Prove that LFD/LFR is the reason subs are low, and the only reason.
LFD was a symptom of WoW’s demise, not the cause.
WoW’s decline was sealed the moment Blizzard was bought by Activision and short term gains became more important than longevity and brand reputation.
In search of additional subscribers they began to water down the game, spreading content ever thinner to try to appeal to more and more kinds of gamers.
The thing about fads though is that, when a new one comes along, most of the people who did it as a fad leave it. Activision’s mistake was believing that they could hold onto those fair weather gamers if they changed the game, and keep attracting more and more players if they made the barriers for entry low enough. It didn’t work of course. People moved from WoW to the next big video game fad anyway, because that’s how fads work. By the time the dust settled in cataclysm, WoW had lost 65%+ of its subscribers and has been spiraling toward the drain ever since. By trying to cater to the people who were always going to leave the game when the next big thing came along, they alienated the demographic that made them a success to begin with.
2 Likes
In no way was the change to the game only one thing, LFD did reduce the need for community but game philosophy changed along with it. Most people would go ape S#@%! if they downed multiple bosses in a row and they only dropped non-gear items. (Prior to rolling for gear)
The only reason I liked mythic dungeons was because you actually had to trek to the instance portal like in the old days.
I still maintain that the random dungeon finder system was the single most overall server community damaging addition to the WoW.
Raid finder I’m on the fence with since I admit most of my modern raiding is in rf mode. It accomplishes its purpose of getting more players to raid as well as helping players learn a bit of the differences between dungeon and raid encounters.
On the other hand rf cheapens real raiding. I understand this. I thought of a solution one time to lessen the cheapening, no raid finder tier and no purple gear from rf. No better loot than heroic dungeons.
I said this years and years ago when it was first introduced.
I thought it was the DUMBEST thing for this reason more than any.
People are being robbed of discovering the instance portal.
Questing in a zone, then stumbling on to the entrance of Zul Farrak, for example, going… “ooohhh, what’s this?”, then finding out, maybe the hard way…
That experience has been robbed.
You should have to discover the instance portal in order to unlock the ability to que for a dungeon. (just like flight paths)
Notice, I’m not against LFD, but you should have to unlock it. (and not just by gear level requirements)
FIXED
1 Like
Yes. And Sharding too. It is a nonsense.
Dungeons didn’t get easier, the add on’s that make the game easier got better.
In cataclysm it was that way for a short while and man the crying it caused lol. I actually thought that it was a good thing to discover the portal.
I think that system should be used again moving forward in modern wow and expanded.
In order to be able to use the rdf a player should have to have completed an atunement quest chain in the zone the dungeon is in so the player understands the story of the dungeon.
That might help curve the average go go go, hurry to end game player from queing.
edit: currently you can get to level 15, then go stand in orgrimar and que for randoms all the way to 120 without having left the city. /pity on the dev(s) that thought this was good game design in a mmorpg.
1 Like
I don’t think so.
Perhaps elements of it contributed, like the insta-teleport to the dungeon, but I still maintain that stripping of abilities, item requirements, regeants, statistics, homogenisation, and turning every mob in the wild into a two-hit pansy were far more destructive than LFD.
Yes.
This was the worst aspect of it.
Of course, the argument was that everyone knew where every instance was.
I never liked the logic of just teleporting anywhere. I hate city portals for the same reason.
They took Captain Placeholder and turned him into a key game mechanic.
This is how FFXIV does it and I love it. The dungeons are part of the story, and in many cases, they are required to be done as part of the Main Story Quest. But, in every case, you have to find the entrance to the dungeon as part of the quest.
1 Like
OP I agree wholeheartedly, except I think LFG has its place. It should always be an end game unlock to be able to spam queue heroics. Other than that… players should be encouraged to explore the world and find friends for dungeons. If the dungeon gear has to be buffed to create that incentive, then so be it. The last time they meaningfully buffed low level dungeon gear was in Vanilla when they turned a few greens into blues. The Cataclysm loot tables were garbage compared to our heirlooms. Make dungeons all about finding a group and getting killer loot… and if you want a ton of XP from dungeons, explore and do the necessary quest chains. Having all the convenience of an Amazon online marketplace in an MMORPG is literal cancer to the health of the community.
I grew up playing all the final fantasy games loved them. Dragon warriors too.I never considered playing a ff mmo, but I just watched a video looks interesting.
I like it a lot. The community is leaps and bounds better than the one here, the story is much more engaging, PvP is completely secondary (as should be in a MMORPG), the way you unlock flight is WAAAAAYYYYY better. Crafting and gathering professions really matter (and even have their own end game stuff, since they’re actually classes unto themselves.)
There are things that aren’t so good, like any game. It’s a bit slow in the early going for sure, but overall I like it.
Both it & WoW are good games, that’s why I pay for both. ![:slight_smile:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/slight_smile.png?v=6" ":slight_smile:")
1 Like
LFD itself didn’t doom WoW. The implementation (ported to instance) combined with all the other design decisions made WoW a hollow shell of its former self.
One of the features that doomed wow was probably random que black list and rewards added to it.
The whole thing was rewarding enough already, the whole blacklist feature was only good for blocking the gilneas bg.
There’s just a bunch of stuff added that was good at some time but was messed with to the point where it became toxic for wow.
Exactly. CRZ had a far more detrimental impact on the game than LFD. In retail with server populations what they are, they need it at this point just to keep us from feeling the sub losses. It is like pain meds…it doesn’t actually do anything but mask the problem.
In a word?
Yes.
Everquest is more hardcore than WoW, so was Wildstar. It’s one of their defining differences.
I think it’s safe to say that the desire for walking to dungeon entrances, spamming trade for tanks, etc, is a niche segment of the gaming community.
If huge numbers of gamers were pining for this super manual everything playstyle I am sure the market would have accomodated it.
1 Like
Must be why WoW’s sub number started climbing when all that idiocy was added…
Also must be why they have never decided to do a vanilla version of WoW again…