I don’t believe we have the population to support LFR. Back when LFR was in use we had dozens of servers filled with 30k players each. There was a large pool of players and a relatively short wait. Our (American) servers are down to 3 main Alliance servers with an approximation of 4k each. Even if that number isn’t exact, it’s roughly in the ballpark.
You complain about the long wait for dps to get into 5 mans. How long do you think it will take to fill 25 spots? How long does it take to fill a pug at 11:00 pm? LFR is available around the clock, just like 5 mans. How long do you wait for 15 and 40 man BG’s? The 40 spots are never full. Depending on the time of day, that que never pops.
–edit: I feel like the only effective way Blizz could add LFR to our population would to be to end all current wow xpacs, shut it down and start over with wow2, concentrate on building ONE population that isn’t splintered into mass directions of Blizzard, and going forward, incorporate everything we love most about WoW.
Threatening to drop out of an entire xpac because of a single feature where there are so many to choose from is just petty and makes you stand out as someone who doesn’t participate in community. It’s also unrealistic to believe WoW could support round the clock 25 man pugs.
Bro what? I haven’t even been responding to that person as much as others. I just saw their comments in both threads and noticed hypocrisy, so I went back to point it out. I’m not stalking or harassing anybody, just commenting on the forums of the game I play?
This is just a personal angle so what I am not doing here is pushing this opinion on others, but for me, personally, LFR was great for alt play in the sense of I just rolled a mage… leveled it up… and want to toss it in a raid environment even if a totally brain dead one to see if I enjoy it. If I do then maybe I try to find a pug for it. Maybe it becomes more of a thing. While the current 5 man situation will gear it at a much quicker pace and probably be more interesting game play it won’t simulate the raid stuff as well.
Do I see LFR having issues? Yes. Of course it has problems. When people can AFK often they will and it does become a problem in LFR. It does remove a certain level of raids at least needing to be organized on a base level because just like AFKing if one can just push a key to raid to some it diminishes even bothering to form other groups.
Over all LFR is a damned if you damned if you don’t type of situation. Some enjoy it and its loss will be felt. Some will abuse it thus ruining it for a lot of others. If anything it will lower the number of people looking for form groups thus hurting the social angle a bit which isn’t ideal. Even if its just a little.
It’s a disingenuous troll posting on multiple characters to pretend to have more support for their positions than really exists.
His post history contains many of the same talking points, at the same time, in the same threads, with the same mannerisms. For example, just tested HoF and had mana problems, said his item level was lower than his raid group, mentioned tailoring and engineering as a solution to poor performance.
He’s just pretending to be a girl and is now defending his “sister” on one of said alts.
I left classic after BC came out ( I never cared for that x-pac ) and I came back specifically to play MOP as it was hands down my favorite expansion. One of the major reasons I loved the expansion was the introduction of the “Looking for Raid” system. My wife and I have done the guild raiding thing, but we no longer have the time nor the desire to set aside 3 nights a week from 2000-2400 to experience raiding. I imagine the “feedback” you received concerning the LFR system was from the core dedicated raiding group. This would be the same group who would call the LFR gear drops “welfare epics.” In no way do they represent the thousands of us who were looking forward to the MOP expansion. What the LFR did for us was it allowed us to raid on our schedule and still experience the end game content without having to dedicate our nights each week. I didn’t care that the gear was a lower gear score than raiding, it was worth it to us to raid in the mid-day if that was when we had time. Your decision to remove the LFR system from Mists of Pandaria has also removed any desire I had to continue to play Classic WoW. I truly hope you will reconsider your decision.
arguing semantics over the definition of schedule is moronic, and I think you’re being intentionally obnoxious just to deflect from the actual problem.
LFR was for people who (by your definition) don’t raid on a schedule, so that they can experience the content.
pugs will still happen.
there still exists a pre-made group finder, which people will use. both of which are what LFR replaced.
removing LFR just makes those two experiences more uncomfortable and time consuming. The devs are fully aware of this fact.
the idea that the community is somehow enriched by removing LFR is delusional. thats not why they’ve removed LFR.
they removed LFR because they want to push the new loot system for economic reasons.
