Up till WotLK the game mostly focused on progressive game play. While there was many casuals in the game, the casuals didnt have many catch up mechanics or things they could actually do.
Blizz seen this was a problem and tried to correct this issue with Wrath at the start (BEFORE RDF WAS ADDED). They created an expansion where it was super easy to level alts with everything from heirlooms and also had many catch up mechanics, plus tons of daily quest casuals could do to get rep for many rewards.
The problem is maybe Blizz over corrected and it made the game more interesting to super casuals players who just didnt care or posses the skills needed for higher end content. So you often end up with those now super casuals in dungeons and even popping up into raids who had not spent enough time on their class to fully learn it clashing with the more hardcore progressive players. This is what lead to more toxic interactions.
The RDF tool only exposed this issue to many, when guilds started pugging a spot or two in dungeon runs using the tool. Progressive players would be like, hey lets run a dungeon, but just happen their tank for the most part was raid logging for example. So the guildies would que up, get some random moron that couldnt tank a bowel of Jello, or healer that didnt know how to heal with heavy pulls or on the go in the dungeon and it would end up pissing both sets of players off. Thus RDF didnt cause the issue, it just poured salt on an already festering wound.
This is why ADDING or NOT ADDING RDF now will have ZERO affect on the game in terms of making it more or less then social place. Anyone that has spent 5 minutes in /4 LFG channel knows this. If ANYTHING it will actually help the game. People just need to understand, they will often que up with a random player from time to time who does not posses your level of skill to play the game.
For me personally, I was amazed that I was playing this huge world with other people. I have tried since then to relive those moments but after years I realize I will never get them back. The wow culture is forever changed and no amount of wishful thinking can change that.
No, LFD was a good part of it since you didn’t have to socialize to do dungeons, which meant that people simply stopped bothering with it. More and more convenience and things that let players do things on their own (not necessarily a bad thing) lead to fewer people interacting because they didn’t have to anymore. The same with LFR, as this meant Blizzard focused most of their endgame on raids specifically and allowed interaction-less raiding.
The change in how people play these games are also a contributing factor, but brushing aside the effect LFD/LFR had on this isn’t accurate.
Please go back and read what I posted. My statement was the RDF had nothing to do with people becoming anti-social. It just exposed the issue to players who just had not become aware of the issue. The issue was Wrath being more friendly to super casuals. Blizzard trying to cater to two different audiences. Not RDF.
When Blizzard talks about immersion it’s referenceing the total involvment.
Social interactions are one thing, but world immersion is a whole other issue. Look at the complaints and forecast for when flying will be available in the next expansion.
As much as I love flying and my flying mounts, it 100% degrades immersion. Why spend anytime on ground work when players fly over it? Do I want them to remove flying?Absolutely not.
But if they did the basis of it’s claim wouldn’t be wrong.
why i totaly agree with this, and i agree on your claims But the real reason about wow being anti social game is all about “gold selling / buying & the boosts at every direction if it’s leveling boosts / arena boosts / gear boosts”
cus this game looks like a Chinese farmer dream and many players just play to get RMT from wow, while in same time that promoted many spenders to never actually play the game when they can simply buy anything from raids or where ever.
This was my experience. In Cata, we’d come out of a raid, doing our post-raid things, enchants, etc. And then someone would say, hey, let’s do a dungeon. ZG for example. So you look at the guild roster, and multiple people are already doing a dungeon finder ZG run and are unavailable. So those left are then forced to also use dungeon finder as well.
The convenience of dungeon finder allowed shy people to be anti-social and not interact with others. It’s like if a shy person goes to a dance. Instead of being forced to walk up to women and ask for a dance, which might lead to a girlfriend or marriage or lifelong true love… instead they are able to just press a button and a female-shaped automaton is generated to dance with them, disappearing afterward to never be seen again. The result is less social interaction, less love in the world.
It’s bad design for an MMO, IMO, where encouraging social interaction is kinda the whole point. It makes the game more of a single-player game and less of an MMO.
buying gold isn’t directly linked to anti-social but it’s a main reason which lead to no social at all, so if more than half the player base is buying boosts and gear would that not effect the social experience in general to everyone? maybe if you’re playing in closed circle it won’t matters to you but to any random player it does matter because boosts to leveling & gear means less chances for everyone to get group going anywhere.
and let me say that if suddenly everyone started buying gold to buy boosts(lvling/gearing), Then what’s left in such game? logging to do nothing? No playing No socializing
i have said before LFD in wrath is fine because its a joke of a PvE game for the most part with the content being overall easier than post nerf 1.12 Molten Core with 2.x talents during TBC pre-patch.
You can literally run at full speed from boss to boss AE’n everything down ignoring all mechanics smashing even the bosses with some trash in tow and it doesnt matter.
If there is ever an expansion where LFD fits right in, that be wrath of the litch king.
Now will I use LFD? Unlikely because i enjoy my sanity.
The game became anti-social directly because of LFD.
YOU CANNOT MAKE FRIENDS IN LOOKING FOR DUNGEON.
The members of your groups are cross-realm, you CANNOT use the Add Friend feature.
You are a disposable temporary member of a dungeon and you are treated as such.
New players to the game with LFD completely bypass any social cooperation and are treated badly from level 1.
and here lies the problem… the borrowed power, the skillgap and the temporary systems started exactly here: when the game tried unsuccesfully to drag the bags of potatoes uphill.
Well for #1 Borrowed and Temp power system didnt start till Legion.
and well #2, the damage has already been done. Removing RDF isnt going to make everyone become model citizens and nice to one or another.
Then explain why everyone is so anti-social now in TBC Classic? Do you actually play TBC Classic and have you actually spent any time at all trying to get dungeon group in /4 LFG channel. I assume you havent by your comments. Just so you know, LFG channel we have now is like barrens chat back from 2005, cranked up 10x times worse. People are constantly being trolled and harassed. If your a mage, people assume 99% of the time your a gold farmer and will not take you into a dungeon. If your a shaman, they will actually kick people from the dungeon to get you in since you bring so many buffs. I can go on and on about how broken /4 LFG is. But players like yourself insist on being blind to the issue instead.
in Retail, when you pug M+, there is a grace period of about 2 wipes before things could either stay constructive or go ape-censored. in Classic and TBC, similarly you get about 2-3 wipes until the spicy language might start.
in LFG… don’t wipe. or it’s happy hour at Shenanigans.
edit: note that M+ is xrealm. so it’s closer to LFG than anything in Classic or TBC.
But hey if they left it out of RDF (which they should keep it out) and just gave us the option in the difficulty setting Norma/Heroic/Mythic, I think it would be fun.
Hmm, yea there are some unique players in the game for better words.
