I’m going to go with no, because letting somebody know they’re mentally ill is not an insult, anymore than telling them they probably have diabetes.
I don’t consider medical conditions to be insults and I don’t think you should either. Mental illness comes with enough stigma already. The more we can do to help them, the better. Ignoring it won’t work.
LFR should have been a single-player experience, from the beginning. They already had the model with Battle for the Undercity, from Wrath.
Have the big-name NPC’s there to do the heavy lifting and explain to the player what to do. But a single-player experience lets people see the story, lets people with social anxiety do it, removes the exposure to trolling and “GO GO GO” that plagues LFR, and even resolves all the “but he needed it and it wasn’t even an upgrade” loot issues.
Instead, Blizzard just removed some mechanics and slapped raiding into the LFD system. Lazy, lazy, lazy.
LFR is not about progression at all in any sense. It is just a simple way for strangers to queue up for a watered down version of the raids.
People toss the word “progression” around way too much.
Well, Blizzard thinks that the adventure and the journey should have some heft. Rather than be something you do in an hour the first day.
If you’re the type who immediately skips to the last page of the novel, then I’m sure you’d disagree. Which is fine, of course.
With world first raiders existing all but the top two guilds could yeet off to another game and this statement would still be true.
Just because some players can clear the content doesn’t indicate it is easy or how we should pace the sense of progression. The vast majority of guilds spend more than a week or two progressing through heroic or mythic.
But again, you have a difficulty like normal that really does just fall down for any halfway decent raid and I think its existence pokes a hole in any argument about needing a sense of progression.
I can agree with this. At this point LFR players doing LFR are only doing it because they want do not want to interact with other people for whatever personal reason. In this day and age schedule isn’t really even an issue anymore since normal is so pug friendly and can be started whenever.
Lots of MMOs these days (somewhat sadly) make it very accessible to play entirely single player because that’s what a lot of people want and LFR would be a prime candidate to give them that treatment.
Indeed. Starting in Wrath, Blizzard stopped treating WoW like an MMORPG and started treating it like “just another video game” and catering to anti-social players.
Then, years down the line, and with entirely predicted results, everyone laments “how toxic” the playerbase has become. 
When the game’s framework is entirely based on short-term grouping with people who treat each other like disposable diapers they’ll never see again… well, that’s not going to be pretty, in the long run.
I think the other thing to consider is MMOs used to be a cool way to socialize and meet people, but over the last 20 years the way we socialize online has expanded immensely. Meeting new people online is no longer a novel concept.
Classic was hailed for “requiring” you to socialize, but now one of the more popular ways to play is solo HC or at best duo/trio with established friends. Even before HC lots of people preferred to level solo unless necessary due to mob density. The playerbase was and is willing to socialize more readily than retail is, but IMO does not actively seek it out the same way anymore.
Blizzard design clearly hasn’t helped, but even if they did things differently there’s only so much they could change.
LFR should’ve been released first along with normal.
Aside from incentive to not just sit around doing easymode all day. Keeps the pool alive longer for those that want normals, because inevitably people will just afk for the easiest loot over doing normals. Also progression and RPGs go hand in hand.
With less health and abilities than normal but sure…
Blizzard isn’t gonna just hand everyone kills first week or two. No one cares if it’s on farm for normal or heroic or mythic. Blizzard is not required to hold your hand and let you que and afk for story and loot and then be done playing. Sorry not sorry
I’m not talking about the various uses of LFR as a whole, but the players who are LFR exclusive. The ones who won’t join a guild or get on discord or join a normal/heroic pug even if they have all the time in the world. The ones who only play the content they can queue in for.
I don’t think the “LFR should be out immediately” vs “LFR gating provides a sense of progression” arguments holds much water in this particular case. We’re talking about a single boss being delayed two extra weeks when it’s already week 5.
Sarkareth should have come out this reset.
Then do normal if it’s that easy. More casual guilds are still progressing to sarkareth meanwhile.
It’s pretty dumb to time gate it imo. LIterally just… let people run lfr in the first week. You released the rest of it.
I won’t TOUCH lfr except for gearing alts for alt raid night with my guild, and I have no problem with it. If they’re really worried about it, they can wait a week to release it so the normal/heroic/mythic guilds can clear w/e the final raid boss is first, but not releasing it for 6? Weeks into the patch is wild to me.
While this is certainly true, the bigger reason has more to do with the fact that if LFR was released quicker, those same types would also be “forced” to run LFR too for tier sets and/or OP trinkets/weapons and they would HATE that just as much if not more.
This is the stated reason why titanforging “had” to go. Besides Johnny McCasual winning a lottery roll and getting something better than vendor trash and thus taking away from the special snowflakeness of Timmy LeTryhard, but now every mythic raiding tryhard “had” to do LFR and even “every” world quest in case they “might” also get some universe shattering lottery roll chance to also get an item that is fractions of a percent better than what they already have on their farm content but also just happens to be the singular missing piece that stopped them from beating whatever no life mythic guild got world first at that point.
I don’t agree, but I definitely think requiring a Sark kill to start the next chapter quest is dumb.
LFR isn’t staggered for the benefit or purposes of people like you and me who don’t do LFR.
The entire point of staggering LFR’s releases is to have a better gameplay experience for the people who rely on LFR exclusively. (Regardless of their “I want it NOW NOW NOW” worst impulses.)
No it’s not.
Keep it sectioned, but also require that each section be done before you can do the other sections/all bosses (at least once). But release it all the same day.
I mean, this made sense back when the system first came out.
I’m also all for a new gearing system in general though. Dungeons would have their own gearing path. Raids would have their own gearing path. PvP would have it’s own gearing path. As would WQ people would have their own system as well.
Keep the same tier looks between the raid levels and LFR could be the easiest version of the raid (like a learning version of the raid), however, it would open up Bliz to make more interesting mechanics that could work in LFR. The stats would still be lower between all the gear levels by give or take 10 points a tier level.