View Full Forums : The Progressive Player


Iilane SalAlur
10-25-2004, 07:01 AM
One thing I see time and again on this board and many other mmorpg forums are people talking about raiding players and casual players. You were either a raider or a casual. It is as if someone lined up every player using some combined measure of uberness, time invested, etc.. then drew a line somewhere in the middle. He is a raider, she is a casual. It is a easy way to classify players, but it falls short of describing a majority of us somehow. Its like saying there are two sizes of shirts, large and small.

I believe quite a few of us would agree that we are a medium size. We feel we are not a raider nor a casual. But we didn't know what to call ourselves.

The Progressive Player
We are the ones who:

Plays as much as raiders, 20-40 hours per week.
Strives to improve our characters as much as raiders do.
Prefer solo/duo/single group/dual group challenges over 40+ man raids.
Enjoy questing and exploration of new places.
Might enjoy tradeskills and other non-combat pursuits such as lore, backstories, item collection or just plain fooling around.

WEDruidVZ
10-25-2004, 08:32 AM
The Semi-Progressive Player
* Plays almost as much as Raiders, 15-30 hours per week.
* Strives to improve/level our characters above all else, as raiders do.
* Prefer solo/duo/single group/dual group challenges over 40+ man raids, but still raids on a regular basis.
* Enjoy questing and exploration of new places.
* Non-combat pursuits are not all that importants.

Just my idea of who I am....

Scirocco
10-25-2004, 08:54 AM
I've posted on this before. The majority of players fall on a spectrum between the uberraider (who is characteristically defined by the ability and flexibility to be able to play the game during the time when raid mobs are available) and the true casual gamer. Most players are not true casual players. Most take the game far more seriously than that....they're just time restricted in a variety of ways. In fact, being time restricted forces lots of folks in this range to be more efficient and effective than a lot of uberraiders in order to make the most of the time that they are on.

I've already called myself a time-restricted power gamer....:)

Aly
10-25-2004, 09:40 AM
I'm a time-restricted thrill seeker! :P I just wanna have fun while I play and be a part of the storyline all the way through.

Iilane SalAlur
10-25-2004, 10:52 AM
Time-restricted power gamer... no offense meant, but that's just way too long!

Panamah
10-25-2004, 11:01 AM
Progressive Player! I like the sound of that. I always got sniped at by casual players because they always felt if you play more hours than they do, you're not casual. :p

Kerech
10-25-2004, 11:08 AM
I'm a patience-deficient time-restricted power gamer :)

I played 20 or so hours per week and I loved raiding, but I hated taking up all my 2-3 hours of play time for a night trying to get people to show up at the raid so we could actually start (no matter how much you plan, you're always missing some key class). Once they all finally got assembled, I'd have to log :(

Kalthanan
10-25-2004, 11:12 AM
Family guild, a notch or two below an uberguild. We've got over 100 members in the guild, but it's a family-friendly guild, and there's no attendance requirements. Many of the folks in the guild are military, or have a lot of RL responsibilities. On an average raid night, of which we only schedule 3 Official raids a week, we can get between 30 and 50 people together to raid.

We also have optional raids, especially lately, to do smaller events that don't require a full raid. For example, Justice trials (we've got a dozen or so people flagged for 7th hammer, to help with monk epic), epic hunts, and occasional miniboss farming.

As for progression, we have a lot of the easy PoP requirements done, like Aerin Dar, Grummus, MB, TT, but we're also farming VT. We're not elemental yet, so we're far from being an 'uberguild' but we're also not a casual guild that doesn't raid.

If you rated guilds from 1 to 5, I guess we'd be a 3.

Personally, if you rated my playtime the same way (1 being blue moon player and 5 being hardcore Harry who plays 8x5 and 16x2), I'd be a solid 4, but that's only because my girlfriend is deployed. I vary between a 2 and a 3 usually.

For some comparisons, "uber" and "casual" make sense, but for others, it doesn't. It's up to the reader to know when that is the case.