Are you pleased with this content tier?

[Ratman_tf]

In my infinite wisdom and awesomeness, I usually put raiders into 3 tiers.

Casual: OMG! let's run Naxx 10 tonight! Do we need a tank for that? 

Serious: Naxx 25 is wednesday. Everyone be on time and ready to raid.

Hardcore:

[Merusk]

The difference IS skill. They put more time in, of course they're going to be better than you. Someone who treats this as a game and not a commitment doesn't want to spend hours poring over DPS spreadsheets and gear lists and raid compositions and cranking out perfect rotations, and so on, and I agree with them. The game is so much more fun when you can play it as you want to and not because you feel like it's an obligation.

Isn't it the people who pour over DPS spreadsheets and gear lists and raid compositions who are now complaining that WotLK is too easy?

Most of them, yes.

I've done insane shit like build my own spreadsheets to try and optimize things for my own character or our particular raid but I don't find myself bored.

Than again, I've never dedicated more than a few hours of time to the above, and I enjoy playing alts. I also don't care enough about "TEH PURPLEZ" to endlessly run every heroic I can every day after hitting 80 before moving into raiding and grinding bosses week after week.  I'm probably an outlier.. too hardcore to be casual, too casual to be hardcore.

Or rather.. I'm Ratman's definition of "Serious"

[bhodi]

I'm also between "Serious" and "Hardcore". I like my raiding and I like helping others achieve and downing new content. I have no patience for pug shit and I don't run heroics endlessly. I have a 80 priest and rogue and am working on a mage. I do level up alts when bored. I surf EJ every patch to see what's up. I am an addons addict. My fishing is at 430. I'm working on getting fish fests for the raid :)

That said, I only raid mon, wed, and sometimes tues. I tend to log in before work to do the cooking daily every day.

I'm happy with the content pace; we've only got sarth+2 and sarth+3 left and will probably complete at least sarth+2 before uldar.

[Ingmar]

The difference IS skill. They put more time in, of course they're going to be better than you. Someone who treats this as a game and not a commitment doesn't want to spend hours poring over DPS spreadsheets and gear lists and raid compositions and cranking out perfect rotations, and so on, and I agree with them. The game is so much more fun when you can play it as you want to and not because you feel like it's an obligation.

Isn't it the people who pour over DPS spreadsheets and gear lists and raid compositions who are now complaining that WotLK is too easy?

Not entirely, I mean, I do that stuff, and I am finding things plenty entertaining and/or challenging. But the difference may be that I play with people who mostly *don't* do that, and it doesn't bother me.

[Soln]

In other news, where did Phunked go?   

[kildorn]

The difference IS skill. They put more time in, of course they're going to be better than you. Someone who treats this as a game and not a commitment doesn't want to spend hours poring over DPS spreadsheets and gear lists and raid compositions and cranking out perfect rotations, and so on, and I agree with them. The game is so much more fun when you can play it as you want to and not because you feel like it's an obligation.

Isn't it the people who pour over DPS spreadsheets and gear lists and raid compositions who are now complaining that WotLK is too easy?

Not entirely, I mean, I do that stuff, and I am finding things plenty entertaining and/or challenging. But the difference may be that I play with people who mostly *don't* do that, and it doesn't bother me.

*respecs elemental again*

[Koyasha]

Did that post imply that if you actually zone into a raid instance with a goal of downing raid bosses, you're hardcore?

And casual can't cope with wipes?

Because, uh, I've never seen a casual guild splinter due to chain wiping on a boss in BWL, but I've seen TONS of hardcore guilds bleed members due to banging their head on progression content.

Unless, you know, I'm secretly in a hardcore raiding guild and we just Pretend.

Most all casual guilds I've seen die slow deaths as the people that want to succeed and give a damn are slowly picked off by larger raiding guilds.  Every time they start to have some success, a few more members leave.  A few dedicated officers live a miserable existence trying to get these people ready for raiding only to have their best members leave because the rest of the people just aren't getting with the program and taking it seriously, which starts the cycle all over again.  Eventually they get burnt out on the game and quit entirely.

In my infinite wisdom and awesomeness, I usually put raiders into 3 tiers.

