Quote Originally Posted by Frizze View Post
A casual player has less TIME to play, not less ability.
Quote Originally Posted by Iscah View Post
Different people use the term to mean either of those things. I don't think there's a consensus on which is the correct usage.
There seems to be several meanings used by different people.

By one measure, people who rush to endgame to focus on the latest raid are hardcore and people who like to take their time and explore are casual players.

By another, people who spend hours every day playing are hardcore and those who play more sporadically are casual.

By another (the skill one that OldeWolfe seemed to be alluding to) hard core players are the ones who focus on completely optimizing every action, whereas casual players just want to learn their skills enough to complete the content they're trying to get through. (This doesn't perfectly correlate to who's skilled or not, but does reflect who cares more about skill.)

I even have one friend who considers me a hardcore player just because I stick with a game for years (this one since ARR was released more than five and a half years ago, and LOTRO for more than six years before that). By this measure, the casual players are the ones who will play for a few months and then lose interest and move on to something else.

All these meanings are independent of each other. A person can be hardcore or casual on any one of them and the opposite for the others.