It reduces group content into an administrative process instead of an organic experience. There are many ‘negative’ things you could remove that slowly kill the soul of the game.
If you just created a character immediately at level 80 and could instantly do any content with a team of bots, would you still play WoW?
Tell that to all the level sub-70s who were levelling in AV as dead weights to their team because free XP and free epics. People congregate to the path of least resistance, irrespective of whether that’s actually good for the health of the game.
you really cant use the word “WE” and “Community” when you make statements like this. you just opened yourself up a big can here since you just tried to speak for literally everyone who plays this game lol
I’ve noticed the pro-RDF arguments use logic and the no-RDF arguments are based on feelings and opinions.
Nobody can define the “soul” of the game. It’s just how you feel about it. You can’t prove it “kills social interaction”.
Playing this game today, I definitely feel the way you do in comparison to how it felt 10 years ago. But that’s a product of the people and the culture around video games in general moving on. There’s an element of efficiency and rush that didn’t exist before.
You can decide as an individual to play in the “spirit” of old-Classic. You could even surround yourself with others that play that way as well. Unfortunately, you’d be swimming in a sea of not-so-like-minded players.
RDF gives players opportunity to get more in less time, directly supporting how people play this game anyway. Whether you like it or not, we are playing in the spirit of RDF with or without the tool. What you are clinging to is all but gone. You’d need a time machine to get it back. Sad but true
I think you misunderstood me. I’m not appealing to some historic version of the game that exists in memory. I’m stating that there are many elements of the game that are seemingly pointless or ‘objectively’ negative, but without which the game loses its identity.
Travel time between quests, levelling professions, paying for mounts and skills, having two different factions - these are all mechanics you could rightfully state are ‘objectively’ bad. But if QOL is ‘objectively’ good then Retail is just an ‘objectively’ better version of Classic, which is obviously not true. After all, you have the option to play WotLK in Retail right now if you believed that.
It’s just disingenuous to paint QOL changes as ‘objectively’ good or bad.
Generally, I agree. HOWEVER, there are some QOL changes that are objectively good. Things that provide no value (fun) but have a heavy cost (time) need a really good reason to stay in the game IMO.
For me, spending time staring at a board, and sending people messages hoping they say “yes” is an objectively worse use of my time than me out questing or world pvp’ing while I wait for a queue to pop. As a result, I get to play the game less (because trying to form a group is not my version of “playing”)
Maybe it is for you… good for you. We just enjoy very different parts of this game.