Can people define what "HARDCORE" "CASUAL" is???

So then, there are no hardcore players on the TLP's, at all. No guild that I know of will kick you out for not showing up to a raid.

Except there are plenty of games that exist that you can drop in/drop out 24/7 and accomplish plenty of things. Hence why people diss WoW so much, you can get max level and complete all dungeons/raids without ever having a set group of people you play with or a set time you have to play with them. EQ’s design does not cater as well to a more casual gaming audience, especially in classic. So people will define “casual”, within EQ world, which is fine. Of which plenty of people still have spent years playing with pick up groups and making it much further than LGuk without a set group of friends/guild. Was easier when the population was higher though. Even pick up raids..it was a thing.

I guess you can call that fundamentally incompatible, but it’s how I played the game with many other randoms for years. Yes we missed out on raiding until much later expansions. Hence why Holly had the mindset that “casuals” shouldn’t fight Naggy. But people logged on when they wanted and played together, with strangers.

That’s how I see the most casual players, which is how I played for years. Just like any other video game, EQ just happened to be online. Logged on when I wanted, found people to do stuff with, simple. No commitment to a certain group or at certain times, to me, that’s as casual as it gets.

But there isn’t much more “ultra casual” than the game you have on your phone you load while in the restroom.

When you need bodies to throw at a raid and not skilled players, sure they won’t kick you out. But your not getting DKP or loot either. Unless it’s just rotting.

There are guilds that do. More commonly if your RA falls below x %, you are busted down to recruit status and cannot get loot for Y weeks until you can be considered an active raider again. This is common from the most hardcore of hardcore, down through most mid-tier raiding guilds (i.e. anyone on the progress tracker websites).

If you're in a loot council guild, hopefully you are good in the sack, because they won't care about you.

Yes, there are other games whose definition of casual can reach down much lower. Minesweeper involves very little investment, and can be killed if the boss walks in. EverQuest can't ever be that game, with any amount of dumbing down.

Yes you can do that in WoW. That is one reason people make fun of it. A more intelligent reason to make fun of it is the class design is poor, and at this point all people can do all roles, but mostly everyone DPS's as fast as possible. And they win. And it is dumb, you can do that in an offline game by yourself. It would be BETTER as an offline game you play by yourself. (Wildstar also comes to mind: the hilarious offline game that never was)

Still, unless WoW has fallen very far from 3 years ago or so, you weren't pugging Mythic raids. You were in a raiding guild, and you raided on a schedule, and you were organized.

You can faceroll Phinny, Vox and Naggy right now on any server. It should take no more than 2 people who know what they're doing. A group or two of PUGs should be able to get it done eventually. That option is there, if we could get them to throw out MoTM you would not have to wait for +2 eras. The issue is that if you were going after something in particular (usually epic pieces) you might have to form that pug many dozen times to get your item to drop, AND win it. Casuals do not like to grind anything, and don't perceive playing the game as "work" they have to "put in time" for. One thing guilds bring that saves you time is DKP and a more static attendance, you won't have to kill that guy so much, over and over again to get the item you want, at some point hte item will be yours.

Which is what I'm doing. You can't define EQ in terms of minesweeper. It is a social game. With a PUG you will never get anything of substance done. I did most of PoP in 2004 as a PUG. The one thing I learned from that experience: this is not how you play this game. You join a raiding guild, you organize, and you beat the boss. This is not hardcore, this is just basic logic. Even the most casual of rando's you can slap together, who are drunk, high, possibly raiding from jail can win with just basic organization, I can even refer you to such a guild. Super, super casual, but with basic organization and beats every boss in the game weekly.

But to play the super casual game you want? I don't think any twist of the ruleset can make it be. The best we can hope for is get rid of MoTM (smaller guilds, lower attendance requirements, more tolerance for your kind of casual), make all the mobs drop far more loot (less grind, more chance for you to play alts, less repetition, more things PUGs can do that are worth the time investment). These are things that can make the game more approachable. But I don't see you throwing together a group of strangers and beating any end-game raid mob with a PUG, ever. I also don't think you can ignore the raid content and still be truly playing the game: you're sitting in your car, in the garage, making vroom vroom noises, but not actually getting anywhere.

