Casual vs. Hardcore - The Battle Rages in WoW

hose of us who read the WoW official forums know that there is an ongoing battle between casual and hardcore players. Both sides have their whiners, their nutcases and their normal debaters who keep the argument intelligible.

The argument is that World of Warcraft was designed for casual gamers yet the end-game is all hardcore content. Casual gamers argue that past level 60, you cannot progress without spending obscene amounts of time in instances, raids, or farming materials/drops for either the Darkmoon Faire (new addition to the age-old argument) or an epic recipe. Here is where the argument gets a little shady on the casual end - there are plenty of instances that can be 5-manned (thus reducing the strain of having to gather 10-15 people for a raid) in around 2 hours. Even casual gamers can set aside 2 hours out of their day/week to go do an instance.

Another "request" by casual gamers is to have solo instances. "Make them super-hard!" they say, and yet that defeats the purpose of an instance doesn't it? Sure, it could be fun cleaving through elites on your own and getting those blue items without all the hassle, but do you really think Blizzard will give solo players the same blue (or sometimes purple) items that they give for 5-15 man groups? If they did make solo instances where blue/purple items dropped, it would have to be so hard that it would weeks and weeks to get it down pat. But even that doesn't work, because there will always be a class that's better at soloing (Hunters come to mind) and will blow by the instance much faster then other classes who rely on support (Priests, Warlocks and Mages despite their abilities would get cut down in a second). There would be mass complaints that certain classes had it easier in the solo dungeons and would ask for a change. The only logical change would be to add class-specific dungeons. Now you're asking for nine NEW INSTANCES that benefit only 1 player at a time, but now they can be balanced for the class and even have quests tied to them. Sure, that could be an idea, but again you are asking for good items to be more obtainable, rather then complaining that a person who can't play 2-3 hours at a time can never get them.

Casual gamers' motto is that they don't want items easier, they just want to be able to work towards them in pieces, so that if it takes 10 hours to get 1 set piece through quests or whatever, they can do the quests in pieces to eventually get the item, which is a very fair and valid request. However, their arguments seem to point out that solo instances would solve this, but in reality it goes back to square one - you're trivializing itemization in other instances. If class-specific solo instances were released and were made brutally hard, there would AGAIN be complaints because certain talent specs could run the instances better then others. People would be "forced" to switch talents to do them. And even if the instances were extremely difficult, one person could finish it, write a small guide on how to do it, and then voila - the entire *insert class here* community can now farm this instance for the drops they need.

However, I won't only knock on casual gamers for making their stupid requests - the hardcore fans are a bit defensive too. When certain people make posts about new casual content, the answer they receive from some hardcore fans is that pure time investment = items, and that skill should not factor into the equation. Hardcore players' biggest weakness is that their "uber-leetness" comes from the fact they play the game for many hours a day, every day. No matter what, they will always be able to reach the highest content and get the best items. Hardcore gamers have to appreciate MMO's are paid for by the customers monthly (and I mean a year of WoW is around $150) and are played by lots of different age groups. Lots of kids, lots of teenagers and even lots of adults. Lots of adults are married, have children, a full-time job and then obligations at home, but still find time to play this game, and you have to sympathize with them. If they work to level 60, over the time they get in a year and then want to continue progressing, they find that they can't and it's been one big tease.

The new "casual" raid instance Zul'Gurub is being released next content patch, and hopefully when details around that are released the casual players can breathe a sigh of relief and enjoy a smile of satisfaction, but you still need 20 strong players to venture into the raid zone, but ZG does offer a easier lockout timer and epic drops, so even that casual player can once in a while raid and try for that epic set.

The biggest problem with the battle is that the people arguing often don't bother empathize with each other. Casual gamers want good items but don't realize that their hardcore counter-parts have to raid many hours a day for many days to reach that epic set, while the hardcore players who want the epics to only belong to those with the most time probably don't realize people who cannot play the game for extended periods of time are missing out on fantastic raid zones, such as Onyxia, Molten Core and soon to be Zul'Gurub and after level 60 have nothing to do.

My answer to the casual gamers is that they do have content which they can complete past level 60 for their rare class set (Magister's, Devout, etc..) without having to spend 10 hours in a raid zone. UBRS, Scholomance, Dire Maul and Stratholme are all instances you can complete 5-manned (though difficult with some more than others) and retrieve your set pieces after many runs through a variation of those listed above. A casual player can set aside 2-3 hours on the weekend to run an instance, and perhaps in the meantime collect materials for that epic/blue recipe (Be it Hide of the Wild, Belt of the Archmage, Arcanite Reaper, etc..) or even the PvP enthusiasts can log into a few games of Warsong Gulch when they got 30-60 minutes on their hands.

The fact of the matter is that there is casual content (heck, level 1-60 is as casual is it gets) in the form of the instances ranked lower then Molten Core and Onyxia, but the inclusion of "skill-testing difficulty" is barren in WoW. There is nothing that really challenges your skill as a player, as a team or as a raid group. There is minimal strategy in Molten Core, and once you find the small trick, you can farm Ragnaros endlessly. My only personal request is that there should be more content that challenges your skill and reflexes rather then your time committed.