The WoW boards have once again erupted with Casual v. Hardcore. No doubt everyone is sick of the "debate." But what interests me, from a Casual Player perspective, is that WoW is so close to mostly pleasing everyone, and just doesn't realize it.

Lets just assume for the sake of sakeing that there really are three, largely fixed groups of players out there: Casuals, Raiders, PVPers. Casuals might do a little ZG/AQ20 if they're in a well-organized but small guild, but they're essentially tethered to the 5-10mans. Raiders raid the 20-40mans, and PVPers.. PVP.

The two outstanding problems are the pace of new content, and the growing gaps in gear.

So yeah, Casuals. Very little new content, and mudflation impacts them harshly. I just a few days ago finally had my first chance to upgrade from my Doomsaw to something more Pally-friendly. Patch 1.10 and sort-of Patch 1.11 introduced some great new ideas and challenges for Casual gamers, if shoehorned crudely into existing dungeons.

Casuals are typically placated with the idea of 5-10 man Dungeons in the Expansion. But this is only half of the solution. As other writers have noted, it just delays the problem yet again. You run the LVL70 Dungeons for your shiny new Dungeon 2 gear, and then... that's it! You win the game. What Casuals need to hear about is what happens AFTER the Expansion, and there the Developers have been frustratingly, if understandably, mute.

But the path ahead should be obvious to the Developers, and communicating that understanding to the WoW boards would go a long way towards putting out fires. Proclaim far and wide that, henceforth, being a casual WoW player will be treated as entering onto a career path. Just as the dedicated raider and (sort-of) PVPer can expect regular updated gear and content, evolving the character and his personal plot, so will Casuals, post-Expansion, be treated exactly like 'little raiders.' Release staggered updates of Dungeon content and gear upgrades, so that a Casual gamer can expect to have different gear and experiences a year after the Expansion is released.

It should be relatively easy to do this in a way that entices the other playstyles into Casual Dungeons, through things like consumables, tokens for enchants, and other reagents. After all, while Casual gamers have a tremendously hard time getting into the raid or PVP game, what Raiders haven't had fun bumming around Scholo with friends during off-raid time?

The release of 1.10 pointed the way towards solving mudflation for Casuals, and the problem of creating harder encounters. 1.10 released Dungeon 2 sets that were substantially the same as Tier 1. All along, the doomsaying Raiders warned that creating Casual gear on par with Molten Core stuff would devastate the raid game, and merely whet the appetite of the ravening hordes of Casuals.

But none of this has happened. Raiders have not been affected one iota by Dungeon 2. And this is in large part because the bar for Dungeon 2 is high. Not every Casual can do a 45 minute run, much less Val'Thalak. If you do have Dungeon 2, it's because you're a solidly experienced player with similarly expert friends... the type of person who would make a good raider if you did have the time/energy. If you don't have Dungeon 2, it's because you haven't ponyed up, not because Raiders are somehow keeping you down. And at the same time, I don't know any Raiders that have been devalued or distraught because their Molten Core gear is at the same level as some Casual gamer. Why should they, when Blizzard has been careful to maintain a two-tier gap between Raider and Casual gear?

So in one stroke, Blizzard killed three of the most common Hardcore/Casual complaints. They killed the Raider complaints about Casual mudflation by demonstrating that Raiders really only care about their relative power, and a moving two-tier gap between themselves and the Masses is a perfectly good reward. They killed the Casual complaints about advancement by giving them a feasible, if difficult and content-light, alternative to raiding. And Blizzard killed their own excuse that Casual content 'just can't be that hard,' by creating hugely challenging and creative 5-10 man encounters.

Blizzard doesn't seem to have reflected on the success of 1.10. The endless, undying complaints of hardcore/casual went from a roaring bonfire to a dull echo. And all from what seemed to be a single new quest line and a few 'Casual Epics' in old, boring Dungeons. It should be a dramatic demonstration that creating new paths for Casuals, in a way that even involves Raiders, is the key to success and managing the current reality of WoW.

