LoL! What server communities? Mankrik has a server community? All I see outside of guild chat is GDPK’s and groups offering 100 gold for tanks.
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There are Discord servers for basically every Classic server and every single one of them is flourishing. It gives players an easy place to communicate upcoming events such as dates/times for “organized pugs”/GDKP raids, track “blacklisted” players, recruit for their guilds, and much more.
Socializing with peers is cool, you should try it sometime.
Dungeon finder was in the game for 307 days, which is ~42% of Wrath’s 728-day lifetime. If you don’t count Wrath’s pre-patch, dungeon finder was in the game for ~44% of 698 days of Wrath (both percentages rounded to the nearest whole number). I wouldn’t call a 112-day difference a ‘hair’, especially when 3.3.0 was one of the longest content droughts in WoW’s history even today.
If you’re talking about the sub count, there’s really no point – You couldn’t attribute positive or negative trends in the sub count to dungeon finder because there’s nowhere near enough data. If dungeon finder had a direct effect on the sub count, it happened gradually.
There’s plenty of room to conjecture on how it may have affected the sub count both for or against, but it will never be more than conjecture.
When we have perspectives that disagree, the only thing that makes sense is to measure it objectively, and objectively, the majority of the Wrath experience had no dungeon finder. Unless you think there’s another objective metric we could apply to it?
You realize that many of the devs who were around during Wrath were in fact the same devs who created retail, right? It’s not like each expansion they brought in a whole new development team. It changed over time, but many people stayed on the team throughout long periods of WoW’s life, across expansion lines.
Like I said, Wrath was when the game started to experience major shifts in design philosophy (Blizzard’s parent company had just recently merged with Activision), and those shifts led to Retail. If the goal of Classic is to give us something distinctly not Retail, then you couldn’t possibly launch it as it was.
I don’t disagree with people if they’re upset about that – I get that up until now, we’ve only been able to expect to have roughly the same experience. I would be disappointed if there was something about the game that I loved and it was deemed to be unhealthy for it’s Classic re-release. But this is a crash course we’ve been on since Classic was announced at BlizzCon 2018. They either could’ve achieved perfect parity with the original releases or they could pull away from the decisions that led to Retail and recreate the game without those grave mistakes. Thankfully, it seems like they’re at least leaning toward stripping the Retail stuff out of Classic moving forward.
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November 13 2008 LK launched
Result: 390 days
December 8, 2009 3.3.0 Patch.
Result: 364 days
December 7, 2010 Cata launched
hair under but not 112 days, I had to put in it a date calculator so I was guessing on my part before, but I googled each launch date and the 3.3.0 patch date.
I don’t disagree but the point is, LFD is NOT what made retail be bad. If anything, it brought back to life old dungeons.
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I would disagree, Wrath was the culmination of design trends started in vanilla, usually from day one. Inclusivity in terms of class balance, QoL improvements, providing content across all levels of play, all things that go back to vanilla. Even LFD goes back to CRBG’s from vanilla.
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The goal of Classic was supposed to give us the game as it was. Now they are pulling a bait and switch and trying to do Classic re-imagined. I don’t want Wrath re-imagined, I want it as it was in 2008-10. If they really want to do changes, then save them for a Wrath SoM server.
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Really? 'Cause nothing says ‘this isn’t Retail’ like selling level 70 boosts.
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I personally look at the dates differently, as Wrath itself actually started in its pre-patch (when the game version turns to 3.0) before the expansion was fully launched. The game also ceased to be Wrath when Cataclysm’s pre-patch was implemented (when the game turns to 4.0). But I can see why you look at it the way you do.
Even if we take only the actual window of Wrath’s full content release, the period without dungeon finder was longer than the period with it, and importantly, the period with it was a content drought. Summing up dungeon finder’s place objectively, even with a perspective that is as generous as it can possibly be toward the feature, neither of the objective measures for its place in Wrath say that dungeon finder is necessary for a faithful Wrath Classic.
Like I said before, I’m totally open to hearing any other objective measures people have, but until then, this argument is a tie at very best for people who want it because it goes back to what I want vs what you want, where no one is right or wrong.
Who is saying that dungeon finder is single-handedly responsible for Retail’s birth? I certianly don’t think that way and I’d have a few words to say to anyone who does.
Dungeon finder isn’t going to make or break the state of the entire game, but it was one of the major contributing factors in WoW’s downfall for many of us who don’t like it.
Do you have any reason to believe that the paid level boost was something proposed by the game developers themselves? Or do you understand that the executives in the highest offices at Activision Blizzard have a legal obligation to their corporate shareholders to maximize profits and ensure financial growth?