Casual: OMG! let's run Naxx 10 tonight! Do we need a tank for that? 

Serious: Naxx 25 is wednesday. Everyone be on time and ready to raid.

Hardcore:

I think the problem people have understanding my definition is that Hardcore = Serious to me, and the image describing Ratman's definition of Hardcore is where I place the people who play ridiculous amounts of time, but suck, therefore causing them to spend even more time trying to beat the content, bitching and moaning all the way.  They're the ones that spend two or three hours on each wing of Naxx, extending the entire dungeon over four days, then take another day at Malygos and another day at Obsidian Sanctum, beating it only because they spend ridiculous amounts of time on it.

I probably define these terms differently than most, since many see "hardcore" as a negative term.  It sounds as though Bhodi, Merusk, Paelos, and probably Kildorn fit with my definition of hardcore.

Edit: Definitions aside, my point that time invested isn't (and rarely has been) what separates the raiders that get shit done and blow through new content from the scrubs that struggle through even the simplest of raids still stands.  Whether "hardcore" or "serious," the people who go in prepared and intending to get shit done get it done, even if they're undergeared compared to the people who don't put any focus or effort into it.  Skill is learning from your mistakes and not repeating them, and it will make up for deficits in sheer equipment, to a degree.

[Nevermore]

Most all casual guilds I've seen die slow deaths as the people that want to succeed and give a damn are slowly picked off by larger raiding guilds.  Every time they start to have some success, a few more members leave.  A few dedicated officers live a miserable existence trying to get these people ready for raiding only to have their best members leave because the rest of the people just aren't getting with the program and taking it seriously, which starts the cycle all over again.  Eventually they get burnt out on the game and quit entirely.

I guess that explains why the pretty casual guild I'm in, which has been around for 4+ years, is now larger than ever and thriving.  It also explains why our GM is living such a miserable existence.  I should mail him a box of cookies, to cheer the poor boy up.

[kildorn]

Any guild will lose members if their primary focus in the game isn't being fulfilled.

Hardcore raid guild: if you keep wiping on a boss for a month, you will lose players, either to a splinter guild or people hopping. Guild hopping to progress isn't a casual phenomenon, it's really really common in the world that is top of the server guild progression. If you have a top 5 player in a top 20 guild, he's probably going to jump unless he's stuck trying to sleep with That One Girl Who Talks On Vent(tm)

If a casual guild is trying to be a progression guild or recruited progression oriented people (and not enough to progress) they may leave. But for the most part what makes the guild casual is that it really as a whole doesn't give a fuck. The goal of the guild was to have people to hang out and do shit with, not be the best at the game. So if that shit is wiping on a boss, they'll either do it, or go do something they know they can beat.

Failure to progress isn't the death knell of a casual guild. It is the death knell of the hardcore guild that isn't already top 5.

[Koyasha]

It doesn't, unfortunately, explain why people take generalizations that tend to hold true overall, and apply them to specific exceptions as though such exceptions invalidate a statement that is, overall, relatively accurate.

Most casual guilds that attempt to do a little light raiding will have varying levels of the problems I described, depending on how many of their members want to go in and get things done once in a while, even if they don't do it every week or that often, and how many want to see the raids and get the loot without really focusing.  Generally the latter outweighs the former.  The former grows dissatisfied and 'moves up' to a bigger guild, where they're also usually dissatisfied because at that point they're raiding more than they'd like to.  Rare is the guild in which the larger number of members want to raid only occasionally from time to time, while taking it seriously enough to do well when they do it.

Casual guilds that truly don't give a shit, but just raid for kicks usually don't get very far, but don't suffer for it either.  These tend to also be pretty rare though, because most people want the shiney that comes with winning.

[kildorn]

Oddly, I find those all the time, and I also find formed to be hardcore raid guild ones where:

"grows dissatisfied and 'moves up' to a bigger guild, where they're also usually dissatisfied"

Describes their constant churn of players.

But here's what it all boils down to: Confirmation Bias. Do you join raid guilds or casual guilds? Which segment of players do you spend most of your time befriending? That's probably the crew you most see the beliefs of.