Have beat plenty of raid bosses with Pugs....it’s a tank and spank game for many expansions. But you find organized raiding the best and apparently only way to play the game. It’s fine to think organized raiding is the only way to experience the game. But I don’t feel that’s the casual players opinion. I played the game for over 14 years without being in a raid guild, but according to your logic I have never played.

Organization is the one and only difference between guilds out mobilizing other guilds to a raid target. Having pre set port groups, people(multiple) who understand the Raid UI. Has nothing to do with the encounter itself. Instancing the raids is 10000% a perk for casuals. If you actively scout and kill OW raid targets as they spawn, you are a hardcore EQ raider.

We've all been on the short end of a DPS race at least once or twice... that's where most of the sting from anti boxers(casuals) comes from. If uber guild_01 beats you to a dragon, meh they're annoying. If homie boxing 42 mages beats you to a dragon, OMG boxing ruins the game.. even though tim is boxing 2 clerics... but we like Tim, he doesn't count

You PUG current tier Mythic raids in WoW? Or am I misunderstanding what exactly you're replying to in that post.

Have pugged end game content in EQ (while still being relevant). In WoW I’ve puged heroics but not mythic. But WoW has LFR and normals, so raids already have “casual” tiers. I guess you could do mythics with a raid guild and feel that your casual compared to other raid guilds. But I feel like your way more hardcore than people running LFR.

Hardcore=No life.
Casual=Maybe has a life.

If the Ultra Casual server is actually an Ultra Casual server, ergo making all parts of the game available to both of the mentioned categories above. An potential way of doing this would be to let Merc's enter AoC/raid zones and having a reverse MoTM that only hits mercs in those zones to make them beefy enough to do raid content, but not over-tuning them for group content.

If they make the buff blockebal, it would mean you could balance the difficulty of the raid to your own liking, by either blocking the reverse MotM/unsummoning some mercs.

I think it is a very bad idea to try to make a server unappealing to certain groups, DBG would loose allot of costumers going that way.

They need to focus on making the Ultra Casual and Hard Core server as appealing as they can to each group of players, and if it turns out you like the Ultra Casual server even though you like to call your self hard core, well then I guess you are a Ultra Casual player. It's hard admitting that your not 19 years old any more ;p

You forgot a category, the Ultra Hardcore that use bat phones as well ;-)

I guess I should have put all of this in to one post, but one last thing.

As long as they make the raids available to Ultra Casuals I don't think they should increase the amount of drops from raid targets on casual servers per kill, but maybe rather half the lockout timers so that more people will be available to help out on spur of the moment raids at any given time. And rather double the loot per kill on raid mobs on the Hardcore server? If both servers have FV loot rules, it would keep the hardcore and Ultra Casual players busy enough on their own servers

Why would a person with less playtime need shorter raid unlocks?

This is a direct benefit to an intense-playing playerbase. A core group will push things as fast/intense as they can on any server.

The ruleset for Ultra-casual needs to be crafted in such a way that such group either has no power being faster (i.e., "so what if you are raiding 1 month in era... we have 7 more months of this") or no real interest in playing regularly on the server (i.e., hardcore may have a "Tuesday character" on the ultra-casual server but they aren't playing 50 hours a week there) because the hardcore ruleset is just that much more appealing if you don't play casual-slow.

So that if you help some friends on a Sunday and you happen to be online on Thursday and a different group of friends need help on a raid, then you can still help out. By doubling the loot per kill, the HC server still gets the same amount of loot per week, but for "less" effort. So that would give HC players one more reason to migrate to the HC server while at the same time making the Ultra Casual server more Ultra Casual friendly

From reading the forums, my impression is that we have two types of people who define the Ultra Casual server.

