It is because these features promote convenience, and convenience is naturally going to kill off any other social interaction in the game we’ve seen this with Retail which is what Blizzard wants to prevent.
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This is an incredible leap of logic. So because I can conveniently spam five-man dungeons, I will no longer socially interact with the people around me? No more talking to my guild, no chatting with my friends’ list, all of it just poof.
Okay.
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RDF was what eventually created the RMT problems with WoW Tokens/LFR/etc. it was a slippery slope and we all know how that ended for Retail.
Maybe RDF directly won’t cause you to stop interacting with others, but in a game where social interaction already seems to be fading then we can’t have RDF in there to accelerate that process.
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It doesn’t. People being mostly silent or keeping to minor instructions is the same, it wont lead to anything past the dungeon, and if it does there are discord servers and battlenet tags for that. People don’t care about ‘server consequences’ because there aren’t any. You can waste a day yelling on trade chat about a ninja or afk but nobody will care and wont remember afterwards. Server discords are circle jacks that have convinced themselves of their importance despite not having even a third of the server in them.
You are unlikely to ever see a person from your server again. If you do, it’ll be so far apart you probably wont notice as you dont remember that person. Pretending otherwise is dishonest. This of course doesn’t preclude unusual niche exceptions from existing but thats what they are, exceptions, and keeping RDF out of the game wont turn them into a norm.
If you want to argue about smaller / dead servers, RDF is a godsend for them to do any content at all instead of being stuck with an insuficient population. Less “server consequences” in exchange for getting to play is fair, imho.
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Well, if these forums are to be believed, we already have RMT problems in Classic via GDKP and Arena team carries.
This is an oversimplification of the decline of the World of Warcraft. The reason we got tools like LFR, cross realm grouping, and variable raid group sizes is because the population has been on a decline ever since WOTLK. Those grouping tools were a symptom of the decline of WoW not the cause. We could spend all day discussing the internal and external factors that lead to WoW’s fall from grace but it didn’t start with LFD/RFD.
Framing this like we are heading towards retail is disingenuous. We are talking about WOTLK servers and nothing more. Nothing that didn’t happen in WOTLK is (supposed) to not happening in WOTLK Classic. Letting us have LFD/RFD, which we had in WOTLK, isn’t going to accelerate anything. These WOTLK Classic servers start and end with the WOTLK expansion.
EDIT: Also, where’s all this “muh community” outrage when it was announced Wintergrasp was going to be a cross-server event?
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GDKPs don’t run RMT all the time, it happens but it can also happen in the AH and PvP is VERY unpopular in Vanilla/TBC due to horrible class balancing, garbage PvP in general and too much of a grind so I highly doubt anyone is spending actual money on Arena carries.
RDF was the start of the decline of WoW.
WoTLK already has the weakest dungeon/raid content out of any WoW expansion in terms of difficulty, adding in RDF only prompted the community to become more casual friendly and more accepting of convenience based features.
The convenience culture created by RDF 100% is the root cause of the problems that WoW faced down the road.
Blizzard runs tons of their own internal data, they are a multi-billion dollar corporation who have immense amounts of data points on every player and that’s more data then you can scrape from some Twitter poll or Strawpoll.
If they chose to remove RDF, it was because they saw a majority of the playerbase did not want it.
I fail to see why a vocal minority that wants it should get their way when it goes against the Classic spirit they are trying to build.
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Anyone who disagrees is lying. What a wonderful way to proceed in a discussion.
It absolutely makes a difference, as there is more invested, and Heaven forbid you lose a character you can’t just have another instantly, so you treat people with more respect and at least try to make a suboptimal situation work because of the upfront time investment.
Having played before RDF, after, and now again without it, I can absolutely tell you that a great deal of friends have been made from dungeons without it. With RDF, there was maybe 1 real ID add in all the years.
Perhaps you hang out on discords for your socialization and don’t care about anyone on your Horde only megaserver, but plenty of people socialize in-game and there were real social consequences to the addition of RDF in Wrath and beyond.
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Retail likely isn’t the game for them either.
What they are looking for is a solo player RPG like dark souls.
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There’s nothing social about having to spam /4, there’s nothing social about summoning people, there’s nothing social about /w random people if they want to tank or heal, there’s nothing social about gatekeeping people from doing dungeons, there’s nothing social about browsing through LFG and there’s nothing social about queueing at battlemasters.there is not community on the realms where most people play. You sound like one of those people who has no life outside WoW and needs to “socialize” in a videogame. The rest of the people shouldn’t have to suffer just because you have nothing going on in your life besides a videogame.
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This level of Blizzard bootlicking when it fits what you want is stunning.
I will concede that the forums are a small sample of the population, but within that sample the pro LFD/RFD crow hardly seems to be the minority.
So it’s now bootlicking to be objective? Do you think some random Twitter poll has more data than a Mutli-Bill corp like Blizzard? Come on now, we’re just speaking facts here no need to call me a bootlicker for pointing out the obvious.
