I'm a gamer and nothing more. I will never consider gaming to be hardcore, even though I can easily spend 8 hours a day doing raids, pve and pvp in different games. Hardcore, to me, was spending over 20 years riding my skateboard at a high level and risking serious bodily injuries daily. Hardcore is pushing up to a 15 stair handrail, flipping your board, then grinding you way down while trying to maintain control and not break your body during the 100 attempts it takes to finally land it. Hardcore gaming will never be at that level for me.

Uh huh...you're hardcore lol

I think using just time to decide who is hardcore versus casual is a bit inaccurate.

A person who spends three hours a day GSHing versus someone spending six hours a week raiding aren't hard core and casual respectfully, IMO. What you do with your time is what I use to define a person.

The difference between casual and hard core is defined in how many hours you spend playing a week and how challenging you prefer your content to be. Casual players typically either play less or prefer easier content that can be done without too much hassle. Hard core player dedicate themselves to completing the hardest, or at least harder, content that the game has to offer and spend more hours doing it.

Erm, a correction. When I was raiding competitively in WoW I think I spent about 6-8 hours a week playing once I got up to raid spec. Time spent has nothing to do with hardcore or not. The other part, is correct. A hardcore player plays for the harder aspect of the game, whether it be elite raiding or top level PvPing.

I define casual as someone who doesn't play as often as a hardcore player, someone who doesn't grind furiously and doesn't play in group every day to get the high end gear. That's what it has always been to me. I'm honestly a casual player in that definition. I play TOR on occasion and when I do I normally just muck around rather than grind. I like working on one character only, I do occasionally do ops or fps but prefer using group finder as I like playing alone.

Appearance is more important for me rather than stats when I gear my character. As an example, I also don't like having to switch things around all the time so I always make my combat gear and my RP gear the same likewise with the skill tree, I prefer having something that works in every situation I'm in rather than changing it all the time. My biggest pass time in SWG was decorating and even if I don't RP all the time or PvP all the time I always go for the RP-PvP servers when available, since I'd like to be able to have that option even if I never utilize it.

Person who plays more than me or clears harder content than me = Hardcore

Person who plays less than me or plays easier content than me = Casual

Just kidding.

Previous posts regarding content orientation and general challenge level are accurate enough. Still subjective as hell though; the label "hardcore" vs "casual" is nothing but divisive.