an old timer - Blue Tracker

#1 - Oct. 17, 2013, 7:08 p.m.

I've got a confession. I'm old. 34 to be honest and apparently much to old to play wow. These days (and for a long time) im a dirty casual player. Here's a few of my fondest memories.

I started in BC and I've loved this game all those years. I remember my first char fondly (a hunter of course). My first WOW memory was being ganked in stranglethorn by two lvl 60s. Out of nowhere one of them was sapped and a rogue appeared, killed the 2nd and then proceeded to spank the other. I giggled for hours! I carried on leveling my hunter but secretly yearned to be that rogue.

I remember being level 17 and 10 of us attacking a level 30 mob, killing it and then giggling when it dropped a copper. I remember getting lost in gnomer and repeatedly trounced but loving every minute of it and the fun we had. I remember mummitroid my long time mage sidekick and how she made me ride through stormwind naked when I lost a duel to her.

I raided in BC, pugged in the wonderful wotlk due to a dead server and spent most of that expansion trying to out DPS folks while healing (and often succeeded). I've been a gm and an officer, a lover and a loser and I've paid my sub all this time.

But I'm a dirty casual. I know nothing, have no skills and am noobish. What I really am is an old fart who looks back and says `in my day....

On some days, years ago I was excellent at wow. That degraded to good, and these days I would struggle to say average. I have a house, cars a wife and son and I'm really only hanging around for those brief blasts of nostalgia in the short time I have to play.

Don't hate me for using lfr, don't hate me for liking the timeless isle. In the brief time I have, they made me feel (if ever so briefly) epic.

I won't be around much longer. I have a date with Garrosh then im gone. My friends have moved on, I can't for the life of me summon the energy to make new ones after seeing what feels like a world of scum in wow. But I love it still. I love it like the memory of a first kiss, knowing I'll never experience it again but wishing....

Thank you to those who I've met on my travels and my old lost friends. And to everyone who pitches in, overcomes and helps others despite how simple it seems. Gratz u are the lifeblood of wow.

And as we used to say, the only people who use the word noob in wow, are the ones who are noobs.

Thx

#40 - Oct. 18, 2013, 3:21 p.m.

http://wow.joystiq.com/2011/08/04/15-minutes-of-fame-knitting-together-a-gaming-life/
You've got to love that shirt!

http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/01/19/70-year-old-raiding-grandma-wields-legendary-and-leads-her-guild/
;)

It’s fairly common for old-schoolers to go from hardcore to a more casual play style; I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with that.
As you get older you start to have new and more responsibilities, less free time and eventually that tends to affect hobbies like WoW.
That’s partially the reason why we have so much more casual friendly content today than what we used to have, it’s not just for newcomers and “permanent” casuals, but also because we know that there are a lot of oldschool players that love WoW and still want a way to keep playing it and experience most of its content, they need something that doesn’t require as much time and effort to complete.
This is also a matter of respect for our fans, how could we deny them the pleasure of still being a part of this world when they were the ones that helped it become what it is today in the first place just because they can’t play hardcore anymore?
After having experienced WoW’s high end content, it becomes very hard for an oldschooler to suddenly have to resign to only do what casuals had access to in the old days.
Not being able to raid was a major obstacle that we needed to overcome. And so LFR was born.

I have to say that I disagree with you on the current state of WoW’s community though. There have always been bad apples in every community, and I don’t think that people change all that much to be honest, we’re still the same WoW fans everywhere and we all love to play this game.
What might be exacerbating this apparent bad behaviour is also what is probably helping you and everyone else experiencing content at a lower difficulty level.

Once WoW is able to fulfil your thirst for gameplay without requiring as much effort in creating strong social ties, the community’s “friendliness factor” tends to go down a little bit.
It’s more of humanity’s flaw than anything else really.
I mean, we’d like to think that we’re being very altruistic at times, but more often than not, the case is that we always have something to gain from doing a good deed for somebody else, even if it’s simply a new friendship, a chance to get a favour back in the near future, or just a smile and a thank you that makes us feel happier and maybe even healthier, we always reap some benefits from our self-initiated acts of benevolence.
When you need 24 other extremely skilled players to finish Hc content that you are personally interested in finishing, this becomes incredibly obvious in a game like WoW. It’s all about our natural tendency to group up and form societies, together it’s easier to overcome obstacles.

I think our current solution is quite good, having content that fits almost every kind of player creates different communities, and it’s up to players to find their own place in all of this.
Can there be a super casual-friendly community with incredibly strong social ties? Of course it can, but it’s up to players to cater for that.
What we can probably say, is that those communities tend to be more volatile because casual players don’t need other players in order to experience the full extent of the content that was designed for them as much as hardcore players do.
It’s also a matter of numbers, there are much less hardcore players than there are casuals so, social ties also tend to be naturally stronger when finding replacements is harder.

Obviously we are always trying to improve the game (and always will) in every way we can, you’ll see that things will only get better over time once all of this dust caused by the impact of these huge system changes starts to settle down. (Flex and LFR)