Forbes: World of Warcraft is for Hardcore Gamers
March 25, 2009 by Ruibo
Yes. That’s right, World of Warcraft is apparently too hardcore for the standard audience. It’s always fun and entertaining to poke at Mass Media, especially since we enjoy gossiping so much. I just couldn’t help but point out how Forbes and Rob Hutter can say,
While most people unaccustomed to MMOs might be intimidated by complex games like “Warcraft,” Hutter says trends in technology suggest the audience for simple, well-designed games will grow quickly. The runaway success of Nintendo’s Wii proved virgin gamers will try new titles if they are easy to play, while the boom in social networks like Facebook suggests people of all ages are looking for new ways to interact online.
Either they’ve never played the game themselves or really in the stone age of gaming. While majority of us have at least tried WoW or another MMO, it may be perhaps be a little difficult for one who has never touched a video game in their life. (Who has never played a video game before? really?)
While we understand what he’s getting at and can appreciate trying to target gamers outside of the main demographic, we think he might need to pick a better example next time. WoW can be intimidating for first time users, but something must have clicked with the non-hardcore gaming crowd as many of them have stuck around in Azeroth. Unless, of course, all 11 million of the World of Warcraft subscribers have suddenly become hardcore male gaming nerds, and those newbies in our guilds are simply the stuff of illusion.
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This dude needs a KVM. Plain and simple. He’s obviously not that hardcore. I mean seriously what kind of guy uses 32 accounts of WoW (yes count them, including the 6 on the laptops where you can’t see the screen) and doesn’t use a software kvm? What a noob, and stop gold/account farming. This isn’t china.
I read the article for the guy’s desktop that is the featured picture in this article… he pays out like 5700.00-6000.00 every 6 months just to have all of those accounts! Needs a life honestly. Also, i believe he has around 50 something accounts for the game? It’s a crazy number. I don’t see how people can do it.
He might spend 6,000 usd every 6 month for his accounts, but how much does he make back selling those accounts and the gold he has farmed? I bet it is in excess of 20,000 usd.
Warcraft isn’t really that hardcore, it’s just very very very time consuming. the game play is really good, leveling your 1st toon take for ages as specially if you have a social life outside of wow. And once you start raiding or pvping, you have to put like 2 nights a week for doing 10/25m raids, then more time outside of raids to gather gold, mats for your potions/flasks, search on wowhead.com to see what items would be best upgrade for you. then redo these raids over and over hoping your item will drop. Very fun, but you end up putting 25-30 hours of gameplay into this game, and most of us already work or study full time. this leaves no time for anything else.
This is a truly truly terrible article with no basis of any kind. i can think of tens of a hundred people i know who have never played a computer game. you mention the 11 million users, thats one in 636.363636 of the worlds 7 billion people. get a grip.
Agreed. I think someone (i) plays wow too much, and (ii) read the Forbes article and got defensive.
wow, what a terrible arguement. a massive amount of people in the world can’t afford a car, let alone a computer. i played wow a long time ago, and it is an incredibly easy game to play, it just requires a massive amount of time. all u do is point and click. and btw, proving u aren’t too bright in math, u could have just said u know thousands of people that have never played a comp game. unless u meant 10/100 people, which would make less sense.
lol clicker
I don’t completely dissagree with that. Sure you have newbs on wow, and people that log on for a casual session… But as you progress within the game, your average log time tends to increases. Eventually your character has reached his/her maximum level and the only way to get your avatar stronger (which is what this game, and most MMO RPGs, is all about) is to participate in instances/raids.
Now, forgive me if this is inacurate, I played WoW around launch and slowly made my way to level 60. Then I was told that the only way to get better is to party up with 39 other people, go to a zone, spend 4-5 hours in there and MAYBE get the chance of rolling for an item that made my character slightly more powerful. Now, there’s nothing wrong with that, if that’s what you’re into… At the time, half of my co-workers played WoW (worked in a Best Buy) and several of them would complain about how their guild’s were forcing their members to participate to a minimum number of raids, per week.
When a game, a tool for leisure, becomes a commitment, or a requirement for you, I would think it’s safe to say, you’re a hardcore gamer; not that that’s a bad thing anyway, not all WoW players are as the one characterized on South Park’s “Make love, not WarCraft”
Thanks for reading.
The game has been tuned down a lot from Vanilla WoW. Only 1% of the WoW player base can really be considered “Hardcore” the rest are just gaming idiots.
