Thorvik_Tyrson wrote: »

People are individuals. You will find all kinds/types of gamers out there, both male and female. My wife got me started on WoW and MMO gaming back when I was a workaholic and MMO's were fairly new. She has always been a more casual gamer than I have been. I would not call her driven in any way shape or form when it comes to her MMO gaming. She is smart enough (Got her Masters Degree), but she had no desire to do end game raiding like I was doing. Nor does she haunt the forums like I do, so you will not see her posting here.

To give you an example of her drive, we have both been playing ESO just short of 6 months now. I have 3 level 50 characters, and I don't think that she has a level 50 yet. I think her highest is level 49 at this time. She is enjoying herself, taking her time and playing the story line on several classes/characters. She is not driven to push for a level 50. It's not important to her.

Thorvik

Not that I'm disagreeing with anything specific that you've said here, but as an aside, this is a good example of why I think we really need to rethink the "casual" terminology. There has to be a better way of categorizing it than just lumping in everyone who doesn't care about raids/trials/etc. as "casual." I mean, I've been playing this game daily for, I think, three years? (And mmos basically since they have been around.) I don't care about endgame content, and likely never will, but I have several thousand hours in the game, I've played every race and class, tried out most content, know significant amounts of lore, frequent the forums, etc. Casual seems... inaccurate. In your wife's case, it sounds like she's been playing mmos longer than you have, playing this game just as long, and puts in just as much time as you do, just on different content or aspects of the game. Casual implies that someone is just dipping into something occasionally. I know you probably weren't making a value judgment, per se, but the words themselves suggest something different than what most people probably mean. (Although other people do certainly use them intentionally as a value judgment.)

Varkal2112 wrote: »

"but I have several thousand hours in the game, I've played every race and class, tried out most content, know significant amounts of lore, frequent the forums, etc"

If you don't know end-game mechanics and balance, you're a casual player. Questing can be done by autoattacking, so doing quests on all chars doesn't exactly make you knowledgeable about their mechanics and philosophy. This isn't a bad thing, people enjoy the game in different ways

Ive done vet Trials, i learn and remember dungeon and trial mechanics etc. I still consider myself a "Casual" player. But thats a personal label. I dont need other gamers placing that label on me.