Project Lore

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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