“We are a casual raiding guild recruiting for Sunwell.” “You can’t be casual if you’re planning to raid Sunwell.” “We only raid two days a week. That makes us casual.” “But you’re raiding Sunwell, that makes you hardcore.”

Some people believe there is a paradoxal relationship between the concepts of hardcore and casual. People argue you can only be one or the other. But what these people fail to realize is that there is a subjective view of the topic centered around the relation of specific guilds to each other. To give a personal example, compared to all of the guilds on my server just venturing into the recently opened Hyjal, my guild Lunacy is definitely hardcore. However, if you were to compare us to Nihilum, we’re absolutely casual. This example highlights how the hardcore-casual spectrum itself is subjective based on relativity.

The concept of casual and hardcore is such a gray area that even sarcastic terms like “hardcore casual” have developed as a direct result. If you spend hours a week doing heroics to farm badges to pick up all of the gear you need from the Sunwell Isle badge vendor, but you’ve never stepped foot into a 25-man dungeon, you’re hardcore casual. If you raid only two days a week, but you’ve killed Kalecgos in Sunwell, you’re hardcore casual. If you have the skill to top 2K in rating, but you plateau around 2100 because you don’t practice enough, you’re hardcore casual. And if you’ve killed the Eredar Twins, but you don’t raid nearly as often as Nihilum, fear not… you’re hardcore casual!

The only people who don’t fit into this ambivalent category are those on each extreme of the spectrum. These are the only areas which are not easily disputed. Joe Schmoe, who’s taken a year and a few months to get to 70 is definitely casual. And guilds like SK Gaming, Exodus and Nihilum are definitely hardcore. Anyone attempting to argue otherwise would probably be met with responses of outright laughter, which is indicative of a concept commonly agreed upon.

So the important thing to understand as a GM is that people will find their own definition for your guild, regardless of where you stand. Don’t try to define yourself as either hardcore or casual, as someone is always going dispute whichever you choose to attribute to your guild. Only do so if you’re a guild that barely raids Karazhan or a guild that has achieved or come close to achieving world or regional firsts.