Please do not debate the merits of the game design in this thread.

If you wish to argue whether or not Mists of Pandaria changed the game for the better, use this thread.

After debating the changes in the thread linked above, I came to the realization that World of Warcraft may no longer be the same game I swore an oath to never play again.  I experienced the frustration of the situation described by the quoted poster in this post when I decided the game wasn't worth my time.  However, the whole thread seems to indicate that Blizzard's attitude towards end-game may have changed to allow it to be accessible to everyone.

If you didn't read the linked post, I will reiterate their feelings.  I got to a certain point in the game where I couldn't progress.  Gathering the gear needed to raid took me longer than most people. By the time I thought I was ready to raid, the guilds that were raiding had already progressed to the next dungeon and refused to help new players get caught up.  Any guilds I joined were not capable of raiding due to gear or number of people.  Essentially, I felt like it was a waste of time to log in because I knew I wouldn't get anything done.

To those who have played Mists of Pandaria, do you think the game is accessible to everyone now?  

If I start fresh as a Monk (race yet to be decided) would I be able to enjoy the same content that everyone else does?  Keep in mind I won't have access to resources that previously-capped players have, and I may not join a guild for a while.

Is there a good chance that I will feel left behind due to my slower pace of progression than most gamers?

Have they reduced the eleventy-button syndrome?  In other words, will I still feel overwhelmed by the number of abilities, buffs, consumables, etc. that I need to have hotkeyed?

If they haven't reduced the number of buttons required to play, are there interface mods that make it easier to keep all of those buttons organized, easy, and fast to press the right ones?

Please do not turn this into a debate over the game being "handed to players" or not.  Use the thread linked above for that.

Umm, WoW has always been for casual gamers.  I guess you could consider it for hardcore gamers too except its not very time consuming.  Just go afk in a bg then half afk in the arena and you will be nearly as well geared as people who raid, minus maybe 10hp/mana.

As far as raiding, you will be behind.  I have not played since TBC, so i do not know where current gear would jump in.  Worst case give it a try see if you enjoy it, you can probably get prior game+expansions (not MoP) for pretty cheap.

Originally posted by phantomghost

Umm, WoW has always been for casual gamers.  I guess you could consider it for hardcore gamers too except its not very time consuming.  Just go afk in a bg then half afk in the arena and you will be nearly as well geared as people who raid, minus maybe 10hp/mana.

 

As far as raiding, you will be behind.  I have not played since TBC, so i do not know where current gear would jump in.  Worst case give it a try see if you enjoy it, you can probably get prior game+expansions (not MoP) for pretty cheap.

If you have not played since TBC, I think my questions are better left for someone else to answer.  I'm mainly looking for insight on the impact of Mists of Pandaria.  

I did not consider WoW to be catering to the casual gamer in vanilla or TBC.  In the other thread, they pointed out how only 1% of players were able to participate in the final raid dungeon before the next expansion was released.  That tells me they either made the content too time-consuming for casual gamers or so difficult that people did not want to deal with the frustration of raiding.

I see your signature indicates your interest in Darkfall.  That tells me there is probably a difference between our definitions of a "casual" gamer and "hardcore" gamer.  Hopefully someone else can chime in.

Yes to all of your questions.  WoW became very casual friendly with WotLK expansion.

If the last time you played was in Vanilla you are in for a huge change.  

The Looking for Dungeon feature completely removed standing around waiting in town for a group.  Sure as a DPS it takes about 20 minutes to find a group, but it does it automatically for you, so you can quest while you wait.

Once you hit endgame, if you choose to PVE, you will want to run dungeons to get gear to run heroics, run heroics to run raids. However, clearing dungeons also gives you Justice points, which can be used to buy gear that is equivalent to heroic gear that in turn can get you in to raids.

Any time a new a raid is released, the justice gear is upgraded so you can run the dungeons, and get gear good enough to run the most current raid.   What you will end up doing though is grinding the dungeons to get points.  

As far as raids go, you have the Looking For Raid feature which will find a raid group for you and let you see the current Raids and reward you with Epic gear.  However, the LFR feature simplifies the raid somewhat and rewards a slightly lower tier of gear, but not by much.  It also serves as a good way to fill in weak spots in your characters gear.

I would suggest joining a guild though.  Guilds can level up now, and a guild at max level will offer you a lot of perks while you level, such as 10% exp gained, increased tradeskill gains, faster mounts, etc.

