The Hardcore Casual

Move past Classic to open more content. This creates content tiers and opens the world up for the casual raiders of the world. Everybody wins. (my froooooogggggssss though!)

I'm on LJ, play maybe 2 hours per day, and have downed every raid target in classic. I'm casually hardcore. Not a hardcore casual.

The game appeals to any play-style. You'll find your fit. I'd recommend Lockjaw though, just to get away from the poison on Ragefire. Worked for me - I'm having a ton more fun than my time on RF.

I am pretty much in the exact same place OP - While I have had quite a bit of playtime over the summer (I was a school teacher, till I quit this last May) I am about to start a new job that is going to take a ton of my time. On top of that I have a baby due Sept 5th and I know that will take up the rest of my free time.

So right now I am in limbo. Being in Faceless on LJ my raid attendance has dropped to 20% because of these new obligations and I suspect it will only get worse come September. Now I sit here trying to decide if I should stay with Faceless where I can pretty much raid whenever I want, but have to deal with all the negative repercussions of not raiding much in the "uber" guild mentality game, or I could leave and join a smaller guild such as DHS or Free Masons and perhaps help those guilds build a stronger force for raiding and be able to do that on my time without the pressure of a multi text batphone going off every other hour. Not to mention the fact that raids go off so often that even if you make 1-2 raids a day, your raid attendance is still gonna be like 25% - which is pretty ridiculous to punish people who cannot wake up at all hours of the night and also get on at all hours of the day. Then again, I guess, to some extent, that is Everquest, and while I used to be the hardcore person who did all that - I am no longer that person and never will be. I love Everquest as much as anyone, but life has a way of making the hardcore into casuals and doing it pretty dang quick. Though, as with everything, the trade off is you just won't get as many opportunities to raid in a smaller guild - so what is the best fit?

I definitely like DBG's new stance on raid rotations. The fact that now guilds such as Free Masons, MiM, and DHS have a shot at mobs makes the server have a lot more options for guilds to join. Besides, I was in EoE 3 different times on Vulak and all 3 times I eventually quit. Not cause I hated EoE, or the people in it, but I very much dislike steamrolling guilds. I like smaller guilds that really have to work for the kills. Killing something in DHS is a huge accomplishment that all members of that guild should feel great about because they really worked for that kill with their limited playtime and membership base and by contrast killing something in Faceless is about as emotionless as it can possibly get and without emotion the game is just boring to me.

I guess we will see what happens after transfers this week and where the dust settles.

Personally I just stopped playing. Keep watch and provide input on the instancing debate every one and awhile.

Maybe TLP v 4.0 will be a server for people who have moved on from 24/7 availability, DPS race, guild vs guild play.

Maybe.

I have experience with both guilds (TL & Faceless). Faceless would get destroyed by TL hands down.

The officers in TL are so far and away better than Faceless its not even a contest. The average skill level in TL is at least 2 standard deviations above the average Faceless player.

Faceless had no real competition on Lockjaw and it shows in the way they do things.

I am just teasing but when someone posts a thread claiming they are Hardcore Casual (which encompasses a lot of people by the way), the dude up further can't go around saying "Lockjaw guilds are far more casual" without us shooting him down immediately and giving some factual information of the raiding environment on Lockjaw.

Aneuren,
A lot of people in all top raiding guilds have jobs. That doesn't disqualify you from loot or raiding at all. Some people even have some pretty demanding jobs like police officers (many examples but this one comes to mind) that can't and shouldn't wake up for batphones at night or during the work day (our police officers need their sleep!). The person who I am actually referencing is actually a very hardcore member that just can't answer to batphones 24/7. Even in his situation which gives him a 39% attendance in the last 30 days, him and his group of RL friends have been a very important part of our guild and has contributed a lot to take down the targets we have taken down. He has been awarded drops from Naggy and Inny plus multiple sky items. I am basing these items on our raid attendance tracker. There are plenty of items to go around so don't think just because you have a job, that disqualifies you from items or from being in a guild currently clearing content.

Kobra: I hope that intended as satire... Not saying they're unskillled but that delivery is just... Not the way to do it if you're being serious..

