Another lost level 60

[Alarick]

Casual players simply cannot be allowed to get this loot, because casual players will not stay in a game.  You are leaving because there isn't enough content at the high end to keep you satisfied, but that's the point.  If they made uber loot easy to get, the hardcore 8-hours-a-day players would leave, and those players form the addicted subscriber base that MMORPGs are built on.  Casual players find themselves at level 60 being unable to get the best stuff in the game and quit.  If Hardcore players at level 60 found that the best stuff in the game was too easy to get (and thus there would be nothing to make them stand out from the casual player), they would quit.  Since casual players will eventually quit anyway, Blizzard has no choice but to cater to the hardcore crowd and try to find some way to keep a casual player happy...
[right][snapback]78365[/snapback][/right]

This is where some of the problem lies. I don't consider myself casual in the aspect you describe. I never entered the game intending to play for a while and quit. I fully intended to do a lot more than I currently have.

What happened is more that I found myself forced into the role of a casual gamer because I didn't have the large amounts of time necessary to do anything else.

Making the loot easy to get and making it available to casual gamers are two totally separate things. Look at the two new epic quests. Barring the colelction parts (in MC and through raid encounters), there's a very difficult single person mission. You cannot receieve any help at all in that mission or you will fail.

Why can there not be some more quests like this? Make a few every patch and you probably will keep a good number of people happy.

If you market the game to casual players, you must have some intent to get them to play, at least for a while. Most of the income for an MMORPG is subscriptions. Even some of the less casual friendly games kept those casual players longer because the "end game," which is where the casual player usually falls short, took a lot longer to reach.

Admittedly, the hardcore players are the ones that hang on the longest, but I've seen no indication that they are in all respects the majority of players. World of Warcraft succeeded because it was casual friendly to start. You could do things in only an hour, or even a half hour in many cases. There can't be this many hardcore players that suddenly decided to get World of Warcraft. It would not be as successful if not for the casual players.

I really do hope things will change. I want to come back at some point. I just don't see any indication that Blizzard will, in fact, add content for the people with less time to play.