Wednesday, October 13, 2010

What is the benefit of Casual? Is there any?

Have you ever written a blog post containing nothing but questions? I wonder, would it even work? How many readers would be driven crazy by the incessant ramblings of a person who couldn’t formulate an articulate opinion and relied on the imagination or input from readers to draw conclusions?

How many of you laughed at those in trade chat last night as they asked “when do Assasination Rogues get Mutilate”, and be told “level 82”? How many of you felt sympathy for those players who had no idea not only that patch 4.0.1 would drop but about all the changes contained therein? Could there be an easier way to assist these needy souls and help them through what happens to be the biggest changes to class play since who knows when? Wouldn’t it be great to have a HELP channel? That’s a silly question, for don’t we already have forums for that purpose?

Who will champion the cause of helping the casual? You? Me? Nobody? Are there not already a plethora or resources for these players to access that give them valuable insight and proven, tested methods that will help the player achieve high dps, high threat, or high throughput? But are these people not called casuals for a reason? What could possibly motivate a casual to log on to the internet and perform a search for the best, new Unholy DK DPS rotation?

So when these casuals logged in, or tried to, did not they and you sit face to face with a blizzard downloader and then a new WoW Launcher? Did they not say to themselves, “oh, look at that, a new patch, I wonder what it has for me”? Are you in a position to deny that they said this to themselves?

So to you, Mr./Ms. Casual, what was the biggest shock to your system when you finally saw your character standing there before you with your talents reset? Did you quietly search your talent tree for those comfortable, safe talents that boost Shadow damage by 2/4/6%? Or did you open your heart in trade chat, admit your ignorance and ask for help from the general populace? Did you regret your decision to ask for help from strangers when you were told that the Mage class was being discontinued? Did you fire off a frost bolt just to prove those trolls wrong?

Alas, Mr./Ms. Casual, what shocked you the most? What did you say to yourself when you found that it would take you a month’s worth of heroics just to purchase one PvE heirloom item? Were you mad or were you pleased (for some strange reason)? Did you cry to see all your hard earned stone keeper shards disappear only to discover that they had been converted into Honor Points?

Are you a Druid? Did you mourn the loss of Tree of Life Form as you have come to know and love it? Are you a Paladin and are totally confused at how your DPS can go from 8K to 4K overnight, realizing that now you may have to actually do something to do competitive DPS? Are you a Shaman, realizing that all your abilities to clean yourself, save it be curses, was stripped and torn from you violently? Did you lash out to your family, your guild, other trolls?

In the end we learn a valuable lesson, do we not? Did we not learn that Mr./Ms. Casual has one advantage over all of us who learned about all this stuff beforehand? Did we not learn that to be casual and ignorant is one way to remain innocent and allow us to be truly surprised and have true emotional responses when changes (major or minor) come our way?

I don’t really have any answers, so I’m asking, what do you think?

2 comments:

Tesh said...

Questions? Who asks questions?

...ah, crud.

OK, so yeah, I logged into the game for BBB's bash, and lo, my level 10 Druid who had just recently fought his way to Bear form was ripped off. Not only was Bear form unceremoniously torn from his hands (at least until level 15), but he wasn't refunded the money he spent on training it.

At least Cat form was available (starting at level 8 now, whee!). That almost made up for it.

Gronthe said...

@ Tesh: So sad about bear form, too true.

Hope the BBB's bash was a success, I wish I coulda been there.