The problem with all this is that Blizzard seems exhausted just keeping up with raiding demands. So it's probably too much to ask that Blizzard program three separate tiers of content. And dealing with mudflation is difficult enough with just raiders, much less factoring in three separate 'career paths.' But just posting some understanding of the solution, rather then racing headlong towards the same problems at LVL70, will go a long ways towards toning down Casual issues.

(PS: After writing this I realized I might've posted a similar topic some months ago. If so, I'm sorry!)

I'll venture that you're alluding to me, Thaen, at least in part. I resisted the urge to post here because I'm (still) short on time. Long story short, I think virtually any type of content can be designed at almost any size group. If you have 3 players or more (holy trinity, sometimes fewer in WoW), I'd venture content can be designed which is very easy or very hard for those people and which is dynamic or downright simple.

I think you hit on a downright great point that whatever the ever-shifting term "casual" is supposed to mean, if it really means what you describe it as, then difficult content will be impossible for these people. I tend to have a different view, from my explicit experience playing WoW.

As I leveled, I didn't join a single guild until I was 60. I did virtually every instance along the way, usually with two RL friends and random whoevers. I got to 60 and PUG'd a great deal, completing my tier 0 set while still unguilded (before +dmg gear was even in the game, really). I got to a point where, early, I was literally out of content. In all of those PUGS, I was one of the first 100 or so 60's on my server, I met many people who are now in the top guilds, leaders of the top guilds on my server. I subsequently took part in a three-guild merger in order to begin gathering enough people for end-game content (then, only Onyxia and Molten Core). We were explicitly and from the start "casually" oriented in raiding, keeping the raid-time down, max three nights a week. None of the founding members really "wanted" to raid, per se, we just wanted to experience the last avenue of content out there. As it turned out, we ended up, even with these express limitations, being one of the top alliance guilds on our server. Heh, who knew?

My proposal is that during that time I was pickuping with groups on our server, all the way to 60 and through all of the non-raid gear to 60, I was making friends and developing a steady group, which eventually became the core of my (now-defunct) guild. Those friends were excellent players, guilded or no. I knew that I could tackle the "toughest" content (5 and 10 man) out there at that time with them and have no reservations about completing it in record times and what not. I would say that if, instead of raid content, I'd have had Dire Maul, then another slightly harder 5 or 10 man content, followed by another, I would never have cared to join up with the three guild merge to "raid." I might have tried it... I might even have merged. But, after the Ragnaros kill, I had already begun to decide that it was just kinda a mess of people and time I wasn't interested in long term. Its fun, to a point, but its just not something I can devote so much time to (growing older, serious life issues, getting married soon, etc, etc...).

I think, most importantly here, that its a much, much easier transition for those "casual" gamers, whoever they are, to move from "easy" 5 man, to dedicated group of 5 man, to dedicated group of 10 man to dedicated group 20 man (if they want), than it is to move from 5-10-15 man content thats "easy" straight to "raiding" in 40 man groups. ZG was a GREAT bridge to raiding. Even after my guild had been raiding for a year plus, our first night in ZG was one of my favorite nights of playing WoW. It wasn't the loot, it was fun, new encounters and a more "social" raid atmosphere.

So, I came to the point with my character, when my guild imploded (she's mostly tier 2 geared), where there's just nothing left for her to do, unless I rejoin a raid guild. I've thought about it, I kinda want to, but otherwise, there is zero character advancement for her in the game. I've alted alot, have four 60's (I've been in the game since launch, after all). I'm done. I wish there were something, other than raiding, I could do. Its really as simple as that. It doesn't mean I don't think that time was not fun, or devalue it or the complication/heartburn required to get our tanks in dark iron, get enough flasks of titans, etc, etc, etc... that we all know. I just wish there were different alternative ways to play the game and still feel like my main (and favorite) character were getting somewhere, even if just with a few of my remaining friends from the guild I so actively took part.

