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The views and opinions expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of VGGEN.com as a whole or any of its affiliates. This is simply one writer's opinion, and should be accepted as such. Weekly World of Warcraft is usually updated each Tuesday.

Casual versus Hardcore

As Blizzard continues to release progressively more raid content to the WoW world, the self-proclaimed 'casual' players release exponentially more frustration onto the forums and blogs of the Internet. 'Blizzard is ignoring the majority of their player base in order to cater to a vocal minority of hardcore raiding guilds', or so the argument goes. I won't attempt to dispute this position. Blizzard is clearly favoring the raiding crowd with its releases. Those that choose not to raid are left with very little to do other than yet another grinding quest or the overly difficult, costly, and often tedious, 'Dungeon 2 Set' quests. This is clearly an issue that Blizzard needs to address in future content patches.

What I would like to dispute, however, is the notion that raid content is inaccessible to the casual crowd. The WoW community has seemingly divided itself into two distinct camps, the 'hardcore raiders' and the 'adult casuals'. I believe that this distinction is a myth that needs to be debunked.

The casual raiding guild

I believed the myth myself for a long time and didn't even attempt to get involved in a raiding guild on my first character. Inevitably, I ran out of attractive options for improving my character and I decided to reroll on a young server, determined to take the plunge into a Raiding guild just to see what all the hype was about.

Four months later, I hit 60 and applied to one of the larger PvE guilds on the server. That same week I was in Molten Core, level 42 green pants and all. I've been in the guild for a month now and I have never looked back. I have yet to spend more than 15 hours raiding in a given week (usually its less than 10), yet I slowly moved to the top of the DKP charts and have already looted several epics. I waste much less time in the game. All raids are planned beforehand. No painful LFG posts. No hopeless pick up groups. My guild is filled with like minded adults with jobs. We set hard stop times for our raids. People have to work in the morning and we respect that. There are no requirements for raid attendance, we are just expected to come when we can.

Perhaps I was just lucky to find the perfect guild, but I think my experience teaches a valuable lesson. Progressing in raid content doesn't mean giving up your life. We have never done more than 2 four hour MC raids in a single week and many people don't attend both. Yet we have steadily progressed through the instance and are going to take on Majordomo for the first time this week. We also do 20 man Zul Gurub runs one or two times per week and last night we made our first trip to Onyxia's Lair, and downed her on the first try.

Rereading that last paragraph, I can already hear the protest. 'Five raids in one week is not casual'. That is absolutely true, but very few players, if any, come to all 5 raids. Personally, I only attended two this week. One hour in Onyxia and four hours in one Zul Gurub run. The key to making this work is numbers. We have set a goal of 12 players per class for our guild. With 96 people, finding 20 to run Zul Gurub on any given night is not difficult. 

To be fair, we do have a number of players that are more hardcore than the rest. They are the glue that holds us together. They grind faction so we have enough fire resistance gear. They know the tactics of the bosses and they lead the raids. The rest of us contribute what we can, when we can. But even our hardcore players have lives. One of our main tanks has a made a point of excluding himself from playing during certain hours and we save a spot for him whenever possible.

The problem of loot

Another complaint often leveled against raiding guilds is the looting system that they use. Most guilds use a variation of the DKP system where each member in a raid earns a number of points based on raid participation. A poorly designed DKP system can make it all but impossible for a new or casual guild member to win any loot. A properly balanced system, however, can avoid these problems entirely. This isn't the place for a discussion of the various DKP systems, but I believe that a mature guild can easily find a system that assures all members will get good items in proportion to how often they come to raids.

Where do I sign up?

The caveat, of course, is that you have to actually find an appropriate guild on your server that needs your class, and then get them to accept you. Finding a guild can be very intimidating. Many guilds list a number of requirements for even being considered. High fire resistance, attunement to the various endgame instances, a certain level of gear and, often, having just the right spec to fill the role that you are expected to fill. Guilds with excessive requirements are probably not what you are looking for, but if you take the time to research how you can meet their requirements, you will often find that you aren't as far away as you think you are. However, in general, I recommend looking for guilds that are more interested in your personality than your gear or talent distribution.

If you can't find a good guild on your server then rerolling on a new server is a great way to get in on the ground floor. The new server transfer system opens up the possibility to join any guild in your region. Use the Blizzard forums to find a match. If all else fails, starting your own guild is always an option.

Myth: Busted

Looking back at the 'PvE progress' threads on my old server forum, I start to realize that many of the guilds there are probably quite similar to mine. They slowly but surely progress through the raid content. They don't drain your life away. I suspect that many people out there just believe the myth and become intimidated by the wall that seems to separate them from raiding. I say there is no wall. There are casual raiding guilds. Give them a chance. Raiding in a casual, friendly environment with other adults can be one of the most rewarding parts of the game. Its a great rush the first time you take down a new boss, but its also fun to laugh at the number of new ways we find to wipe on trash mobs. And, as much as I hate to admit it, its very satisfying when some lowbie is drooling over my shiny new epics!

Posted: 07/31/2006

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