I don’t know where you got the impression that I use Era to refer to LK. Let me put it another way. I fully supported #nochanges for Vanilla when it first released because I wanted #nochanges for WotLK too. Now that we’re getting #somechanges, then I think fair is fair and they should do changes across the board. If we’re going to add additional dungeon difficulties and tokens to WotLK, I don’t see why we can’t add popular QoL changes to Vanilla, too.
Are the classic forums where we come to complain about RDF now?
Era doesn’t need it. I love the system but don’t want it in Era.
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it’s not gonna be in era only wrath so no worries
I know, just going with the topic 
A few things to note…
- The #somechanges mantra is specifically applying to WotLK. With the exception of Season of Mastery and a few very smaller changes, Era is sticking mostly to #nochanges.
- I’m all for #somechanges as well, though maybe not to a large degree and definitely not RDF. It’s not not a mechanic that belongs with the Vanilla game style and if that’s make or break for you, play something that provides the experience you want. However, I would be open to having the retail (not WotLK) group finder ported to Vanilla so you at least don’t have to scan a chat channel that’s being spammed by the entire server about politics just to find a group.
- I’m also opposed to tokens. I realize Pay to Win in Classic already exists and gold buying is a problem; however, it would be nice to see one verison of the game avoid it and make an actual effort to discourage it instead of embracing it across the board. It’s unlikely, but one can hope.
Gotcha, that does indeed clarify.
So I will have to disagree here and I suspect it won’t be comfortable.
LK (and BC) are still mostly available in Retail. Considering gameplay, story, convenience, etc. Yes the raid tier is dead in the water but that’s vertical progression for ya.
Era is the game where the game genre itself was killed off to bring in a new demographic, and therefore it was, in its entirety, simply unavailable.
Once folks start saying, “But X storyline is gone,” or, “But Y Talent/combat mechanic is gone,” we’re in completely different territory from, “Literally this entire gamestyle is absent.”
Classic Era is not Vanilla. Those are two separate games. Wrath is not Classic. This was made obvious years ago with the debut of retail progression realms (tbc).
world pvp is why we like the traveling bob.
You should stick to pve servers
If that’s how it is, why didn’t they just disable RDF on PvP servers only? Why should those of us on PvE servers have to endure manual runs to dungeons the expansion?
Obviously, and I’m pointing out how hypocritical that is. I understand what they’re doing. I don’t understand how they can justify it.
If it’s the loss of travel to the dungeon that’s the issue with you folks, add RDF with no teleport. Simple solution.
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You’re welcome to start your own guild or find one that doesn’t care about this. The only real addon you would MAYBE need is DBM due to the lack of sound and visual queues for certain abilities. Running your own guild or joining one was a real possibility … i was in one for a long time and we did well enough. Sure it was harder and i enjoyed it because of that but to say you CAN’T raid is misleading.
You took things out of context…
Contradicted yourself with what I said…
And you expect me to take you seriously?
This is a violation of the spirit of vanilla.
A big part of the game is getting to where you need to be, and the dangers of the world. For example, running BRD isn’t just about what happens inside the instance, that part is static and pretty easy. However, getting a non-60 through the mountain can sometimes be a real challenge - I’ve had pug-members just logout and end their play session because they got ganked so much in the mountain lol. The same goes for UBRS and raids, players having to face the dangers of the world to get to dungeons is a core part of vanilla.
I do agree that the LFG chat has somewhat lost control, however I think there are already some reasonable fixes and if blizzard does do anything it should never have players being teleported to instances from the menu in era.
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No disagreement there. I think instance entrance is what people will expect but I’d be good with the nearest friendly flight point or even the instance meetings stone. The meeting stone would sure be an interesting place on PVP servers.
When people advocate for RDF, it’s the teleport that they want. However, RDF does indeed offer three different pieces of functionality…
- Matching players across different servers.
- Automatically building a group for the selected content from a queue of players.
- Teleporting playesr to the dungeon, then returning them to their previous location upon completion.
If you’re taking the teleport off the table, let’s look at the first two…
For the first, is this really relevant in Era? I think there are multiple clusters in the same category (ie, PvE) but I’m actually not sure. However, should populations drop again we don’t really need RDF to support this. These realms could just be connected… in fact, they should have been from the beginning. We only really needed one PvE and one PvP pool, letting layering sort out the rest. Regardless, RDF doesn’t offer much here.
For the second, I’ve seen a lot of arguments for this and I think it’s from player perception, especially players who are used to retail. They expect to be able to press a button, go on about their day, and get a group. They don’t like that in versions of the game without RDF that they will get passed over in favour of others, skipping what they feel is rightfully “their turn” in that queue.
I can certainly see the reasoning there, but it really requires you to set aside any and all responsibility you migh thave in forming a group. Which is fine for retail (and apprently now WotLK), but that’s not what Classic is about. If you want to group, you have to interact with people, at least at some level. If you don’t want to do that no judgement here, but I think you really have to ask yourself why you want to play Classic Era to begin with.