Buffs have been streamlined to an extent, and most classes buttons are not too overwhelming, and a blizzard does a decent job of providing you everything you need in thier built interface options.  It is definitely playable without mods.

I hope I helped you a bit.

Well Syntax, let me take a shot at this.  Please bear in mind that as I do so, I have no idea what -your- definition of 'casual' is, nor how you personally perceive 'feeling left behind' as it is a personal feeling.  However, with those two things in mind, here we go. =)

I do think there is a way of playing the game that is accessible to everyone now.  That does -not- mean that any particular person's preferred method of doing something is -also- the most efficient method, however.  The best way to explain it, to me, is like this.  Identify a goal; there is almost certainly a path to it regardless of your playing time commitment.  It might take longer, it might be more difficult (for example, heroics vs dailies: heroics are more difficult, dailies take longer), but there is a path to your goal.  This includes current content raiding if that is your thing.

You would be able to enjoy all the content everyone else does, yes.  (Obviously, this is assuming you have bought the game up to Pandaria for monks.)

The third question is one I'm iffy on, as I don't know what you constitute as 'left behind'.  You will take longer to gear up most likely, yes.  You would most likely never be in a situation where you were more than a single patch's gear behind though (only exception -- if a patch were to come out before you were finished levelling.  Not likely, but possible.)

No, there are a metric ton of abilities.  However, most classes can be played competently with about 8 buttons or so with a couple of highly situational manuevers.  For example, my primary class is mage (fire).  My main buttons are Inferno Blast, Fireball, Living Bomb, Scorch, and Pyroblast plus Ice Barrier and Combustion.  Now, I have a ton of situational abilities, but generally those I listed are all I'm guaranteed to need.

Yes, the state of UI mods offers so many options as to border on insane lol.  The customization of your UI via mods and via Blizz's standard built-in options is strong.  I use the standard UI except for on my healer, where I like to have a group of unit frames to heal from.

In MoP, the largest bulk of commitment -at present- is to dailies.  There are something like 300 possible dailies once all of them are unlocked, and of course it's not expected to do them all -- just the ones you want, and the ones that offer things you want like mounts, pets, recipes, etcetera.  There are scenarios, which are made for very casual play -- they're like little group quests almost, but instanced.  Dungeons, of course, both heroic and regular.  Challenge Modes, which are for hardcore players.  Raids exist in LFR (tuned for pugs, they offer raid gear but not quite as good as normal and heroic raids of course), Normal, and Heroic mode.  The exploration in Pandaria is pretty nice in my opinion -- I still haven't hit 90 yet because I'm always running off to go look at things, and the new pet battle system is incredibly addictive -- I have collected over 200 minipets...and I'm not even halfway done!

So...sorry so long, and I hope this gives you some insight from a current player.  I have played both hardcore and casual (past and present), from BC to Wrath to Cata to now.  I haven't been this pleased since mid to late BC, though.  I can't speak much to PVP...I don't like PVP.

Thanks, Lissyl.  That was exactly what I was looking for.

It sounds like all of the game's content is accessible (eventually) no matter how slow I am to get there.  This wasn't the case for me with the vanilla game or the first expansion, as I described in my first post.  By "falling behind," I meant that the majority of players who were interested in raiding had already progressed to the second tier of the raiding system before I could start the first.  This made it nearly impossible to ever catch up again without some luck or the help of a [nearly nonexistent] guild that gets new players caught up.

It sounds like there will be plenty to do and plenty to strive for if I play the game again.  At the same time, I won't feel unable to achieve any potential goal in the game due to my inability to commit a certain number of hours per day to the game.

All of that is what I consider to be friendly to casual players.  

It was always even in Vanilla 'casual accesible' .

Currently it is 'catered to casuals'.

If you're confused what's the difftence you may check that video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rd0-zVIBVo

Originally posted by syntax42

Originally posted by phantomghost

 

 

I did not consider WoW to be catering to the casual gamer in vanilla or TBC.  ...

Wow was extremely casual friendly from the very first day of its existence. There was no MMORPG which would be more casual than WoW. Gradually, WoW became even easier over time, because other MMORPGs released afterwards began to compete by being more casual and easy than WoW, so WoW just kept getting easier and easier to stay the easiest MMORPG on market.

