Have you all ever considered adding a casual TLP to the mix .. see what happens?

Correct on the rate of exp but if it takes me 2 weeks to hit raiding level and there is only 4-8 weeks in an expansion, ill be only able to raid 2-6 weeks of that expansion. That is why the exp rate matters to me.

We still have 2 weeks in GoD and OoW is 12 weeks. And lets be honest, we are actually going to be raiding Anguish for the next 5 months. It is the perfect time for a casual to join.

And really. A single expansion is going to stop you from joining? Write off that expansion and focus on being ready for the next one. Which is still at level 70. As is the one after that, and the one after that. Think long term. This is a game played for years not 4-8 weeks.

I think you may be underestimating how much #RealLifeStuff some people do.

/NormMacdonald Voice "casuals love lvl 1-60"

I agree with ya, its good thing the Yelly bois will be able to box like a big kid when they hit the plateau.

As others have said, Mischief is the casual server.

Honestly, I think it's the most casual TLP ever made.
I am a casual, and this server caters to me SO much.
I love it.
I think other than longer lockouts--which I would like (but don't think are good for the server) is about the only thing you could say it might need.

The reason I don't think longer lockouts are good is as others have said too; the longer locks would drive the more hardcore players away.
I believe they are part of what makes Mischief so great within the rule-set that it is.
They allow me to have gear I would never acquire...whether people like that play style or not, that is how I play.
I buy Kronos (I can) and I buy from the Baz. I've never bought loot rights before.
I don't think I'll leave the server anytime soon.
TS are fun for me and I can do that WAY more on Mischief.


Anyways, that's what I think.

yes, I agree that you can look at casual/hardcore many different ways. I was just trying to illustrate that time alone isn't necessarily the best way for everyone. Some people may only play 6 hours a week once all their personal/group stuff is done but they still have every slot BIS, have gina and know all the triggers, use parses to tweak their spell rotation, etc... Some would call them casual and others would call them hardcore.

Catering to casuals is what essentially ruined the mmorpg genre in the first place. WoW made the genre more accessible to "casuals" and overtime the genre had to change. Granted not in all cases, but in general "casual players" is basically just synonymous for people that don't actually like mmorpgs, specifically the rpg part. The result is that games are dumbed down for gamers that really shouldn't even be playing the genre.

This is why TLP type servers are so popular across all the different games, from EQ TLPs to even things like WoW Classic etc. Its not just for a sense of nostalgia, but also for that sense that games were just better back in the day. What was it that made them better in the past? It was the fact that they were rpgs, and rpgs at their core are "hardcore."

I mean lets be real here, EQ is modeled after table top dungeons and dragons type of game, and anyone that has ever played those types of games, or any of the old school MUDs or original mmorpgs (Ultima, EQ, AC) know this kind of game was never meant to be casual.

Another issue we see is that there are alot of people that have differing views on what is casual in the first place. Keep in mind just because we're all entitled to our own opinions, doesn't mean that some of our opinions are accurate or very reflective of reality.

For example the dudes that claim they are casual because they only play like 6 hours a week but are raid loggers. This is crazy to me, the number of hours being "small" doesn't even matter. They are playing the game on a "schedule" they log in on specific days at specific times to raid. You know damn well that they in all reality plan as much of their real life around this EQ schedule as they can. That is just as hardcore as someone that plays 6 hours a day.

These types of games were always meant for and designed for hardcore type players. If casuals have a problem with this, then they need to become hardcore and start running with the big dogs. If that option is not available to you then you can either play a different game (I would suggest something outside the mmorpg genre) or just get over it. There's nothing wrong with just embracing your casualness and recognize where you will stand in the pecking order of this type of game. There's plenty of stuff to do for casuals in this game, that can be done at your own pace.

In my opinion "casuals" should not even be worrying about this type of thing. A real honest to god casual shouldn't give a crap about being casual or anything else for that matter. Casuals don't need their own casual server that is just destined to fail anyway. They should just be playing the game how they want to play it and not be concerned with the aspects of the game they think they are missing out on because they are not hardcore.

I won't go over this point by point. But someone who has raided until BFA/Shadowlands (ahead of the curve/cutting edge) and does mythic + dungeons.
You have it exactly the opposite. Asmongold (Not a raider anymore iirc) Scripe and Limit Max can all tell you the game does not cater to the casual player base in the strictest sense. If anything most of the changes is to find ways to make lives of high end raiders easier most of the casual content is gone in that game. The way LFG and Raid is done now is not casual friendly at all especially RaiderIO and Warcraft Logs and how metas shift based on how well world first guilds work.
Every other guild ends up mimicking higher end guilds in strats or raid comps because of some perceived "meta". "Method used 7 arms warriors and a bear tank to get world first on this boss - we have to do the same, if you aren't a 500 ilvl and do 600kdps get out" is not a casual mentality at all, split raids or selling carrying for gold to pay for flasks and buffs for raids to race is not casual.