I think I, to some extent, agree with the OP. My thought is that there should be multiple pathways, as the OP suggests, to character advancement. The "two tier" difference, I'm not even sure is necessary, though that seems to be being hinted at by Tseric in a post about the Expansion. There really ought to be somewhat equivalent opportunities for advancement of characters, or at the very least progressively difficult pathways. My concern is it seems like they've bought into the idea that level 60's who want to just do 5 mans should have a progession path and "new" content. I don't fault them (too much) for having so much raid conten nowt, its the game they expected to make from launch. It just sounds like they want this upcoming expansion 5 man content to always be significantly behind the end-game raid. If you buy my thought that content, at least 10 man, can be tuned for difficulty and really can be difficult, approximating ZG end-bosses, say for a brand new level 70 5-10 man zone, then why can't this zone be, say, only one "tier" behind the similar first tier raid zone?

If the "casuals" are as you describe them and not like me... someone with well-developed friends lists and old, great players to draw from or even guilded players with a different emphasis, then I agree with you, Thaen, the development of such content is pointless. I think, however, with my account expiring on July 27th for lack of things to do, that if they make an effort to provide progressively difficult, requiring organization, 5-10 man content, they'll win me back for the expansion and otherwise, I, personally, am done with WoW forever.

One must always be aware that the people who even read the WoW forums are a minority, let alone those who complain that either casuals or hardcore players are being ignored.

The mere fact that WoW has demonstrateably more people raiding than any previous MMO, and has still attracted a huge casual base testifies to their success at providing content for both.

Everytime something new is added to the game, someone will always complain that its not a 50:50 split of what they see is casual vs. hardcore depending on their own perspective, and even if 99% of the people who play the game felt both sides got an equal measure of content from a patch, the 1% who disagreed would still create 20-page forum threads.

The labels are completely simplistic and stupid, internet forums promote whining, and I have fun playing WoW, both the so-called hardcore content, and the casual. Accidentally doing a 45 min baron run when you engage him with seconds to spare felt fantastic, the final boss of the dungeon2 set was fun to fight even though I was just helping out non-raiding friends, and although Earthstrike is hardly a 'casual' accomplishment, at least it doesn't take full raids.

Finally, the so-called 'casual' content gives addicts something to do on their alts.

You're absolutely right that the term is always shifting. MC/Ony used to be considered "Hardcore content". Now you see more and more "casual" guilds and pugs killing at least up to Domo (FR cockblocks hurt the casual guilds pretty hard on Rag, but if they spend their cores well, they can do it).

BWL still hasn't gotten the "casual instance" aura, probably because of Vael and the amount of coordination needed for Razor, and tanking gear needed for Broodlord.

UBRS/Scholo/Strat used to be considered hard content. Now even the very most casual player can waltz through the place.

The argument is, for at least 75% of the people that call themselves "casual", a farce.

I agree the labels are stupid as well. If you haven't figured by now what type of game WoW is once you hit 60(primarily raiding, or you can pvp), then gtfo. Complain and complain all you want that blizzard SHOULD satisfy you isn't going to change that they probably aren't. It isn't enough for these people that they are going to get TONS of "casual" content when they hit 70? I imagine all the current 40-mans will become 20 mannable, in the correct gear progression.

Also, add firemaw to that "casual" cockblock list.

Correctamundo.

A lot of casuals are people wanting to raid more, but who associated themselves with the wrong people and now feel beholden to the "family guild" they helped create back when they were all starting out.

Yes but I think those people that can't sit down for a 3-4 hour block a few times a week are actual casual players and probably have plenty on their plate doing a UBRS run or spending some time on a Saturday working on their tier .5, or just enjoying a few battleground games.

The "casuals" that have the time to bitch and moan about how Blizzard is screwing them are people that either have no personality skills (ninja looters, general realm trolls/assholes, major guild jumpers) or no playing skills; which is causing them to be unable to get into any type of raiding environment due to their own devices.

The actual casual player more than likely does not read the Blizzard forums, and probably does not know all that much about dungeon gear past some guy he may inspect passign by on his realm. Hell I get asked about my Stormcaller by people all the time asking where it came from, I tell them its from AQ40 and they ask what that is ... heh.