Man, you pretty much nailed my situation as well, i'm almost at bottom of my guild's dkp points. and instancing would be so awesome. It was so much fun taking down Inny for the first time ever (for me) but I had to take the whole day off work just to be there, but everyone should be able to experience that content on their own schedule I think. Maybe if they put them on fixed timer's 12 hour spawns from death, that double and maybe triples the amount of spawns tho so doubt they will do that. Even tho if all the guilds that have applied for rotation make it in buy killing naggy which im sure a couple of them will there will be 8 guilds in rotation instead of 4 so if they doubled spawn times and fixed them at 12 hours there would be the same kill rate for each guild (1 boss per day)

This still misses the point. You aren't wrong but it isn't what the OP said. He said it isn't efficient. And he's right. Instanced content is far more efficient than non-instanced content. I didn't take any swipes at any people who have jobs. I know full well both sides of the coin. But somebody that can only be a 20% raider in a guild like TL on a server without instanced content could very easily be a 100% raider in a guild like TL on a server with instanced content. So for him, it very well is less efficient.

Its not satire. I was in both guilds and there is no comparison. Faceless is not anywhere near the skill of TL but they act like they are. Its actually funny to listen to them. They really think they are good. Faceless was #1 by default on Lockjaw. They would be a 5th tier guild on Ragefire.

Thank you for the kind words, my Dwarven friend. I hope things work out well for you in LJ.

I think you missed the point of the whole thread...

Oh the salt!!! THE SALT

I hope you know I was just teasing with that thread but you seem pretty salty about it. Can you tell me about it?

By the way for the person who posted before: Yes, we did attempt to tank the bees but, as everyone have found, it doesn't tend to work out very well

I have no idea about TL officers compared to Faceless officers but I can compare Faceless officers to past guilds I have been in (various games). FoH (EQ, Wow, and Rift) Addiction (Rift and Wildstar) under this name I have posted under in case you were wondering. Yes the leaderships were all different but I wouldn't go and say the leadership is leaps and bounds behind any of the top guild I have been involved in during my past gaming, although I will say Faceless officers are a lot more relaxed and forgiving than FoH and Addiction ones. I highly doubt TL leadership would go and claim they are better than old school FoH EQ or Addiction in Rift. If anything maybe they might have an equivalent leadership and I'll give you that one but an equivalent leadership doesn't equate to your claim of "far and away better." So go back into your parents basement and finish your cheetos and code red while you stew on that.

As for your guild member's skill being at least 2 standard deviations better than any faceless member. HAHAHAHAHA You're quite cocky aren't ya I mean maybe if each of your players uses 6 chars at once you might be doing a lot more damage per person behind the computer than Faceless. I'll give you that one.


In all seriousness though, we do have competition on Lockjaw. AD and MM have taken down plenty of FFA targets racing with Faceless so I would call that quite a bit more competition than Ragefire has had. We have had poop socking wars. I am not saying that we would dominate TL by any means if we moved to Ragefire. I mean the fact of the matter is, you have a LOT more member than Faceless but I can tell you this much, you would have lost multiple more times more mobs than you did pre forced rotations if we were over there.
Pre forced rotations you had 95% of the mobs locked down completely. Those numbers would have dropped a lot more than the 5% you lost if faceless was over there. I am guessing Faceless would have merged with other forces and had a guild that competed with TL if Lockjaw would have never came about.
All of that doesn't matter at all though right? Faceless isn't moving to RF, TL isn't moving to LJ. Who cares what hypothetically would have happened or could have happened? The fact of the matter is, more raiders on Lockjaw have killed all of the content in the game than raiders on Ragefire and RF has 3x the server population as LJ. I see something wrong with that and the GMs apparently did too. Your philosophy of locking down all the mobs you could knowing darn well that every time a guild has locked down content that heavily in the past has been forced into unfavorable rotations tells me maybe your raid leaders aren't as godly as you think they are. They should have seen this coming a mile away and set up a very favorable rotation a half a month ago when things really started to fester in these forums and the RF forums.

Solkos: You on those "other boards" I'm requested to not mention? He really reminds me of the recent comic in the thread over there if so.... I was tempted to copy it and edit the names on it, but frankly... I'm too lazy.

I can relate to this. I work 3-12 every day. That is prime time, american - all of it. I play a ton though. My solution is to try and join a EU or Oceanic guild where the prime time and raid times will match up with my playtimes, and for the batphone type stuff in the meantime just do the best I can. I am blessed in that I work from home and can sometimes sneak online at work. I suspect rando spawn times + being able to sneak on once in awhile should give me OK attendance, or at least keep me in a roster until instanced raid content and set raid times, at which point I'd be able to have 100% on a EU or Oceanic time.

It's not ideal, it makes me worry I haven't managed to find a guild yet with these times, but the xfers and my level right now aren't quite matching up with my ultimate goals and it looks like we'll just have to hope for the best. It seems ragefire has better population of oceanic/eu players, at first glance.