It’s clear they had the data behind their decision or why would they do it?
But whose out here collecting EVERY Pro LFD/RDF vote?
No one has any of this collective data, it’s just anecdotes of people saying the Pro-RDF crowd is bigger and everyone wants it yet none of them can back up their claims.
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Get’s back from “vacation”
Makes another troll post
Get’s sent on “vacation” again.
Just ignore and flag everyone.
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There is absolutely a level of social skill involved in all of these things, like I said I think Retail is a better fit for you. You can AFK in Org/SW, queue for RDF/LFR and AFK while trying to find a Gold booster so you don’t have to lift a finger to complete any content.
This seems to be the type of player that supports RDF 
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Look, I will give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you might not have been around for all of WoW’s history. But speaking as someone who has been here since Vanilla, not a flex, I can assure you that the Blizzard isn’t nearly as analytically feedback-focused as you think. That might start to change, but it took the humbling of the most popular MMO of all time and its studio to make it happen.
Again, all I said was that the pro-LFD crowd outweighs the anti lfd crowd on this forum. Yes, it’s anecdotal, but all you have to do is scroll through these threads and see how many folks are pro vs. those who are anti-lfd.
You probably never even played the orginal Vanilla and TBC. Battlemaster queueing has been a things since Vanilla, you know, afking in cities and waiting for something to pop. Semi-AFKing in cities, spamming /4 and browsing LFG isn’t much different either.
You seem to be the type of player that has nothing going on in his life besides World of Warcraft. Imagine thinking any of these things are social, but then again, that’s probably what happens to people who have no life.
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Anyone who lies is lying. Same as your anecdotal experience, plenty of others run counter to it, so to derive a clear cut rule of it ‘promoting interaction’ is false. You know what promotes interaction for your anecdotes? You. Your being open to engaging and actively seeking it as a rewarding activity within the game. That has nothing to do with any tools or game design, its an individual choice.
Heaven forbid you lose a character you can’t just have another instantly, so you treat people with more respect
So the reason for people to treat each other better would be the fear of them quitting, due to long replacement times. Except, people leaving also have to face that abyss so are more likely to put up with abuse to avoid having to slog another 30 - 40 mins for a group. Its a wash either way, but more importantly, disrespectful rude people will remain so and ingame threats wont change that. Maybe it was different in 2008, but current classic community is what it is, not what we wish it was.
and at least try to make a suboptimal situation work because of the upfront time investment.
So hold everyone in a sunken cost fallacy, throwing good time after bad for fear of going back to the “enjoyable” process of manually forming groups. This really speaks to how little you trust in the process being valid on its own, and just dont want alternatives to exist to keep people from bypassing its many flaws.
With RDF, there was maybe 1 real ID add in all the years.
But the game interactions have nothing to do with RDF. If you have some bias to not “waste time” socializing with people you won’t see again in your server, thats a subjective issue not something to blame the tool for.
Perhaps you (…) don’t care about anyone on your Horde only megaserver
I do, I like to think I’m polite, helpful and honest in my dealings with everyone. Not that it matters, for example last night after our healer ragequit in MT because someone started the escort I jumped into my T6 priest to heal a normal MT for people because it’d be sad if they didnt get to complete just because someone was being toxic.
I also can see past myself and conclude that being this way should always be an option, not a requirement, and that the developers should not expect it from the playerbase at large for their systems to work, or they wont, same as they dont in TBCC.
plenty of people socialize in-game
Which is how things like Diablo Inmortal and other gacha games / predatory designs bleed addicts of their money.
and there were real social consequences to the addition of RDF in Wrath and beyond.
Nothing exists in a vacuum. The social fabric of the game was in steady decline since Vanilla started, and as it got worse and worse RDF was a welcome solution to gatekeeping, elitism and content drought. If you happened to be within one of the few socially active bubbles remaining you might not have noticed and would rightfully feel robbed, but for most people ease of access was a welcome life saver and prolonged the game’s value for a long time. Subscription numbers going up towards the tail end of the expansion despite no more new content should be proof enough, more so when compared to the steep drop TBCC is seeing for lack of such a system.
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Ok but what company is though? I’m only pointing out that they are a huge company with with vast access to data on all their players, it wouldn’t shock me if their internal data read that RDF was not wanted by many is all i’m pointing out.
They could be wrong in that analysis, but I don’t see any Pro-RDF person compiling data to prove otherwise.
A majority of the Pro folks will false flag and remove a lot of Anti posts, this is very common and we can see that in a lot of Pro threads where people will automatically flag them just for holding a different PoV.
The Pro group imo is more radicalized due to being a vocal minority hence why we rarely see Anti posts on the forums.
I believe the Anti side is far greater than the Pro.
Imagine becoming this rude and belittling over something as insifnicant as RDF lol, do you think this will make people want to side with you?
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This is conspiracy cope.
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