My old job in an actual *gasp* 40 man hardcore raiding guild was the effective morale officer. Anyone has a complaint, I'll listen and talk you through it. I knew every player's drama, knew who was going to quit, who didn't like who and for what reasons, and had to motivate people to focus or try another guild. Hardcore guilds have a ton of player churn. Because the top 5% of your players want people who are playing at their level, and will likely get fed up and leave, even if the other 95% aren't even remotely casual or unfocused. Because they can get Better shiny objects by switching up to another guild.

What I'm saying is that your generalization doesn't tend to hold true overall, and isn't overall relatively accurate. Player churn is a little bell curve. The most casual of guilds will have low churn, they don't give a flying fuck about epics. The most hardcore will have little churn, because they HAVE all the epics. That big mess of casual and hardcore guilds in the middle? They'll have a lot of churn as people move around trying to find a bunch of like minded people at the same performance level as themselves or with the same goals as themselves.

[Nevermore]

It doesn't, unfortunately, explain why people take generalizations that tend to hold true overall ^{[citation needed]}, and apply them to specific exceptions as though such exceptions invalidate a statement that is, overall, relatively accurate.

I'm very curious to see the methodology you used to come to your conclusion.  Because from where I'm sitting, your generalizations look as anecdotal as mine.

[Paelos]

Certainly finding people with similar goals will make a huge difference on your overall raiding experience.

My example was that I led a Black Temple raid with people who fancied themselves to be hardcore. They annoyed me to no end with the loot bickering, the rule complaints, and group composition slap fights. It made raiding a fucking chore, and the sad part was that I knew for a fact many of them sucked and couldn't get the job done even with their high-and-mighty attitude.

So, I backed off that run, and let them reform in TBC. I waited two weeks and opened up a new run of my own with a bunch of people from the raiding alliance that I didn't know anywhere near as well. They were behind the leveling curve, they didn't give as much of a crap over loot stuff, and they just wanted to see the content. Shockingly, it's the most fun I've ever had in a run, and we've cleared out everything but Malygos 25. This has to do some with the entry-level ease of the content, but a lot to do with the fact that I'm running a group of 40 casual folks in 25 slots. We do rotations when we need to, but it all works out running 4 days a week. People take breaks, they enjoy the time they are there, and they play well. It's been very refreshing from the old style of "25 static people who must be there every raid, and oh fuck where's our healer today, FUCK"

[Ingmar]

A lot of this has to do with how guilds form in the first place. A *lot* of casual guilds are groups of people who already know each other and have social ties keeping them together beyond just 'we play WoW together'. These guilds simply do not break up over progression issues for the most part, and frankly I would wager that more guilds than not are of this type.

[Rasix]

Most all casual guilds I've seen die slow deaths as the people that want to succeed and give a damn are slowly picked off by larger raiding guilds.  Every time they start to have some success, a few more members leave.  A few dedicated officers live a miserable existence trying to get these people ready for raiding only to have their best members leave because the rest of the people just aren't getting with the program and taking it seriously, which starts the cycle all over again.  Eventually they get burnt out on the game and quit entirely.

Casual guilds that I've been in and see die have died from internal personal conflicts.  Casual guilds are not raiding guilds, and when the start to define themselves as raiding guilds or when one officer sees them as a raiding guild and another does not; bad things happen.  Casual guilds have turnover when a personal relationship becomes less important than advancement.  This happens in raiding guilds also.  You can develop the same type of bonds anywhere, but a casual guild may hold on to a serious raider a lot longer than if that raider was in a lower tier guild looking to go to a higher tier one.

Casual guilds that die due to raiding, die because they simply cannot field the numbers to do it and the majority of what's left sees it as a priority.  And they got to this point  because officer Tim called officer Jenny a fat whore and Jenny left with half the guild.

Edit: Definitions aside, my point that time invested isn't (and rarely has been) what separates the raiders that get shit done and blow through new content from the scrubs that struggle through even the simplest of raids still stands. 

