Those methods would be far less effective and less ubiquitous to the playerbase though. And any LFG that is starved of players, dies.
I am currently leveling a couple of toons in retail and you’re correct. My “main” is 73 and outside of a city or LFG, I could count the number of other players I’ve seen on both hands. I’d only need one hand to count the number that have actually spoken to me.
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Uh… it will probably be a public discord channel very quickly if it is needed. A LFG discord addon, link Battle net account in Discord and bam it goes. Be a little more to it than that… but not much. And yes, most people will have discord already (if not they’d probably get it).
If you could have created those characters on a “pristine” seasonal server, would you? People are creating new characters all the time on retail realms. The problem is that they are all being created on different realms, so there can’t really be an community around those new characters. If you could roll on a server that was only for new characters (no gold inflation (no tokens), no heirlooms, no high levels characters) would you? If you knew that months down the road you could transfer that character to your “main” server with your other characters?
Uh… so, at that point why not just bake it into the actual game? You’re just moving the LFG UI into a third party interface so that you can maintain some “no changes” BS.
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Bingo! Agree.
I mean there are already wow addons in discord for guild/raid organization. Modify for public channel use and a little automation and you have LFG. Would be nice to have it ingame instead.
You could even try to schedule PUGs in advance. Probably wouldn’t work out to well but it might work some.
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Seasonal for Classic may be fun- get to do it all over again, so to speak. But I think the number of people would eventually recycle down to extinction/unsustainability.
As for retail, the biggest pisser for me is the level scaling throughout all of the zones and dungeons. There’s no reason to make everything else so faceroll, add numerous, pointless conveniences and time-saves, only to then make every zone on the leveling grind a complete slog. When I made my new toons, I was actually looking to do a slow burn leveling grind, no heirlooms, level professions at the same time, and even lock xp to finish out some zones/story arcs. About my mid-20s, I suddenly realized that everything I was fighting in Loch freaking Modan was also mid-20s. I checked the map and saw that all of the zones now scaled with level. YUCK. Who’s brilliant idea was this?
this would a better question to be asked on the general discussion forums
Back when WoW was in its early days, the “typical” player was probably in their teens or early 20’s, either in school or having just got out, with a relatively open schedule and plenty of time on their hands.
Fast forward to today. The typical WoW player is probably an adult in their 30’s or 40’s with a full-time career and a family. That time to walk between places just doesn’t exist in a practical sense for many of us anymore.
And in my opinion, the point of an RPG is to play a role. It doesn’t mean I literally live that person’s life. I don’t need to see them eating meals, taking a dump, etc. in order to feel “immersed” in a story. It’s the story itself that interests me.
And simple convenience is nothing at all the same as “having things handed to you.” Take raiding. The first boss in a raid today will probably have more mechanics than the final boss in a raid did back in Vanilla. The fights are more complex. It’s not “handing” anything to me because I can get to the raid entrance quicker.
I am totally ok with that because that generates discussion, community and interaction.
Because with something like Discord, the average player won’t use or need it. It’ll be limited in the same way that finding groups in Guild is limited to a specific group.
The issue is you’re seeing those as negatives which i don’t know if it says anything about you.
However i am pretty sure to the majority of people saying these. They see it as a positive.
Sorry, I was having a hard time following the threading. I thought you were arguing to keep it out of the WoW client, and just let it exist in Discord, which seems silly.
Actually seems like it would only serve to fragment the community and make it harder for everyone to find a group. Half are looking in General Chat, half looking in Discord, and the third “half” looking somewhere else.
I mean some community would probably arise around it, but Im talking about a discord bot on a public channel (for you realm/faciton) that you pop into, fill out a form that you want to be Healer/Tank/DPS for dungeon X and then it match makes you automatically with appropriate matches. Just Like LFG without the teleport. Discord already has your BNet chat/info. If they restrict an addon or 3rd party app from auto making the party ingame, then it wouldn’t be hard to manually do it for the matches.
But again, why not just add that interface in game.
Hey.
Dont make me waste time while i waste time wasting time standing still in an online mmo waiting for the boat to menethil.
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Because it becomes ubiquitous and required. You would have to manually make your group yourself, because Blizzard sandboxes the Addon environment, so you can’t bring in things from outside.
And in that manual making, you’d converse, realise that you got matched with the server ninja, and kick them. And then start managing your groups in chat in that discord instead of the tool.
I’ve got zero issue with a global chat channel in game for LFG. We used to have one in the later months of Vanilla. We don’t need automated matching, and all it does is remove the community from the equation.
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OK ill say this in parts.
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There can be plenty of chatting, conversing, community building with an automated LFG tool, in game or 3rd party.
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If a 3rd party tool is more convenient than the LFG channel then it WILL be made, and it WILL be used. Eventually creating a segregated community divided between the ones that know about the superior tool and those that don’t or refuse to use it.
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I think we both agree a segregated community isn’t a healthy thing.
That is may rational for saying:
Things that can’t be prevented, but will be wanted, should be integrated in-game. Now, I’ll admit I am making assumptions on the need or want for such a tool. But I think it is a solid assumption.
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Definitely not the case. That’s the argument for having everything in game.
LFG tools that do nothing but group you up, might be ok, depending on how they’re implemented. They’d need to pay attention to Ignore lists, allow you to kick people out after the join, join as a group etc.
But that’s no reason to make them baseline. In the same way that having extra bars or removing the Lions on the UI should happen because they can happen.
The whole point of the Addon interface was to allow you to customise your experience, and choose what you want to use. If you force people to use LFG, it becomes ubiquitous and we’ve already seen how it damaged the community in Wrath.
Having a tool that’s not much more than a /LFG channel isn’t necessarily bad, and definitely not required. When you make it baseline, and required, it becomes a problem. That’s why there’s such a kneejerk response to LFG tools. Not because an individual tool might be bad, but because every other instance has shown scope creep, and eventually when it became baseline, destroyed the community. No-one wants a repeat of the past.
Well time will tell. But it isn’t something you or blizzard gets to control. I understand your desire for not over automating the process, I share it, to some degree Blilzzard might understand it too when it comes to Classic. But reality is this game, like all others, does not exist in a vacuum.
Actually, its something Blizzard gets to control regarding the game. The best your Discord tool will give you is “Here’s a list of Character names to invite”. There is no way to cross-pollinate that information while the game is running. And if you make an in-game tool, Blizzard can and will control it.