Alliance based content

[detlef]

It's fairly easy to separate the two. How much time do they spend not only playing the game, but reading the forums and optimizing macros and the various builds for their various jobs? The core separator is that hard core players seek entertainment in acquiring achievements and doing stuff that they believe "casuals" can't. If casual players can beat a specific content, hard cores tend to dismiss that content as "easy". Conversely casual players seek entertainment in merely playing the game, unique distinctive achievements are not required for them to feel satisfaction. They invest far less total time into the game, rarely do research and tend to just copy whatever they see other players doing.

Hardcore players copy and paste gear sets, strategies, and play styles all the time. There are casual players who maximize their online time by formulating intelligent strategies and gearing sensibly and who are still driven by gear acquisition. There's too much gray area to truly determine who's who.

As far as costs go, HC players are actually a bad thing from a resource perspective. Everyone, HC and casual alike, pays the same subscription fee yet HC players use far more server resources then casuals do owing to them playing more often. If you are running two accounts and I'm running one, yet your logged in 3x more often then I am, you are still using more system resources, especially if your mules are also logged in with you. Those people running 10 fishing mules at once 24/7 are taking up far more server resources then 10 individual casual players do. HC players also consume content faster then casual players do while being the ones to find and utilize exploits and thus require even more developer time to create and field test content that's "hard core" proof. The only good HC players provide to a game is that they are the ones who lead guilds and provide the information that casual players eventually follow in. You want some HC folks running around making youtube videos doing crazy stuff, but you don't want to build your game around them.

From SE's perspective, wouldn't they secretly want a customer paying for 10 accounts? That was part of my point. Aside from that, I never said that SE should build the game around them. I'm just saying that what me might call a hardcore player's subscription is probably worth more than a casual's subscription. This paragraph you wrote agrees with me.