Hello everyone,
I wanted to make a pro’s and con’s list to Dungeon Finder, and why the con’s outweigh all pro’s that it may give. Please give it a read. This is primarily where Blizzard is coming from and why they do not want to add it.
Pro’s:
In and out, you get your dungeon complete usually without fuss. Quick and easy content completed at your leisure. Encourages solo play.
Con’s:
Community eorrsion
Toxicity
The pro’s of dungeon finder are quite clear. It’s a great, quick QoL feature that generally makes it easier to complete things. I would like to go into the con’s, and why this benefit simply isn’t worth it in the long run.
The first is quite basic: community erosion. This is very simple to see. You do not spend time searching for players, you rarely if ever communicate with your premade group, and you will almost certainly never engage with those players again.
Let’s compare this to an old fashioned group:
You spend the time to find players. As a result, you’re more committed to the group. If things aren’t going well, you’re much less likely to leave at the first inconvenience, as you invested your time into putting together the group. This, by default, leads to more intergroup communication. Wipe on a pack? You’ll probably talk about it, maybe you want to mark some mobs for CC, maybe you’ll trash talk the tank. But you’re probably not leave at the first sign of trouble, which you’re more inclined to do in Dungeon Finder. With Dungeon Finder, if you have a bad group you simply drop the group, wait the 15 minute time (none if you already killed a boss) and queue it back up. While inconvenient, this is part of the Warcraft community building structure. Challenges. Yes, WoTLK heroics are a joke, but this topic isn’t talking about WoTLK, it’s talking about the entire history of WOW. It’s talking about the very essence of what pushes players on. The desire to overcome challenges, be it raids, levels, or even an elite quest.
This also Segway’s into my next point: Toxicity.
Let’s, for example, say you have a bad tank. If you spent the time putting together the group, you’re more likely to accept the tank’s inability to perform up to your standard. The game itself encourages you to work with this tank, help him figure out what he is doing wrong. Talk to him. Engage in your community. If you’re in Dungeon Finder, however, you bet your butt you’re vote kicking him at the first opportunity. You don’t care if he’s bad, you want him gone.
Now let’s flip the coin. You’re the tank. You suck. You keep getting vote kicked from groups, and nobody is telling you why, and you have no way to improve. What do you do? You quit. The absolute last thing an MMORPG needs is people quitting due to direct response from in-game results. It’s important to keep these bad players in the game. Yes, they might inconvenience you, but they’re part of the entire server ecosystem that keeps the server running. You know what happens when all the casuals up and quit? Your butt is paying $25 to transfer to a new server because you ran all the casuals quit and your server is now dead. It’s a big circle of life, and players of all skill levels should be encouraged to keep playing the game. To keep interacting with the community. Remember, these incredibly bad players may be out there farming your raid consumables in their free time. They enjoy WoW in their own way, and it’s important to appreciate them. Now, imagine, because you talked to this tank, helped him out, he got better. Eventually, he might become great. He might even join a raiding guild one day, and become their main tank. That guild might raid for multiple expansions. That terrible tank now has a large, diverse friend group to help out, which trickles down to helping out the entire server. More tanks are always a good thing!
I need to stress this interaction. In Dungeon Finder, it is simply incredibly unlikely such an interaction takes place by the very nature of its design. But in a normal, put together group, the game itself invests you into each other to complete the content. And, once in a blue moon, you might make a friend due to this interaction. This chance interaction is what leads us to life long friendships. My personal friend group are people I met and befriended back in original TBC, and early Wrath. 15 years later and we still talk and hangout on a daily basis. THIS is the World of Warcraft experience. Not the loot, not the ease of completing content, but the game itself encouraging you to work and stick together, to breed and create lasting friendships. Dungeon Finder, by design, significantly reduces this opportunity, and as a result led us down the slippery path that resulted in retail. A world where everything is an automated queue. A world where server communities do not exist. A world where you, and probably everyone you know, has already long left behind because of design decisions like Dungeon Finder.
This is a social game, first and foremost. It is designed, intentionally, to force you to work together. To make friends. To create communities. This is why Dungeon Finder should not be added to classic. The short serotonin benefit it offers will never outweigh the lasting damage it creates to the game itself.
but he was pretty clear in the interview that he wants guilds to be a thing. And in wrath guild we’re a big deal