The stated purpose for the removal of the RDF tool for a LFD was to improve the social experience.
I honestly think it did this. I mostly do my daily by recruiting guildies, I will fill with pugs and will talk to them briefly, I talk more in dungeons.
The LFD was a good decision for end game to maintain socialization.
But… Leveling now exists nearly entirely of solo questing, sometimes AV spam.
AV spam is okay sorta, its sorta afk, you can talk to guildies, you can organize with players.
Solo questing is complete trash. A huge number of dungeons don’t get used at all.
Mara is great. DM is great, Gnomer is great (it got changed in wotlk, and its like 9 straight quests).
Make it own server only and let players play with other players before level 80.
It’s sad because I wanted to experience these all over again.
I’ve never seen (in Classic) Mara, Gnomer, Sunken Temple, Dire Maul, RFD/RFC et al because they are far too out of the way of the zone I was levelling in.
By the time I travel to them, I could have quested a couple levels and no longer need the dungeon gear. So much content I missed out on on my journey to get to end game.
I don’t afk in AV. But a lot of it is literally running for 5 minutes. Or guarding a tower. Don’t be obtuse keep to the topic at hand.
Even if it provided no rewards, was server only, and its only function was to teleport you to the dungeon. That or put portals to these far away dungeons in the major cities?
Literally anything, it sucks not having dungeons as an option to level.
Its a resurrection of an old game, most people want to experience end game and ulduar just dropped a week ago. Also, no one knows what the future holds, if anything.
What should be the expectation of lowbie zones and dungeons?
When JJ was added, low leveling was great. My buddy actually went from level 8 to 25 during that time (his wife doesnt let him play much) prior to the latest JJ it took him close to 2 months to go from level 1 to level 8 but he hit the highest level in wow with that little window of the JJ buff.
If they added RDF and stacked JJ, much more casual players would be able to get to max character level, hopefully some day my buddy hits max level.
I should add last time he logged on was the day after jj expired and I said now its going to be painfully slow for you to level and after an hour of playing he gave up and hasnt signed in since
it seems you have a completely different understand of the term “socialize” then I do.
I lived through the retail introduction of RDF and the realization I came to was that the social aspect suffers and eventually dies off because of how RDF works. Because there is next to no effort involved to forming a group anymore people start to value these groups less and that involves all kinds of things.
less talking
not even trying to adapt to the group set-up
short fuse / no patience because if this group doesnt work you just jump into another one
utter generalization of a class disregarding the person (this is basically lack of patience again)
being hostile and aggravating holds next to no consequence because you have an unlimited access to new players due to cross-server matching
Its the same as BG introduction all over again. People marveled at the novelity of it and it was pure joy in the beginning pitting yourself against others under a set of rules and conditions so you “worked” toward a goal instead of personal success (I need to win every single encounter). When that novelity wore off due to the grinding design of it (honor points and how they accumulate) toxcicity and other negative aspects took over and those actually persisted and flowed into other games as well.
RDF was just the same. If you can simply line up one dungeon after the other by clicking “accept” sitting AFK somewhere not having to worry about set-up or peoples roles because the system is doing all that for you you ll stop valuing success or other people because of it. Its not a question of “if”. This WILL happen especially if you are a specc more in demand (so healers and tanks)
RDF helps with getting into dungeons or getting loot…no doubt about it but it seems like most people advertising for it lack the experience or willfully ignore the negative aspects of it.
So your suggestion that RDF would “enhance” the social aspect is simply not true
I played since Vanilla and there were dungeons I had never stepped in until RDF. It really did open up the game and let players experience all dungeons.
I mean it does suck when you can’t find a healer but as someone who misses RDF I will say I really love finding a good group organically.
I also really like running groups that don’t mind taking it rationally slow. I hate how the gogogogo mentality causes newer and returning players to have anxiety about a core part of the game.
whats the point? that already exists now with Group Finder and its not working. There arnt a big enough pool of players on each server to form a functioning dungeon system. And since people are so demotivated by the wait time to form a group, they dont even bother leveling or logging on at all, which just makes the pool even smaller. It absolutely NEEDS to be cross realm so instead of pulling from 2-10k players, its pulling from 400k or whatever the player count is at now. Would vastly change how active this game is just like it did back in real wrath when subscriber count exploded with its implementation. Not having it right now is intentional sabotage of classic on the devs part
