However, do not violate the following 3 rules.
Rule number 1. It must be your own opinion. You are not allowed to quote somebody else.
Rule number 2. Respect the way others play. Do not treat your preferred playstyle as the default that everyone should aspire to.
Rule number 3. No gatekeeping. We are not preventing others from enjoying a toy because of arbitrary standards you hold.
I don’t really believe in gatekeeping nor think all ways to play the game are equal moreover when we’re talking about rmt/p2win/boosting or pay for advantages. So that’s gonna be a rough start for your rules and I get it for some this is gonna be divisive.
Most people put restrictions on themselves, this is why they don’t join guild not because they lack the time. Many have straight up admitted to hate guilds or the community. This is understandable but this is their choice.
And I think playing with a premade group or with strangers still bound you by a social code, if you’re expecting no judgement or communication when playing with others that’s not on them but on you to do better or to find a group that fits your needs better.
Looking for raid definitely has good aspects as it tries to make people that would not normally do raids do raids. But in itself that’s the bad part, you’re designing content for people that dislike it which makes it terrible content to start with as they have then to water it down a lot. And that in itself is not giving new players the full experience and like leveling for me not putting your best forward. (but that’s also a different subject)
This is my opinion on it right now and it could be up to change but that’s what I think.
The main flaw I see here is that it’s assumed LFR provides raiding for people who do not like raiding.
LFR was introduced in Cataclysm because the percentage of players engaging with raids was going down, not because they didn’t like raiding, but because the changes in design philosophy were keeping them out.
5 man heroics on original launch of Cata were infamously hard. The increased difficulty of the raids on top of most classes being considerably weaker meant many players didnt meet the high expectations for raids when they were raiding just fine in Wrath.
Blizzard did seem to realize it was a mistake to create such a drastic spike in difficulty and saught to fix it without having to completely rebalance Cataclysm shortly before a new expansion.
What happened is the game from wotlk to cata went from 100 dev to way more as they got bough out and that their ambitions grew. It’s like going from a AA to a AAA game you need to feed more mouths and this means taking decisions that are not necessarily good but will pay off. And this is the road retail has taken multiple times and has kept taking so much that most of the game is unrecognizable from a mobile game.
The difficulty problem had been already solved in wrath with 2 difficulties and 10m with 25m. Normal is still easy enough for most nowadays moreover when you consider that a raid is supposed to last multiple months. It’s fine if you don’t clear the first week and most people are able to clear normal over a season as the stats for raid clear on current warcraftlogs being really good prove this.
Players are also much better than before and we have discord to help making groups, it is also not the same as before. Moreover when Classic is a smaller version of the game that doesn’t need as much development so it doesn’t need to compromise itself “just to make money” if it doesn’t want to.
We don’t have to spectualte as to who their target audience was.
“Q: Who is Raid Finder for?
A: Raid Finder is primarily intended for players who don’t already raid consistently. These are players who may not have had the opportunity to take part in raid content due to scheduling conflicts, playtime constraints, limited access to other raid-capable players, or a lack of experience with higher-end content. These players may want to experience World of Warcraft’s raid content and storyline without being able to commit to the additional time investment of a raiding guild. The Raid Finder is also a great way to quickly and easily gear up alternate characters without having to worry about raid lockouts.”
— Blizzard Raid Finder FAQ, November 30, 2011
And that target audience is the same one I’m talking about, but Blizzard can’t really say it the same way when presenting it and selling it.
Personally, there are several things I don’t like about looking for raid, from the fact that the LFR (welfare/budget) version of gear uses the same model, but different colors as gear that’s supposed to be cool. In this way, it detracts from it.
Like, in WoW Classic Thunderfury is an incredibly cool legendary. If there was a way easier to get, but only somewhat less powerful version that had a slightly different color, it removes the uniqueness of Thunderfury (cheapens it, as now everyone has access to a lame knockoff that isn’t really much worse).
There are several other things, like how it impacts overall design and ilvl changes of the same items throughout an expansions lifecycle, but I’ll leave it for that for now.
Uniqueness and exclusivity help to create desire. “Accessibility” is an anti-feature.
I personally liked in Wotlk difficulties dropping different loot, just getting the same item twice doesn’t feel as good.
Agreed but this kinda goes out the window with xmog and collections
Eh… sort of, yeah. But I absolutely hate transmogrification as well, so… (it doesn’t actually impact performance though).
Nor does a recolor
Well, the ease of accessibility does, actually. Oftentimes, it’s a proc or some performance enhancing effect (like stats, etc.) that makes such an item desirable to begin with. And you have a (slightly) weaker version, or 4 (LFR, Normal, Heroic, Mythic) that all have the same on use or proc, with some variation of power depending on the raid difficulty.
It’s not just the looks, as your comments seem to suggest.
No different than going from normal to heroic versions of pieces. These small separations already exist between level difficulties. LFR versions just happen to be more accessible to casuals.
Also not a fan of this. I would be much more accepting of LFR if it used the one difficulty of raids (assuming there was one), and took the lockout for those who would like to use it as a matchmaking tool.
What happened is SoD had implemented a token system to buy raid loot, and from what I saw it was seen as a good thing by most players, so they’re replacing LFR with it in MoP because LFR is widely viewed as a terrible experience for most people.
What’s wrong with LFR? It’s not that it exists—it’s what it replaces. LFR automates raiding in a way that undermines everything that made group PvE meaningful in Classic-style WoW: preparation, coordination, communication, and social accountability.
The real danger isn’t that LFR exists—it’s that once it’s in, everything else shifts to accommodate it. Encounter design, loot systems, player expectations—they all get bent toward the lowest-effort path. That’s how you end up with a game where raiding is no longer something you do, it’s just something you queue for.
We have a bingo!
Blizzard traded LFR for pay to win.
Pay to win sadly existed before LFR.
That’s just not accurate—Blizzard didn’t trade LFR for pay-to-win. What actually happened is they replaced LFR with Heroic+ dungeons in MoP Classic. And while H+ avoids the automation and disengagement problems of LFR, it carries its own baggage: inflated rewards, difficulty spikes, and raid-tier loot in 5-player content. That shift affects Classic’s balance and progression just as much—just from a different angle.
This isn’t a win—it’s a lateral move. Blizzard essentially swapped one system that eroded raid value and group accountability for another that blurs dungeon and raid boundaries, creating its own distortions.
The real issue? Neither LFR nor Heroic+ is they both cause harm to the game. If Classic aims to preserve expansion identity, then shoehorning in modern systems from other branches of the game—no matter which ones—misses the mark entirely.