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Original post by BlueFalconLoyd Hardcore players are your player base that will stick with the game from pre-release to closing of the servers. This is a smaller market but a market that will pay for your game much longer then a casual player might. While casual players tend to move from game to game...why wouldn't they? They have no "real" attachment to the game other then logging on for a bit, playing, then logging out. This is a large market for MMO's but a market that will pay far far less time wise.

I've found pretty often just the opposite behaviour (at least with casuals and WoW). Casual players will keep playing WoW for ages because they don't know anything else, and if you show them something else is damm hard to convince them to move from it (learn another game, repeat all the basic stuff, their friends may or may not move to the new game...).

While hardcore players know which games are coming, which ones look good, which ones will probably interest them,... and move more often from game to game (or try several games at the same time).

I tried convincing people at work, to move from wow to eve
eve was to confusing for them, wow holds your hand, eve pushes you into space,

I think id class as hardcore, Ive played most of the online games, I do have wow and warhammer suscriptions, but ive stuggled to get into them, biding my time for a decent mmo to come out.

I want to play a mmo with the P death, it would have to be build diffrently to wow, cause wow is based around you die alot and it doesn't mean much
Not interested in Tales of the Desert (I belive that has pd)

With death, I think you either have to make it, little to no interference, but you can die fairly easy, or very strict but your not going to fall over and die as soon as a high skilled oppodent sees you

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Original post by Vicente Casual players will keep playing WoW for ages because they don't know anything else

In theory any way. Casual players will jump ship the moment a new casual oriented game comes out that has what WoW has, plus a gimick or two. I don't know what that gimick might be offhand because I design almost exclusively for the hardcore audience, but even better graphics might do it for some.

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While hardcore players know which games are coming, which ones look good, which ones will probably interest them,... and move more often from game to game (or try several games at the same time).

I, as a hardcore gamer, move from game to game because I haven't found the niche game for me. The same is true for many of my more hardcore friends. Targeting specific groups within the hardcore community is the best way to get fans to stick around, not to wow the legions with shiny baubles and mindless gameplay.

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Original post by Zouflain Of course WoW is more appealing to a casual audience. And, it's true that the casual audience is much larger than the hardcore audience. WoW has, however, very few hardcore players and is considered something of a joke in other games. "Go play WoW you carebear" does not suggest a universal appeal.

Hardcore gamers do not indicate quality. Hardcore gamers tend to be a jaded bunch that look for every game to be better than the last and thus the best game ever made. They're snobs.

If anyone overlooks the success of World of Warcraft or tries to downplay the things that they have done very right in that game, simply because it's not as difficult or punishing as something like EQ - than -THAT- person is missing the point.

Making your game accessible and easy to play is precisely what the economy of game design is all about. This is probably the only place where World of Warcraft is actually innovative. It's the first MMO that wasn't horribly broken and buggy, and that people could actually get into, understand, and play - without the help of a support group.

Dismiss that at your own risk.

If you want to make games for niche crowds, fine. But don't be so brash that you miss the reason why WoW has that many subscribers, and the advantage in making your games "casual" in their ease of play. Let your decision to make a hardcore game be a conscious one, instead of something done out of ignorance.

Original post by Zouflain

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Original post by Telluric EVE has a population of 150k to 300k. WoW has a population of 9M to 11M. It seems pretty clear that the WoW model is more appealing than EVE. And a part of that model is ease of game play (which includes death penalties).

You totally missed my point. Of course WoW is more appealing to a casual audience. And, it's true that the casual audience is much larger than the hardcore audience. WoW has, however, very few hardcore players and is considered something of a joke in other games. "Go play WoW you carebear" does not suggest a universal appeal.

Slightly off topic here, but the casual World of Warcraft audience will eventually become the hardcore gaming audience. People either play the game and like it, and continue playing, or they quit within a few levels. Seeing how the game has been online for a few years now, the latter is true. When a player continues playing, the game is obviously interesting to them, and in most cases they will eventually want to accomplish everything there is in the game. This turns them into a hardcore gamer for two reasons: The time they've dedicated to playing the game, and the experiences they've had in the game, which will make them want to experience more (on the subject of gameplay, they've accomplished everything there is to, now they want to accomplish more); eventually leading them to other games. Of course this is all in theory, but I've already seen it happen time and again. Not just from myself, but from many other friends as well; including some that have never even played MMORPG's pre-World of Warcraft.

On the subject of the death system, there are a lot of good points here. What it boils down to, is keeping the player from playing the game. They log on to play, not wait 15 minutes for their death penalty to go away, (or taking 30 minutes or more to run back to their corpse).

There is a very, very simple solution to this. Give the player something to do while they are recovering from death. Perhaps a small mini-game to keep them occupied until their death penalty, whatever it may be, goes away. You could even go as far as to let them level up in the "spirit" world, make it another part of the game. When you die, you can continue dead, living in the spirit world for as long as you desire.