LFD was a step along a path, but neither the initial nor the most consequential step, imo.
I suspect the move from rpg combat (slow, tactical, pseudo-turn based, stat focused) to action combat (fast, twitchy, action-focused) was the death knell; all subsequent steps were merely natural extensions of this philosophy change.
Sort of.
Wrath Heroics were already pretty mindless when LFD came out. In that sense they worked well together, you could pretty easily and quickly complete one with whatever set of questionable heroes you were assigned.
Things were more interesting when Cata hit. Heroics were hard(ish) again, at least for a while. If you tried to LFD one in the first few weeks it was a hilarious qq fest that disbanded after the first few pulls/wipes. You needed to form a premade of non-incompetents, and even then it wasn’t trivial. It was challenging. It was fun.
After a while people got geared, and the nerfs rolled in. Things became LFD’able. It was fine. Then ZG launched, it was hard(ish) again. If you wanted a challenge, you grouped with your guild and ran it. If you wanted a quick run for some catch up gear, you could queue LFD and run the older stuff. IMO it all worked pretty OK. LFR + the trend back to 15 minute EZ mode heroics was the real damage. That is when you really had no motivation to group up or make friends.
All that being said, was it ultimately better for the game? Probably not. As others have said, functioning more like a server-only matchmaker would have been much better. Of course, that wouldn’t have solved the problem Blizzard was actually trying to address, dead realms.
Agreed with this as well. You can force yourself to be sociable, but when 95%+ of the player base is happier ignoring you and running LF, it’s just not the same experience.
I don’t think it affected wow much at all.
True and that fact that no class feels unique. In classic you had to bring along at least one of each class if not more for buffs or debuffs.
It was one of the big three things that ruined WoW.
LFR/LFD
CRZ
Welfare gear
It was dungeon design and heirlooms that killed it as much as anything else. Dungeons became a small investment where you barely need to cooperate, expecially at lower levels. Heirlooms along with the constant character power upgrades each expansion enabled the speed run expectation that kills dungeons.
Why not make your own groups? Elitists can’t stop you from doing it without them.
I think LFD definitely hurt WoW and was a bad segway into LFR which for some of my friends spelled the cancellation of their sub (I quit long before LFR), but I think that it’s not just LFD. Though I will say that I think that dailies and LFD both interconnected had a really big impact on WoW becoming really bad.
Originally (I think) dailies came out during BC for things like netherwing and orgi’la and I’m pretty sure most of those were just things you did in the world itself and not really dungeon related so they didn’t have a hugely negative impact at the time due to them being something players could do ‘in between’ dungeons and raids. However I believe that the attitude of dailies and ‘daily dungeons’ kinda intertwined into the ultimate combination of garbage so to say because no longer would you be looking for a group to do content that was challenging, but instead you were qing for content to do that was less rewarding overall and hurt community.
In the long term dailies offer so little actual reward that they don’t feel like you’re getting anything out of it and eventually it causes burnout. It’s the same reason I think Mythic+/titanforging is trash. You do the same dungeons over and over again in the hopes the item you want will drop with the titanforging you want resulting in more time spent and less satisfaction because of less challenge while also simultaneously being timed. It’s garbage.
Returning to the point. I don’t think that LFD alone ‘doomed’ WoW, but general move towards less community and being tired out for less reward. Tokens might have solved the issue of not getting what you wanted, but the method of acquiring them invalidated this advantage and more.
I didn’t mind it normal dungeons being faceroll is what ruined them to me.
Blizzard actually doomed WoW
But the difference between the Netherwing dailies and Titanforging is you could map out exactly how long it would take to get those mounts. And it was by and large all cosmetic. You didn’t have to do it. My best friend back then was a sham who asked “Will it increase my dps? No? Then why bother” and that was ok.
Titanforging actually makes you bummed when it procs on a pos item and not your potental bis trinket that dropped the boss before. And it leaves your ability to excel in a raid to rng. X
I liked the dailies that let me grind for something cool, but didn’t feel like I had to do them everyday or it would hurt my raid performance.
It was part of it, but I think what doomed wow was changing class design and recreating talent trees mid wrath or so.
guilds were less important. Nope I didn’t rely on guilds to do stuff though in wrath it was probably my best guild experience I have ever had and one of my worst. Either way cataclysm money flow and other stuff practically ruined guilds that weren’t filled with close people.
Yes
Yes
3.Yes!
Yep
Yep
Cross realm doomed PvP realms eventually, especially having different shards to phase into added to it
Cross realm bgs also had same effects, battlegroups probably should of stayed after they added them instead of letting people seeing everyone across the world.
World of Portcraft…
And blizzard invalidating their previous expansion content because they didn’t want people to be playing or raiding in previous, content they wanted people to buy expansions.
Well the changes to abilities should of stayed the same in places mop ,wod, and legion you know play the way it was played.
Don’t forget hitting rocks for that sweet, sweet, metallic meat!
They made more when it didn’t exist.
What the other guy said, they’re still making money so yea.
It definitely altered the gaming culture within wow; for better or worse depending on your opinion.
I have to say, the flex system was the first time I ever made my own raid group and successfully lead random people through Siege of Org as a tank. It was a huge boost in confidence, regardless of the lesser difficultly and I appreciated that from blizzard. I became a tank for WoD after and was #1 raid tank for my guild at the end of HFC. All because of flex.
Flex isn’t inherently a part of LFR.
True enough. It’s roughly the same category though, not normal, or top tier raiding by any means, maybe even on a equal footing difficulty wise with LFD/LFR as far as mechanics.
All I can say is, I couldn’t do normal raiding level as a tank, flex enabled me to achieve that.
I wouldn’t chain run instances and raids with random players even if payed $15 per month. Not even remotely fun IMO.
no it didn’t.![:kissing_heart:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/kissing_heart.png?v=6" ":kissing_heart:")
If LFD would have functioned similarly to how the LFG tool works, I don’t think it would have been too bad. Making it an instant group and after awhile an instant teleport into the dungeons I think did the most harm.