I was the raid leader for Phoenix Emerging on Phinny. We raided 2 to 3 nights a week. 2 to 4 hrs. We started raiding two months before Luclin unlocked. Our goal was to complete end game raids before each expansion ended. We ended up very close each time. We beat Aow a month into Luclin. We beat Emperor SSRA first week of Pop. We beat all of time minus 2 T4 bosses Quarm last two weeks of LDON. We finished Time first month of GoD. (GoD was way easier because there was no motm. But at this point most had burn out (we were down to sub 40 per raid including boxes on a true box server.) Our hang ups usually involved people not being lvled and/or enough AA. Limited play time slowed this process down so much it put us behind on keys and flags. Also having members half geared because only 1/3 of the raid force were in every raid, they had to pick between gaining lvls or raiding, those lvls help way more than a few dkp points. To accomplish these kills were damn impressive. An hour to kill, Aow, creator, or thought horror because most did not even have a full set of kael gear, mostly just tradeable items. With around 40 people because not everyone could attend every raid as I stated. (About 120 players at any one time in guild). Pop was a little easier because I forced SSRA on us until we could do all bosses in 2hrs minus emp. over and over during luclin. So we had gear going into pop. (Not only ssra but stuff from Aow/vulak or other mini Luclin bosses. So here is what I am getting at. For us, a whole lot of casuals. We wanted to beat those bosses in era, same as the guys who could split ever raid second week in. Our biggest constraints were XP and time. By GoD I was so burnt out trying to keep up lvl/as wise it just wasn't any fun anymore. The limited time I had to play was put into raids only. To keep max lvl and aa I'd have to spend 2 or 3 straight days (12hr days just xping). That meant sacrificing sleep and time with my family for about 2 to 3 weeks on days off. And that was just me making sure I was up to par to lead the guilds raids. A lot of our people could not and would not do that. Those are your casual players. The ones who want the challenge, who want to see the endgame in era but cannot XP nonstop. Who cannot dedicate 4 nights or even 1 a week sometimes for a raid. We didn't want easy and we didn't want the challenge negated due to lvl increases or gear from the next expansion. Selo has xp right. They have rare spawns right. Aoc right. Just not the length of time for anyone truely casual to keep up and enjoy the game. Which is seeing the endgame, completing those epic quest while it still means something. All while they are still challenging. There has to be a balance yes, but 1 month is not casual ever. It would take all the casual players a month just to lvl even with fast xp as live much less see anything else in an expansion.
The biggest mistake DBG made was branding the servers. Selo's is an AMAZING ruleset, but them calling it casual gave it some negative stigma. If they had said "here are your two new ruleset TLP's" there would be almost NOTHING bad to say about selos and people would just perma rip on mangler. However since they called Selo's the "Casual server" it is getting some negativity thrown at it for JUST that reason.
Kinda agree, but not entirely. Anyway you slice it, 1 month is too short for casuals to keep up, regardless what you "brand" it.
It is, but what some people are asking for goes beyond "casual gaming". They want to be able to play their 5ish hours a week and accomplish all their goals be the time the new expansion drops. While there is nothing wrong with those goals, I would bet over half of the TLP population puts in 20+ hours a week and another 20% does more than that. The Ultra casuals are not as a large a group as they think they are. Granted they said they were putting in a casual server, and I think you have to define casual. Which i think most would agree is someone who plays a few hours a night, not a few hours a week. There were unrealistic expectations set forth by a lot of people. Part of that may be DBG's fault, but a lot of it also lies on unrealistic expectations.
I would say the casuals (around half the server pop) play between 12 and 20hrs a week. With around 1 to two weeks (in a 3 month period) with no play time at all. So around 144 hours (120 with two weeks off) minimum to 240hrs (216hrs) in a three month period. If DBG can work it out to where at most half that time is spent for the initial lvling process then a 1/4 of that time for each expansion aa/lvl increase. That might be a server casuals could keep up and enjoy the game based on a 3 month period. Now you got to take into account time spent building groups and finding locations and some bsing into the lvling as well. (And these people do not max/min, so hardcore players might make max lvl in 24hrs, a casual is going to new zones doing things that are not pushing the XP bar faster than the eye can blink.)
