At the end of the day, the labels "casual" or "hardcore" are arbitrary. They're made up.
5 hours a day is pretty solid. I'll probably not manage 5 hours a day. If you are working a 40-hour a week job and are playing 5 hours a day, that's quite impressive. And you'd hit 60 within a reasonable amount of time, especially if you go longer than 5 hours on weekends.
I'd love to be able to get in a dedicated 5 hrs a day. I'm looking at 3 hrs max a day but I'm gonna make the best of it man the test period just felt great so I'll take what I can get.
5 hours is assuming I can do it without any conditions that you will not allow. In this case, my intention is to enjoy either 2 or 4 hours that I can dedicate as much as I can. The game mechanics have always seemed great to me, at least in the classic version (I started at the end of LK) and I hope to enjoy it as much as the first time I log in.
This just depends where you are within the phase. In the initial few weeks, you will be casual. After a month or two when a lot of people are 60 and raid logging, you will be playing A LOT at 5 hours per day. Many 60s will be logging in for 2-3 hours per week and then either playing other games or alts etc.
If 5 hours a day is considered casual, then there are a lot of "adults" in this community that likely do not lead normal, adult lives. By normal I mean aspects of life such as a job, friends, family, a house to care for, etc. You almost certainly do not have a job or house to care for if you can devote 12+ hours a day on a regular basis (outside of taking paid vacation out from work and rare circumstances like that).
I know that there will always be exceptions. For instance, there could be people in this community who have won the lottery and have so much wealth that they don't need a job and can pay people to take care their house. There are probably people who have such bad illnesses (physical or mental) that they have been deemed unfit to work and literally have nothing else to do besides play 12+ hours a day. Things like that happen but are not normal by any means.
I doubt I'll ever be playing more than 2-3 hours a day. Most nights will probably only be an hour or so. I definitely consider myself a casual and I'm totally okay with that.
So if I dont play every day am I even considered a player at all? :S'
I'll likely be able to play like 3 hours on weekdays, as I work away from home at the moment.
I dont think I'll have time to play on weekends. :/
I will be able to put 1-2 hours maximum each day, and some days per week I can't play at all - and I'm seeing myself as a casual.
5 hours a day IMO sounds alot and shouldn't be considered casual :P
Casual is like 1 or 2 hours a day imo
Yeah as everyone else says, 5 hours per day is more than casual. I'd say a casual player commits between 0-3 hours per day to the game.
To play hardcore you dont need to play every day 12h+.
Many people invest at the start super much time after that they turn it down to a normal base.
That will change with PvP Update, but before Phase 2 many people turn down hours.
If I limit myself to being drunk for only 5 hours a day, am I still an alcoholic? Or just a "casual" drinker?
Only 5 hours? You fucking casual.
Weekdays I'm looking at like 7:30pm to 11:30pm for first few weeks. Then probably 8:30pm to 11pm after that.
Weekends are an unknown quantity, little bit around lunch sometimes, and probably a few hours fri/sat night until midnight+
You can achieve a LOT even with that sort of schedule. Efficiency of time is nearly as important as the hours spent playing.
Nothing wrong with that, you can play for less than that each day and still be a fairly relevant player. It'd be different if it was retail as you could mindlessly grind that game forever if you wanted to.
Can't believe I'm saying this but I can't wait to be a casual. I used to rush everywhere and try to level so quickly! I'm ready to settle down and enjoy it.
its not going to cut it in the first month or phase 5 and 6 or ranking past 10.
apart from that you can easily be a hardcore player on 4-5 hours a day.
its called raid logging for a reason.
the more hardcore the guild, the less time it takes to do things (apart from fricken consumes)