For someone who complains about uses of “people” and immediately rushes to correct it to “some people” you sure do like your own generalizations 
I just want to chill out and play a fantasy game, but I don’t want to read an LFG chat or stare at a tool.
im one of the chill casuals who has been repeatedly insulted without cause, told that my character has no place in world of warcraft, told that my gs (though viable for the selected dungeon) wasnt enough for the group leader to accept me.
Classic Era is that way—->
RDF is a simpler tool, but not an objectively better tool.
I don’t find lack of RDF is hindering my ability to find groups in WoW in any way. In fact, finding groups in WoW Classic has never been easier or more accessible… current issues surrounding differentiating between Heroic and Heroic+ notwithstanding.
You’re welcome to that. I respect your opinion. However, a game that caters to your preferences will deteriorate the game for me. So we are at an impasse and it will be up to Blizzard to decide what kind of game they make.
That really sucks man, I’m sorry you’ve experienced that. Unfortunately, you will experience similar toxicity with RDF, as those same people will find ways to abuse you there too.
If you are indeed chill and just wanna play the game, maybe we can find a way to connect and play the game together? I play Alliance side on Pagle and can tank or dps dungeons. I also have a few alts that, if our schedules aligned, perhaps we could level together.
If our server/factions aren’t compatible, I invite you to join me in advocating for the cross-realm (perhaps even cross-faction) functionality of retail to be brought forward to WoW Classic. Even though we may have different outlooks on what RDF brings to the game, perhaps we can find some common ground with regards to bringing people together.
No, that way is Retail, where you can find all the QoL features you’re looking for, and more!
<— is the direction for Classic Era, which is also a fantastic option for folks looking to experience that type of content. I strongly encourage you, and everybody, to experience all options WoW has to offer and try to find fun where you can 
Likewise.
And now you understand the purpose of the threads.
We signed up for what was meant to be a recreation of a game we loved and played to death.
Blizzard is making changes to said game that we’re not appreciating.
I’d even argue that a huge reason Cataclysm sucked was cause Blizzard tried to force players to play their vision of the game and players simply weren’t having it.
Okay, but at least then he’d HAVE RDF.
Right now he gets the toxicity and not the benefits of RDF.
Retail and its rdf is
<----
It is objectively better for the goal I described.
Now are there use cases where it is not better? Sure for example if you’re trying to do an achievement or something.
But for the use case of just running a dungeon when you don’t care about which one necessarily or who you run it with, RDF is objectively better.
Yeah it’s easy finding groups for the daily heroic at prime time on a geared character on a high pop realm, anything else not so much.
We don’t want Retail; we want Wrath. And RDF was in Wrath.
Telling people to go play Retail because they want an authentic Wrath is trolling. Telling you to go play Classic Era is a legitimate statement, since you’re asking for Vanilla design.
But RDF is a Wrath feature and belongs in Wrath.
Look, you can’t know that. It’s just your very limited and subjective opinion. The most you can say is what you observed on the servers you played on. Almost no one on the servers I played on waited out their queue in a city. Why would anyone do that? If you want to level up quickly doing quests was more xp than doing nothing. And almost everyone had professions and needed to farm for mats. Especially back in og when there wasn’t nearly as much gold buying as today.
With rdf it was even easier to make a partial guild group. Before rdf guildies often wouldn’t bother to switch to an alt because the odds of getting a group weren’t great. But after it was added when I asked if anyone wanted to do an ST run etc a couple of people would always switch to an alt and join. Then we’d fill out the group with rdf. I almost never joined rdf solo. Every rdf run was a partial guild run for the people I played with. If you couldn’t make groups manually that was a you problem.
Which is entirely the crux of the problem. We both have different things we want from the game.
I feel you, I do, but for a lot of us this was a change for the better. Blizzard was pretty up front about what they were going to do and why, so if this was something that was a deal breaker for you, you’ve had plenty of time to move on. You’re still here, so obviously a lack of RDF hasn’t ruined the game for you.
By the way, this is in on way intended to communicate to you that you should stop advocating for RDF. I didn’t engage here to tell you that you were wrong, or that you should stop. Solely that the argument that “We can just ignore RDF and make our groups manually” doesn’t apply, for the reasons I’ve gone into above.
Fight your fight, forum crusader, and I will fight mine
At least you agree it’s a change, something most anti RDFers don’t want to acknowledge.
Oh I absolutely agree and don’t really think I’ve expressed otherwise.
I just wholly disagree that the act of forming a 5 man group is in any way a fun or sociable.
Running a 5 man is.
Right, and for the content in question, I want Wrath too, not Classic Era. RDF was not yet in this version of Wrath. So why is it valid for you to tell me to go elsewhere to get what I want, but not valid for me to tell you to go elsewhere to get what you want?
Fortunately for me, I don’t need to go elsewhere, since Wrath is currently offering what I want.
It was pretty widely observed back then, not just on my server, but on others as well. If people were still active on your server, that’s cool, but it was definitely outside the norm. People just didn’t interact in PuGs as much. Obviously Blizzard took notice of this, long before WoW Classic was ever a thing, as when they introduced Mythic Dungeons in WoD it was something you had to manually make a group for. This persisted with M+ being introduced in Legion.
