Who Swtor was made for.

You make a good point about "hardcore" and "casual" gamers. I suppose to many of my friends could see me as a hardcore gamer for spending time on a game forums, doing research on game mechanics, etc even though someone who enjoys raiding and doing difficult content would regard me as a casual player, since I have essentially no more interest in raiding after years of WoW.

I think it's important to remember that many "casuals" spend just as much time as a "hardcore" player in game. Instead of raiding, these players may be playing for the social aspect of MMOs, questing, or PvP.

I think the problem with current MMO culture is that raiding has become the definition of a hardcore MMO gamer, but in reality, it really encompasses much more than that. It's good to keep that in mind.

fantastic Post OP. sorry that you have to deal with some ignorant rants through the thread. You bring up some very solid and relevant points.

I have raided in my 10 yrs or so in the MMO field, and done many other things as well. I sort of fall into a niche category myself atm (hardcore crafter and GMT...possibly even smaller then the raiding community). But I've done it all, and enjoyed it at various times in my MMO experience.

I think the quote has a great deal of insight. in a competitive MMO field, it's probably not worth a company taking the risk with the degree of budget you need nowadays on a niche group. it's most likely why MMO's still follow traditional mechanics, and only "extend" themselves out a little bit. they build a solid foundation...then once they have that foundation built, and a prove-able customer base (data that's more then a few months worth), they start to add those elemtents that may cater to those niche groups.

Games also IMO have to make a choice at some point. certain game elements simply do not fit with others. As an example, a robust crafting environment doesn't really fit well in a mold with a progressive raiding environment. to cater to one fully enough that the niche group is satisfied will often alienate the other group. PvP vs. PvE is another perfect example.

Games Like WoW try to balance out for all, but end up never completely satisfying any. it's being vanilla (scuze the pun) for the sake of giving a flavor to everyone. those that simply want chocolate are stuck...sure vanilla is OK...but where's the chocolate?

And companies that attempt to hit a sweet spot with a niche group often fail...sometimes miserably...Conan anyone? I have yet to see any game get so close to complete extinction just out of the door. Not dissing the game...it had many innovations i thought were fascinating. but it still almost died. I actually quit playing because they were doing patches so much, so rapidly, that I would spend half of my game time every night waiting for the patching to finish.

TL - DR = good job...feel for ya, being in a niche is an unrewarding place.

Deleted. No point. Everyone is TLDR these days. +See Sig.

Deleted. No point. Everyone is TLDR these days. +See Sig.

Not even close, HM and NMM in TOR is abysmal at best.

Hardcore players do NOT want to see the same boss with more health and hits harder... there's nothing new to that.

Perfect example in how it's done wrong and right... in the SAME RAID... Firelands... the first 6 bosses were trash on HM, but Ragnaros was a VERY different fight when you hit HM, that was done right... the first 6 were done VERY wrong.

The Hardcore player wants a very difficult challenge that takes skill and coordination to achieve success that the normal monkey at a keyboard just won't understand. Sorry, but most MMO players are just terrible at being great at the game, hardcore players want a game that rewards greatness and punishes anything less with impunity.

Hey. Great post, lot's of insights. Particularly this idea implicit in the "E-Mon-Bus" concept that casual gamers are in some sense defined by their willingness and ability to pay a monthly fee.

Interesting, then, that the MMO world seems to be at the cusp of a Free2Play revolution. This reinforces my conviction that we are nearing the golden age of MMOs. Companies are dropping the monthly fee model, and soon the entire community will as well. And in effect by doing so we are giving up on the political potency of the casual vs hardcore gamer concepts.

The casual/hardcore largely grew up around the monthly fee. The monthly fee implied something about all of us, that we were good citizens willing to pay what essentially amounted to a utility bill in order to feed our habit. On the one hand we were good citizens who could actually afford to pay our bills, on the other addicted gamers who couldn't possibly afford a bill unless it was being payed for by our parents.