Asmongold has also clarified that technically everyone is a hardcore player by proxy that if you watch a streamer play your game and you read guides or watch videos on fights or learn how to play your class more effectively that makes you more hardcore than someone who doesn't do any of that.

Hardcore and Casual literally mean nothing. Someone can be in a high end guild like Realm of Insanity and do the bare minimum and raid in WoW two more nights. Are they casual if they are still in a guild that's maybe Top 50 in the world but put in the bare minimum because you can get all the content done in WoW in less than 8 hours.

WoW is an MMORPG, its supposed to have content for high end players. You've just argued my point though, you yourself have said that they have dumbed down the content to make lives easier of the high end raiders.

There's a reason for this, its because people like Asmongold are not real mmorpg players. Asmon's biggest gripe with these games is having his "time" wasted. The whole point of an "rpg" is to have your time wasted by being put into an immersive world where you slowly overtime build up a character. Doing repetitive tasks, completing quests, grinding experience, and ingame wealth is the whole point of the genre.

It's people like Asmongold that at their core hate rpgs, that have ruined the genre, as they have been slowly transformed into more twitchy action/adventure based games. These are the people that whine and cry when the dude that puts in 20 hours a week whoops their , when they only put in 5 hours. They cry and whine that it should be more "skill" based. Overtime the games have changed to cater to this group of people. The result is people don't "care" about their toons the way they did in the past. In old school rpgs you were invested in your character because of all the time you put into it. It wasn't just some generic avatar like modern games. You don't have the same investment with characters that don't take work to build. This is why we still see so many people playing the same 20+ year old game instead of moving on to newer games, and or playing "old school" versions of them. The new games are , they are not rpgs anymore.

Skill in an rpg has always been about time investment. Those that put in the time dominate, those that don't get to occupy the bottom rung of society. So called casuals being jealous of "hardcores" for putting in more time and effort into the game is just as stupid as unskilled hacks complaining that people with faster reflexes and twitch skills dominating them in games like overwatch is unfair. People just need to "get gud scrub" at the game they are playing. In an rpg that means putting in the time. People not wanting to put in the time, but then demanding they be on the same "level" as those that have is what killed the genre. The mmorpg was ruined when WoW started getting so big and trying to cater to people that aren't and never were RPGers and should never have been playing the game in the first place.

Yes, FOR high end raiders because they wanted them to stop doing split raids and gold selling which was a TOS thing and pay to win drama. It didn't help casuals it didn't change anything. Proof of that is in their new upcoming expansion which is introducing more content for your "casual" crowd.
Raiding isn't hard. There is no "get gud" its download your Gina or DBM and Weakauras and go. ALL the raid content is already done for you. 90% WAs and mods come from world first guilds and raiders and they give it away because downloads = money from Curseforge.
That's the way it's always been. Some addons were too good, like the addons uses for Star Auger and Lich King and blizzard had to disable the API for those fights.

The truth is times change and games change. If you don't like it then RPGs aren't for you.
Whether I am playing DDO, UO, EQ or WoW or even FFXIV. They all change their games based on needs of the masses because that's what brings in the money. They are a business.

WoW's down fall wasn't catering to casuals. It was trying to make a game from 2006 an Esport and that's warped the whole game and so they tried to design the game around pushing arena's then it was the MDI now its World First races.

Forum boomers wouldn't last 30 seconds in an actual challenging game. EQ ain't it chief.

The best players are efficient with their time, always have been.

So by your logic the best gamers don't play games at all, because gaming is probably the least efficient thing one can do with their time.

What separated hardcores from casuals was never that raiding is hard. What separated them was that hardcores just actually went out and did it, they put the time and the effort required. This was how EQ was, same for vanilla wow. I distinctly remember people jumping into battlegrounds with their BWL gear and stomping the hell out of people in their dungeon or quest gear. Did this make them better players and was it fair? I guess that depends on how you view the game. From a "time/effort" based perspective it was fair, casuals didn't get the same advantages because they didn't go out and get it. From a "skill" based perspective perhaps not so much. Most people didn't seem to have as much of a problem with it back in the beginning. We saw these people, knew what they had to do to get where they are, respected that they had put more effort into the game then we did, and just acknowledged that there were some real badasses out there.

