While I’m casual and do not expect to ever “win” a MMOG, I do like to have the feeling or knowledge that if I keep working on something, I might actually accomplish a goal.

Currently, there is a ton of content in WoW that is completely locked out to people that cannot attend 10+ person raids. If you don’t do those raids, you cannot get any of the items that drop there, participate in the crafting that rare drops occur in there, etc.

Why is it so difficult to develop a system that allows casuals to work, albeit longer, towards those same goals (items, crafting, progression of the lore, etc.)

While I don’t think I’d like to run 5-10 person raids over and over again at a *chance* to get something epic, I would be somewhat satisfied to know that it was *possible.* Design a game that you can either be guaranteed certain goals with a one time 8 hour session (20+ instance) or with 4x 2 hour sessions for a high *chance*. (10 or less instance)

There has to be a balance that keeps hardcore raiders – raiding hardcore and not picking the casual route as easier AND satisfying the casuals with incremental progression in smaller doses. What that balance is, is up to the designers with testing and time.

There’s:
Casual(1): a player whose total time commitment to a game is low;
Casual(2): a player whose gaming timespan in any one session is low;
Casual(3): a player whose interests do not lie in attempting to ‘beat’ an MMOG or advance further than other characters
and possibly some others.

They may not be in any related. Some people don’t spend much time in a game; others play like crazy but only on weekends; others spend lots of time in game but are alt-o-holics or just aren’t in it for the uber.

‘Hardcore’ is easier to define. Since designers have to build in mind-killing timesinks to keep the 7-day, 16-hour gamers from stomping their game flat, the “achiever” types have to be the opposite of causal(1), casual(2), *and* casual(3); in-game nearly always, in-game for long periods, and in-game for the primary purpose of being at the top of the game.

If you can’t do that, there will be no future.

The future is not by reskinning diku for hopefully millions more. Rather, it’s about getting more people to join a persistent online ecosystem where they can be plied for more cash by being given more experiences. The average person is not interested in an MC drop to start the tech tree to eventually take down Ony/Naxx/whatever. They want a fun game they can get into and out of that may be part of a longer-term growth strategy. And particularly in the U.S., there’s a lot more average people out there playing casual online games than there are playing massively-multiplayer ones.

Make the persistent long term rewards easy to understand and a natural evolution for people you attract through casual games. Then you’ve got them. Just don’t expect to keep them with raiding.

Here’s something I found funny:

Sigil Games\’e2\’80\’99 Zack Karlsson pointed out that in Vanguard: Saga of Heroes (due sometime this winter), they are finding gamers well outside of the typical 18-35 year-old male demographic.

Oh really? Where was this thinking when Nick Yee was qualitatively researching the game these folks originally built back five years ago?!

You can get a lot of time and interest from hardcore gamers. They’re a great fit, the ambassadors for MMOGs in particular. However, you can’t grow this genre except incrementally without appealing to casual gamers. And I mean real casual gamers, not someone who’s casual because they only raid two nights a week instead of seven nights.

WoW proved this. The vast majority are not repeating BWL for new drops. They play the game as an RPG and either leave when they realize they can only grow beyond 60 by repeating BWL for new drops, or stick around to play a different portion of the game from a different perspective. And they’ll be back for Burning Crusade because 60-70 is being structured the same as 1-60 was. And leave at 70 because that won’t be.

But forget WoW. Big as it is, it is not the future. It is just one part of it. Segments of the punditry in this genre are fixated on EQ, things like EQ and things that aren’t like EQ but still take a whole lot of time to be successful within. Hardcore, hardcore, hardcore. Other segments look beyond the typical CD>patch>subscription-fee model to see where the real growth is happening. It’s easy to ignore this part because it doesn’t show up on MMOGcharts, but it’s there, real, and is where a lot of companies disinterested in spending $60mil to take on the ultimate diku are looking.

You can get casual people to play MMOGs. Look at the top six titles at one of the hotter destinations for casual games (miniclips). Until recently, three of them were MMOGs (Club Penguin, which has been top almost since launch, Runescape which has been there since their launch, and Puzzle Pirates which appears to have fallen off again).

That’s saying something.