WoW is and always was the heaven for casuals, there was not a moment throughout its existence during which it wouldn't compete to become the world's most easy and casual MMORPG on market. You may consider WoW before TBC to be uber hardcore or whatever, but already at that time, it was the MOST accessible, casual and easy MMORPG on market.

Originally posted by syntax42

Originally posted by phantomghost

Umm, WoW has always been for casual gamers.  I guess you could consider it for hardcore gamers too except its not very time consuming.  Just go afk in a bg then half afk in the arena and you will be nearly as well geared as people who raid, minus maybe 10hp/mana.

 

As far as raiding, you will be behind.  I have not played since TBC, so i do not know where current gear would jump in.  Worst case give it a try see if you enjoy it, you can probably get prior game+expansions (not MoP) for pretty cheap.

If you have not played since TBC, I think my questions are better left for someone else to answer.  I'm mainly looking for insight on the impact of Mists of Pandaria.  

 

I did not consider WoW to be catering to the casual gamer in vanilla or TBC.  In the other thread, they pointed out how only 1% of players were able to participate in the final raid dungeon before the next expansion was released.  That tells me they either made the content too time-consuming for casual gamers or so difficult that people did not want to deal with the frustration of raiding.

I see your signature indicates your interest in Darkfall.  That tells me there is probably a difference between our definitions of a "casual" gamer and "hardcore" gamer.  Hopefully someone else can chime in.

Dude, the reason WoW exploded was because it was TOTALLY geared for casual players.  If think it was a game for the hard core, you obviously never played EQ back in the day.  This is the problem with newer gamers that cut their teeth on this game, you actually believe it's hard core.  Hard core was camping a mob for days and running across zones you were KOS in naked on corpse runs.

Originally posted by syntax42

Please do not debate the merits of the game design in this thread.

If you wish to argue whether or not Mists of Pandaria changed the game for the better, use this thread.

 

After debating the changes in the thread linked above, I came to the realization that World of Warcraft may no longer be the same game I swore an oath to never play again.  I experienced the frustration of the situation described by the quoted poster in this post when I decided the game wasn't worth my time.  However, the whole thread seems to indicate that Blizzard's attitude towards end-game may have changed to allow it to be accessible to everyone.

If you didn't read the linked post, I will reiterate their feelings.  I got to a certain point in the game where I couldn't progress.  Gathering the gear needed to raid took me longer than most people. By the time I thought I was ready to raid, the guilds that were raiding had already progressed to the next dungeon and refused to help new players get caught up.  Any guilds I joined were not capable of raiding due to gear or number of people.  Essentially, I felt like it was a waste of time to log in because I knew I wouldn't get anything done.

 

To those who have played Mists of Pandaria, do you think the game is accessible to everyone now?  

If I start fresh as a Monk (race yet to be decided) would I be able to enjoy the same content that everyone else does?  Keep in mind I won't have access to resources that previously-capped players have, and I may not join a guild for a while.

Is there a good chance that I will feel left behind due to my slower pace of progression than most gamers?

Have they reduced the eleventy-button syndrome?  In other words, will I still feel overwhelmed by the number of abilities, buffs, consumables, etc. that I need to have hotkeyed?

If they haven't reduced the number of buttons required to play, are there interface mods that make it easier to keep all of those buttons organized, easy, and fast to press the right ones?

 

Please do not turn this into a debate over the game being "handed to players" or not.  Use the thread linked above for that.

And that is exactly why we are in this shit hole of simple, meaningless, dumb down and simply wretched game design that developers serve us. So that Mr. X can come home after his hard day work at the pencil factory and play a game he likes for 30 min...from time to time... expecting to achieve something without hard work and be rewarded afterwards. MMOs ARE NOT THE PLACE TO GRIEF YOUR INABILITY TO ACHIEVE GOALS.

For the love of god don't You casual players know there is Nintendo Wii or even better DS that You can play with other casuals at "the office" and feel special with all the content You can discover while living Your "wonderful busy real lives"? Why the fck do You have to make everyone's game experience miserable just because you don't feel like playing that much and insist on posting all those "mommy they don't want to play with me, so make them" threads. It makes me sick...  ufff there I said it!

The numbers of buttoms you need to smash is not a good measure on how casual a game is. Wow always had plenty of more hotkeys than Diablo (1) but still always been more casual.

As I see it have Wow always been casual, no way it could have that many players otherwise. But there is nothing wrong with being casual as long as it does it well.

Never been the game for me though.