Project Lore

The Balancing Act column was created to highlight how we as a community can dedicate so much time to our beloved MMORPG, and still have times for the finer things in life.  The introductory piece focused one's ability to play other games.  The second installment forces us to take a much harder look at ourselves, our lives and how our hobby interferes with our personal connections. The past few weeks in the blogosphere have been, well, downright depressing.  First the WoW community lost one of the most prominent Druid healing blogs, Resto4Life.  In the past few days I have personally lost two blogs that I subscribe to on my RSS feeder (Yes, I read other stuff.  You should too!), my favorite WAR blog known as WAAAGH! and Project Lore's own, BigRedKitty.  Phaelia and BRK both mark personal and family duties as reasons for their departure.  Phaelia took her absence due to a pregnancy, one which Blizzard has honored.  For his part, BRK ends his reign as an enlightened and highly regarded Huntard to spend more time with his family.  Only Syp of WAAAGH! will remain on the blogging scene, shifting gears from WAR to an all-new multi MMO blog appropriately named Bio Break. The recent losses, and the reasons behind them, have led me to look at my life in much the same way.  I'm not going anywhere though, and that is due to one big difference - I do not have a family.  Pleasing my girlfriend and keeping friendships intact are all I have to worry about, but even that can become difficult sometimes!  Time management is not everyone's strong point, and the only way I manage is by laying things out in advance.  The most time consuming of my WoW habits is raiding.  I work around this all night affair by informing my girlfriend of my raiding nights days in advance.  Not only does this let her know it's coming, but she can try to schedule her owns things, like a girl's night, if given enough time.  For obvious reasons I don't inform my friends of such plans, but with my guild only raiding twice a week, it is easy to work raiding around face time with friends. This is mainly accomplished by keeping the weekends entirely unscheduled as far as Azeroth is concerned.  I have also been known to disappear from raiding entirely for a few weeks.  Going cold turkey from time to time allows me to reevaluate my habits.  I can discern if I am being neglectful or getting sucked in a little too much.  Not to mention the fact that a break here and there keeps the game fresh and fun. How do the hardcore raiders out there manage it?  I don't think I could ever be hardcore again.  In fact, the only reason I was able to pull it off in the first place was because my ex-girlfriend played more than I did.  I don't regret it, I had tons of fun, but my life has changed since then and it can no longer facilitate such a commitment.  As long as I get through all the raids, I am content at being hardcore casual.  The lesson to take away from all of this is to remember that age old adage, Life > WoW. Be sure to keep those friendships active, the grades up to snuff and to stay awake at work.  To Phaelia, BRK and Syp, all the best in your future endeavors.

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Hardcore. Casual. Newb – however you spell it. These are all terms that are tossed around a lot in World of Warcraft. Our own glossary defines hardcore as the following, oh wait, we don't have a definition. We do have various incarnations of newb though, newb, newbie, noob. All the definitions are the same, a new player or a derogatory term to “suggest that a player is not very good”. I have never tended to agree with the classic definitions of hardcore and casual gamers though. Just because you spend a lot of time gaming does not make you hardcore in my mind. The flip side is true as well, only playing WoW five hours a week doesn't necessarily make you casual in my book. The labels should not be linked to the time spent on just the game but on the experience as a whole. I was hardcore in the traditional sense before The Burning Crusade hit the live servers. I would eat up any and all information on the game while spending more than a few hours a day in Azeroth. Like many hardcore raiders of vanilla WoW – including most of my guild – I drifted off into the sunset when TBC hit. No longer do I raid multiple times a week, or spend more than three hours in front of the screen commonly. But I still consider myself to be a hardcore player. Why do I consider myself hardcore if I only play the game for a few hours ever other day? Because I still dedicate myself to the experience. I have created long standing goals for the game, I spend massive amounts of time reading the background lore, staying up on the latest happenings in Wrath or the PvP scene.  Oh, and I also write about it.  WoW isn't simply a game for me, or the other hardcore players out there. It is THE game. So if the hardcore make it a part of their life, what would casual be then. Casual players to me are the ones who are in it for the short term gains. Mainly, these are the players who just hop on to kill time or chat with friends. They never bothered with the quest text, they don't knit pick over who the first Death Knight really is, they just play the game for something enjoyable to do. Of course, there is no 'a square is a rectangle but a rectangle is not a square' restriction. A player from the casual group can become hardcore at any time and a hardcore player can become casual just as easily. It is all a matter of how serious you take the game, in my opinion.

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