Ooops the post I put Aneuren's name on was meant for you. Anyways let me try to take a different approach to this. Keep in mind I think Lockjaw suits you very well even though I don't like the 6 month unlock at all.

There will be a good percentage of casual players over on Lockjaw but the one advantage of the 6 month unlock period is that everyone will get a chance at the content over time. I would could be very wrong in this but I think the guild on Lockjaw "Dead Halfling Society" has quite a few members in the same situation as you are in. This guild took down Vox last night and even though they fell outside of rotation hours, all the guilds in the rotation stayed back and let DHS have the glory that was well deserved!
We are only a little past the 2 month mark of the server and the rotation that was set up at the 1 month mark is continually evolving to accommodate anyone who has a serious desire and ability to take these targets down.
Currently there is no provision for a guild or playerbase to be removed from the Lockjaw rotation and there are good reasons for that. I believe the 2 guilds DHS and The Free Masons would have trouble with getting the force to kill a 3am target and that doesn't mean they deserve to be removed from the rotation.

Your class diversity can be highly desirable to the raiding guilds. That's a good thing and it will give you a foot in the door.

On Ragefire, the way the atmosphere is set up and the raiding is going to be, I think there is nothing to look forward to there. On Lockjaw you would have plenty to look forward to. The 6 month unlock (even though it is a long time) will give everyone who has a serious shot at taking down a classic target a chance to have their glory.

I have mentioned how Faceless does loot earlier in this thread. Different guilds have different methods of distributing loot. Some would in fact roll on loot. I am not sure how all the guilds work on lockjaw but: The Faceless is a loot council coupled with raid attendance charts. AD is DKP. MM I think has a similar system to Faceless. DHS and The Free Masons I am unsure of their system but it could be looked into.

Yes, targets will pop in off hours and there will be lost targets but with 6 months to go, I would guess the rotations have a lot of room to evolve. They have evolved a ton already. Plus on LJ guilds aren't removed from the rotation ever. There could be a case in which a guild disappears for whatever reason and that is a case where the leaders of the guilds get together and have to vote on what to do.

Yup, only time will tell. I think the rotation was the poor mans way of instancing content although some guilds do enjoy and invite the competition so the instancing doesn't resolve that discrepancy.

Yeah I thought of that too. I just thought of a new solution that might benefit a lot of the guilds. Every 2 weeks or month give each guild a 12 hour token. Use this token to lock the target to your guild for up to 12 hours. Maybe allow that 12 hour token to be turned in for 2x 4 hour tokens that have to be used before the 1 hour mark of the mob being up (this is to prevent a token from being used last min when you see another guild starting to mobilize). I think all guilds would benefit form this style of token system. Vulkan you should grab this idea because I am too lazy to push it

You are definitely not the only one in the situation. I am not one of those in this situation either but I am just here to help out and hopefully give you my opinion. Hopefully you can see that I am at least genuine in trying to help you out here and saying that I think Lockjaw is a better fit for you.

See above comments. I think 6 months will cater a lot better to everything you have explained and said.

Haha Solkos, confused me =p

Let's not ignore that the people who had a full set of raid gear from the current expansion from Vanilla to roughly Omens were by far the exception, not the rule. Being geared in top end gear from the current expansion in EVERY slot is a symptom of the modern game and instancing, not the classic game. As a cleric in a major raiding guild, I was still wearing several slots of Donal's well into the Luclin expansion.

I am very much in the same situation as OP. A fair amount of free time, but work 3rd shift. Four-six RL friends and I play EQ pretty heavily, few hours per day. On our days off we play waaaay more. We would have time to raid, and want to raid, but there is no way we could all do this currently. We can't be logging in at 2pm while most are working and I'm passed out, or 2am when the roles are reversed.

Hardcore casual here, likely moving to Lockjaw so we can all enjoy the content we were promised for as long as possible. If we can't raid, may as well enjoy all the group content at a leisurely pace without feeling like I am constantly playing catch up with gear/ levels/ and eventually AAs.

Oddly enough the reversed raiding hours are HIGHLY desired in hardcore guilds. Here is why: The timegap of 2am to 4pm is the hardest time to get a substantial raid force gathered to down targets. If you can play these hours you have an almost automatic invite into the top guilds if you want it. You just have to know that these times slots are a lot more valuable than you think they are. With batphones now days, you can set your phone to wake you up for a raid target so that pesky sleeping issue can be solved

The guilds that would not suit you as well are the ones that are forced to only raid prime time. The top guilds are never restricted to only prime time so players like you are needed and welcome!