There’s not an actual problem to deflect away from.
My definition? I was merely correcting the previous poster: they don’t want to raid on their schedule, they want to raid without a schedule. You’re just saying words without knowing what they mean.
Also, you’re only partially correct. LFR was for those people, yes, but it was actually to make up for the lack of PUGs since raid content was mostly a guild activity. Blizzard even says as much in their reasoning for removing LFR.
Now that PUGs are EXTREMELY common, there is no reason to have LFR. If you want to raid without a fixed schedule, you can already do so. Just join one of the many groups forming at all times.
The point is that PUGs are happening. That’s why LFR is being removed.
LFR didn’t replace PUGs or the premade group finder. That’s utter nonsense. LFR was added because PUGs, for the most part, weren’t happening.
How does removing LFR make PUGing more uncomfortable? How the hell does removing LFR make the premade group finder more uncomfortable? How does LFR being removed make either of those more time consuming?
The community is 100% enriched by removing LFR in the same way a child is enriched by being forced by his mother to order his own food at a restaurant. It’s uncomfortable for you, but it’s necessary for your development. Time to grow up. If you want to raid, you’re going to have to get comfortable saying “inv” to the dozens of people spamming “LFM”.
Correct. They removed LFR because the casual, unscheduled raiding scene is already active without it.
What economic reasons are those, exactly? They make more money with LFR. LFR is behind a weekly lockout, and the gear is entirely beholden to RNG, so you can spend months trying to earn gear. You’re also connected to the game less because you can’t reasonably progress your character by playing more when the game is timegated by weekly lockouts.
well, i’m correcting you. your assertion is wrong. its a generalization that doesn’t apply consistently
and blizzard is lying in that statement. raiding was not a “relatively niche activity” in 2011. the wow population has been declining for a decade. their entire excuse here is preposterous. I’ve accused them of lying about this in the past, and I’ll happily reassert that accusation now.
why would you? do you realize how stupid and functionally backwards that is? LFR is just a tool. it does pugging faster, and with less hassle. that was its purpose.
for those of you who are new - LFR was modeled off of an ADDON.
you really need to get your story straight. it all just sounds ridiculous to anyone who’s actually been here long enough.
yes, and now they’re more time consuming to form, more difficult to refill if someone drops. its all so pointless and has nothing to do with gameplay.
again, this is total BS. LFR was literally based on an ADDON. it was always intended to make grouping faster and easier. if you were there, you’d know that and you’d know blizzard was lying through their teeth…
^ psychosis. I’ve spent 15 years working in and around UI design. you have no idea what you’re talking about.
also lol… get over yourself. you’re ignorance is insulting everyone who actually works in software development.
Why is no one engaging with my idea of LFR in BUT it shares lockdown with Normal and Heroic?
That literally removes the need for sweaty tryhards to run it AND gives the chill casual dads the option to run it…
Casual dads did just fine in vanilla and tbc. The real reason they needed lfr is because they started catering to sweats and raiding became too difficult.
I was correcting one person. That isn’t – and cannot be – a generalization.
They’re not. The reasoning is consistent with an interview back before 4.3 was even released, adding LFR.
Do you feel like you are alienating any part of the player base when you make easier content or do you think the new three difficulty system might solve that?
Ghostcrawler: We’re hoping it solves it. I mean, generally this is an experiment for us. We’re not sure how it is going to work out. We have a hugely diverse player base, and we want to be able to let lots of different players see the content. We felt in the past we were struggling too much to decide “Okay, heroic mode is for 5% of the population… that means normal mode has to be for 95% of the raiding population” and we were stretching ourselves really thin. So our hope is that by offering up an additional difficulty, it will free up normal mode to be targeted towards the kind of traditional guild it has been, where players who don’t have a lot of time to raid or find the commitment too much can do Raid Finder to be able to experience the fights.