It is. A serious raiding guild gets a consistent time commitment and investment from everyone even if it's only a few hours for few nights a week.  You can do a lot when someone's ability to be in a guild is closely tied to their ability to be online and ready to go at 7pm on the nights you want them to be.  Largely casual guilds cannot do this.  People take weeks off. People join that cannot even attend the normal raid times. People just some times log in without their priority being raiding and often may end up raiding when they had no expectation to that night.  People get called into a fight they've never done often with gear/spec that is probably insufficient for the fight, because the goal of the person running the raid is merely to keep the raid going even when they'd rather not. 

I've seen my guild go into advancement mode a few times this expansion.  The obvious bads sit, the group composition stays the same, and they actually tend to pick and choose the group composition.  It's usually knocked out within a session or two.  The guild would not survive in this environment.

[Ratman_tf]

A lot of this has to do with how guilds form in the first place. A *lot* of casual guilds are groups of people who already know each other and have social ties keeping them together beyond just 'we play WoW together'. These guilds simply do not break up over progression issues for the most part, and frankly I would wager that more guilds than not are of this type.

My guild is based off a message board comunity. We have just about every type of player in the guild, and a sizeable group that makes up the core raider segment. We've beaten Malygos and are working on Sarth+2 now.

It's been pretty refreshing to be in a guild that doesn't require attendance for raids, and yet we have the co-ordination and 'skill' to get the bosses down. The vast majority of our raiders are totally cool, low drama, high energy/fun people.

And we have a tabard! 

[Azuredream]

It doesn't, unfortunately, explain why people take generalizations that tend to hold true overall, and apply them to specific exceptions as though such exceptions invalidate a statement that is, overall, relatively accurate.

Most casual guilds that attempt to do a little light raiding will have varying levels of the problems I described, depending on how many of their members want to go in and get things done once in a while, even if they don't do it every week or that often, and how many want to see the raids and get the loot without really focusing.  Generally the latter outweighs the former.  The former grows dissatisfied and 'moves up' to a bigger guild, where they're also usually dissatisfied because at that point they're raiding more than they'd like to.  Rare is the guild in which the larger number of members want to raid only occasionally from time to time, while taking it seriously enough to do well when they do it.

Casual guilds that truly don't give a shit, but just raid for kicks usually don't get very far, but don't suffer for it either.  These tend to also be pretty rare though, because most people want the shiney that comes with winning.

It was already covered but if a social guild is dying from lack of advancement it's because there's mixed goals in the leadership. Guilds that raid for fun are not rare, I don't know where you got that impression.

[Azazel]

To summarize for those who don't want to read it all:

I have never known the touch of a woman

I concur. 

I was going to type a reply in your vein, but yours is much better. Bravo, sir!

[Zetor]

It doesn't, unfortunately, explain why people take generalizations that tend to hold true overall, and apply them to specific exceptions as though such exceptions invalidate a statement that is, overall, relatively accurate.

Most casual guilds that attempt to do a little light raiding will have varying levels of the problems I described, depending on how many of their members want to go in and get things done once in a while, even if they don't do it every week or that often, and how many want to see the raids and get the loot without really focusing.  Generally the latter outweighs the former.  The former grows dissatisfied and 'moves up' to a bigger guild, where they're also usually dissatisfied because at that point they're raiding more than they'd like to.  Rare is the guild in which the larger number of members want to raid only occasionally from time to time, while taking it seriously enough to do well when they do it.

Casual guilds that truly don't give a shit, but just raid for kicks usually don't get very far, but don't suffer for it either.  These tend to also be pretty rare though, because most people want the shiney that comes with winning.

You're underestimating the number of guilds that don't raid at all [except for maybe pug archavon etc], even with the WOTLK barrier-of-entry to raiding as low as it is. They're easy to miss though, since people in those guilds tend to only log in a couple times a week / are still leveling to 80 / are leveling alts / play battlegrounds all day / etc...

Not raiding != scrub guild either.


-- Z.

[Koyasha]

Oh no, I haven't been missing the ones that don't try to raid at all, I just didn't consider them part of the discussion since it was pretty much focused on raiding.  There's definitely a huge number of guilds that don't try to raid, perhaps equal or greater to the number that do.

