Well, it would require more work to get it viable at the start then blizzard is likely willing to put in.
they would probably conveniently forget to lower the internal ilvl requirements and it would be nearly impossible to queue for heroics.
I get what you’re… getting at, but because everyone is going to be doing dungeons at the start it’s not really needed because groups will be a dime a dozen.
Agreed. I started playing WoW halfway through WotLK, and using LFD was literally my WotLK experience.
You dont think its important to be vocal about a major change in the game that was poorly communicated?
Thats all your server does lol
i mean, the wrath experience is basically just ulduar and then icc, so… dungeon finder was a big part. lol
LFG was pure failed retail game design and I’m glad they aren’t implementing it. If you rolled on a megaserver and have 0 sense of community then that’s your own problem. The problem is that people don’t talk to one another enough as is, the solution definitely isn’t to add a tool to prevent them communicating at all. I’d be fine with it being implemented alongside ICC however if there’s actually demand for it.
There’s a bit of demand, yes
I’ve been extremely vocal about LFD and I am for giving the majority of the community what they want and that seems to be an authentic and organic Wrath experience. If that means waiting until ICC then I think most people are fine with that. I am.
Saying this only strengthens the case that dungeon finder is unnecessary.
We’ll just have to agree to disagree there. To me, those are shining examples of Blizzard desecrating the spirit and memory of the game for quick profit. It doesn’t make much sense to get into that argument in this thread, but just know that I brought it up because it was a very important and contentious point for many of us and the answer we got was that promises made in 2018 didn’t apply to anything but Vanilla Classic.
That being said, there’s little sense in arguing that leaving dungeon finder out of Wrath Classic constitutes a lie. If it does, that ship sailed literally years ago.
Hard agree there!
Vanilla Classic is a perfect example of how things will go poorly if the game isn’t retrofitted to plug certain holes though. Unfortunately the world buff meta ruined the experience for a lot of people. We almost had a similar situation with Drums of War, but they rightfully decided that no changes would ironically result in a very different experience.
Don’t be sorry, the whole point is to have a discussion! About the “it was in Wrath” and “Wrath was based on a build that had dungeon finder already”, I’ve already addressed those points at the end of the thread.
As for it being I’m the game long enough, I’ve also spoken to it. Just from a factual, statistical point of view, anti-dungeon finder wins. The majority of the Wrath experience happened without dungeon finder, both in quantity of time AND quantity of content.
I appreciate that this might not mirror the experience you personally had with Wrath, but we can’t just ask for changes to be made to everyone’s experience just to fit your personal experience. I played all of Wrath from beginning to end and adding dungeon finder on launch would change my experience.
So what’s the solution when everyone has a different experience? Literally everyone had a different experience. Who chooses which experience is the “correct” one?
The solution would be to use the original design philosophy as a cornerstone for bringing Wrath back today, regardless of the overlap of peoples’ personal experience or lack thereof.
Well put and constructive thread about the issue. Sadly it will be drowned out by people who will just yell for what they want assuming that LFG was always a cornerstone of WoTLK.
Yeah. It’s definitely sad to see how little actual discussion has been going on and how much insult hurling has been happening in its place.
Awesome post OP.
I think the biggest thing for me is; How much is having it in the game impacting you?
Without it, personally, it has destroyed the very thing I was excited about; Levelling alts without paying for boosts/replaying content I’ve done so many times over.
My biggest take away from the debate is the ratio is way off when it comes to the enjoyment of players having it in or out of the game. I think both parties make great points, yes, but ultimately adding it to the game will piss less people off. If they announced RDF was being added from pre-patch I highly doubt the response from the Anti-RFD would be similar to the Pro-RDF we’re seeing now.
Can we just look at features with pros and cons. Why does it have to be exactly like in the past? OK, the LFD only existed for 40% of the time. This is 2022, we can do better. The developers should think through which feature they want to change and why.
The removal of LFD is said to preserve players’ interaction. The disenchant button isn’t added for the same reason. However, the 2022 player base no longer interacts like in 2009. Trying to enforce something that no longer exists is a very weird take.
It’s like an old man wishing shopping malls to be vivid like back in their days. Now we have online shopping and self-checkout kiosks; that day may come back only if you banned the internet. Everyone would socialise more, the mall would be crowded, but everyone would be just miserable.
Comparing LFD to the internet is extreme, but I hope you get the main idea.
This Brian guy is like Lenin. He thinks that by making model utopian policies he can actually regulate people’s behaviour. Lets remove convenience so that people socialise… What a stupid take. The player base is the same with or without LFD.
This change is backward, full of nostalgia and wishful thinking. The community and interaction are not there to preserve anyway. The WOW developers are overall very disconnected from reality. I really want him to answer this simple question. How is his experience leveling and grouping before 70?
I’m also tired of the classic player base. Something is very sick inside their mind. Instead of making a better game, they like to live in the past, to play a version of the game like in their youth. Your argument about the original timeline is a symptom of this IMO
I hope they don’t add LFD to Wrath and stand their ground with their decision.
Finally a constructive post without all the feet stomping and childish yelling.
