A casual is that annoying player who join your group and leave less than 2 hours later with a 15 minutes warning and not bothering to find a rep for himself. Then who will go afk multiples times due to various reason like baby, phone, family. Bonus point if you die while on your way to join the group. If you're that kind of player you should just leave right now honestly. This is not a game for you and you shouldn't be allowed to play it.
It's pretty simple. If you complain about other players, you are not casual. A casual player simply doesn't care.
I have a problem labeling anyone a casual EQ player. That is like saying, on a reach but bare with it, there are casual Navy Seals, some are more hardcore than others to be sure but seriously no one get into that casually. It is not a gaming environment where much of anything attracts the casual gamer. Its slow, its not flashy, it can be very complicated, its buggy, oh god is it repetitive, the game play is not very engaging, and the tech is so old its positively archaic. You got to really want to play EQ to be here at all. So where does this all come from? A way to designate a bad player expanded to ridiculousness so it's meaning is lost. Yeah casual to some of these guys means inept. You do know that enough gear can make a bad player somewhat less bad even passable raid member right? Can one do that in a relaxed (the original meaning) fashion? Sure given enough time or sadly enough money. So what is hardcore? Willing to put up with absolutely any and all of the most utterly inane decisions by a gaming company and still fork over the cash. No wonder they are loved by TPTB. Thus I will remain a filthy casual, I have a limit.
Hey, Rhodz! You forgot to acknowledge the trademark in your signature. That's the sign of a true casual.
I don't think Everquest has many people that I'd call casual. By that, I mean most players, including myself, spend an unhealthy amount of time glued to their chairs. It's been fairly recent that they made changes to catch returning and new players up to those that have been playing over a decade. Does Everquest have a pause even? There's always a risk when taking an afk. I'd be curious to see the average daily play time of folk on the progression servers. Or others even. My wife and I are retired, started on Lockjaw shortly after it opened, and probably average at least four hours a day. We're not rushing it, but we've barely reached 35th level with our main characters there. We're doing other activities than hitting dungeons for experience, though. Tradeskilling, farming tradeskill drops, working factions, and such. Six months won't be near enough time to accomplish all that we hope to before Kunark is patched. I think a better topic would be defining a hardcore player. I'd call players that are willing to stop at nothing to get what they want hardcore. Putting the game before their real life activities, won't hesitate in griefing others, kill stealing and camp jacking are typical, etc. And note that DBG winks at, condones, and even encourages this type of playing. While some hardcore players are skilled, no doubt, that would be a whole different topic and this type of gaming says nothing of skill. Anyhow, while I wouldn't personally call most players casual, I think that DBG sees most of us as such. Yet they continue to cater to the hardcore.
Gosh I'm reading things like "less than 10 hours a week" and stuff like that. Here I was thinking that playing only 30-40 hours a week was "casual". On Vulak'Aerr I played something like 60-70 hours a week and got really tired since I also have a full time job and between my job and the game I kind of cut back my hours of sleep more often than I would have liked but felt that I hard to work hard to keep improving the gear and aas of my warrior so that I could help my guild progress. With the 3 months between expansions I also felt rushed to try and get everything I wanted done before it was time to unlock the next expansion. I knew I was "playing it hardcore" but really enjoying it overall despite being really tired many days at work. When some of the people I was gulided with on Vulak'Aerr told me they were planing on new progression servers I was kind of looking forward to it but was a bit hesitant since quite a bit has changed in my life since 2011-2012; I'm also just a couple of weeks from being 30 years old and missing out on sleep seems to affect me more than when I was playing on Vulak'Aerr. So despite the desire to actually want to play with my friends from Vulak'Aerr again I really didn't feel like I had to time to play as hardcore as I would like. However they then announced that these new servers would have 6 months between the first several expansions instead of 3 months like Vulak'Aerr so that convinced join them on Ragefire because I knew I could play the game just 30-40 hours a week and still accomplish most everything I want done in each era before having to worry about the next expansion. Of course now they've changed the rules on me and I'm in forced in this situation where I have to hope they allow transfers from Ragefire to Lockjaw soon and then convince my guild that moving to Lockjaw is the right choice for our guild. However most of my guild in from Taiwan and many members are not fluent in the English language and explaining this to them is a real challenge; heck many members in my guild don't seem to understand that Ragefire is being changed to a 3 month server since they either didn't read the official announcement or didn't understand what it means. I even had someone in my guild tell me that "6 months won the vote" not understanding that while yes it did get the most votes that's not what Daybreak decided to implement. So while I want to be able to play at a "casual pace" of 30-40 hours a week it's starting to look like I'm going to have to try and push myself to playing 50+ hours a week again (not sure I could manage 60 anymore) to get everything I want done with just 3 months between expansions since it looks like I'm going to be stuck playing on Ragefire unless I want to abandon my guild (main thing that got me to join the server in the first place) or just outright quitting.
Reloading please wait was one of the only guilds on vulak to ever really challenge EoE in any relevant content.. I hope you can convince your members to switch Simone, yours is a guild that would defiantly be welcome on lockjaw.
Casual and Hardcore players approach "rules" differently. A casual player will typically follow the spirit of a rule whereas the hardcore player is going to follow the letter of the rule, toeing the line of what is acceptable or even breaking the rules when it empowers him or her to do so.
I play 4 to 8 hours a week and enjoy it. I'd call that casual. I've already done the accomplishment part of this game a few times over. Now I'm enjoying occasional nostalgia. It's funny that it's even a debate! I use to go out seven nights a week in my twenties, now I go out once or twice a month. Does that lessen the enjoyment of those few nights?!?
Years ago a similar discussion came to the conclusion that anyone who doesn't raid and plays EQ less than 10 hours a week is a casual. Makes no sense for anyone to be upset there are casuals in this game.
It's all relative. I play and perform music 2-3 hours a day on average, but compared to my friends who do it for a living, I'm casual. It goes back to my earlier comment in this thread. If the amount of playtime you have is a personal concern, you are not casual. If you don't care whether you have a lot or a little, you are. Casual is how seriously you obsesses over your time, not how much time you have.
Casual and hardcore have nothing to do with principles. If a player has enough moral "flexibility" they will resort to whatever gives the biggest bang for the krono no matter the abstract designation. Perhaps it should be considered people are not what they were 15 years ago. Just look around...
