Patch 5.2 interview with Dave Kosak
Inside an old alt's vault
The latest patch 5.2 news
All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsWoW, Casually: What really happened in Patch 3.2
by Robin Torres 
Sep 10th 2009 at 2:00PM
Robin Torres writes WoW, Casually for the player with limited playtime. Of course, you people with lots of playtime can read this too, but you may get annoyed by the fact that we are unashamed, even proud, of the fact that beating WoW isn't our highest priority. Take solace in the fact that your gear is better than ours, but if that doesn't work, remember that we outnumber you. Not that that's a threat, after all, we don't have time to do anything about it. But if WoW were a democracy, we'd win.
Timely, huh? Patch 3.2 was how long ago? Yeah, well I plead BlizzCon. Regardless of time passing, there are some tidbits here and there that I would like to chat about that happened in our most recent content patch. But before we get to the things that really affect those of us with limited playtime, I'd like to express a strong opinion about badges and easier leveling.
Timely, huh? Patch 3.2 was how long ago? Yeah, well I plead BlizzCon. Regardless of time passing, there are some tidbits here and there that I would like to chat about that happened in our most recent content patch. But before we get to the things that really affect those of us with limited playtime, I'd like to express a strong opinion about badges and easier leveling.
We casuals are constantly blamed for the "dumbing down" of WoW. The complainers state that we want an easier
game and therefore Blizzard is pandering to us. I've babbled on about this before, but I've recently come to a different conclusion. In my house, I'm the casual and my husband is the leet hardcore raider. Which one of us is regularly doing dailies in order to get the Emblems of Triumph for Tier 9 gear? Mr. Raider. Is he PuGging it with casuals or are they all leet hardcore raiding guild runs? The latter. Who complains most in the house about how boring leveling is? The Spousal Unit. The majority of people clamoring for easier leveling and more diverse ways to get their gear are the players with plenty of playtime on their hands. They are the ones speed-leveling multiple characters to 80 in order to fill gaps in their raids. They are the ones that feel that adding two dailies a day to their playtime is easy.As I have said before, while acquiring Tier 9 badges is certainly within a casual player's grasp, it requires a non-casual time commitment to get gear in a reasonable time frame. If you are playing for a couple hours every day, then you are playing more than most of us "casuals" are. But, the fact is that making the game more accessible to everyone benefits everyone. Look, it's Captain Obvious holding up a "Duh!" sign! Moving on...
Following are highlights of things which affect casuals that actually happened in patch 3.2:
More stacking: I didn't see this in the admittedly copious patch notes, but it seems that the low level pots and meats are stacking in bigger stacks now. The 5 stacks I was forced to send my alts from my Alchemist, combined into 20 stacks when picked up from the mail after the patch. Low level alt bags suddenly got less full.
Mounts: Faster, cheaper, accessible earlier. The world just got smaller and leveling became less travel-ly.
Flying mount clue: Don't know where to buy your flying mount in Outland once you hit 60? As soon as you take a flightpath after leveling to 60, you will receive an email telling you where to go. Spoiler: It's in Hellfire Peninsula.
Wand cooldown: If this was spelled out in the patch notes, I completely missed it. Wands now have an extra cooldown after casting a spell. It took a while for The Spawn to get used to it after the patch while playing Itchee the Gnome Warlock and I'm still having issues.
Vendor prices: Item descriptions for everything in your inventory now include the prices you'll get from a vendor. I love this feature for deciding which greys to delete when my bags get full while questing.
Easy Equipment Comparison: Shift mouseover a piece of gear and you will see a stat comparison. Quest rewards automatically show the same breakdown. You get a clear list of what stats will be affected and by how much, should you choose the new gear over your currently equipped item.
More mailboxes: Old world major cities now have more mailboxes. I particularly like the one located on the path just outside the portal dropoff in Orgrimmar. It's great for when I have to run and spend my AV tokens on combat potions and then pick up the overflow in the mail. AV is still the only BG in which I accumulate any spendable amounts of tokens. We'll get to why this won't change anytime soon below.
Interface changes: There are now exclamation points to point out new features in the Interface menu. The new Features menu includes the Equipment Manager and Talent Preview toggles. I strongly approve of moving Talent Preview from Display to Features, having complained about it before.Quest Tracker: If something good happened here, it isn't apparent to me. Unlike my original assessment, if I want an informative quest system, I'll reinstall something like Quest Helper.
Crocolisk pet drop increases: There is nothing official from Blizzard about this, but my guildies, Warcraft Pets and I have all noticed that the crocolisk pets are dropping much more frequently from the Bag of Fishing Treasures received after turning in Crocolisk in the City. I still don't have Muckbreath, though I have the other 3. If obtaining the Lil Game Hunter Achievement is on your list, check the daily fishing quest outside of Shattrath for when the quest is available (it differs per server).