This distinction, revolving around the monthly fee, is perhaps in large part what lead to the "casual" becoming the political ideal in the MMO world -- someone who could actually afford to pay for their own gaming habits -- while the hardcore became associated with a 30 year old living in his mother's basement.

Free2Play began as a desperation model by MMOs that were going under. To an extent that is still the case. It became associated with bad MMOs, whereas good MMOs were ones that people were still willing to pay for. But I predict this entire thing is going to flip very soon, all the writing is on the wall. I'm not going to go into the details of why I believe that is the obvious case, the important thing here is that F2P will have a tremendous shift in terms of the politics of the online gaming world. The war between "casuals" and "hardcores" -- even if it were only ever more of a conceptual war with far reaching consequences -- will evaporate overnight. The next generation won't even remember this distinction because it won't have any potency.

Now, you mention CoH as a game that caters to EMB (emonbus) types. I completely agree. The thing is that CoH is one of the most group-friendly games ever made. My guess is your experience goes something like this: you log in, join a pick up group within 5 minutes, kick *** for an hour, then log off feeling like you had a rewarding experience. But that experience is the MMO experience I would argue. Sure, we spend a lot of time soloing and crafting and doing what not, but in the end we come back for the online experience of playing with other people, either in Co-op mode or PvP. The brilliance behind CoH was in allowing you to have that experience with such ease that you can log in, have it, and log off. Now days, of course, online coop games are much more popular; casual friendly coop games that still provide a persistent world and character, however, are still rare. Although many games are now adopting the CoH model of instances to allow for quick grouping and pvp. Rift comes to mind.

So CoH really isn't a SPOG. It is casual friendly, for sure, but a SPOG is a Single Player Online Game and the "single player" part means you aren't grouping, you aren't necessarily even interacting with other players at all (except maybe for some chat). A SPOG is a game where you get a persistent world and a persistent character and an unusually annoying general chat channel, but otherwise the experience is more or less the same as if you were playing Skyrim -- only not as good (that would be amazing if they could make an online game as gorgeous and rich as skyrim).

I don't think SPOGs do well, and since you raise City of Heroes as a game you love that is EMB I point you to its SPOG counterpoint, Champions Online. Developed by the same people it had everything CoH had, great character customization, awesome powers, excellent combat, quick and casual friendly . . . and yet it flopped. Why? The obvious answer lies in the the only meaningful distinction between the two games: City of Heroes was extremely group friendly, whereas CO seemingly went out of its way to discourage teaming and replaced it with a more extensive questing (missions) system for more solo content. In other words, Champions Online was a SPOG and City of Heroes was a MMOG and that was the only significant difference between the two games, a difference that caused one to fail where the other had succeeded.

I think HC folks give themself to much credits.... what is hardcore folks now-a-days... who knows... only thing i can think of is that they play the game 40 hours a week instead of my 25 hours a week...

What makes them HC realy, i think its just a title that presumed HC players give themself to justify all their time playing a game that shouldnt be played that quickly to start with....

What is HardCore ???? a title used to show how fantastic a player base they are, how wonderfully skilled they apparently are........

What is HC really...... its a title given to players by themslef labelling them HC... based on what??? who knows

To me a HC is just someone that got to end-game way to qickly and now comes to forums to complain about lack of content hehe

So what is a HC player now-a-days???? its just a tittle rly, nothin more......

TOR is not my game. I hope LucasArts is working on some "Open World" Star Wars MMO,
a kind of Massive Multiplayer "Red Dead Redemption". In fact they should give a license to Rockstar Games or the Planetside 2 Devs.

Did this game really take 300mill to make? wow, seriously wow, I guess that went all in to the voice acting.

On topic, I play more than most but i don't consider myself a hardcore gamer. i try to enjoy the game if i like it.
Hardcore to me is more the min/maxing part of games, looking for info on forums/sites.

What the Op is saying is pretty much my thoughts also, i don't understand why people try to change the core of a game instead of just moving on.

I have never played a SPOG, I play Swtor and group all the time, that is a matter of choice.