Ailis in Hunterland

You hear it all the time “we are a hardcore raiding guild” or “I’m a casual raider” and, at some point, you have to stop and think about those terms.  What do “casual” and “hardcore” mean?

Take my husband and I for example.  We play WoW in our downtime, which, as people who own their own business, can be for many hours a day or none at all.  During the summer months when business is slow, we’re online much more often than, say, in the fall or winter when the large companies have money to spend before the end-of-the-year-budget is due.  When we raid, we are serious about what we’re doing and very much want to progress in a timely fashion.  I’m interested in hard modes but have yet to find a group to attempt them, but that’s not a huge deal.

I go after any and all achievements I can.  He spends his time honing skills and researching his hunter, tweaking and fine-tuning everything he can within the available gear he has to work with at any given moment.

So, are we hardcore or casual?

When we left our previous guild, I spent a few days researching several guilds on our server.  I looked at the top guilds and picked a few random ones from a list – usually going by names that jumped out at me.  I even looked up guilds on other servers for a little while.

After reading through countless forum stickies on guild policies and raiding policies, my definition of hardcore is simply this: When new content is released, you make it your top priority to clear it first and you immediately attempt any and all hard modes.

So, wait, if you don’t clear it first, you aren’t hardcore?

That’s not what I said – if you, at any time, whether or not you meet this goal, make it a priority to attain realm firsts, world firsts, or any other firsts, I consider you hardcore.  If you immediately go into hard modes after clearing the instance quickly, I consider you hardcore.  Everything else can very much fall under the heading of casual.

So, what does casual mean, then?

Casual does not mean unskilled or undisciplined.  It can, but I believe there are many levels of casual when it comes to raiding and many people immediately assume “loose and undisciplined” when they hear the word casual.  This can be the case, but not always.  When you hear that a guild only raids 2-3 days a week, most people nod and think casual.

I would consider the top five guilds on my server hardcore.  They vie for the realm firsts and all have their hard mode drakes from either 10 or 25 man.  They are the best geared players on the server.  All of them only raid about 3 days a week for only about 4 hours each day.

Most “casual” guilds I know raid 4-6 days a week for 4+ hours each day and don’t even see half the content.

After finding this out, I came to realize that raiders that think of themselves and their guild as “casual” adopt a “meh” or restricted attitude towards progression half the time.  Or, even if they are serious about raiding, they think that because they are considered “casual” that they aren’t supposed to progress faster or in a more disciplined fashion.  They figure that this is just the way things are.  Standards are a bit more lax, rules are “meant to be broken” and a night beating heads against one particular boss for the third week in a row is simply seen as the status quo.  ”We’re casual so therefore we don’t move as quickly and sometimes struggle more.”  Any attempt to address this is sometimes seen as “trying to be too hardcore.”

Does it really have to be that way, though?

I firmly believe a guild can call themselves a casual raiding guild and still clear content in a timely manner.  It’s about maximizing the time spent and holding your raiders to a  standard.  Most of us who raid have real lives and families so we can only raid 2-3 nights a week for a few hours.  What you do in that 6 or so hours a week is what’s important, no matter the label you put on yourself or your group.

During the summer, it’s harder to maintain standards and the same rate of progression due to attendance problems.  This is especially true for guilds that focus primarily on 25 man raiding.  This is where, in my opinion, your 10 mans have a chance to really boost morale for the guild.  Those who know me well know that I am a very strong supporter of dedicated 10 man groups.  I realize it’s hard to have the same 25 people week in and week out but it is infinitely easier (and needed) in a 10 man.  In a lot of ways, you just simply cannot progress as well if you’re constantly juggling people.  A 10 man is a much more intimate raiding environment and, with time, you come to learn your raidmates’ styles and it makes your team that much stronger.  The most efficient 10 mans I’ve seen (other than the aforementioned top five hardcore guilds) are ones that have been together through several installments of content and can walk into new content with only one thing to do – learn the new content.  Not learn the new content and these 3 new people that were shuffled into the group.

Successful 10 mans such as these in the summer lulls can help even the most casual of guilds when frustration and burnout are at their peak.  And a dedicated 10 man group or two does not mean you are hardcore.  You can very much be as casual as you want and still have a smart and organized view of raiding.

Basically, you can call yourself “casual” and still maintain standards and discipline in your raiding.  Doing so doesn’t mean you are hardcore – it means you are being smart with the time you have allotted to get through content.  Asking that your raiders maintain a certain level of DPS or coming to raids repaired, with flasks, and having read up on the boss fights isn’t hardcore.  It’s using your time wisely and making sure that money spent in enormous repair bills will be worth it as you systematically take down boss after boss.  Having standards and discipline also doesn’t mean you don’t have fun with each other.  My closest friends in this game are raiders with a set of simple, easy to follow standards that make raiding a little less stressful and a lot of fun.

The best way I’ve seen it put was in a forum post on MMO-Champion:

Being casual doesn’t make you a bad player, and people confuse bad with casual. Casual just means you can’t play as much as someone who raids hardcore or semi hardcore can. Casual players might be AMAZING, great players.. but they just don’t have the time to devote themselves to raiding 4 hours, 3-4 days a week. But if they could, maybe they would be amazing hardcore players. Bad players are the ones who raid hardcore and can’t kill bosses.. but people seem to take the word casual a bit wrongly.

However, this is all my opinion based on my observations.  I’m curious to know what you guys think.  What’s your definition of hardcore and casual?