Benefits:
Faster groups
No Spec discrimination
Continued interaction with the open world while searching
Socially awkard people can find groups
Playing with people on the server
No AFK flying to dungeons
Downsides:
Tanks can’t strong arm selling runs for gold
Found boosting strats are less viable to sell
Ma Immersion - oh no, teleporting in a game with magic
Getting specs you don’t want to play with
Arguments against this that are invalid:
Wasn’t in at release - Blizzard already stated that the moto is now #somechanges
Social Interaction - Spamming /4 isn’t social interaction. Most people use addons to scan /4 anyway for groups
World engagement - You spend more time interacting with zones with RDF. I’ll explain:
Traveling to a dungeon is time wasted in the world
Time spent searching /4 is time wasted in the world
Time traveling back to the zone you want to be in is time wasted in the world
Please give legitimate reasons for or against non-cross realm RDF being in the game.
That’s something that can change later, don’t need Cross-realm from launch of WOTLK. At least with Server Lock you can know the players you match with.
This is a legitimate arguement, but I would ask what is the appeal of a tiny server? Wouldn’t you rather them just merge servers and have more people to play with?
Yes, I’m really hoping they get rid of that trash LFG tool and just give us the RDF that was in Wrath. Unless someone can actually prove RDF killed WoW then I don’t see the issue in them re-implementing RDF
This will still happen. You can sit in queue for 2 hours for a tank, or buy a tank queue. Hell, the tank doesn’t even have to stay. You pay him 100g, he queues with your group, you get an instant queue pop, that tank leaves and now you’re at the front of the line for the next tank.
This is a legitimate concern. Being thrown into random groups and teleported to an instance is precisely the type of development decision I left retail for to play Vanilla and TBC. In retail WoW you can queue for every aspect of the game from in town. You don;'t need to know anyone, you don’t need to communicate with anyone, you don’t need a guild, you don’t even need to leave the inn. You just stand there and queue for BGs, for Raids, for Dungeons, for whatever you want and you’re put into a group and whisked away for a souless adventure with strangers you’ll never see again. That’s not what I play Classic for. If I wanted that, I’d go pre-order Dragonflight.
I never saw this happen in Wrath when it was out. If it happens on private servers thats an issue of the community, not the tool.
This is solved by not being cross realm. You will see these people again, they are on your server. This isn’t LFR which I would be against as raiding is a larger form coordinated form of content.
You can’t sit in cities and get your sons of hodir dailies done, farm mats, etc. I won’t speak to retail as I don’t play it nor can I speak to your experience, but allowing people to find groups faster than 2 hours is a net win.
Me personally? I’d open up cross realm for all grouping purposes so that what server you are on doesn’t dictate who you can play with.
Even if they limited that just to instanced content, that would at least end the mega server push and stop people from getting screwed by server selection.
But… but… how will i get the enojoyment and excitement of being able to socially interact with other players while whispering to them the magic social words “dps here” and not talking to anyone the entire run! OMG
Jokes aside. I think this would be the best middle ground however it unfortunatly doesnt adress the issue that players on lower pop realms wont be able to find groups since there is no cross realm to help them.
It doesn’t help minority factions or low pop. realms like cross-realm RDF would.
It was never whole game anyways. Make one battlegroup be Faerlina+Bene so our alliance can play with theirs and their horde can play with us. Then make other battlegroups for lopsided servers or low pop realms to even them out. Bene alliance pop is so many times ours that they’re unlikely to ever see one of ours, but at least they aren’t left to rot unhelped like with your idea.