I can play anywhere from 10-20 hours a week. I don't mind leveling or even AAing but I don't want it to be a grind or something where I feel like I have to go to 1 or 2 zones to maximize that exp gain and need 20 hours a week or more to keep up with. If I'm going to play on a TLP again I want to be able to go do quests. I want to exp in zones I've spent very little time in before I don't want to go unrest > lower guk > sol b etc. I want to go explore zones i've spent little time in before and play to experience and love the game again and all the unique zones and quests. To do that and feel like I can get to the raiding in the game which I enjoy doing 2-3 nights a week for 6 -10 hours of my weekly playtime I need fast exp. I want the challenge of in era content. I want to do it with 35-72 of my closest friends and I don't want it to feel like my third job. I also wouldn't mind actually being able to level up an alt or 2.
Which may or may not be the case. But claiming its not suitable for casuals based purely off of the casual "title" is false.
The issue with so many of the goals people lay out is that they are casual players with hardcore goals. I want to get max level, max my AA, get all the gear I want plus do these quests on my list and accomplish X, Y, Z. I want to do this before the next xpac comes out each time. Oh yah I play 12 hours a week. There is nothing wrong with this, but you must be realistic. I see people making goals that arent accomplishable in 3 months, maybe 6 but again, not likely. Should one server be 6 month unlocks? meh I dont think so, I think the server would be down to a handful of players after week 20 in classic. There needs to some compromise.
Marketing 101 Don’t announce an “Ultra-Casual server”, then rebrand it a “Casual server”, and then once again try to brand it as “Fast progression” server.
Been saying since day one their biggest mistake was pre branding the servers... should have just said "we will have 2 new TLP's unlike any previous".
The thing is on Phinigel as a casual with what I laid out with my 10-20 hours of playtime a week I was able to keep level capped, maintain a 80+% raid attendance, keep my vital AA capped but after that I would rarely AA because I didn't have the time and would burnout and then only log in for raids because everything was a grind. I did all this while working 2 jobs and pursuing a Ph.D. Now I just work more hours at my 2 jobs. I also have a wife and family I would like to see. Most true casuals I've ever known love playing the game. They like to raid some, but they also want time to do quests and level up alts, the days of wanting to grind away everything are gone. We want to do the same things the hardcore people do we just want more time to do it or less time doing the tedious stuff since we have less free time to actually devote to the game. When I was 19-24/5 I would play 40+ hours a week on top of my 40+ hour a week job and going to college. I'm not that young anymore my life has changed and I just want to play the game I enjoy and get to experience things in the game when it means something. There are a lot of people like me out there that were wanting this and found everything about selo's perfect other than the unlock rate. Previous TLPs got the unlock rate but the experience wrong for people like me. The uproar here isn't that Selos is wrong I actually see the appeal of it for those that can dedicate to playing on it. The problem is that many of us were excited about the prospects of what a casual server could be Selos almost had it right and mangler was a god awful abomination because of exp even worse that Coirnav. Selos great idea with a good ruleset for alot of people I have met on TLPs. I'm just not one that can keep up. Phinny I couldn't keep up to the degree that I wanted to and have been disenfranchised from time to time because of it. Not that I was super far behind but I just felt rushed and exhausted trying to continually keep up to the point the game became a job and not something fun. Coirnav I tried it got to 40 something in about 1.5 months with my playtime but again the push to try and keep up with the server just bogged me down. I think its a good move for them to just have one server that the filthy casuals like myself can manage to keep up or catch up whenever we don't have time to play for awhile They could accomplish that with somewhere between 2-4 month unlocks for expansions with everything else being like Selos and I have no doubt it would be a very popular server.
There are allot of people in the same boat here. People who want to experience all parts of the game, but can not commit as much time as the game demands at the moment. I've mentioned it before, but adding merc's from the start will help speed up getting the XP grind going when people log on, since they can start XPing right away as they build up a group. The OP mentions the problem with getting enough people online in a "casual guild" to raid targets, what he is saying is that people with jobs and families do not have enough time to log on enough in a "small" guild with 120 members to have a large enough raid force to kill in era targets “always”. This is part of the reason why these people give up after a few expansions, the other part is because they do not want to join one of these big mastodon guilds that have hundreds of members were the turn over is so insane so that you never really get to know anyone except for the token narcissists that usually are the leaders of those type of guilds. Those type of people don't really mesh with "normal" people, because we have learnt by now in our life that being around those type of people is not worth it in the long run regardless of the pixel dopamine’s you get. An easy "fix" for this to help the "small" guilds survive long term and to keep that player base, could be by adding mercs to the raid mix so that they can keep killing targets in era even with lower numbers. The biggest problem in the TLP family/small/120 member guild I was in, was to get enough people online for raids to actually have a chance at in era targets. That is what made people quite. If you fix this, then you will not have the drop of after 2 years as you have seen on other TLP’s.