I think Rasix hit a key point I wasn't really thinking about and that being that my thoughts of time invested went only along the lines of quantity of time, not considering that term might also cover consistency.  Consistency is definitely a big thing in a guild that doesn't have 2.5 to 3 times the number of members as needed for a raid, since if a person is missing, that means a big hole in the standard raid lineup.  It's still not usually what people mean in general when they say that hardcore raiders' main advantage is time invested.

With that in mind, I'd say that probably makes as much difference as any of the other things I mentioned, probably the most.  Simple consistency, showing up and getting things done at an appointed time, as well as recognizing and correcting errors.  So, in order what makes the difference would be, consistency, recognizing and correcting errors, and focusing entirelyon the task at hand.  It's still a far cry from the general concept of 'they can do it because they spend 4x the amount of time at it' that seems to prevail when the topic is initially considered, and which is the main thing I wanted to argue against.

[Azuredream]

It's still a far cry from the general concept of 'they can do it because they spend 4x the amount of time at it' that seems to prevail when the topic is initially considered, and which is the main thing I wanted to argue against.

Does anyone here think the 'hardcore' players suck but only win through time invested? Whose general concept is this?

[Koyasha]

Yes, apparently someone does.

The assumption that what separates the "hardcore" from the "casual" is *skill*

My consistent experience in all MMO's is that 80% of the hardcore "skill" comes from augmented abilities/spells/stats that are the result of time (i.e. loot) and definitely not the skill of the individual player.  Extra marks of course go for organization and teamwork... but that is a matter of good leadership and following orders - not what I would precisely call, skill.  If I could screen for leadership and following abilities I could rule the MMO world.

While he goes on to admit there is organization and teamwork involved, he attributes "80%" of the difference between hardcore and casual to gear, when this is simply not the case.

[Azuredream]

Yes, apparently someone does.

The assumption that what separates the "hardcore" from the "casual" is *skill*

My consistent experience in all MMO's is that 80% of the hardcore "skill" comes from augmented abilities/spells/stats that are the result of time (i.e. loot) and definitely not the skill of the individual player.  Extra marks of course go for organization and teamwork... but that is a matter of good leadership and following orders - not what I would precisely call, skill.  If I could screen for leadership and following abilities I could rule the MMO world.

While he goes on to admit there is organization and teamwork involved, he attributes "80%" of the difference between hardcore and casual to gear, when this is simply not the case.

He didn't say hardcore players suck. He said casual players don't suck. There's a difference.

[March]

Yes, apparently someone does.

The assumption that what separates the "hardcore" from the "casual" is *skill*

My consistent experience in all MMO's is that 80% of the hardcore "skill" comes from augmented abilities/spells/stats that are the result of time (i.e. loot) and definitely not the skill of the individual player.  Extra marks of course go for organization and teamwork... but that is a matter of good leadership and following orders - not what I would precisely call, skill.  If I could screen for leadership and following abilities I could rule the MMO world.

While he goes on to admit there is organization and teamwork involved, he attributes "80%" of the difference between hardcore and casual to gear, when this is simply not the case.

He didn't say hardcore players suck. He said casual players don't suck. There's a difference.

Exactly, his main point is that Organization (leadership/followship) is the key to the MMO world (note his overblown rhetorical flourish of "ruling the MMO world") -- what Rasix above noted as Consistency.

That content is gated by loot (in the form of statistical enhancements to the character) is sometimes miss-represented (or overstated) as Skill.

As Azure notes, it is not a rehash of skill vs. no-skill or that raiders suck, just that the new expansion has a much more accessible phasing of content that seems to benefit all - and exposes more of the "scrubs" as viable players.

At least, that's what I think he's saying, his posts are very muddled.

[Koyasha]

I never really thought you were saying the hardcore suck (I was being a little snarky when I replied yes up there), but maintaining that most of the difference is in the gear is still wrong in my opinion.

Having had it pointed out to me, I'm going to say most of the difference is in the consistency of their raiding, as well as in the group organization and better recognition of mistakes, and fixing them quickly. 