See, I'm not sure I agree with this. Obviously it's a decent picture of how the game is at 60, but not necessarily of how it needs to be. I sympathize with the "casual player" argument a lot more than most raiders, I suspect. As I've outlined in prior posts on the topic (see this old post), I do think that WoW is something of a bait-and-switch deal in its current form. The open beta, the initial experiences, the word-of-mouth subscriptions after watching a friend play, the "WoW Experience" from 1-59 was all about a new approach to the MMO genre, removing dozens of barriers to accessibility that had previously left analyst estimates of the size of the entire MMO market languishing in the realm of six-digit figures. No more holy trinity. No more endless grinding the same mob over and over again (unless you wanted to do that!) in order to advance. No more sitting in town for an hour to find a group so you could get some exp, then having that group break up after 20 minutes and being right back where you started. No more being entirely reliant upon others if you were a healer. No more sitting for 2-3 minutes after every fight to regen if you didn't have a healer/recharger with you.

The essence of the WoW experience, for many, was to be able to log on for 45 minutes, do two quests, and log off, and advance a little bit. Or to have a lazy weekend free and spend the whole day leveling, or maybe get a good instance group and get some rare gear at the same time. WoW has 6mil+ subscribers because of the 1-59 game.

If WoW had advertised around the premise of a more refined raid game that improved upon EQ's foundation, and instanced PvP, it would still be a popular game thanks to the Blizzard name, but it would by no means be the behemoth that it has become.

The problem with WoW at 60 is that you can't really do anything in small chunks of time anymore. If you're on the wrong side of a faction imbalance, you can't even PvP with small bits of spare time. This weekend I queued for some BGs and queuing for both WSG and AB at the same time, I had a 45-minute wait on average before I got in (and then they both popped at once :angry:). For the "casual" player in that sense, WoW offers roughly 500-600 hours worth of content, I'd say. Now, that's a lot, don't get me wrong! If I spent $200 on four PC or console games and got 600 hours of gameplay out of them combined I'd be very satisfied. But obviously MMOs are different. There's no "Congratulation! You are winner!" screen that pops up when you finish your Dungeon 1 set, and no feeling of closure. Everyone wants to continue.

Anyway, 500-600 hours. Let's say 300-350 hours to hit 60, and then the level 60 gear progression, replacing greens with blues and assembling the Dungeon 1 sets and such. Then you hit a wall. Maybe you roll an alt and do it all over again if that's your thing, in which case you have a lot of gameplay ahead of you. But what if you want to keep building up your initial character? Then you run to the Blizzard forums and complain. And, as I've said, I don't think it's an unjustified complaint.

The current excuses for "casual" content at 60 are pretty flimsy. Grinding CC rep or AD/Scarlet Insignias is an absolutely godawful proposition from a time:reward perspective. Grinding up to CC Exalted and doing all your badge quests to get one single item will take you literally roughly as long as running Strat/Scholo/BRS/DM multiple times and replacing every piece of gear you own. And at the end of that grind, you get what... a shiny trinket, or a pair of bracers, that are an upgrade, but still just one item in one slot?

There really should be a true 5-man and 10-man progression. I'd actually reduce the number of 20-man zones, because they cater largely to the same crowd as the 40-mans (how many people regularly kill Hakkar or Ossirian but don't do MC or BWL?). Ideally, once you're done gearing up in blues at 60, there would be a whole new set of 2-3 more instances that are tuned to be a few notches above UBRS and DM/Strat/Scholo, that offered ZG/AQ20-quality loot.

Now, at release, time and manpower constraints made that impossible. It wasn't until January 2006 that Blizzard had pretty much completed their vision of what the game would look like on release 14 months earlier. But based on what I've been reading, I think the expansion will go a long way towards rectifying the problem.

Casual is a tricky term to define that's for sure. I remember regarding myself as 'casual' well into BWL. The kind of guy who shows up just in time for the raid, buys ammo as people head out and doesn't have anything farmed, basically a leech. I considered myself casual because I didn't play all that much, that I had friends take my character to molten core to gear up, and still now when I'm at work during BWL my class leader will take my hunter to nef so that DS chest that will never drop for me won't rot.

But lately as my guild progressing in naxx (lovely thing about that place, you always progress even if you wipe it FEELS like you've accomplished something) I've been logging on more in between classes... realm trolling less and doing more herb picking and the like.

It's just a very vague term probably not defining, but I do know anyone with enough time to be fed up with the game has more time on their hands then I do.