Battleground changes and experience: This is my favorite change in the patch. They've made Battlegrounds, faster, less annoying and a way to level up quickly. I love questing. I really do. But the experience gain per time spent is pretty outrageous, particularly in Alterac Valley, where a loss is about a bubble of experience and a win is approximately 2 bubs. I am going to go into this in more detail next column, but if you haven't given BG leveling a try -- you should.
My in-game experience post-Patch 3.2 has been a more pleasant one. My only real issue with playing WoW currently is that I want to play a Goblin now! Yeah, yeah. Patience is a virtue. Blah blah blah. What are your favorite changes since the patch?
WoW, Casually is a column for those of us who are playtime-challenged. We've got your guides for choosing the best class, finding a casual guild, keeping your account safe and choosing the best addons for casual play. But wait there's more! If you have questions or tips about how to get the most out of your limited playtime, please send them to robin AT wow DOT com for a possible future column.Filed under: Patches, Analysis / Opinion, WoW, Casually
Reader Comments (Page 3 of 4)
impurezero Sep 11th 2009 1:17PM
Uh...my point was that YOU didn't seem to read the article. Nowhere does it say that casuals aren't "willing" to do things that take less than an hour. What she DID indicate, however, was that anecdotally, they don't seem to be the ones that are taking advantage of the new supposedly "casual-friendly" options for the most part.
She wrote an article simple pointing out an ironic situation, and you took it completely out of context in order to whip out your little ePeen to measure it.
Beldayven Sep 10th 2009 2:41PM
AV really does give wonderful exp I spent the weekend after 3.2 was released leveling my 71 lock all the way to 80 using this method. It sounds good but I wouldn't suggest doing it that way. once I hit level 80 I found that I didn't have the gold needed to purchase my skills ( I was so busy queing for AV I forgot to do it in between BGs. ) , I missed out on a lot of quest lines which gave story to the game, I also missed out on exploring Northrend for the first time and I had to learn were everything was as an 80 ( It is very embaressing to ask a level 74 where the portals are in Dalaran. ) I would say that leveling this method is best used by those who have already gone through Northrend on there main.
Jason P Sep 10th 2009 2:39PM
Hello. I was wondering if I qualify to be called a casual player.
I dont play everyday, and when I do play, the amount of time depends on if I have something else to do. For instance, I didnt play at all this past Monday, Tuesday I was able to play for about 4 hours after work, yesterday (Wednesday) I played for about an hour after dinner, but had a social club meeting to attend, and didnt play after I got home from said meeting.
When I do play, I dont care much for PVP, although I have run Warsong Gulch and the other BG's a few times.
Mostly, I am playing just to enjoy myself.
Does this qualify me as a casual player? If not, what description would fit?
Thanks
Spiraea Sep 10th 2009 2:49PM
Personally, I consider anyone who doesn't take part in time consuming things like raiding, to be casual. Honestly, there's not an exact meaning to it. Some people even consider themselves casual raiders and that's fine. As long as you are enjoying yourself in-game like you said, it doesn't really matter what you are. Everything doesn't need a title to it.
Gamer am I Sep 10th 2009 2:51PM
Robin actually did a post on this topic. Here it is:
http://www.wow.com/2009/06/09/wow-casually-what-is-casual/
Xiol Sep 10th 2009 3:45PM
Only 4 hours?
GTFO Casual, you're ruining it for the rest of us.
16 hour stints FTW.
/sarcasm
/hasdone16hoursonce...twice
Quill2006 Sep 10th 2009 2:52PM
Loved the article; I'd completely forgotten about the outland fishing quests (SO easy!) and I wasn't really aware of how the BG changes worked.
Also, positive change for the casuals who are at 80: the additional tourney quests for people who've completed the Argent Valiant quests are very nice, easy to do, grant lots of gold and tourney emblems, and are all in one area. I can complete them all in about an hour, and they go even faster with a partner. So many of them are "kill X # of monster" quests and you get credit for everyone in your party's kills, so they can be done in a few minutes. Excellent! They're just about the only dailies I do now, because I can get them done so fast. Now, if I could just be less bored with doing them every day...
Angusailde Sep 10th 2009 3:29PM
I'm a casual player. I have no extreme desire to raid anything, mostly because I don't want to have to do homework to prepare for a video game. I log in, do the daily heroic, maybe the daily dungeon, and Sons of Hodir dailies and a few others. If my friends are on, I'll try to get us a group together to do some other dungeons, but we don't have a schudule for runs or anything of the sort. At this point, I'm more interested in helping my friends experience content they wouldn't otherwise bother with if they were playing by themselves. And along the way, we get some neat pieces of armor and the like.