The "hardcore" players that want to make the Ultra Casual server as unappealing as possible, want it to be veeeerrrrrryyyy slow in progression.

The "casual" players that want to be able to experience raid content in era without the hazel of organizing 50 to 70 warm bodies and having to have a set raid scheduled weekly to be able to experience raid content. AND hopefully not having to sit hours on end to find a group after the first lvling frenzy has passed.

Were talking only EQ not other games!

We have two types of hardcore in everquest you have early era hardcore and what i would describe as OGC Hardcore later on.? WTF is OGC hardcore?? Well folks that splitting end game content 3,4,5,6 different ways!!! Props too those guys / gals for going so HARD =)! They want to kill the end game zone with as few toons as possible as many times as possible this is 100% hardcore!

What about Classic-pop? The same could be said for classic-pop but its more about taking every single open world kill and leaving nothing for no one as AOS showed on Phinny they took it all because they were hardcore bat tweeting <--- ! they were truly 100% hardcore

Hardcore would also be faster expansion unlocks , slowest exp , more open world targets then prior TLP's,would also have AOCS because why not more loot!?

Both servers will be FV or no one will care!

Ultra casual uhhh FV Rules, Fastest exp ever (gotta grind on the hardcore server) True Box, AOC TSS or DON starting point (don is a great place to start but dat #Drakkin) ! Ultra casual is still raiding 2-3 nights a week at least in this game. I guess i never see the people that are a few months behind or in lower no name guilds i just assume they r having fun and it doesn't matter because thats why there here the lot of us our raiding and farming. what is the majority of the server doing? Raiding 1-3 nights a week and farming stuff. Playtime doesn't matter here because you prob get 15ish% a kill lol!

I Loath classic-pop so i wont be around until after the bore fest is over. I am really hoping for a DON/TSS starting point. I have no desire to kill frogs for 100s of hours or sit in dull zones with enchanter pets! If the revamped classic loot and balanced the classes that would be a different story!

Think this 5 hour energy post was better then last few

I don’t know the stats now, but you do realize for a good 10+ years the majority of EQ players did not raid right (outside of pugging)? You didn’t log on discord with your set group of people and only play with your guild. The majority of players were not raiding 1-3 nights a week. That doesn’t mean they didn’t want to see raid content, but how they played didn’t allow them to. Those are the players EQ lost and by the way people act, apparently people have forgotten how the game was on live in era.

The wasn’t made just for the players with guild websites, dkp points, and raiding schedules. Nor did people insist that “if you didn’t raid, you were not playing”. If 1-3 night a week raiders are now the definition of Ultra Casual, then basically we are saying EQ has lost its entire actual casual family guild style playerbase and there is no reason to make a server for them.

I think people also forget GoD wasn’t finished in era even by hardcore raiders. Many of the guilds that did raid, were 2-3 expansions behind. And most the playerbase was stuck in PoP for 2 years and tons of PUG flagging happened. Tons of PUG killing for epics happened.

I do feel like so far TLPs have mostly appealed to most hard core players. Then you have various levels of care there, but the ones who stay for any amount of time are not very casual. And maybe DBG just sees a casual server as something for that group, but slightly faster.

Personally for an “Ultra-Casual” server for me, I’d open up raid content to the people that could never do it. Make bosses single groupable.

Hardcore:


Casual:

A person with less playtime isn't going to be regularly helping multiple groups of friends. I see your point, I see some merit in it... I don't think it is make or break for making the server more casually appealing. AoC does enough as is.

There's more than 2 types...

1. Quill

2. hardcores trying to make the Ultra-casual their playground

3. casuals that want to raid as you say (that already have Phinny and Coirnav or even stayed on Ragefire/Lockjaw even though that isn't the ideal ruleset)

4. casuals that want to go slow, not be bot armied or rushed in the content [big untapped group at the moment... one group with no obvious home]

5. next poster that will say they don't align with any of the above...