From my own experiences, it’s undeniable that we aren’t the same players we were in 2004. Group formation is taciturn, runs are nearly silent unless something goes wrong, and generally the “forming a group” thing isn’t where social interaction occurs.
Lot of people want to see the RDF tool added, many others want to see the Retail LFG tool added instead. Both have their benefits, and both are chosen by different people as their preference.
There’s an argument that “If you add RDF, no-one will do it any other way” and that’s definitely true when it comes to RDF vs a channel spammed mostly by boosters and political or outright offensive chat. Network effect will drive everyone to use RDF, just as most people currently use the LFG Bulletin Board addon to filter the channel into a tool.
However, there’s also the LFG tool that is currently used in Retail for the more complex groups (or non-instanced content) which stands alongside RDF successfully, and is far more in line with LFG-BB that people currently are accepting of.
So why not add both? Provide the opportunity to allow people a structured ‘selection and discussion’ based grouping tool, and the RDF tool as it was in Wrath. Let people select the tool best fitting their preferred method of grouping and they can stand alongside each other. With the LFG tool, not using RDF becomes a viable choice without diving into the need for a spammed channel, and the same gold selling spam protections that supposedly protect it in retail can be applied to booster spam etc.
I will also add that both of these tools need to be realm-locked to have any chance of success without damaging the on-server communities. Without realm-locking, the LFG tool will fail on launch, because it will be far more limited than RDF’s pool of players. While people can complain that “My server is too small to have realm-locked”, remember your alternative status quo right now is zero tools.
So why not implement both the LFG Tool from retail, and the Random Dungeon Finder tool from Wrath, and let people have the options that allow the community to manage itself?