I’d have classic era with HC opt in taking that crown lol.
The thrill of 1 more level, still alive, I saw its appeal as I dabble there. After a spot of the soon av weekend, I will see if I can actually break 20! I got stupid on a level 19…and I was taught my lesson for it. Natural selection wow version lol.
The thing is…that is voluntary yet enforced solo play. Its players opting to take on rules of mostly solo.
right now on some wrath servers you can make a new blood elf and not even see the people to run the couple of 3 man quests for the intro run to 20-ish.
if you can’t get 2 people to fill a 3 man…5 is 2 more problem slots to fill.
I think most people would have been fine with the exclusion of RDF if Blizzard gave a compelling reason. However, the reason they gave was illogical and flimsy.
Its CTA AV weekend that cuts their reason to shreds. The place is packed for 3 days all times of the day.
Its not all bots either.
Lots of people partake of this instanced, qeued, teleporting event.
Even anti-rdf’ers. Some have tried to say its pvp so its different. I have not seen an angle they presented.
All I know is my hunter will be in some place in wrath between matches killing crap to level her pet between AV hits. AV is not really good for pet levelings you see.
I like my pet so don’t mind I will make up like 3-4 levels on the 80 ding. I spam quests at 80 anyway with deadly/hateful gear. The extra gold since no longer needing xp happens anyway. The pet can catch up will happen anyway lol.
You can queue Arenas and BGs cross-realm. You cannot raid cross-realm… (of course this is a recent change).
I think that a major difference of perspective with regards to the socialization aspect of not having RDF is that the massive populations we have on servers make it so that it’s much more rare to run into the same people, even while doing the same content than it would be if the population sizes were much, much smaller. So, people looking at it from the perspective of a mega-server population may not see any difference in social interaction and how that would change versus those on smaller servers, even if that’s a minority of the overall playerbase.
Having said that, nobody seems to be pushing for smaller server sizes, and today’s WoW player seems to want convenience of grouping for content over roleplay and relationships in the online game world. While this seems to be exactly what Retail has prioritized, the whole, “Go to Retail” seems to miss the points that people playing Classic want to enjoy Classic content and classes, and of course that RDF was originally added during Wrath.
If they removed the restriction of guilds, trading items, and grouping for content cross-realm, then that would also be removing any barriers for continuing and encouraging social interactions between players in cross-realm instanced content, such as RDF could bring.
I’m not pro-RDF (not particularly anti-RDF), but if they moved all cross-realm grouping restrictions, I think they’d effectively remove any argument I would make against RDF, as well as potentially resolve a lot of the issues around realm populations.
Majority of who we talk to is discord friends or groups or guild.
People outside your circle are mostly irrelevant.
Which is why its odd, knowing all of that why people argue LFG adds any form of socializing.
It doesnt, no one really talks in dungeons and thats fine because im not trying to meet my wifes new boyfriend in the SM group and im trying to get the dungeon done, typing would slow that down.
My stance there. I don’t have the APM of pro a rts/moba player lol.
I can tell you how my day was.
Or I can put out dps.
Pick 1. the best I can do for play and chat is stuff like “4 inc GM”. “5 inc IBT”. ye olde pvp shorthand.
And yeah…discord. The wonderful place I can see retail contacts, wrath contacts, and now classic era HC contacts as I dabble here and there. Guild has discord? well then what’s the link.
Games aren’t a marriage lol. You must be wrath and this chat is not what some do really…
i just returned to wotlk classic with toons that were abandoned after the initial launch of vanilla classic
there was plenty of socialization and grouping and random quest grouping early and if one happened to be part of the initial wave of players leveling
but once that initial wave washed past then the server became a ghost town and resembles what may posters refer to as the “single player leveling experience”
from my old and vague memories or original wotlk as a casual i really liked reaching northerend and being able to queue for a random dungeon as i leveled
doing that ridiculous dungeon flying on the dragons, or the one with the jousting, and the azol nerub spider dungeon, etc
i played as a dps only back then so i took what i could get
—-
as i sit today and level this 50 something druid i dont think i will even get in a dungeon before my 1 month sub expires
maybe if i get to outland and maybe find a group that wants to speed run a couple of the tbc dungeons
but it really feels like wrath classic is a single player leveling experience on one hand and an 80 endgame gearscore cluster zonk on the other
i havent tried to be proactive in organizing a group (only been playing for a couple or play sessions) and that might help in getting groups
but that spontaneous “social experience” isnt happening because there is or isnt dungeon finder- it is a different time and place