Basically, Normal Mode was almost exclusively the domain of guild groups, and the unorganized, unscheduled raiders were being catered to with the addition of LFR because there wasn’t a real alternative. These days, they don’t need LFR because there’s lots of PUGs running at all times of the day. If you want to raid without a fixed schedule, you can do so without LFR.
This only strengthens the argument that PUGs uncommon. With a declining player base, only an increasingly fewer dedicated players remained, and they were in guilds.
Why would you join one of the many groups forming at all times? Uh… to raid, obviously.
No, as stated by Blizzard back in Cata and again now in Cata Classic leading up to MoP Classic, its purpose was to enable raiders to raid without a fixed schedule.
Less hassle, sure, because you can just press the button to queue instead of having to type “inv” to someone.
I’ve been playing since vanilla. Spare me your attempts to act like my senior in WoW.
Quite the opposite, in fact. They’re so easy to refill and so quick to form that people can actually be selective with who they bring. They no longer have to take any and everything they can find just to fill slots.
It’s pointless to form a group and raid? I’m not sure I understand what you mean. PUGing is pointless unless it’s as easy as clicking “join queue”?
I also disagree that it has nothing to do with gameplay. The game is a social one, being an MMO and all. Having to interact with other people is part of the gameplay even if you don’t like it.
What does that have to do with anything?
Why would they lie about that? Honestly, please explain what reason Blizzard has for saying “no, we don’t want grouping to faster and easier, we want people without fixed raid schedules to be able to find groups”. They’re not even that different of reasons, really. PUGs could happen, but they took forever to form and rarely got going. Most of the time they’d kill a boss or two then disband.
These days, PUGs fill in less time than an LFR queue and fully clear even Heroic difficulty.
I don’t think you know what that word means.
Totally irrelevant.
lmao
You realize I was talking about your emotional and social development, not software development, right? LOL
You first, kid. No one cares that you’re big mad over not having LFR.
Either you aren’t playing Classic because it doesn’t have LFR, in which case you aren’t the audience Blizzard should be catering to and your opinion is worthless, or you are playing Classic despite it not having LFR, thus proving you’re perfectly content to make due without it.
Personally, I don’t think there should be a weekly lockout in the first place. My issue with LFR is that antisocial matchmaking and instantly teleporting you to the instance, not the fact that I have to run it. I’d also remove dungeon finder for the same reasons.
clinging to semantic arguments doesn’t make up for your lack of substance.
you made a generalization, and it was wrong (like the rest of your argument points).
nice attempt trying to change the subject. no where in that quote does he say raiding was niche.
he literally said: “We have a hugely diverse player base, and we want to be able to let lots of different players see the content”.
you have a tendency in your arguments to leave out context. In this case, the context you’re leaving out is that you’re quoting a PR statement, after a feature that was added BASED ON AN ADDON.
they didnt add LFR because of the BS reasons GC listed… they added it because the LFR ADDON was wildly successful…
ya, its extremely hard to believe you were playing in vanilla, because you seem to have zero comprehension of the game at the time.
pugging communities were server-specific prior to cross-realm servers. Mannoroth commonly pugged heroic raids. again, you’re hanging on a PR statement that isn’t accurate or reflective of the truth at the time.
because its a waste of time compared to using a system that creates the group in real time…
and again, that is total BS. none of it is true and only a fool or a shill would believe it.
highly doubtful.
