How casual will it be.

[Apocalypse]

Non-gamers will have next to zero interest in D3 no matter how hard Blizz wants to cater to them.

i gotta agree with you here. however i still say d3 will be a casual game and there is nothing wrong with that. people seem to think casual is a bad thing. "you calling my favorite game casual? i kill you"

[Karpalo]

I think D3 got both sides covered. You can play it couple hours a week, but even if you go in 24/7 grind frenzy you there is still something left to do for a long, long time.

[Zorrah]

My thoughts on casuals do vary wildly from what the general consensus of what casual really is. If you have a level capped character (WoW) and claim to be casual, you're full of crap.

When people call for casual raids, they are not calling for casual raids, they are calling for easy or puggable raids, but no, if you've ever gotten a group of 25 coordinated people together, you've stepped past the boundries of casual. On that note, soloist doesn't not necessarily mean casual either, I've known a lot of causal players that have only ran 5 men dungeons because they got dragged into it, when about 3 or 4 of their friends were already grouped up for it.

Casuals don't jump on the web site to complain that the game is not casual enough for them. Odds are, the casuals haven't dipped into all of the solo content that a game offers.

Casuals don't take time off work for the release of a game or attend midnight launches or stand in line for Collector's editions.

That said, no Diablo III will not be for casuals. It will have a lot of fun, casual content, and will be a good game for many casual players, but they will still quit between mid nightmare and early hell. In fact, if you want to make ANY money from the RMAH, you better hope that the game is popular with casuals, because they will not have the game release day, they will be the ones buying mid range magical items from AH. They are going to be the ones rotating in and out of the game, good for Blizzard, and good for people that do plan on selling anything on the RMAH.

Also, WoW never really got casual friendly in regards to raids and PvP. Lowbie PvP was dominated by twinks, not casual friendly, and A casual raid, I would imagine as being more of a 10 man leveling raid, as opposed to what a "casual" raid these days mean in WoW. WoW did have some smoking solo casual and 5 man casual content though. Still does. But those who are actually going to the message boards and claiming to be casual, really are not as casual as they claim to be.

Edit, also, looking down at someone who has played for a long time, and seeing that they only cleared hell a couple of times, when you regularly farm hell Baal, it might seem that said player is casual, but I would not call that player a casual, only more casual than you.

[Raesene]

I've seen these casual vs hardcore debates all over the place in WoW too, and they always have the same annoying theme. People talk like casual/hardcore is some sort of binary state, when it is not. It's a sliding scale with a huge population of players spread all across it. Also, skilled/unskilled is separate. I've seen terrible players in WoW, who keyboard turn and stand in fire, while also logged in and playing the majority of their waking existences. I would certainly not apply the term "casual" to them.

[yovargas]

It will have a lot of fun, casual content, and will be a good game for many casual players, but they will still quit between mid nightmare and early hell.

Lots of data shows most gamers don't even beat the games they buy. At best, "casuals" will beat the game once with one character and move on.

[Whiddin]

If you have a level capped character (WoW) and claim to be casual, you're full of crap.

Also, WoW never really got casual friendly in regards to raids and PvP. Lowbie PvP was dominated by twinks, not casual friendly

I disagree with both of these statements. Reaching the level cap in WoW was never something that took much skill or required any sort of out-of-game work like theory crafting. You don't lose your character or even any experience when you die. All you have to do is play level-appropriate content of the game. You can even level up doing cooking and fishing dailies in some zones. With Cataclysm changes it's stupid easy. I would argue that someone who doesn't have a level-capped character either periodically deletes their characters or just started playing and has 10 level 35 alts. Unless that person loses interest and is no longer a player of that game at all, they will eventually, and casually have a capped toon. Fighting monsters that are easy to kill (and give no exp) isn't fun; it's not what a casual player would do.

On the topic of PvP, I was the "10 alts" guy back in '06 when I started and my level 23 quest-geared shaman DOMINATED in the Warsong 29 bracket. There weren't many twinks back then, and it was more dependent on class skills and teamwork. I played because it was fun! I would also contend that pick-up raiding was pretty casual towards the end of WoLK, at least to the extent of daily raid bosses. By the time Icecrown was open gear was so easy to get that even people who only put in the time to do the 5-man daily quests could handle the raids that shipped with the disks.

WoW did have some smoking solo casual and 5 man casual content though. Still does. But those who are actually going to the message boards and claiming to be casual, really are not as casual as they claim to be.

Edit, also, looking down at someone who has played for a long time, and seeing that they only cleared hell a couple of times, when you regularly farm hell Baal, it might seem that said player is casual, but I would not call that player a casual, only more casual than you.

Agree, agree, agree.
My favorite time in WoW was BC 5-mans. I could pop on, get a few friends together, and be challenged-but-not-too-much. No scheduled raid times, no guild websites, just playing the game.
Anyone who talks about game balance/content/difficulty, outside of "Make more games so I can play them!" on the internet is not what I would call strictly casual player.
As Raesene also says, and as with most things in real life, this is a sliding scale. Am I a casual player? I'd like to think so, but the fact of the matter is that I also enjoy discussion and theory and learning game mechanics as much if not more than playing sometimes. I like having expertise on a subject. Thoughtfully Casual? Casual Theorist? I don't think I really need a label, but tis fun to ponder...

[Wizz]

hideo.. nuff said.. and he has 666 posts.. gg..

[Pyrohemia]

Casual enough to wear socks with sandals.

[nailertn]

i gotta agree with you here. however i still say d3 will be a casual game and there is nothing wrong with that. people seem to think casual is a bad thing. "you calling my favorite game casual? i kill you"

There is nothing wrong with being a casual. The problem is how game developers are willing to sacrifice the integrity of their games to appeal to casuals. And that understandably pisses off the rest of the players. It's like adding a pinch of dubstep to opera or showing naked women during snooker matches just to appeal to a bigger crowd. WoW was a very good example of this.

It also taught Blizzard a lesson. For such a simplistic game, the differences in player skill are enormous. Pick any healer from the world's 100th best guild and he will single handedly beat the entire healer section of the world's 1000th guild. Pick from the 10th and he will do the same to the 100th guild. When Blizzard designed content with hardcore players in mind, 95% of their player base didn't even get to see it. If they tried to engage casuals, the hardcore guilds were done with everything in a week and had nothing to do for months.

Hence Blizzard resigned from trying and failing to please everybody to pleasing as many as they can. The spectrum is way too wide to be covered by four difficulty levels, and since they go by the numbers they serve the casual player base first. So the answer to op is: Yes, Diablo will inevitably be too casual. To some.

[Wildmoon]

uh no d2 was not more popular than SC:BW. the competitive scene alone in brood war was so popular that it made one of the biggest sport in korea. ya sure, d3 will be more popular than sc2, but it's not necessary cause it's more casual, but more like many people favor one genre over another in the modern era. Moba game is pushing the RTS genre away.

D2 was more popular than SC:BW in the term of how many people played it worldwide. Blizzard said long time ago that there was really high amount of D2 game played on Bnet. Competitive scene for BW was strong at first but after that it was only Korea. SC:BW died off pretty fast except in Korea. It's the same pattern as WoW/SC2. WoW is much more popular but SC2 is for esport.