Rest State

[dkass]

In PvE, does it matter to the casual player that people playing 25 hours a day are going to get to level 999 in five days?  Does it reduce *his* ability to level, to do quests, to find people to join with, etc. etc.?  Not that I can see.  If the game is balanced for the casual player, then the presence of power gamers affects him not at all.  So, there is no problem in PvE and thus no need to fix one.

To some extent, I have to disagree. Even the casual player wants to think he/she can get to the end, become the most powerful...

It can also be discouraging to find oneself in a world where everyone else is either way ahead of you or breezing by at insane speed (there is nothing more annoying when playing than trying to party only to find you're irrelevant to the group because you don't have the absolute best gear possible at level 6; or worse finding no one is interested in doing the quests you want because they're not required and they're waiting for their high level buddy to give them everything on a silver platter). The latter is almost exclusively a function of twinking (and why I hate twinking). I don't know how possible twinking is in WOW (hearing of sending money seems to make it completely possible, even if it isn't common yet). I suppose if they really manage to get an ever growing population of casual gamers this might not be as relevant.

I have no idea if the rest system can solve these problems.

In PvP, will a casual player ever develop the *player* skills necessary for him to go heads up against a power player at anything like his level?  Yeah, right. ... the power player is always going to own the casual player in PvP. 

Actually, depending on how the game works, I can easily see the casual gamer handing the power player his head (I'm thinking strategy/tactical games here so it may not apply to WOW). Some part of skill is practice, but some part is knowledge/situational awareness/correct choices and the like. This is especially true of non-twitch games that don't revolve around memorizing layouts/levels (twitch games can also fall in this category, but in this case its reaction time that counts, not necessarily intelligence, but my understanding is that WOW is not a twitch game). Consider the regular DII power player. Many in that population barely know how to build and run the uberpower cookie cutter and would be helpless with any more sophisticated. Now consider a lurker. A game needs to have strategic and tactical depth for this to apply so perhaps it is irrelevant to WOW. Also remember there are grades of casual gamers. The two hour a week type is much less likely to get there. The 6 or 8 hour a week gamer (I'd still definitely call this casual) is IMHO quite capable of matching the skills of the average power gamer, given the same character/equipment (or at least fairly close equipment). This is especially true for someone who also reads good sites (like the Lounge), they get to learn a lot quick without experimenting--note that many medium casual players do have that extra bit of time (in 10 or 15 minute chunks, sometimes at work) to keep up with a few relatively modest, high SNR sites.

There will be the good power gamer who is and will always be better than the casual gamer. They're the ones who have the talent of the good casual gamer and the time to go further. I'm actually glad they exist since they're the ones that generate the material for places like this. But in my experience, they make up a small part of the power gamer population.