I’m not really trying to tell you what to think is better here, just that this happened and Blizzard clearly didn’t like it. I used to be just fine with it… but I’m not anymore. I like what we have in WoW Classic. I didn’t really like the chat channel though, so I’m glad we have the LFG tool to help me identify groups that are appropriate for me more effectively.
As for why not go level while you waited in queue? Laziness… disinterest? Why bother when you can do something else and your queue pops? For an actual reason, I can only speak to my own experiences at the time and a combination of apathy and general disinterest in quests was at the forefront. While I’m less apathetic now, I still am not terribly interested in questing. I love dungeons, they’ve been my favourite activity since my very first Deadmines run in 2004, when I didn’t even know what a dungeon was.
Regarding your experiences with guildies and RDF, I actually had the opposite issue. People were happy to come group, but wanted to play a different character while waiting for the group to fill. Except you couldn’t because you had to be on the alt you intended to queue with. As things are in Wrath and Retail, I can just go build the group and let them know when they need to switch over.
The patch a system went in originally has never mattered in three years is Classic. And RDF isn’t coming with ICC anyway.
But it’s good to know you support RDF when ICC comes out.
I don’t know how they can deny that, it absolutely is a change. Along with many other changes, large and small, that we’ve gotten since Vanilla. I was never in the #nochanges camp though… and I fully support the updated #SomeChanges take Blizzard has been taking.
It also doesn’t mean I agree with all of the changes they’ve made either.
Again, this is a valid perspective to have. I’m not going to tell you that you should like something just because I do. I just want you (and others here) to understand that this is something some of us do like. It took WoW Classic in 2019 for me to realize how much.
It’s just unfortunate that RDF, in it’s original form taken as a whole, is so mutually exclusive to our ends. It’s why I’ve been trying lately to dissect the actual problems that RDF can solve and break them down into smaller components.
For example, RDF…
For reasons that I hope you understand by now (even if you don’t agree with), I don’t want #1 and #3 above because they take something away from the game that I think is important to be preserved.
However, #2 above addresses a serious issue with player connectivity, putting players on low pop severs at a serious disadvantage. When a lot of these RDF conversations play out, I often state that I’m actually not having much trouble at all finding groups, even at leveling ranges. While I don’t play on a mega server, my server (Pagle) does have a very large and active population, so folks who play on a low population server understandably find this hard to believe.
Even if we can’t agree on #1 and #3, perhaps we can agree that cross-realm functionality would be a value add to WotLK and should be considered independently of RDF. It doesn’t solve any problems I have, but it does for a lot of others, and it also doesn’t compromise any of my values and desires for the game.
This is an example, but perhaps working to find common ground instead of being at odds with each other might provide a more productive path forward. I don’t think we’re ever going to agree on all things, but I figure something is better than nothing.
It was not pretty much widely observed back then. People hear what they want to hear and tend to just listen to the voices that agree with them. You just widely observed mostly the voices that told you what you wanted to hear.
That’s not obvious at all. All blizzard realized is that if they were going to add progressively harder dungeons at some point they would be so difficult that only a premade group would be able to complete them.
People who didn’t actually play back then just believe the nonsense they read.
Agreed, but you did direct me to another version of the game, after all. The bottom line is, we both want to play WotLK content.
That’s not what I said, which you know. However, if it did come out in the appropriate phase, it’s not like I would quit the game because of it. I think it’s the wrong move for WoW Classic, and takes us down a path we’ve already gone down. One that wasn’t corrected until late WoD, but if that’s the way they go… 
Honestly, my Classic journey stops at WotLK anyway, so while I think RDF would diminish the longevity of the game, we have no guarantees of a WotLK Era server and a last phase patch with something I’m not a fan of isn’t the end of the world. Just a shame.
Didn’t take you long to move those goalposts.
You’re using ‘it wasn’t added until ICC’ (something that is irrelevant) to justify it not being in the game. Then turn around and say even with ICC it shouldn’t be in the game.
I do, but those are not aspects of the game I enjoy in any way or shape.
I just don’t see staring at a badly made tool or a chat that’s so spammy it needed a literal addon to be human readable nor hitting auto run after pointing my flying mount at my destination as meaningful interactions in a game.
Same, which is why I don’t give a hoot at what perceived damage RDF might make later on (even if I will still argue it hasn’t done any, players changing and Blizzard forcing some stupid vision on the game however…).
Yet they are things I enjoy, which is my point… perhaps we can at least solve one problem, even if we can’t solve all of them in a mutually agreed upon way? I do think WotLK could be better for it… not just because cross-realm would solve problems, but in a more general case. If we could find ways to agree with each other instead of dig our heels in and constantly argue, perhaps Blizzard would be more inclined to hear us out since we’d be presenting them with a unified message instead of constantly arguing in circles.
Like don’t get me wrong, we’re only human, but I hope you get my point here.
Finally, for what it’s worth, I’ll happily run to the dungeon to summon you. I don’t mind. I don’t expect you to like the same things I do and like I said, I understand why you don’t like them. I just want the opportunity to have them and, unfortunately, I feel RDF takes that away. So I’m thankful that the game currently operates in a way that appeals to me, just as I’m sure you would be thankful if the game operated in a way that appealed to you.