Azelma wrote:
I don't think it's complete bullshit. People who don't have time to play will get less enjoyment if they are unable to get into raids or clear raid instances because they are "too hard" or their casual-ness prevents them from getting gear.
It's bullshit for the following reasons:
1. The instances are not "too hard" for any person of nearly normal intelligence.
2. Enjoyment is defined by the journey and not the ultimate, final goal.
3. It's never been easier or less time-intensive to get gear.
4. In the history of video gaming, or gaming in general, total completion has never been a condition for a well-designed game.
No one ever said Super Mario Bros., or Goldeneye, or Final Fantasy, or Diablo, or any other game, ever, was flawed because most players who played it never saw the ending.
That condition is unique to WoW because of how insanely seriously some people take this game, and a younger generation of gamers who have no character.
Azelma wrote:
That was one of Blizzard's big things, is that people couldn't see all the content.
Casuals are the bread and butter of Blizzard's revenue model, and so many decisions have been geared towards them.
And they were stupid and wrong because that's never been a criteria of making a good game, the means they pursued towards this end reduced WoW's appeal, and what made WoW great and casual-friendly wasn't the raids but the world environment.
Total access doesn't appeal to casuals. It appeals to hardcore bads who take the game so seriously they can't handle the thought they're not as good as they would like to think, and take the game so personally they can't adapt or adjust.
Azelma wrote:
TFD ---> Casuals. Log on for a bit, queue up, do your dungeon for the day, log off.
Hell, PvP is for casuals to the extreme - with bots for BGs, you don't need to play that much at all.
The only people who do what you describe are hardcore bads who play for gear and regard the game as basically a second job. They're hardcore bads, not casuals.
Why else would someone sit through LFD queues, through the tedium and social pathology of LFD, then log off once they've gotten their pixels? Clearly, nothing about the activity itself is inherently fun, these people just want pixels so they can pretend to be cool in the virtual world. And that's as hardcore as it gets.