I promise you, the people on the WoW team couldn’t care less about how much money gets poured into Bobby Kotick’s or the corporate shareholders’ pockets. They have to hit certain financial performance metrics, and that means that things like the paid level boost and that ugly mount are going to be ordered from high up. Those weren’t gameplay decisions.
If you look at the situation reasonably and strip away all of the stupid monetizations they’ve added to the game, the WoW team itself has actually done quite a good job at offering a good experience. The way they’ve handled population distribution, faction imbalance, dungeon carries and botting has been absolutely shameful, but they’re not actively making the game worse with their design philosophy.
You can promise me all you want, but it means nothing. You don’t know and neither do I. What I do know is that when it comes to micro-transactions the whole ‘vanilla spirit’ goes right out the window, and thus it’s total bullcrap.
By the way, they want to hit certain financial performance metrics, then don’t remove core features from the game that drives away the biggest percentage of the playerbase (casuals and purists). All removing lfd pleases is bots and boosters and gatekeeping elitists. The people who dominate TBCC right now. You know…the expansion that pales in comparison in population to Classic. Why? Well, obviously that’s up for debate. I can tell you I didn’t play it because of the #somechanges philosophy…namely the boost that facilitated this toxic lfg environment that drives away the average player. LFD would have brought them back, but alas…Blizz would rather cater to the garbage that’s filling TBCC right now.
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Yah who doesnt love getting trolled with a kick and 30 min dungeon debuff… no thanks
Right. It’s much better to spam lfg for 4 hours or pay gold to finally get in a dungeon.
By the way, you should probably look up how the vote kick function worked by 3.3.5.
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You boosted your hunter, Nerrick.
Creator of Warcraft Logs:
Mogar, you’re never going to be happy playing a Blizzard product. They’re never going to give you the exact, precise experience you want catered to you. Time to move on and find something that makes you happy. Good luck!
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Both RDF and LFD have there flaws and both have positives. Im gonna play tank so i win either way. I can see why dps want RDF… only real way to avoid the meta slaves
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I mean, if you’re incapable of reasoning things out and thinking any deeper than just the sheer face value of everything, why are you even here? 
The WoW team decided not to include dungeon finder because it’s bad for the game. There’s no ulterior motive.
Heh. You think it’ll be doomsday and everyone will unsub? Where have I heard that one before?
Wrath managed record sub numbers without dungeon finder, I think there are plenty enough people who value the expansion itself more than one discrete feature that was implemented after most of the content had been played.
I’m none of those things and I’m very pleased with their decision.
Define “pales in comparison”. The population metrics don’t seem very different from where they were in Vanilla Classic. And we’ve always known that of the ‘big three’, Burning Crusade was always the least popular for private realms.
I think dungeon finder might have brought some people back to Classic, but overall, I perceive that Wrath itself has more than enough merit without it. I guess we’ll just have to see.
I have never seen any evidence to suggest that the ‘average player’ you’re talking about cares strongly enough about individual topics like this to quit.
You can make your own groups.
Considering dps is the majority of players, it seems like a system that encourages them to stick around is good for the game.
And you can with dungeon finder too. It has literally zero impact on people who want to just play with guildies. Or are you saying the elitist gatekeepers need to control who’s able to do dungeons? Because we see how well that’s worked out with TBCC.
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Blizzard disagrees and that is why it is not in Classic.
Dungeon finder is responsible for the collapse of server communities and social bonds and Blizzard removed it to preserve those aspects of the game for Classic.
The fact that tanks and healers have always been insanely scarce, dungeon finder or not, says that DPS players don’t need encouragement to stay.
Choosing not to use dungeon finder is making a conscious decision to gimp myself. Creating a more convenient avenue effectively removes other avenues.
True. But I’m guessing you probably thinking that they make up a very small amount of the playerbase, or dungeon finder might not be so necessary?
LMAO
It seems to have worked out pretty well. It’s genuinely a very rare sight to see people who aren’t wearing full dungeon/raid gear if they’re at cap. It seems like everyone runs dungeons.
I can’t take anyone seriously who doesn’t see the dumpster fire that is TBCC. Where there is no server community and the casual masses have quit the game.
So the argument lfd destroys these things has already been disproven. And I’m certainly not advocating for dungeon finder to be in TBCC. I’m all about authenticity. Which means it should be in Wrath Classic, and it would bring back those casual masses. But apparently Blizz is more interested in appeasing the bots and boosters and gatekeeping elitists. So that’s what the majority of the playerbase is and is going to remain.
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