Verdict: Cata is great for this casual.

A few Caveats:

-I think you need a good guild.
PUGging that would not be fun. I relied heavily on the fact I could trust my tank & dps to be pro. I don’t have to try to heal through stupid ever.

-Being an ex raider/experienced player helps too – I had to pull out ALL the stops – but years of12 or more hours/week progression raiding means thats a habit anyway. My UI is also still set up for raids so all the information I need to be most effective is there.

So the dress code for Cata is obviously smart casual

Probably helps that I’m still in my old raid guild, so I have support from knowledgeable & competent players that other casuals don’t have access to. Haven’t tried healing a heroic yet – I figure it’ll be a long while till the next expansion so I’m not in a hurry. When I do though, it will be with guildies on vent. So, easy or difficult as it may be, it’ll be fun to kill stuff again with them.

IDK – I love the Cata casual gamen, I do alot of BGs, I’ve made a fortune playing the AH & spent a large portion of it pimping my alts – which I spend alot of time on – playing different classes & different zones to se how things have changed. I wish I had more character slots on my server.

I found heroics to be incredibly unfun, exhausting, frustrating to the point where I logged out in frustration, canceled my account, left my guild etc. I hated WoW at that point. and I didn’t even try pugging.

2 hours minimum per instance is too long for a 5 man dungeon. 3 hours are my raid limit and I’m usually pretty tired by the end of it (4 hour raids mean that I’m making stupid mistakes for the last hour because I simply have no energy left to concentrate at that point). 1 hour doesn’t happen until you know places by heart and ONLY run with your guild and I’m not a fast learner when it comes to movement memory. I might understand what I need to do quickly, but it takes me a while to actually get the movement close to perfect and imperfection in new instances = wipe.

Are they doable? yeah, sure. are they a relaxing pass time? no. they are mini raids. I realized that I’m a casual. I’m a casual that would like to be able to relax in a game, I’m playing instead getting stressed out, just to finish an instance run. I don’t want it to be so easy that I’m not even looking at the screen, but I don’t want it to be so “challenging” that I have to concentrate 100% through a fairly long dungeon to the point where I have no energy left for anything else once its finished. I don’t want to come out of the instance with the feeling of “thank god, its over”

did Cata kill casual gameplay? it certainly did for me. and the attitudes of you just suck, l2p you baddie and find some friends only exacerbated the problem.

I’m loving every minute of it. Heroics in WOTLK were way to easy and way boring. I had more fun completing dailies and getting my dragonmaw mount.

I am shocked by the new difficultly levels, though… but it’s shocked in a good way. I enjoy getting into a heroic with my guild members and trying to work it out.

I do have to say though, I’m kinda on the same path as Virile – less about time though, and more about need for gear. If I am to remain competetive in PVP I need to grind honor and conquest points now so that I can be properly geared for arenas and rated bgs. That boss in Shadowfang keep won’t be getting better gear or become any more difficult than he is right now. That opponent in PVP, however? He/she is.

I believe this really needed to be written, and more importantly understood by the general public. Wrath era Heroics are gone (at least for now, we will out-gear them eventually) and it seems that the majority of people haven’t realized it.

Facerolling Heroics in 15 minutes isn’t possible anymore.

To the failpugs: Gear up, turn off the tv, and l2p your class to the best of your ability.

Beruthiel, thanks for writing this, and keep up the good work.

The only point you mentioned that is in fact bad for a Casual is the 40 min in the LFD tool, everything else has nothing to do with Casual.

Thou I’ve been playing WoW for the past 6 years, since 2 years ago i only have 1 hour max 2 hours (during weekends) to play per day due to work and family, and i consider myself a Casual now, but, i rejoice with the level of difficulty of this expansion.

BC started being a bit “noobish” and Wotlk 100% destroyed that… What’s the fun of running hcs clicking on Hellfire and press the “W” key? Seriously tell me… Or is there any fun of spamming CH on the tanker while alt tabbing to talk on MSN/Facebook and when someone dies ‘ops sorry was distracted’ ?

What Wotlk was wasn’t anything related to “play” it was just a “zombie fest” where you had 5 players doing hcs where none would talk, think, or stop… GO GO farming… But what’s the farming for? For you to be shiny? Just adjust your monitor brightness and you’ll get the same results… Or you want the items to enter in a raiding guild? In that case L2P before getting the items and entering the guild.

From my 6 years of WoW i can honestly say that the attitude, friendship and intellect of general players have drop like hell and the three factors are due to the game being way too easy in the lower tiers.

Yes it was challenging to do Ulduar hcs and ICC hcs, but aside from that was just plain farming.

And the OP is right, if you’re having difficulty getting into the LFD because you’re waiting for 40 min? Then get some friends dammit! Casual != Lonewolf.

Get into a lame guild, or start talking with people and make friends. My guild just migrated to a new server (Twisting Nether) and you know what? After 2 weeks in that server i already have a list of 20 new friends that i sometimes do some instances when my guild is raiding and i’m out of time for it.

So please don’t ever confuse Casual with being good/bad.

You want the game to be played for a 5 year old kid? Then create an account on Farmville please

I was in full 277 gear coming into Cataclysm, and I had replaced all but 2 items by the time I hit level 85. Most of the greens in Twilight Highlands were straight up upgrades to my Heroic ICC gear.

Are you sure that you aren’t overlooking some upgrades?

Do not be too quick to judge who is, or isn’t, doing something. I know a good number of folks who wouldn’t consider themselves “casual” also “gaming” the system.

Also, do not assume that just because someone is “casual” means that they lack skill. Those are two very different things.