It's easy to think it's gear because they usually do have better gear, since they gear up quickly because they don't spend much of any time failing.  But in the cases where they don't have better gear, it's clearly noticeable.  I'll say it again, the quest blues and such that casuals go into raids with these days are superior to the stuff the really hardcore raiders used when they powerleveled to 80 and cleared all the Lich King raid content within 2 days of expansion release.  A lot of people spend time at 80 once they get there looking up quests on wowhead and the like to find the gear upgrades, doing those quests, and end up better outfitted than the early raiders that got the world firsts in the opening days of the expansion.  They succeeded immediately because they knew what they were doing, and they executed perfectly, which made up for the gear difference.

You can take a level 80 that just got there, with whatever quest gear they managed to gather while leveling, put them in a raid, and have them succeed.  But that person and everyone in that raid needs to be really good, and be capable of adjusting for the lower level of gear in order for that to work.  The margin of error, basically, is nearly nonexistent.  When someone misses a heal and the tank doesn't die, that's gear providing a margin of error, and when someone fails to decurse/dispel/get out of the fire instantly, that's gear providing a margin of error when they survive.  But if nobody misses a heal and everyone does react precisely right, the extra margin of error that gear provides isn't needed.  That's the level of execution and skill that's needed in order to take down content without better gear.

Thott said years ago in reference to Luclin-era raids that they are exercises in error control.  That's still true these days.  If nobody makes a mistake, you will succeed.  If somebody makes a mistake, you might still succeed, if your gear is good enough to give you a margin of error.

[Sjofn]

Most all casual guilds I've seen die slow deaths as the people that want to succeed and give a damn are slowly picked off by larger raiding guilds.  Every time they start to have some success, a few more members leave.  A few dedicated officers live a miserable existence trying to get these people ready for raiding only to have their best members leave because the rest of the people just aren't getting with the program and taking it seriously, which starts the cycle all over again.  Eventually they get burnt out on the game and quit entirely.

I guess that explains why the pretty casual guild I'm in, which has been around for 4+ years, is now larger than ever and thriving.  It also explains why our GM is living such a miserable existence.  I should mail him a box of cookies, to cheer the poor boy up.

He's only so miserable because he's married to me, and my obsession with vault cleanliness gets him down. 


EDIT: As an aside, our guild is totally weird about when we suck and when we don't. Three wipes on motherfuckin' Gothik when we've NEVER WIPED ON HIM BEFORE? Sure! Same group one shots 4H? Indeedy! People failing to an amazing degree on Heigan? Yep. One try to get Sapphiron down the first time we see him as a raid? SURE THING.

[Lantyssa]

Your weird success rate just matches the nature of the guild's personalities.

[K9]

uh... how can you wipe on Gothik? He's up there with Noth and Loatheb in the category of bosses that I've never seen a wipe on, can't even remember anyone dying on them even really Oo

[Merusk]

Lag, keyboard turners, people who don't know what the fucking cleanse button is, DPS is split too unevenly, clueless DPS who nukes the wrong shit.

There's all kinds of ways. I've done almost all of them in one 25-man PUG or another.

[Rasix]

Lag, keyboard turners, people who don't know what the fucking cleanse button is.

There's all kinds of ways. I've done almost all of them in one 25-man PUG or another.

We've got a keyboard turning druid tank.  I fake diarrhea whenever I get invite to a run he's tanking. I think the dude might be slow in general though, he's the only tank I know where people are constantly thread capped on him.

Ohh, and bad tanks can cause wipes on Gothik.  Failing to aggro spawns before they rip through a cloth wearer can make things dicey. 

[DLRiley]

I wanted my first post in the wow subpost to be cool but Paelos, and a few other guys are saying what i was about to say for me, so i'm grabbing popcorn. 

[Ingmar]

The main issue was finding a good dps split, pretty much my fault as the raid leader.

[Sjofn]

Keyboard turning is really not that big a fucking deal in PvE. I'm one of the keyboard turners in our guild. I'm also never, EVER dead at the end of Heigan.


EDIT: PvP is different, I fully cop to it hurting me there, but PvE? Keyboard turning is fine!

[Fordel]

I bet you click too, dirty clicker! 

[Sjofn]

Anything past 5 on my quickbar, I totally click. 

Imagine how awesome I would be if I wasn't a scrub!