Our #25,000 Winner Asks A Question
Wowpeon was one of our winners in the BRK Count to 25,000 Contest, and as such, was given the opportunity to write a Post of His Very Own.
He has declined.
However, he has a Question. BRK has decided - with little difficulty - that a substitution is allowed. So without even needing to give us a rock-offering, we shall attempt to provide an Answer.
“How much content can a casual player with basic competency in his or her class reasonably hope to see? Obviously with enough patience and tenacity it’s possible to do a vast chunk of the quests in the world, but in terms of dungeons/instances, does there come a point where you need a certain support structure or level of skill that the casual player can’t reach? Does the answer change depending on the class you play, or are all classes valued to some degree?”
Pre TBC, if you wanted to experience the highest-level dungeons, you needed to be in a Guild. And we use the capital G specifically to mean that a large group of dedicated and competent players with an experienced core of leaders was necessary. Zul’Gurub is a 20-man instance, but if your guild had twenty 60s you weren’t going to complete it. A buffer of 10 players was minimal to cover illness, absenteeism, quitters, and to ensure the proper mix of toons were available on Raid Night. Casual players, at least in BRK’s experience, didn’t do much beyond UBRS, (exceptions always prove the rules, however.)
Post TBC, things are a bit different. With the advent of Heroic mode dungeons, any casual player on a large-population server should be able to get into a whole lot of instances due to the fact that, until you reach Karazhan, they are all 5-mans.
Lower Instances
Hellfire Ramparts
Mana Tombs
Blood Furnace
Underbog
Slave Pens
Auchenai Crypts
Shattered Halls
Karazhan Attunement Instances
Escape from Durnhold Keep
Sethekk Halls
Mechanar
Botanica
Shadow Labs
Arcatraz
Steam Vaults
Black Morass
and finally you can go play in Karazhan.
Karazhan is, of course, a 10-man instance. Getting a 10-man pug together, let alone working well as a team, is a real challenge. Now BRK was in a few ZG-pugs and even an MC-pug or two that was strictly roll-for-class-gear; no dkp. But was it common? No.
But for you casuals who cannot commit to a raiding guild and do Karazhan, Blizz has a treat for you: Heroic Mode instance. Still 5-man runs, but harder and epic-quality drops. All the instances we’ve mentioned so far, except for Karazhan, can be run in Heroic Mode. This doubles the number of instances available to a casual player.
The Question now morphs into: Just how easy is it for a casual to do all that? From BRK’s experience, it really does depend upon your class.
On the low-population server Madoran, this hunter is lucky to run one pug per week. My guild’s warrior and priest (yes, one of each, sigh…) get whispers from the moment they log on until they log off asking them to come run pug instances. If you want to play the big instances on Madoran, roll a warrior or priest, power level them to 70, and run instances 24/7 if you want.
If you desire the solitude of sitting in the LFG tool for hours on end… roll a hunter.
If you’d like to add your experiences as a casual player trying to run instances, please leave a comment. We dig em and those worthy always get BRK Bonus Points. We heard the BRK Quartermaster convinced a judge to lower his sentence to house-arrest, so we expect a visit from him very soon.
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9 Responses to “Our #25,000 Winner Asks A Question”
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Thank you, very informative
who ever came up with the idea to get rid of the LFG chat and replace it with the LFG tool i want 10 minutes in a dark ally and a baseball bat so i can tell them thanks =P
Adrus
I always wonder how a casual player is defined. I certainly don’t consider myself hardcore but I do play every night and most of the weekend. In terms of raid content - I always seem to be in small guilds but at least Feathermoon is a high population server so there are many pugs. Except of course I’m in Australia on a US server… so peak play time for me, on weeknights at least, all the US players are sleeping. That said pre TBC I was beginning to raid regularly in ZG and MC with a regular PUG group that did roll by class for items. I also began running with another group which used DKP - which everyone in the raid was assigned not just the guildies. Then TBC came out and I haven’t raided since. In my guild we’re working on getting all of our 70s keyed for Kara.. but we will barely have enough players to go.
I’m having the same problem with my guild, too. We barely have enough class differentiation to get into Kara let alone the fact that half of us aren’t keyed. And to add salt to our wounds my server is low populated and getting into a good PUG more than once a week is just plain luck. No worries on my part, though. As of this morning I am transfered to the med-high population server of Dethroc where I will be joining Blades of Reckoning (who are currently halfway through Kara). I can’t wait to get in there and let my BM spec shine!
Welcome to Detheroc! I think you’ll like it here.
I don’t think it depends on your definition of casual so much as it depends on your skill level.
“Casual” play means different things to different players. I consider myself a casual player - I play 2 hours a night during the week and around 4 hours or so a night over the weekend. Other casual players I know play for just a couple hours here and there.
But does that define your access to end-game content or the time it takes you to level? Who says time online = access to content?
Certainly being online more exposes you to more friends, gets you better gear, increases your standing with your guild, etc. etc. But we all know plenty of guild members that are online all the time that can’t carry their own weight in a high-level instance.
So the determining factor for me is really level of gameplay first, then time online.
As Damh pointed out, there is always room in a guild for good, solid players, even if they aren’t online all the time. As long as you accept the fact that you will be “second string” in a sense - filling in for cancellations, replacements for mid-run personnel issues, etc.
Like everything, there is a balance. The more time and effort you devote, the more access you will get. It’s up to each of us to determine where their own particular balance lies.
“My guild’s warrior and priest (yes, one of each, sigh…) get whispers from the moment they log on until they log off asking them to come run pug instances. If you want to play the big instances on Madoran, roll a warrior or priest, power level them to 70, and run instances 24/7 if you want.”
I’ve actually started a priest on your server, and even just getting to level 13 I’ve been getting tells. I always wondered what a low pop server was like, and now I see. Playing the priest is a nice break from outdpsing my MM Hunter class officer.
Oh, and natch, if you’re Alliance, look out for a huge red cat named Cringer. I keep him hungry.
Perhaps consistency of play time is as important as quantity. If you can be online most evenings in a particular time slot, you could fall in with a guild or non-guild group on the same schedule. If you are fitting your play time in between other activities, and others don’t know when you might be back, you’re going to be solo most of the time. Add to that the uneven pace that characters will level up based on amount of time to play and it can be a challenge to see the instanced content.