Elitism is not only affecting the community, it is starting to affect the devs

[Floortank]

Casual players don't play as much so their in-game presence is lower. It doesn't take a big leap of faith to imagine that the same is true on forums and on Reddit.

Not a sound conclusion. If they spend all their time doing content, as you say, they aren't on the forums nearly as often as people who don't play. Forum studies have shown that the smallest demographic in any fan community is people who go to the forums of their fandom and talk about x fandom. Such posters can be hardcores, casuals, or dabblers. In the context of MMORPGs, they can be people who aren't even subscribed to the game, but still like to talk about it. Forum posters represent the smallest sample size of whatever different slice of the community they come from.

So your analysis here is wrong.

But acceptable ways to play the game and criticisms of the game are also mostly broadcasted by hardcore players. Casual players who only play the game 5 hours a week and would likely not even check Reddit or YouTube are very unlikely to be able to broadcast their views.

Think about what you're saying, here. Mrhappy and Xenosys are regularly streaming to 300~500 people, for hours and hours every day. Are the viewers then, casual or hardcore? They can't be playing the game and watching a stream, and nobody likes to try running content with someone else's game sounds in their headphones, so, which is it? Your arguments contradict themselves.

Hardcore, dedicated players insist that the story is so good that everyone should watch all the cutscenes.

Sure some of them say things like that. I've also watched Xenosys and many others log in on launch day, skip every cutscene and race to the endgame as fast as they can. Xenos in particular skips every cutscene. I've known ultimate raiders who do it. Not everyone is the same.

But every non raider I know watches all the cutscenes. In fact, they do mostly casual content, but are on the game for far more than five hours a week, so you've got another bad data point there, ergo, being online for 30+ hours a week does not make you hardcore.