It really is this bad.
I recently leveled a toon from 59-65 in Hellfire over the course of 3-4 days on Whitemane – a high-pop server. I had the LFG panel open, and hit refresh whenever I could, essentially every few minutes. Two or three times I found players to group with, but the groups disbanded before being filled, because finding players to fill the remaining spots was taking so long. At level 64 when I had finished literally every quest in the zone other than the three inside HR and BF, I found a level 80 to carry me through the two instances.
Is this experience really preferable over RDF, for Blizzard and for a majority of players? Is it really preferable to try and fail for hours to find a group, and eventually either give up and not experience the content, or have a higher-level character to faceroll over the content? Is it really preferable to have to stare at an interface panel and click refresh, rather than click a button to join a queue?
I’ll add that LFG didn’t help with finding groups for group quests either. Twice I encountered players at the quest objectives who were able to help me. For the remaining quests, finding a group took so long that eventually I out-leveled the objectives and was able to solo them. I understand that RDF wouldn’t help with this, but clearly the LFG panel is completely unhelpful for nearly anything outside of Northrend.
In the end, even if I had been able to find groups using the LFG tool, in what ways, exactly, would my experience have been improved over RDF? My server is so massive that there is close to a zero percent chance that I’d encounter any of the players I grouped with ever again. None of the partial-groups I joined and waited in, for extended periods of time, engaged in any of the conversation I tried to strike up. And I did try.
I really don’t see a single benefit of the LFG system over RDF for any content outside of Northrend. And the clear downside LFG is completely ineffective, rendering content completely inaccessible, in many cases, to PUGs.
Keep in mind, there were dozens of players leveling in HFP on my realm at any given time while I was there. The issue isn’t a lack of players. The issue is that using the LFG tool (and likely any tool that requires players to manually monitor an interface panel) detracts from the gameplay experience as a whole.
And to be clear: I’m not saying every single person will be completely unable to find groups for content outside of Northrend. But the fact that it’s possible to try and fail to find a group, to the extent that I have (on a high-pop server, at that), indicates that the LFG system clearly is not working.