Oh, don't get me wrong Gurg, WoW definitely does a bait and switch maneuver once you get to 60. And I agree, that's wrong. I've battled and debated this for probably a year, but I've finally accepted it. If I want to continue advancing, I have to raid and deal with organizing 39 other people who want the same thing but just can't stop jumping around or hitting on the NE manginas in the raid. But, the point of my post is that the endgame is clearly advertised ONCE you get there.

Debating how much the shit stinks hasn't changed anything, and probably won't.

I think it has; if the ideas that Blizzard has set out for the expansion truly happen and become part of their ongoing new-content process, I think they will show that all the discussion has had a huge impact. The folks asking for "the same gear in 5-man as you can get in a raid" are never going to get what they ask for. But asking for the sun, the moon, and the stars isn't necessarily a bad thing if it at least gets you the moon (i.e., new content). It may just be so much hot-air to get the masses to wait it out until the expansion, followed by another 2 years of raid instances. Only time will tell but Blizzard is at least paying lip service to the concept.

I don't think anyone -- certain super-moron Casuals excepted -- is arguing that non-Raider gear should be anywhere near Raider gear. The 'Time = Reward' argument is trotted out all the time to justify parity, but means nothing... for all the reasons above.

So I think the realistic, intelligent position of non-Raiders is a moving two-tier gap. Blizzard is already sort of doing this -- Dungeon 2 is nearly on par with Tier 1. If your guild is like mine, and can do ZG on weekends, you can do a little better. I think most Raiders are okay with that level of disparity, except for a few diehards horror-struck that not everyone has to grind Molten Core.

The thing about a moving two-tier gap is that it does require Blizzard to release new content, on the same schedule as Raid content. So Naxxrammas comes out.. then the next patch has Uldum as a 5-10 man with an upgrade quest, with a few outdoor Raid bosses while Emerald Dream is finalized.

That's really reasonable for everyone if we're getting new raid instances every three months, plus some AD/CC type casual content, and new Dungeons or similar accessible content every three-four months or so, with an enticement for raiders to check it out. That's really my dream scenario, where we all get along and run around Ironforge in a harmonious bliss.

The trouble with this is that Blizzard can barely cobble together broken raid content every three months. And they take a year and a half to design instances like Dire Maul. So to a certain extent Blizzard's hideous patching structure is designed to pit the two play-styles against each other for scraps of new content. If Blizzard did commit to a moving two-tier schedule they'd be forced to dramatically change their patching speed and entire design philosophy.

If there's one point I want to expand upon, it's this one. The issue with WoW right now is that the "casual" gear does not scale, at all, every single set of gear past the Big3/DM is through already existing content (non-raiding of course). There is no BWL to a casual's MC, and until there is, I will never ever ever stop raiding if I can. This is the kind of content I want but cannot get, enough to throw away 3-5 hours with 4 real life friends and not adjust my schedule to another 35-60 people.

Sorry to break continuity, but is this something that was announced or were you just using Uldum as an example?

I will agree they want character improvement - not many people would run the same instances over and over again knowing they will get nothing out of it. And some of them want an equal opportunity at improvement but I suspect - pure supposition on my part based on my own experiences - a large part would be satisified with improvement, period. Sure, you may get a bit wistful looking at somebody in full Nemesis when you are sporting Dreadmist or Deathmist. But I have to believe that pales in comparison to the fact that you've run Strat a zillion times, farmed those bozos in Silithus until you are blue in the face, and have nothing to look forward to but another grind to get AD rewards.

Personally, I raid because the alternative is to not play WoW. Like many others, I prefer 5, 10, even 20-man. But I want to kill Ragnaros. I want to put an ending on the Nefarian story that started in UBRS. I want to see Kel'Thuzud. And yes, I want my character decked out in epics. And I'm willing to put up with the fact that to do this my time in the game is dependent on 39 other people - who I really don't know except in-game - showing up on time, prepared, and putting the effort in to raid.

If I wasn't willing to do this though, would I stick around for the next best thing that Blizzard has offered to date (i.e., endless rep farming, Silithus and AD quest rewards on a huge grind cycle)? Not on your life. But more Dire Mauls, etc. would hold my attention reasonably well.

