Based on some of the responses i may be a casual employee at my job. I work 7-8 hours a day, and most days could take it or leave it as well lol.
Anyone playing once or twice a week. For hardcore, it is easy, anyone with a better stuff than me is hardcore.
Raiding actually doesn't demand as much as you think in terms of time and such. I belong to a raid guild and do raid most of the time, but they don't treat it like a second job. Sure, we have a muster time, but there is no "Thou shall be here or else" mentality to it. You don't get DKP for not being there, but you aren't going to anger the guild/raid leads when something IRL pops up and you can't make it, making them bench you or booting you out. The only things that raids demand is a lot more attention to details such as mechanics. You've got to pay attention to those and the raid lead to get a successful win. Some people can't devote the time or attention span (i.e., have IRL stuff happening around them to keep them from concentrating) to raid. Some people don't want to raid, and that's fine. Hard-core raiding also isn't what it used to be. When we had open-world bosses, some guilds had people with pagers and when whomever was to keep an eye out on the boss saw it pop, they started dialing numbers, regardless of what time of day or night it was.
The term casual by itself does not say much. Casual play time? Casual play style? Casual in being a completionist..... etc etc that is why everyone has so many defintions. You can be someone who for whatever reason is hardcore time wise because you spend all the time you can get on EQ and still be casual in regards play style or completing every thing in EQ current or past expansions.
Raiding is, as noted by someone else, on a bit of a spectrum. There are casual raiders who aren't working on the lastest progression to rise in the ranking on a server and that can have a lot of the fun of raiding without a lot of the stress, unless you have a guild/raid leader who thinks the casuals need to be treated like what they perceive as how the hardcore guilds do it. On the flip side of that, you can have some really nice and relaxed raid orgs that are in progression and ranking and that really is they most fun but completely not casual.
To me the term casual applies to someone who cannot commit to a regular schedule of guild events.. If I join a raid guild I join a group of like-minded people who have agreed to attend at least a majority of the regularly scheduled raid-nights, indeed the ability of the guild to be able to run regular events depends upon most of its members commiting to attend regularly. A casual either cannot or will not commit to a regular schedule, they play as & when they either can, or feel like.
I think that there are many different categories that you can fit in. I wouldn't consider myself casual, but I also wouldn't consider myself hard core either. I raid once a week at this current time, for a few hours. I generally am not online actively doing anything outside of those raid hours. The exception is getting AA's to max my bank so I can glyph during said raids. A few of you are mentioning raiding and lumping hard core into that. I would bet that the majority of players in the top 5 raiding guilds, play less then most of the people calling themselves casuals on this thread. My current guild considers themselves hard core casuals, lol. We raid launch, we do a good job, hold everyone to a certain standard, and just chill the rest of the time. All this leads back to my original point that I don't think you can define players by simply "hard core" or "casual". However, if we wanted to debate utilizing those two terms, I would say you are hard core if you're logging in multiple times a week for multiple hours a day. The activity shouldn't matter as much as the time invested.
By your thinking, those currently active in my guild are "hard core" because we are committed to a weekly scheduled guild group for 2-3 hours of fun with each other. We recently rolled up new characters and have been doing low level stuff. It was a blast taking on So Ro giants last week. In the past, we have spent a couple of those nights doing stuff related to player housing. So very hard core.
I don't think it is a binary - black vs white - type definition. Just because you are what I think of as more than "casual" doesn't mean you are "hard core"
Casual vs hardcore is not what you do, rather, it is the frequency and intensity in which you do it. A person who only plays on a raid schedule, 3 days a week, 2-3 hours a night, gives it an atta-boy and logs off, without putting a significant effort into advancing their character, is a casual player. They both raid and play on a schedule, but they play minimally and without much intensity. Flip this to someone who only groups, never plays on a schedule, but plays group content several hours per day, every day, has full T3 group armor, all the group augs, is completing all ACH (except raids) in era, etc. This is a hardcore player. They are playing a lot and with a lot of intensity. Casual players are experiencing EQ. Hardcore players are mastering it. The epitome of the hardcore player is maxing out grouping, raiding, tradeskills, etc. Most of us fall in between on a spectrum. We play a lot and with a lot of intensity, but aren't maxing out everything.
A casual is someone who plays a few hours a week and subsidizes the hardcore player that plays many hours a day. Since casuals don't have much time, they don't spend long hours posting on the forums and as a result their voices are seldom heard. Although they are not squeaky wheels, they are the unsung heroes that make Norrath possible with their continued financial support. Darkpaw should erect a statue in some forgotten part of the Karanas in memory of the Forgotten Casual.
It seems that hardcore/casual opposition may means many different things depending of the person. Some people would associate hardcore with neglecting your life commitments. Some other will associate casual with people neglecting game commitments. I feel that you should be able to enjoy the game without neglecting either game or or real life commitments.
I would agree with you, your guild has members who schedule time to be with each other & that's a strong commitment & dedication to your community.
I think every raider who posts would not only disagree with you but would laugh so hard they would fall out of their chairs. But, to them, "casual" is a slur to be flung at those they think should be ignored. Even the post above noting that "casuals" experience the game while raiders "master" it has the same snear that casuals "experiencing" the game don't matter as much as the raiders.
Casual is as casual does. Casual is low to moderate amounts of planning, expectation or achievement while actively playing.
You are lumping all raiders in the same bucket. There are no doubt elitist jerks in the raiding community, but not all of us think of "casual" being a slur. I am a raider and I'm not part of the elitist jerks or the "git gud" crowd.
