Casuals are often seen as the death of an MMORPG. But in WoW Classic it becomes clear: Without casuals, the game is not complete.
World of Warcraft is the best MMORPG that has ever existed – at least that’s what a lot of WoW fans would claim. But whether they mean the current WoW, that is “Retail”, or the old “Classic” variant – there is disagreement about that.
But no matter how much one likes Classic, most have come to realize: It’s not quite like it used to be. This is not only due to the small changes in the game but also to the community. Because it has changed drastically.
A fan sees only one solution: WoW Classic needs to attract more casuals again if it wants to be good again.
A new expansion is coming soon in modern WoW:
What’s going on with WoW Classic? Those trying to find their way into WoW Classic as newcomers might have a hard time. Because without friends to guide them and if they don’t want to spend hours watching guides or videos, getting started is difficult. Most players are veterans who have been playing the game for 20 years. Patience is often low, and the entry is tough. Glittering-Beat3831 criticizes exactly this in his post in the WoW Classic Subreddit:
I believe that what made WoW so special was the fact that everyone was new and just experimenting a little. People simply enjoyed doing what they wanted to do and playing the game the way they wanted to play it. Most people were just casual and friendly.
However, according to his view, it is no longer like it used to be. The player base has changed, and so has how WoW is played:
Nowadays, there is gatekeeping in the game from sweaty try-hard players competing for the best parses and only doing Min/Maxing. There is nothing wrong with playing the game that way, but it’s just a shame that this is now the majority of the player base.
Dad guilds and leveling guilds do exist, but most of them are practically dead.
This behavior, he argues, leads to newcomers having neither a chance nor wanting to spend much time in the game:
I have the impression that when new people come to the game, they are immediately turned off by all the try-hards who take the game too seriously or treat it like an eSport, and then newcomers say: “Yeah, this is not for me, I have a life” and then they disappear. If I were new, I wouldn’t want to play either.
We need the majority of players to be casuals again so that the game can be magical again. Now it’s just a cesspool of negativity with miserable players who aren’t even playing to have fun.
Community agrees, but sees other problems
Even though many agree with the original post, there are also some comments that consider a few other factors. Because the development in WoW Classic is simply normal, as times have changed. It was different back then because there was always a stream of new players. Hiroba writes:
I believe people often forget that the popularity of WoW was a big reason why old content felt alive for so long, even in the first expansions. There were thousands of new players back then who were just starting and leveling from 1 to 60.
Unlike today, when nearly everyone playing Classic is a long-term veteran of the game and has experienced everything multiple times.
The consensus seems to be that the “good old days” will simply never come back. But if one wants to bring back a bit of the old magic in classic Azeroth, then they need to try to give newcomers more space and maybe pay a little less attention to complete optimization. But that’s not so easy once one has started.
But maybe some fans just need to come out of their wrong phase of their WoW life …