I think there is something else to this problem that people have not brought up. Constructing a 40 man raid isn't that much more difficult for the developers than a 5 man. The time spent in developing the environment and artwork and questlines is about the same. The only thing that might be more difficult in a 40 man is making up the more difficult mob encounters, but I don't know if that is a substantial difference. So lets say a raid dungeon takes 1.25 times the amount of work that making a 5-10 man dungeon does.

Now look how it affects the players. A 40 man raid will take literally months to get everything they want out of a raid dungeon. Look at people still doing MC for minimal upgrades. Even if you don't go to that extent, it still takes 3-4 months for a 40 man raid to get what they want out of there. Now lets apply that to a 5 man group who do some 5 man dungeon when its released. There are no weekly timers or likely any cockblocks. Probably a group of 5 as skilled as the 40 are can likely get everything they want out of that instance in a week, maybe 2 max, if they put the same effort to it as raiders do to new content. The only reason it can't be fully done is because of epics that are miniscule chances on drops, like Scholo and Strat with their epic weapons.

Now it does work for the truely casual who only do have a few hours to put to the game each week, in that in the limited time they play they will likely progress at the same rate the raiders do. But to the non raiders who are not casual, well they'll blow through a 5 man much faster then the raiders/non casuals will go through their content. Which means they'll continue to complain.

Remember when people first started raiding MC and there was no gear jump between UBRS blues and tier 1? Dark Iron fire resist gear wasn't even in the game yet. The only people that were able to make the successful jump from UBRS to MC were large, established guilds. There was literally no intermediate ground for the little guy.

For this reason, I disagree with you that there should be fewer 20-mans. Instead, there should be more 20-mans as gateways to the 40-mans. They should also have tiers of difficulty, sort of like Zul'Gurub is now (but not AQ20, which is fucked).

My roommate is part of a small guild that can just barely field enough people for Zul'Gurub. They're working on the spider and panther bosses at the moment. They can pretty consistently kill the snake boss, and take down the bat boss if they have the right classes online. But like you said, there's no way they're going to be killing Hakkar. This would be fine if there were multiple 20-man instances where they could gear up. They could spend 2 nights in ZG and kill the easy bosses, then move over to the next 20 man and kill the first couple bosses. Eventually, they could move on to clear the whole instance.

They can't do this now because AQ20 is not well-designed for the casual players. Kurinnaxx, while a complete joke for us, is really freaking hard for new players. I've watched my roommate's guild wipe for two hours on him and I've listened to how frustrated they get on vent. The first boss in a supposedly casual raid zone shouldn't be that hard. The first boss should be "You got 20 people together? Grats! Here's free loot! See how fun raiding is? Now let's give you something just a little harder."

But it isn't. It goes from Kurinnaxx to assrape Rajaxx. There's not a chance in hell my roommate and his guild are going to take down that boss. I've got a few friends on other servers and I've stood over their shoulders while watching them attempt Rajaxx, and it's painful to watch. There's no way Rajaxx should be the second boss in this zone. He should be the last boss, and Ossirian should be the boss of an entirely separate zone.

So, why would more stepping-stone 20 mans be good for the expansion, or a new MMO that wants to have WoW's level of success?

1. The 20 mans offer a viable gateway for casual raiders. With multiple zones to choose from, they can slowly work their way up without brick walls. (Hi, Rajaxx!) And if they do well enough and decide they like raiding enough, they can make a smooth transition into 40-man raiding. This currently isn't entirely viable for most casual players. Either they don't want to undertake the tribulations of creating a large guild (and be honest, it's not an easy thing to do), or they're content playing with a smaller group of friends.

If you have multiple tiers of 20 man dungeons, the small guilds can keep on moving up without ever having to bother with 40 man raids.

EZ Level Raid zones: 20 - 20 - 40
Med. Level Raid zones: 20 - 20 - 40
Assrape Raid zones: 20 - 20 - 40

The difficulty should be such that casual raiders could skip 40-man zones altogether and still have a shot at progressing through the next tier of 20-mans. The next tier of 20-mans would just be farming zones for the big guilds. The final bosses (Ossirian, Hakkar) would have the jesus loot that even big guilds would use to prepare for 40-man zones. We still have tanks using Hakkar shields.