LFR always had minimum requirements, and the pre-made group tool always existed for people who wanted to spend an hour being selective.
its pointless to form a raid using a chat channel when a system does the same thing in a fraction of the time.
thats WHY the LFR ADDON was so successful.
thats partly right. for a casual player, just looking to experience the content, who doesn’t want to spend their game time on building a group, the time is more valuable than the “experience” of building a group.
according to your deranged ideology. whether you like it or not, there are a lot of people who don’t care about your view and just want to see the content.
its the entire point. the basis of your initial arguments were based on lies. the things you’re quoting and stating as fact aren’t true. you’re like the guy screaming “iraq has weapons of mass destruction”.
because it was a giant embarrassment, that an addon brought this to the game before the dev team did.
and you were playing since vanilla? riiiiight.
you’re talking about a subset of players who aren’t returning casuals. take myself for example, I’m not joining discord communities. I just don’t have time for it at 40 yrs old. I have maybe 40 minutes at a clip to jump on, and thats it.
MOST people coming back are like me.
its very relevant. LFR isn’t come deep philosophical question. thats a BS story. its a faster way to pug.
I’m not here for emotional and social development. if that’s you’re MO then try adding some substance to your life.
Listen, SON, looking at our comment histories, I get a lot more likes than you do.
so guess what, a lot of people are mad. so am I.
I came back for MOP, and now I’ve unsubbed because I’m not interested in their dungeon-spamming loot system (and thats really all the removal of LFR is about).
I wasn’t changing the subject at all. That quote was relevant to the subject. Stop trolling.
Nor did I argue such. I said, quoting them, that PUGs were niche.
“…it will free up normal mode to be targeted towards the kind of traditional guild it has been…” In case you don’t understand what this means, he’s saying that Normal Mode is targeting normal guilds. The whole reason they added LFR as a difficulty is so there’d a difficulty targeted towards people not in guilds, i.e., PUGs.
Yes, which is what I was describing. Now ask why those players couldn’t see the content and how LFR helped with that. Then ask why LFR isn’t necessary for them to see the content anymore.
No, I don’t. I quote you directly, and your entire post is visible by clicking the area.
It wasn’t after the feature was added, it was before, and why does it matter that it was based on add-on? How does that change their reasoning? How does it being an interview make what he said in it untrue?
Why was the add-on wildly successful? What did it do? Did it, perhaps, enable people to find raids without needing to join a guild?
I’m only going to respond to this once. I’m posting on this character so you can check my armory.
Achievements → Legacy → PvP
Verifiable proof that I played in vanilla.
Of course, but LFR was added to the entire game and was cross-realm. So PUGing being more common on specific realms meant nothing to people not on those realms.
Not really. It supports my argument, but the reasoning is there regardless of the interview’s existence. LFR isn’t necessary.
I’m not sure you know what “real time” means. PUGs also create groups in “real time”. Feel free to complain about me arguing semantics again, though.
I believe the argument you’re actually attempting to make is that you can press the button and focus on other activities without needing to wait around in a raid as it forms. A fair point, but you could also just whisper the person and say “Hey, I need to drop group to do X, let me know when the group is full.”
So, really, the benefit to you is that you don’t have to interact with anyone. That sounds like a bad thing to me.
Okay, so the real reason, according to you, is that it was a popular add-on? You genuinely believe the ONLY reason they added it was because someone else did it first?
Sort of. It had minimum item level requirements, but that’s it. It didn’t have minimum DPS requirements, gem/enchant requirements, nor did it even check if the gear you were wearing was appropriate for your spec, e.g., cloth worn on a plate-wearer to gain item level.
As for the premade group tool, perhaps this is a difference in realms. In my experience, PUGs could rarely afford to be selective. They spent an hour in LFG, Trade, and so on, just to fill the slots with anyone. They weren’t being selective, at all.
These days? Sure, people can be more selective, but that was my point. They aren’t just taking anyone, anymore, they’re actually looking for the right spec, checking logs, etc. The PUG raiding scene is highly active in Classic.
Speaking of not knowing how things were back in the day, “a fraction of the time”? I’m not sure I’d consider 40 minute queues to be a fraction of the time.