Watching the player base change - even just via the forums, from pre-beta Vanilla Classic reworkx2 to now, is comedy gold. I never really played Retail (panda xpac for a little maybe? or the housing one) so I don’t know what the typical player base attitude was like, but people didn’t say good things. But geezus, ya’ll are so much older and wiser compared to the noobs you were 20 years ago right? Listen to yourselves.
I’d imagine what a Retail forum would look like and draw parallels to what I’m reading from the Wrath crowd and the resemblance is uncanny. Except some of you folks are like 30+ years old.
I never played Wrath, but as TBC started the path toward Retail, it’s clear that the players behind Wrath put the pedal to the metal.
LfD doesn’t prevent players from communicating. There’s still a /party chat channel. I don’t see people talking in /party in the pugs I join. How about we just require each party member to type a certain amount of words in /party before they can attack a boss. That would solve the problem that you see.
Probably quite a bit more than I’m even capable of effectively communicating to you. A little while after dungeon finder was first implemented (probably around the Cataclysm pre-patch or sometime during Cataclysm’s official launch), I noticed a sharp decline in a certain quality of the game that made it so special. People talked so much less and started leaving the groups the instant the last boss was looted without saying a word. Running dungeons started feeling less like a cooperative effort and more like I was playing with bots. Increasingly over the next few years that I played WoW, it became more and more difficult to create groups manually whenever it was necessary and when I did, there was an overwhelming amount of people I played with who had no idea how to get to the dungeons and just sat there waiting for a summon. Questing zones started feeling totally empty and I often had to abandon every group quest I had picked up while I leveled.
The server(s) I played on had relatively healthy populations and faction balance in most cases (I routinely checked those metrics on WoW-progress), but fewer and fewer people wanted to do anything but AFK in a resting zone while waiting for a queue pop when they leveled alts. So leveling alts because way less fun for me. I don’t always need to be in a group with people while I level, but I certainly enjoyed it when /who would bring up a long list of people and I ran into them all the time. It was great being able to call for help when I needed it, or to be that help for another person. Also little interactions like buffing and emoting at people for no reason. Playing WoW used to feel a lot more like I was chilling with other people and it gradually felt more like I was just playing Skyrim.
I can see that many people on these forums see no merit in interactions and they often minimize it, but this conversation will never go anywhere until they can acknowledge that many people see a lot of value in it. The same thing goes for traveling the distance to the dungeon rather than just teleporting to it. Dungeon finder effectively removes the distances between places by trivializing it. Those of us who think the convenience was an unhealthy change have been forced to choose between just teleporting in or traveling in an empty world.
That’s the thing though – You speak as if Classic is meant to appeal to the majority of players. The whole reason why Classic exists is because, despite all of the money Activision made by forcing WoW down the path of Retail, an enormous number of players were sick of it. So much that they begged Blizzard for “Legacy servers” for a decade and decided to host private realms when they were continually denied.
Activision Blizzard was never going to fund the creation of a version of WoW without all the monetizations and “accessibility” or roll back all of the changes because modern Retail was astronomically more profitable. So they kept saying “No”. That is, until the number of people who wanted “Gameplay First” again grew to such a critical mass that Activision could no longer ignore how profitable appealing to that part of the playerbase would be.
Make no mistake, Classic is absolutely NOT meant for the majority of Activision Blizzard’s audience. Activision Blizzard understands their majority customer demographic very well. And that’s why Retail is what it is. The majority of people are “casual”, which is why the casual player has been the primary beneficiary of nearly every single significant change to WoW since Activision merged with Blizzard’s parent company in 2008.
Retail is what you get when WoW appeals to the majority of players.
See my second response to Floppy above; it applies all the same.
LFD doesn’t give any incentive to communicate let alone make it necessary like it currently is. You might not experience social situations (although I severely doubt you try and initiate a conversation) but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen to other people.
No, it doesn’t prevent people from communicating, but it trivializes the necessity of communication. People en masse will literally always favor the more convenient option. Therefore, trivializing the necessity of a thing effectively removes it from existence by and large.
I really don’t mean it as a jab at you, but I have to point out that you might just be the common denominator if you don’t personally see much player interaction happening. The arguments you make against the importance of the necessity for player interaction in Classic tell me that you’re not one of the people who see any value in it.
I swear I mean this with full respect and friendliness – The way you discuss the issue makes me think that you’re just not understanding the value that I see in player interaction. It’s one thing to understand me and disagree, but another thing entirely for my perspective to be completely lost on you.
I’m very interested in figuring out which one it is.
This problem runs waaaay deeper than “10 char”.
What do you want? Agonise people who want to eat cake and have fun?
I get it, Artificially creating friction will increase interaction. Let’s destroy cars so people can enjoy the scenic rides. Let’s ban smartphones so people socialise more.
Have you ever questioned why everyone would use LFD en mass? it’s simply better.
Social interaction should happen naturally if there is a need. The chitchat to form the group does not guarantee continued engagement once they are in. Removing LFD won’t force anyone to open up if the person chooses not to.
If you think there exists an audience who values “social interaction”, I’m sure you can join them, and do it the old way. LFD doesn’t stop you.
Social interaction does happen inside the dungeons with LFD. People can socialise when they are in, if they wish to.
I suggest we remove the AH too, lets’s use /2 trade chat for more interaction. I’m being extreme but you get my point. Wimping players and trying to ‘engineer’ society’s behaviour never worked.