2. It gives the hardcore raiders viable gateways to the 40-man stuff and provides a good venue to acquire resist gear, instead of forcing us to do horrible bullshit reputation grinds or farm level 45 instances. Even Tigole said that AQ resistance gear implentation was a mistake. I think people just forgot about MC and how Dark Iron didn't exist when it debuted, which was only made forgiveable by the fact that some FR did drop in BRD and UBRS.

Both, because anything below BWL will likely be untouched in the expansion due to progression.

Example. How neat would it be, though?

My guild just beat Hakkar for the first time, after about six months or so of doing ZG. Having ZG available has been great for the smaller, family-friendly guilds. I would guess that having those 20-mans available for weekend trips, and progression, has helped keep some of my guilidies in the game long after they otherwise would. Especially now, with two drops per boss and the silly reagent requirements nixxed. AQ20 would be great if Blizz didn't apply their 'Second Boss = Rape' Vael philosophy to 20-mans.

I was thinking of how great it would be if Molten Core was turned into a 20-man instance. Keep Rags on a timer in a cave, similar to Onyxia. All of the MC fights are super-easy when compared to the ridiculously hard and coordinated ZG/AQ20 fights. Raiders win because they don't need to pony up 40 people to gear up some alts and new recruits. Smaller guilds gets a whole new place to play in.

The 45 minute UD run really demonstrates how smart development can separate 'easy' 5-10 man content from really challenging 5-10 man content. Val'Thalak is another good example -- guy is a monster, epic in every sense of the word.

It's probably true that Raid Instances are better bang for the buck. You get 40 people in there, two-three nights a week, for hours on end. And gearing everyone up takes forever. And yeah, it's the exact same time requirement for level design and art, excepting only boss design. If Blizz's thinking really is 'We're catering to Raiders because it's cost-effective and a proven long-term MMO strategy,' then that's fine, it's their business, I'd just like to know. I suppose it's possible to add token systems and reagents in 5-mans to keep people coming back -- like the new AD quests.

The whole problem of the end-game in an MMORPG is not something that can easily be solved with a patch here or an expansion there, imo. The devs/designers have to sit down and say, "What do we want players to be doing when they are finished leveling?" After answering the question, they need to get to work and implement some stuff. Now, this is quite a tough question to begin with. As it is, there are thousands and thousands of hours of content to be experienced while leveling, and this content is basically the game. They can also put hundreds of hours of new content into the end-game scene but let's face it: if it's the same style of content that players experienced while leveling, players will get to the end of it soon enough. What do they do then? As Gurg pointed out, there is no screen at the end of the game telling they won, so they'll likely fee empty and disappointed.

What we know is that, generally, people want to keep playing endlessly when they hit the max level, but...

1. They don't want to have to wait around for months for new content just to beat it in weeks.
2. They don't want content that is mindless and artificial repetition.

The developers' challenge is to make content that has a long life expectancy, according to #1 above. Now, unless they want to triple the size of their development team, there is no way that they will be able to come out with quality content faster than people can beat it. It's just unrealistic. Their content has to have some way to sustain it's own life, so either it never get old/useless or it takes a long time to get old/useless. According to #1 above, however, the content must do this without being artificially repetitious. The only way I see to do this is to make content player-driven.

Take PvP for example. In my eyes, this used to be something that was extremely player-driven, especially when the honor system first came out. Sure, it was a bit limited and elements could have been added to the game to make it even better, but world PvP was great and it almost never got old. Quite often on my server, there was a zerg 50 vs 50 battle going on in Hillsbrad, there were groups of 5-15 horde and alliance clashing in the Plaguelands, and there were raids on cities every week though. Yes, there were problems with this (server crashes, faction imbalances, etc), but this is just an example of what I mean by player-driven content. It wouldn't be tough for Blizzard to add elements to the environment every now and then for world PvP to become that much more interesting. Now, compare this to Battlegrounds. How boring is it to go to the same places time and time again to grind honor/reputation and take part in PvP, the results of which have absolutely no significance to the world around you? These are just my personal opinions, but it's artificially repetitious.