I completely understand business's doing what they think they have to do to make more money. The result is generally the same though, the games get worse for the people the game was originally designed for. This is why private servers of "original" games are so popular. WoW increased their revenues and subscriptions to never before seen levels. However they did this by somehow getting players into the game that in their hearts never really liked this type of game. Overtime the games evolve to suit the desires of these people. These people are a type of "casual," they don't like how the game was played, and wanted it to be changed around their desires as opposed to playing their own game. In your own words WoW has been warped into something different from what it started as. Its also a game that as far as I'm concerned is dead and has been for a while. WoWs subscriber base is a fraction of what it used to be, and while I have no proof, i suspect that most of the lost subscribers were the original gamers.

As far as your first sentence here, I completely disagree. Genre's don't change, an RPG is an RPG and an eSport Arena game is an esport arena game. When times and games change for the worse, and RPGs are changed into something else, its doesn't mean I don't like RPGs. It just means I don't like the esport arena games. But thats why I don't play WoW anymore and instead am still playing a 20 year old game in TLP form. I suspect that its the same for a lot of the people that play on these servers.

RPGs are about time invested so of course those that are efficient with that resource are going to be considered the best.

Someone that plays 6 hours a day efficiently is going to run circles around someone that plays, 6 hours a week efficiently as well as someone that plays the same 6 hours a day but not efficient.

RPGs are about role playing, if you want to get technical. It's literally in the name.

Time invested has extreme diminishing returns. I have very little to gain by playing EQ for 6 hours a day unless I'm a Krono farmer, but I couldn't care less about farming Krono.

In what way are they going to run circles around me? On the parse? High doubt. Krono income? Sure.

I recently saw someone posting to complain that during a "nice dungeon grind" that they outleveled the camp and that was bad. That is the issue with those who think that they're casual. Going into a camp and staying until the mobs grey out isn't casual, it's dumb, and it's certainly not "playing the game as it was meant to be played" or "enjoying the journey".

If you are staying in a camp so long that it greys out you are spending a lot of time in game

The point of this thread is talking about casuals. The numbers I used were just pulled out of my butt for context examples. This is a 20 year old solved game, obviously its been mapped out for maximum efficiency already.

Yes there's diminishing returns on time invested, but that only occurs when you reach the peak. If you are reaching the peak of time investment efficiency then you would not be considered a casual. If you're putting in the time necessary to achieve optimum outputs you are not a casual, and so of course nobody would be running circles around you. On the other hand if you are playing 2 hours a week on Saturdays, then most people would likely consider you a casual, and most of the community probably runs circles around you.

If you're wanting to raid in this game you will in most cases have to submit to some kind of schedule that impacts your real life. You have to take the time to show up on Tues/Thurs from 8pm to 11pm or whatever. This would not be casual behavior, if you are doing this you can't be considered a casual. The instant you are doing something on a schedule it becomes serious business, it doesn't matter how efficient you are with the hours or how flexible the raid groups attendance policies are, because if you aren't showing up as much as the people in your group, it is highly unlikely you will achieve the same outputs as the ones that show up with perfect attendance.

I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this in an earlier post, but there seems to be a big issue where non casual players are considering themselves casual. I assume this out of some psychological desire to not perceive themselves as a loser that plays too much videogames maybe? I don't know.

Bottom line is if you are putting in the minimum number of "efficient" hours to achieve max outputs, if you just put in a lot of excessive hours and or you raid around a real life schedule you are not a casual. I can also tell you for free that the people that can't or won't do these things (real casuals) also do not consider those people as casuals.

The whole point of this thread was these people (real casuals) want a server that caters to their playstyle. As others have mentioned this doesn't work because you will not have a very robust community if you don't have the hardcore and mediumcore players in the mix acting as essentially the core of that server's community.

What casuals need to do is just embrace their casualness. Log in and enjoy whatever time you spend in the game. They shouldn't be worrying about what the noncasuals are doing and if they feel that the server rulesets don't allow them the enjoyment they want from this game then they need to realize that they have other choices. Either become less casual to enjoy the TLP, or play on servers (most likely Live or Agnarr) that can more easily cater to a casual playstyle, or just realize that maybe they've gotten old and due to real life obligations perhaps EQ isn't in the cards for them right now.

So you are the guy at the raid undergeared and under-AAd, being carried by everyone else, because that's all you want to do?

Negative, when you have a 95% RA, you tend to be able to get BiS.