I can see where the Forbes article comes from. There is pretty much 0 tutorial in WoW, you just get dropped into the game. Granted the beginning quests are pretty easy (actually all of them are fairly easy, barring some endgame quests for Vanilla, TBC and WotLK). However I know alot of people that don’t really participate in end-game content and are definately not hardcore players. For example my friends mom trades pets, and that is it.
Is the article fair? Yeah, I think it generally is because once you hit 80 people start talking about miniscule differences in gear, and this vs. that, and strict roles for players during raids. However alot of people who are not gamers can pick up WoW pretty quickly as it is one of the simpler complex-games I have ever played, and I have been gaming since I figured out how to turn my TV on in the late 80s.
lol.. im sorry but Ruibo your a silly twat lol.. the majority of Wow players are hardcore like the LARGE MAJORITY… some thing like 70-80% of wow players raid 4+ nights a week. Due to the nature of Wow and its leveling/expansions/gear/teirs… it is a very very very hardcore game…
Yes there are alot of players sub end game who just mess about but its only about 30% of the total population.
Serioualy.. its pretty obviouse your a Wow player who has now “quit” and just likes to say how its a Easy “casual” game… Hardcore is about time remember.
Nice of you to call me a twat
Yes there are many “hardcore” players but honestly the game has many different aspects. Can you say leveling from 1 to 80 is too hardcore for the average player?
The game has many levels to it, the early stages and the learning curve in the beginning is definitely easy, kill tasks and running from town to town completely quests isn’t what I call hardcore.
I do admit in the end game, it can get a little more technical. But by then your skill should be accustomed to the level of difficulty and that would just be another grind.
This is a classic case of a lack of reading comprehension coupled with a very narrow point of view.
The article simply states that “people unaccustomed to MMOs” could be intimidated by a complex game like WoW.
Many, many, many, people in this world have never played any video game and in western culture there are many, many, that play consoles only so they have little or no exposure to MMO gaming.
The writer of this article is in need of both remedial reading classes and an expansion of his personal horizons so that he might understand, someday, that not everyone does what he does or thinks (and I use the term loosely) like he thinks.
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No, the point of going to raids is the boss fights…not the gear.
The gear and repair bills are a means to an end.
Being in synergy with 10 or 25 other people while you work strategy to overcome a situation is the point of end game.
Mini-scule differences in gear? when you understand how the mechanics work with all the classes and how it affects the spells etc etc…the differences in gear are not really minis-cule.
Sorry no…WoW is no longer for hardcore gamers… all the people that cared about staying out of fire have left the game, viz the people who can’t work out how to setup their toons with proper gear& talent choices.
Tutorials? there are plenty out there…half the fun of wow is discovery.
“Being in synergy with 10 or 25 other people while you work strategy to overcome a situation”
“Mini-scule differences in gear? when you understand how the mechanics work with all the classes…”
Working with 10-25 other players for a few hours to clear an instance is hardcore. Learning how all the mechanics work in the game just to understand why you’d want more agility vs. strength on a particular piece of gear is hardcore. Leveling and quest lines, that’s easy for casual players. Once you get to 80, though, you don’t have much to do but PVP or raid, and serious raiding (not just the occasional PUG) is hardcore.
“Learning how all the mechanics work in the game just to understand why you’d want more agility vs. strength on a particular piece of gear is hardcore.”
That’s like saying how learning all the tasks and responsibilities to do your job correctly is hardcore and too much work. The point is to learn how to play your class. If you don’t know how to gear/play your character then what is the point in playing? World of Warcraft is a joke. It was my first MMO, I played for about 3 years and quit out of sheer boredom. It’s not difficult to play.
Everyone I know that plays WoW is a hardcore gamer.. Admit it. Are people afraid to admit they are big into gaming. Think about the time commitment it takes to play a game like wow .
This whole hardcore gamer notion is a load of crap. I’m sorry, but a 10 year old girl who spends hour after hours feeding her horses or playing on webkinz is just as hardcore as the 15 year old boy who spends hour after hour playing a FPS.
sorry – by feeding her horses I was talking about the all the stupid “pet care” genre of games.
Most of you are disagreeing because of a misunderstanding in what ‘hardcore’ means.
The forbes article uses ‘hardcore’ to mean people who have always played games, play a lot of different games, probably own a PC and at least one console. So ‘hardcore gamers’.