Another thing about WoW is that it just doesn't feel like an immersive world. The visuals are amazing, don't get me wrong, but I don't feel like I'm sitting on a planet shaped by Titans and rocked by millenia of war and history... I feel like I'm sitting in a world tailored for the sole purpose of supporting players as they level up. Every now and then, maybe once every few months, I get the urge to go exploring the world: I hopped over the wall and went to southern Silithus far before 1.9, I've been in the Caverns of time, I've jumped off the top of Teldrassil, I've swum around almost the entire coast of the Eastern Kingdoms. Sometimes I find houses and towers that exist for no real purpose, sometimes there are breathtaking landscapes, and sometimes I run into something cool only to hear in guild chat, "Yeah, that's just used for Undead Lowbie Quest XXX." It's cool, nonetheless. The question is, though, what does it matter to me? As a level 60 player in an end-game raiding guild, I have absolutely no reason to go to these places and nothing I can do there. It sucks.

Now, is changing the layout of the world something that's even feasible to do at this point? Of course not, but there is a lot to be learned from this issue. The entire world is designed for leveling, and the entire game is designed for combat, no matter how you look at it. What variety can there be in a world where everyone is interested in doing nothing other than improving their ability to fight? Very little. It may sound like I'm just rambling, but this means a lot when it comes to the development of end-game / player-driven. Take the economy, for example: it's severely limited and boring. A few changes could easily make it into something that provides hundreds of hours of enjoyment for players, "hardcore" and "casual" alike. If you've ever read the suggestions forums, which I highly recommend you do, there are tons of other ideas as well that would really go a long way. Player housing and guild housing, anyone? Those things alone would open up a whole new avenue of possibilities for the economy, for professions, and for PvP. I could write a book with countless more ideas and the specifics them as well, but I won't, because my guild's raiding soon.

My central point is that there are a lot of new and creative paths Blizzard can open up in this game to make it exponentially more rewarding and enjoyable for every player. Killing challenging NPCs to compete with other guilds is great fun, but having something to supplement it so I have a reason to play while not raiding would be great. I imagine more casual players would also like to have some options outside of grinding for quests / doing 5-10 man dungeons.

The assumption apparent in point 1 is that "Casual raiders" want to jump from small 5-10 man groups to 20 man groups. As pointed out by Praetorian, this is pretty much a bait-and-switch scenario. Not once, before level 60 are you asked to even muster 10 people for anything. I think, personally, that this 20 man content ought to be available for people who DO want to make that jump. I just think that alternatives ought to be provided as well.

As far as an intermediary zone, ZG filled its purpose well. Half the caster drops in there were better/roughly equivalent to BWL drops (sad, I know) when it came out. If that won't help you, absent resists, to take on real 40 man content in WoW, I don't know what will.

I nearly posted this earlier, but didn't. ZG was designed to provide such a pathway you are suggesting from UBRS->MC. It does that awesomely, I'd say. But, what if you didn't want to go to MC?

Some people also think that the expansion will spell the death of the raid game, with 80-90% of the content targeted towards small groups. Personally, I hope that they just intend to do what they did at release, have a couple of raids and then focus live content generation on a new raid every 2 patches or so. Without a raid game, I'd just quit WoW, and I imagine a lot of others would too. Not the majority, certainly, but people underestimate the "whole world" effect that raiding has. If there was no raid game, the world would ring much more hollow for even the casuals, I think. Especially when you consider how raiders often act as leaders for the community.

I don't think this is a good model of content release, though. Pumping the casuals full of content, and giving the raiders a token one or two things to do and then only having a regular schedule of real raid content releases is pretty stupid, as this is what leads to the complaints of "not enough casual content".

In fact, there really is not more raiding content in the end-game than casual content currently. It's just that all the casual content was dumped into the game at release, and has no progression. If scholo, lbrs, ubrs, dire maul, and stratholme had been released periodically as ascending-in-difficulty-and-reward 5-man instances, every two patches, between the raid releases, there would be much fewer complaints... yet the exact same amount of content would be in the game.

And that's what they should be trying to do, staggered releases of progressive content for both groups.