It is a fair point that mega servers and dead servers complicate the issue, though. Like if they’re not going to make dead servers viable, it’s probably a great feature on there. And with obviously too many people on one server / faction, there you don’t have to make heads or tails of spam when using RDF.
It does seem odd that they just keep opening new servers and shoehorning people haphazardly to make stuff happen. I feel like servers having quota systems between the factions can’t be that intricate, yet for whatever reason we have a 99% Alliance server with 30k people on it, etc etc. Must be a financial thing. lol
waiting 20 minutes for a group to form is peak quality wow social experience for me too. no, not really.
if you want social interactions with or without RDF, you have guilds and in-game channels to devote your social time to; regardless of that fact discord interactions are way more sociable than in-game chat, where no history of chat/whispers/guild chat is retained; there is plenty flaws with the social interaction experience in the game as it is, to strike down a tool that encourages group activity isn’t the solution to improve social interaction.
what does that have to do with dungeon finder though? people have guilds with or without RDF, people can /who with or without RDF, they can still use whispers/chat/guild chat to interact with others outside of dungeons; whoever is doing all that inside a dungeon is probably slowing down the group if they are going through the lengths you’ve described to reach a social interaction while they are running dungeons, now think about the issues without RDF; you will have to sort through all the hard reserve loot groups to find one that is willing to accept your class/spec/gear, you will still have to wait for a tank/healer like you would with RDF but you aren’t constantly having to spend time with /who or hitting the refresh button to find someone that is eligible for the content your group needs to run.
people say guilds/friends solve these problems, but when you are waiting for said people to log in everyday, that just adds to the issue, you are spending time waiting for other players who probably aren’t as interested as you are in running that same dungeon with you for the 20th time for the loot to finally drop, hence hard reserving loot, you will create more problems without RDF for those who just want to run dungeons, and in the meantime with RDF you will fix issues that were not there when RDF was available in original wotlk.
you will still have that option to form groups with RDF available, people will still look for solid groups outside of RDF especially with heroics in mind. it doesn’t limit you on that, you can still /who people who are in dungeons even while they are in an RDF group.
that doesn’t sound like an argument, but okay.
are you are fine with them adding incentives to healers/tanks to make up for the issue RDF would have resolved with the lack therof?
did you enjoy how they changed the TBC arena ratings similar to how they were in retail?
are you in favor of them changing the original game by adding features borrowed from more recent iterations of the game?
i guess wotlkc is for you then.
one player’s anecdotal experiences aren’t true for every player, to say that every player that is in wotlk classic right now has had the same experience as you have had sounds like a stretch, to say wether or not RDF improves or reduces social interaction or experience based on your anecdotal experience just doesn’t hold up.
maybe we should look at the consequential outcomes of not having RDF and determine what is good for the community based on that?
players being forced to choose between hard reserved loot groups because tanks dont want to run a dungeon 20 times for their dps offset pieces, who can blame them when they have that option available to them?
players being rejected explicitly for being the wrong class/spec or not having the desired gear.
groups advertising GDKP in the LFG tool; what a great addition to forming groups now we can sort through all the GDKPs that we were never looking for.
just between those 3 examples it seems like social interactions and experience will be upheld without RDF, what a great social experience to have for people who just want to run dungeons.
i get you want to make friends with every person you ever dungeon with while leveling or gearing, but you can’t force people to be your friend. people don’t explicitly run dungeons to make friends or find new social interactions. and pigeonholing them into a system that can be used to abuse other players with hard reserving loot, gdkp advertising, rejection due to class/gear/spec is pretty inflammatory if you are talking about improving social interaction in the game.
RDF was in original wotlk, was highly praised at the time and solved the same issues people were having back then that they are having now.
we can agree to disagree and both be right, neither of us have to be wrong, but if you have anything else to add that could support blizzard’s reasoning for removing the tool i’d be happy to engage with you again, opinions aren’t subject to being wrong, if you believe your best avenue of making friends is in dungeons, noone is going to force you to stop believing that, but you will meet plenty more people with RDF enabled if that is what you truly enjoy in the dungeon aspect of the game.
mega servers aren’t going to die because of RDF, so really it’s not a social experience or interaction issue or even limited to just dead faction or unbalanced faction servers, it’s a gatekeeping issue because certain people don’t want players to have the freedom to do dungeons at their leisure and rather force them go through the tedious and abusable process of forming a group through group finder/LFG at the expense of the players time and/or social experience.
yea but you wont get rejected from the group after waiting for 20 minutes based on class/gear/spec
atleast with RDF your social experience wont be hindered by being rejected for such reasons. not only that, with RDF you wont be limited to a pool of groups that consist of hard reserved loot.
No but at the end of it you are guaranteed a group. You don’t have to worry that maybe say the tank you are waiting for decides to join another group that just started looking a couple minutes ago, or the healer decides to call it and now you are looking for a tank and a healer and now your group is even less appealing to a tank.
yeah that or being replaced by someone’s guildie, im sure im not the only one that’s happened to, even before the retail LFG tool made it’s way into wotlk classic.
forming a group isn’t socializing, it’s hitting a refresh button and right clicking a players name in the list and hitting invite to party button; /who 70 (insert class here) and going on a whispering spree to fill your group, alot of people would rather not be bothered to answer their whispers and probably get annoyed after the 2nd or 3rd time. these are not prime examples of social interactions.
sure people socialize within parties but that isn’t even exclusive to dungeons, most dungeons i’ve experienced were straight to the point, even while leveling in 15-60.
nobody wants to form a group every single time they want to run a dungeon, but even if they wanted to it isn’t required to be overly social to get a group formed or dungeon completed. players can have similar if not the same interactions in dungeons with RDF as they do without RDF, it’s up to the player to decide how they want to socially interact with others in their parties or group content, neither the group finder nor RDF dictates or limits how players interact with eachother.
A lot of things besides flying so that. Flight Paths, summons(lock or stone), mage portals, in game portals, the general design that most zones have clearly defined paths to travel on…
And the things that make the open world relevant despite those things also apply to flying, mats, quests etc…
Right, but talking in terms of traveling too and from dungeons, RDF makes the open world pretty much as irrelevant as flying does, only difference being it took you 3-5 minutes to fly there versus just being teleported.
I personally like to turn off chat completely when entering BGs or dungeons. They must think I don’t speak english. After years of seeing how the average wow player conducts himself when something isn’t exactly how he/she wants, I retired from chat completely. Macro hides the window when I want.
I’m a pro lfg fan for northrend content personally, I enjoy seeing chat booming all the time while in the open world. I might see something that I wanna join being advertised for and whisper for an invite. It feels really good tbh. Better than playing mobile one button action simulator anyway.