For some reason I had the idea that getting back into Guild Wars 2 would be fun on the weekend, not in a “let’s start and play a bit” but more “would I be willing to invest some time again” – because I think I was in a FFXIV duty roulette queue at the time and of course I can’t just stare at the screen for those 15 minutes…

I asked on Discord if my gear was still ok (or even good) and several people reassured me that nothing had changed in GW2 and my Level 80 Ascended and Exotic pieces were still completely fine.

Tessa remarked “Yeah, one of the reasons why Gw2 is casual friendly. Take 6 years off and your gear still holds up.” and that got me thinking a bit. What does playing something casual mean anyway? Our FFXIV static was formed to raid savage at our own pace, and originally once per week (we did add an hour for reclears on a second day meanwhile) but we’ve not yet skipped a week I think, and it’s savage – so ist that even casual? My WoW guild is strictly limiting raids to 2x2h per week, very rarely do we spend 5 minutes extra on a pull. We managed AOTC in 9.1 and before I joined they managed AOTC in 9.0 as well, and I think they’ve been doing that for many expansions. Despite taking everyone in the guild above a certain token item level and even getting them through heroic (unless someone actually sabotages a single fight) I wouldn’t call that casual. Non-hardcore raiding, yes – but casual?

On the other hand I guess my adventures in SWTOR are actually casual, it’s just that I spend a lot of my time there when I am playing. But apart from the launch raids in 2011/12 I’ve not raided progression and I only joined farm raids 1-2 times. I don’t do dungeons, I basically just level toons and get some gear and achievements. So that’s casual I guess. TESO is complicated, I think if you’re just starting a game and never coming close to max level or any real goal that might be casual by a proper definition, but I’d just call it being a beginner. So, GW2 then. I heard there are raids, but I don’t know anyone who does them. Most people also weren’t keen on fractals, maybe this game’s goals are actually more aligned to casuals overall.

Oh, and Diablo 3 – is it casual if you start a fresh season, grind yourself to max level and then through the rifts and Paragon levels until you lose interest? Do you actually have to be good (compared to others) to not be casual? Or is being invested (time) and progression-focused enough to temporarily not be a casual?

I don’t know. I guess my definition of being casual stops with having an organized scheduled group to focus on a goal that’s non-trivial (or pugging that stuff that’s usually done this way), so that would be raiding Heroic in WoW (but I guess Normal also counts) but in FFXIV I’d draw the line at Savage and EX because Normal Asphodelos is no comparison to a Normal WoW raid. You can have 2-3 of 8 people never being there, needing 2-3 rezzes each, and still winning in a reasonable time. Good luck with 5 of your 20 people dying early in WoW.

But back to the original question. I made a spreadsheet for my three main GW2 toons with their gear and plan to investigate if I can craft or otherwise get some upgrades before I actually plan to play, so maybe I really suck at casual gaming.

This is a draft I found, I originally wrote this a few weeks ago and really wanted to have a second session with Lost Ark but it hasn’t happened yet and I’m not hopeful, so here it goes:

After postponing it for a while while a good chunk of people were raving about it, another part was lamenting the queues and a small minority was like “Why the fuzz, it’s not a new game”, I was standing at the side lines and waiting. A while ago one night I started the download while doing something else and then gave it a quick spin.

The character creation is kinda nice and yes, the randomizer gives you more hilarious options than any other game. I’m not a fan of gender-locked classes but it’s not a big deal for me personally. I love how they made this “try out the class in a short battle” before deciding, that is a really great idea.

I went with an Assassin (not-the-sword-spec) first but I didn’t really like the combat. Oh, and I kinda hate the controls in a “why different buttons to move and attack, this should be like Diablo” way. Need to check if I can change that but I only see “left to move, right to attack” and “right to move, left to attack”. Hmm… Also one of the attacks has a horrible sound effect.

The voiceovers are kinda terrible but the graphics are really pretty. When it comes to cutscenes it’s a little meh but that might be because they’re overdoing the effects. Yes, female characters walk ridiculously. Later I also tried a Warrior (Berserker) and I think I might enjoy this one more, that’s why I didn’t claim all the stuff on the Assassin yet.

I wrote that it’s inferior to Diablo 3 in every aspect except the graphics, it’s a whole lot of meh – but this was my first 100 minute impression, I definitely want to give it a second chance on another day and actually progress more than the prologue + first city, BUT if the combat feels bad at the start already, or the controls, is this salvageable? I also found myself skipping the cutscenes very quickly because I’m not anticipating a great story anyway.

Back in January I wrote about games I sunk 500+ hours in but didn’t have numbers for a lot of them. Today I checked GW2 because someone asked, I am subscribed to WoW now anyway, and SWTOR is patched up at least

Ok, so:

• Guild Wars 2 – 589 hours
  • Warrior 226h
  • Guardian 103h
  • Thief 89h
  • Ranger 70h
  • Necromancer 56h
  • Mesmer 32h
• WoW – addon says 717 days = 17000 hours
• WoW TBC Classic – 3d + 8d 18h + 4d 20h + some lowbies = ~17d = ~400h, so no
• SWTOR – at least 50d = 1200h
  • Sage – 16d 18h
  • Commando – 4d
  • Scoundrel – 5d 10h
  • Operative – 4d 6h
  • Juggernaut – 7d
  • Powertech – 14d 5h
  • 5 more at 75 that were mostly just leveled up

Unfortunately EVE Online killed the possibility to look at your /played in 2020.