I played as a healer for most of my WoW “career” and the queues were shorter than that, but DPS, and tanks to a lesser extent, had a very long wait for what usually amounted to easily clearing most bosses and groups wiping endless on one particular boss. They even had to add Determination in Mists of Pandaria because of people wiping so much on certain bosses. You might not remember, but that wasn’t added until 5.2.
I’m not sure why you continue to bring this add-on up instead of saying that’s why LFR was successful. You’re arguing for them to bring LFR back, not the add-on.
Your argument seems to be solely that it’s faster to press Join Queue than to whisper “inv” to one of the dozens of groups running. I really don’t believe that’s the reason you want LFR. It’s probably faster to join a PUG. The reason I suspect you want LFR is because those PUGs are being selective and that excludes you more often than not. Or you just don’t want to talk to people.
You don’t have to build a group. Just join one.
That aside, I don’t really think that’s a valid reason to bring LFR to the game. You are more than capable of experiencing the content without it.
Yes, my “deranged ideology” that an MMORPG should have social elements. You’re hilarious.
Whether you like it or not, there are a lot more people who don’t care about your view and don’t want LFR added. Also whether you like it or not, Blizzard is not adding LFR.
Saying there are people who want X is not a compelling argument.
Your entire point is that LFR should be added because it was based on a popular add-on? You keep bringing it up, but you have yet to argue why that matters.
Who cares if LFR was based on an add-on? Even if that was the case, the reason the add-on exists and Blizzard implemented it as an official feature can still be as stated.
I genuinely cannot fathom how you think “it was based on an add-on” is in anyway a meaningful argument in favor of LFR. Let me try to understand for a second:
Okay, so they lied. The real reason LFR was added was because there was a popular add-on that did something similar. Which means that the reason of “we want people to be able to raid without needing a regular scheudle” is not true, therefore the reason for not adding LFR to Cataclysm isn’t true. Therefore, the real reason they won’t add LFR is…?
What, exactly?
How would that be an embarrassment? If it was popular and they implemented it into the base game, they would’ve received huge support for doing so.
The opinions on LFR at the time of release were mixed, to say the least, generally apathetic leaning towards approving in retail, and mostly negative in Classic. The people who do want LFR in Classic are either staunchly in favor of no changes or people who aren’t playing the game right now and who thusly don’t matter. Why should Blizzard cater to people who openly admit to not paying for and playing the game?
No, I’m talking about random groups of blue-parsers.
Then raiding isn’t for you. Do something else. You would spend your entire session sitting in a queue. Even if the queue is instant, I doubt you’d kill all the bosses in time.
No, your work experience in real life is totally irrelevent to the discussion of whether LFR should be added.
Even your argument of LFR being a faster way to PUG is totally disconnected from you working on UI design.
That’s nice. The point I was making is that the community is made better by forcing players to have to interact with each to participate in the game’s content. For people like you, that can be uncomfortable, but it’s good for you and the game as a whole.
If it bothers you that much, then you can go play single player games.
I don’t measure my self worth by the number of likes my posts get. Grow up.
We – the actual Classic playerbase – don’t care. Stamp your feet all you want, but you’re still not getting ice cream.
Good for you. Genuinely, it’s much better for you to simply not stress out over it and avoid giving money to companies who aren’t providing the service you desire. It’s also better for the audience that is already paying and playing.
I genuinely think the dungeon-spamming is better, but only for one reason: no weekly lockouts. I can grind it non-stop and get all the gear in one or two sittings. It’s also MUCH friendly to people like yourself who have little time to play. Admittedly, it does not let you experience raiding, but I think part of the raiding experience is socializing and forming/joining groups.
Frankly, I’d prefer they remove both (and dungeon finder while they’re at it), but if they removed the weekly lockout, I’d prefer LFR over Celestial dungeons.
so basically the only reason you are pro celestial is because of grindable free gear? got it. You do know they can “improve” LFR so it drops fragments too?
As long as is not Karazhan crypts tier buggy/difficult to the point you need bis geared people to complete i dont see a problem with these special dungeons