Many of you (healthkid for example) are talking about hardcore as in ‘Hardcore WoW players’ which is a totally different thing. Think about why this is the wrong use of the word. Compare these two statements:
‘Most WoW players are hardcore game players’, and
‘Most WoW players are hardcore WoW players’
Obviously the 2nd one doesn’t really make any sense. If you assume they mean the first usage, you can see why this site is laughing at them: most people who consider themselves hardcore games have or do play wow, sure, but the vast majority of those 11 million subscribers are not even close to being hardcore gamers.
I know a ton of people that play WoW, and for many of them it’s the only game thye play. They have no interest in other genres, and the only reason they play wow is because it’s so easy and it means they can do something with the boyfriend/girlfriend that is easy to learn and has a social aspect.
The majority of wow players never get to level 80, never raid 7 days a week, never get any of the epic gear and aren’t really interesting in becoming a hardcore gamer. It’s casual gaming with very low barrier to entry and it’s easy to play once a week with the significant other.
The Forbes article is just completely wrong. This article is correct in calling them out on it.
Thank you Neil, I couldn’t have explained it better myself. Majority of the players continues playing for the social interactivity.
I couldn’t stand raiding honestly, the only reason I did it was for better gears and to help the guild. BG/Arena gears was more than enough for me, however I continued playing to kill time with my lady and some friends in the game. I quitted because my lady no longer plays and the game itself didn’t feel as a whole.
There you have “my pov”, WoW is more of a facebook to me than a place for hardcore gamers.
No matter how hardcore people are, when the realms goes down there is nothing you can do about it. Blizzard has always had a hard time keeping realms up and running, even now with the billions they have from WoW.
Thats why we started youplayorwepay.com, to make sure the rest of us gets downtime compensation.
Noob question what the hell is “Vanilla WOW” pre BC?
Vanilla World of Warcraft, Vanilla WoW, pre-TBC, pre-BC, refers to game content before expansion set World of WarCraft: The Burning Crusade.
All games are for hardcore gamers. You’d just have to spend enough time and focus on it to be one of the best players. The fallacy of the title is that it assumes only hardcore gamers can play WoW; which isn’t true. People play games because it’s fun. Some people get sucked into games for various reasons. People get sucked into WoW because of guilds and high replay value. It’s the same way CS is; substitute clans in place of guilds. There’s hardcore DoTA players even though it’s a specialized map inside of Warcraft 3. There’s also hardcore Warcraft 3 players who don’t bother with DoTA. Hardcore gamers pick their games to play; the games don’t pick the players.
You make fun of this guy, and then in the third paragraph you say, “WoW can be intimidating for first time users.” Isn’t that really all Rob Hutter is trying to say?
man.. no offence… but get a fucking life. wow is for teenagers and adults in their SPARE TIME. NOT to take over your life and make you a 40 year old Otaku with no friends or ambitions in “real life”.
please… for urself.. get off ur ass and do something productive.
black people
oh you are nice…
WoW is for gamers of all ages (as proven through what I’ve heard on ventrilo) Anyone can learn this game, and anyone can get to level 80. Not everyone can be good at it but it’s not hard by any means. Clearly the guy in Forbes assumes that hardcore = puts all his/her time into it, whereas I consider hardcore to be someone who kicks butt
WoW isnt realy that difficult, you got to know things first, find out how to do quest efficienlty,where to grind,where to level, etc, etc
When it gets to this stage, it is no longer gaming, it’s a business.
WoW is not particularly for hardcore gamers. In fact it’s probably one of the more accessible of the MMO’s, so have to disagree with the article.
i play wow. its intensive in the fact of : having the feel the need to keep playing longer than your intended time because of the want to complete quest, get honor, gold, gear w/e. it’s almost like a drug in the aspect of the ‘want’ just not the will to pull away. however any game is only as ‘hardcore’ as you want it to be. now i see a few posts here and other forums, yeah it’s gotten WAY easier sine wotlk release because in blizzard forums they stated they wanted to open more doors to outside players to broaden their spectrum of playing style i.e. “fatten their wallets” – more players = more moolah. and they know it’s an addictive game with many features and aspects of the game that suit to many different playing styles. btw. u wanna see what game i wish wow would have been like, but sine they’re more for casual players i don’t expect them to keep up this game – AION. you can see the game trailers i saw from gameplay on the beta testers – aiononline.com very very smooth graphics and lots of action, i’m very keen to try this.
This is why most of my frinds call it warcraft war-crack, refering to the addictiveness of the game. it’s like cocaine for gamers