It’s just not a game that was designed to be played with zero interaction. You can do it, but it was never set up to support that. Sure, you can make changes and evolve it to a design where you can play that way… but why go through all that trouble when you can just play retail, and now WotLK?
So no, I don’t think there’s any portion of RDF that belongs in Era at all. It’s just counter to the game’s design and, for those players who actually want to engage with the game, simply not necessary. The only thing Era could benefit from is the retail style group builder UI, but in the absence of that the LFGBB addon is good enough.
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Because many of us don’t like those game modes, but want a bit of QOL in Era. I prefer playing on smaller servers, but it’s also a lot more difficult to get groups. Xrealm RDF would be helpful in this instance.
With a RDF that doesn’t include teleport, what interaction are you losing?
“LFM, dps DM”
“lvl 20 mage, inv pls”
Do you really feel that interaction is substantial? Actual player interaction begins after the group is formed imo.
I disagree, I feel engagement occurs after the group is formed. Unless you’re wanting to be choosy about what class and level players are when inviting, I see no issues. If you want to be fussy about your groups, you can still invite manually.
There are servers that have very small pop, it would be a boon for players when looking to dungeon. Yes there are smaller clusters.
WotLK is very shortly going to offer RDF and still provides access to all the dungeons that you would do in Era with RDF.
Which cluster are you on? It was my understanding that the only servers that are kind of on their own these days are RP servers and I would expect RDF to be contrary to the RP experience anyway.
Asking for more information here.
Don’t downplay this. I watched this argument unfold time and again on WotLK. You pick at each small component of the overall experience and justify how it’s not important or isn’t relevant, and use that to build an argument for why player interaction doesn’t exist in a meaningful way and so we should just have RDF.
It’s a flawed approach and requires the buy-in that each of those pieces doesn’t matter. They do, and together they build the whole that is the social experience that is Classic WoW.
If that experience is so detrimental to your time in Classic WoW, don’t play.
Of course engagement happens after the group is formed, but building the group is an important part of the process. You language is very dismissive, but being selective is critical. Classic dungeon design is very different from modern design, dungeons can take a while. If I’m building a group, I want to ensure it’s successful. I get context clues from communication in my group and I get to decide if and when that matters.
I don’t always need to be selective, but when a tool smashes together the first 5 people it finds, it incurs an element of risk and unpredictability in the group that I’m going to potentially spend the next 2+ hours with.
Furthermore no, you can’t just invite manually. RDF’s convenience ultimately wins out over quality experience. I’ve been saying this for months with folks denying it, like we didn’t already witness this happening. I guess we get to see it happen again on WotLK though, so watch out for it.
Group quality is compromised, but when all you have to do is turn your brain off and click a button, you will. It’s like slot machine and our stupid monkey brains just can’t help themselves.
You mentioned above, but which clusters? There aren’t that many… both Whiteman and Mankrik are massive. Whatever cluster Fearlina is on I’d imagine would be large as well, that was one of the biggest servers back in the day.
However, RDF (teleport or otherwise) isn’t the answer here. All you want is people to play with and I’m all for that! There are other options here though. RDF comes with too much that takes away from what Classic represents, but if you just want others to play with hey, I’m in complete support of that.
Find another way… more realm connections, cross-realm chat channels and invites, whatever, let’s talk about it…
I will because it’s insignificant.
I’m sorry but I tanked and dps hundreds of dungeons in Wrath with very little issues. You could still pick your players manually if you desire.
Rubbish, you are absolutely able to get a group manually with the RDF existing, Ive done it many times.
The Mankrik and Whitemane are not the only clusters, and I happen to play the most on BsB.
It’d be nice to be able to group with the bigger servers for dungeons.
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If they’re doing another SoM they should at least try out a dungeon finder in a classic environment in that since it’s temporary and is supposed to come with changes anyway.
I do think at a minimum era could use a built-in premade group finder style tool just because it’s a bulletin board system instead of having to manage chat spam. Meeting stones should also become summoning stones instead of doing nothing at all. They could copy and paste the WotLK limited version.
Although I think they should do a SoM TBC since there’s already two options to play vanilla and 0 to play TBC. TBC with a RDF would be nice. The WotLK built in dungeon forming tool is a bit too pathetic for most people, which is why people still begged for a RDF in WotLKC until they finally got it (coming October 10th).
To clarify is LFD a system that would automatically invite ppl based on role?
If so that does not belong in vanilla. Often a group doesn’t just need ‘a dps’ but needs a specific dps. Or people want to make a group so they get easier access to / distribute certain loot.
It is pretty easy to group in vanilla:
- If you want to make a group, post it in LFG and whisper the people you need with /who in worse case.
- If you want to join a group just post in LFG or whisper the group leaders.
I think any automation beyond a nice UI that parses the LFG text (which is currently available in an addon) is not classic.