People can complain about 'welfare epix' and the like, but they're still going to form groups to run those 5man badge runs. And they're going to take those badges and trade them in. Having more time to devote to the game isn't something that should make anybody feel any better than anybody else for. We're all playing the game at our own pace. Just be glad they made leveling your alts so much easier.
Angusailde Sep 10th 2009 3:30PM
aaaaand I spelled "schedule" wrong.
here is a thought Sep 10th 2009 3:43PM
did not mention the ilvl checkbox? makes that item compare a bit easier
Andrew Martin Sep 10th 2009 3:53PM
I don't think you've got the right of it.
Everytime Blizzard talks about why they're making it easier the answer tends to be something like we want more people to see the content.
I don't think this is a bad thing at all but to say it's all the alt-raiders who are causing this is a stretch.
I think it's more likely that Blizzard thinks it's better for everyone even the people complaining.
JKWood Sep 11th 2009 8:31AM
I have to agree with Robin here. All the people I know who whine about wanting things to be easier... are trying to barrel towards the endgame, or push towards gearing up, or push towards leveling an alt...
I started playing in March, and just dinged 80 on my paladin the other day. And I had a blast doing it. I have a guildie who spends about as much time shopping for clothes on the AH as she does leveling (she calls it her "retail therapy.") I have another guildie who spends her time looking for pop culture references in the game. We're all casuals, and we all have one heck of a lot of fun.
Oh, and here's one... Guess what all us casuals do when we want to run an instance? Find a group of our own level. What do I see in Trade chat? "Will pay a high level to run me through Scarlet Monastery until I hit 45." They're level 30. I don't think that qualifies as "casual," but it sure does qualify as someone who is trying to make leveling easier.
Crööl Sep 10th 2009 5:46PM
One of the best articles I have ever read on here. You are so right that it is not the casual gamers wanting easier leveling. Almost every SINGLE person on my servers who complain about this being too hard or that being too OP are normally younger folks who are online almost 100% of the time I log on.
Most casual gamers do not have the time to complain. I spent a lot of my time as a casual gamer, then became pretty hardcore, took a break and when I go back I will be casual again. I miss taking my time and not having 20 people sending me constant pms about raiding the moment I log on.
No need to complain lowbies in AV either.. you can easily jump in with the big boys if you pay your 10G.
Good article.
Drakkenfyre Sep 10th 2009 4:26PM
The wand cooldown is a bug.
Amapele Sep 10th 2009 4:41PM
*sigh*
And here I thought I was on a lucky drop stint...I got Chuck and Snarly one right after the other.
I also got my Delicious Chocolate Cake recipe (and I just started doing the cooking dailies), a couple of the emotion food recipes and the fractured scarlet ruby in the span of like three days.
To me it'd make sense that if they upped the drop rate of the pets then they'd probably up the drop rate of those other patterns and recipes.
Boo.
JKWood Sep 11th 2009 8:34AM
I still want that cake. I didn't realize that the pet had been hard to get in the past, I got Snarly on my first (and only) Crocolisks in the City. Now I have reason to do all the cooking/fishing dailies again...
Croe Sep 10th 2009 5:28PM
After many months of doing the Outland fishing dailies to get the four non combat pets, I was happy to finally get the remaining three within a couple of weeks. It was 100% drop rate for me, with a non combat pet in every bag. This only was for the Crocolisk in the Sewer quest. The only RNG left was if you got the pet already or not.
This is good and bad. Good that I finally complete the collection and have now taken it off my list of dailies. Bad that they are no longer as rare as they once were.
Still, in the end, you still need to actually do the quests in order to get them.
I love non combat pets. :D
Anonymous Sep 10th 2009 5:30PM
I think part of the problem with the casual versus hardcore thing is that casual versus hardcore is pretty ill-defined. I mean, if you're at the extreme ends of the spectrum, it can be pretty easy to say, "Yeah, that person is casual" or "He's totally hardcore," but I think the vast majority of people are somewhere in the middle. I think these "more casual" changes have mostly helped the in-between people too, since these people often do want to raid and get stuff done, but it used to take alot more time to do it.
Spyder1911 Sep 10th 2009 5:45PM
Am I missing something or amI the only one that fails to see how an extra wand cooldown has anything to do with being a casual friendly change....? I read that like 10 times and still can't figure out how that's a benefit to anyway, let alone casuals?
Thoughts please? I'm really eager to know what I've missed?
Robin Torres Sep 10th 2009 5:49PM
Introductory sentence fail. Fixed.