, very little laid back banter, all business, all Nazi, all the time. Fun was chastised by others who were obsessed with progressing. Recordings of Onyxia Wipes and such show this. The thing is, is that if this way of thinking achieved better results I could almost tolerate it. Some would argue that Guilds like Nihilum prove this theory to be true, but one gander at a video by them will show that they are an extremely relaxed Guild; considering how far ahead they are of all competition, despite how some of their members sacrifice their rl (some reports I have read of how Guild members have to rally together to pay the leaders real life bills is even a little too much for someone as hXc as me), shows that it is much better to make your members feel comfortable as opposed to forcing them to “focus” (= panic) to limit mistakes made and failures incurred.

The bottom line is, that although there are exceptions, this is what I have experienced in my 7-8yrs of MMO gaming, I would love for it to change to be more tailor made to how I enjoy these games, but I don’t see it happening in the forward-sight.

Comments are appreciated, if you think I’m completely wrong or completely right then let me know.

You probably worked most of this first paragraph out already but why not: I’m a 19yo guy living in Newcastle, England attending my 1st year of an Honours Degree in Games Science at University, I’m an avid hardcore PVP MMO gamer and love the community aspect of the games just as much as playing them, I’ll talk your face off about games and technology, hopefully using this blog as an outlet will save some of the people I know from going into a coma from being bombarded with my endless wisdom.

I’ve played games for as long as I can remember, but when I was around 12, a friend who I’d been working on a Forum Software project (oh look, more community!) mentioned how he’d been beta testing the Japanese version of a game called Ragnarok Online, and how the beta of the English version was about to hit, I took one look at the art and decided to sign up, I got into the Closed Beta and from that point on was addicted to the game, this is what opened the door to MMO’s for me. I must’ve played RO for 4yrs, and achieved the very pinnacle of the games content through a Guild I loved, including an invite to the US and World Ragnarok Online Championships before my age owned me. Shoutout to any current/ex-XGMR members! For those who know/knew the game, I was a Level 89 DEX/LUK Purecraft Blacksmith and a Level 99 STR/CON Blacksmith on iRO Loki, best time of my gaming life community wise.

I thought I’d spend forever in that game, but an invite to the first phase of the Closed Beta for Lineage II soon changed that when the graphics and more specifically artstyle -blew.me.away-, pretty much the same story as RO ensued and I played that for a further 3yrs, again, shoutout to any ex-RedKnights members from Bartz L2NA, I was a 79 Mystic Muse/78 Sagittarius, best time of my gaming life competition wise.

Currently I reside in World of Warcraft, (yeah, I know.) I had played for a few months last year during the Summer on the EU Version when I took a hiatus from L2 and managed to achieve Grand Marshal status on my Ret Pala by participating in premades with some friends who had come over with me, I sold that account and moved back to L2 shortly thereafter, then in February of this year, moved back to WoW, but this time the US Version, because I hate Europeans, where I currently play a 70 Undead Demonology Warlock and a 70 Blood Elf Protection Paladin on Skullcrusher, best time easywise ;x.

I also spent a stint in Dark Age of Camelot since the PVP system was incredible, my activity in that game was sparse and my actions not very noteworthy, but points to anyone who gets what the blogs address means!

You may be wondering why a Hardcore PVP Gamer such as myself didn’t mention any PVP in the aforementioned games, and that’s because the section you’re reading right now is dedicated to it! Yes, it’s true, I am a PVP whore, and I do hate carebears and can’t for the life of me understand people who play PVE-only MMO’s or who play games with PVP content who just want to PVE, but it’s worth mentioning a couple things:

When I first played RO through beta and for the first ~6 months there was no PVP content in the game whatsoever, I feel I should be let off for this as I didn’t know such a thing existed in the world at that point, until a “PVP Arena” was added in a patch where you could go for instanced PVP fun with no objectives/rewards, it took one trip of curiosity for me to know I was hooked, and from that point on, any PVE I did or character progression I participated in was purely to become more able in PVP, and that is the story of the birthing of the PVP God you see before you today.

Eventually War of Emperium got added to RO, where Guilds could lay Siege to castles to obtain them for rewards, and have to defend from other Guilds in a PVP blood bath every weekend and then twice weekly. This lead me into Castle Sieges in L2, which were –truly- spectacular, until you’ve experienced staring literally 1500+ attackers in the eye you don’t know what it feels like, then of course the standard BG’s/Arenas in WoW are what occupies most my time now, but I am guilty of PVEing quite a bit, since I still find it fun with friends.

PVP matters to me, and in MMO’s where it actually matters via game mechanics, it can be the biggest adrenaline rush and the biggest depression-induction all in one, victory tastes like honey, defeat tastes so so bitter.

Throughout all my MMO experiences I have either been a staff member or an extremely active user on at least one community-based fansite for each game I played.

I intend to elaborate on both PVP dynamics and my hatred of Europeans in future articles, as well as my views on communities within games very soon, so keep an eye out.