Disagree, it is more infuriating when someone has to leave or gets disconnected… LFG affords IRL taking priority, where manually forming a group and having to travel to the dungeon is far too punishing for people with actual responsibilities. It is not about being a casual player, it is about having a defined schedule for a raid group, then on off nights wanting to spend an hour or two in dungeons or arenas. LFG makes that possible, whereas I feel if LFG didn’t exist people would literally just not log on on off nights.
You keep saying “you” like you think this applies to me and everyone else. Not everyone operates on the sunk-cost principle. I have met my fair share of people who were irate from the start of the dungeon because it took so long and they now had a short amount of time to get through the content because their play time was dominated by having to spam the chat with LFG messages.
I strongly disagree with your notion that people are universally more well-behaved after having to wait to put a group together.
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If you really want to improve the social component of the game, put hubs outside every single dungeon that are 100% across all realms for people to assemble parties at. Outside that, not having LFG is straight up stupid.
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If someone is cool in a cross server group you can add them as a friend and play with them in all content whenever they’re on just like you do with same server friends.
Yep. If I had to assign a “social destruction score,” then an “automatic group finding tool” itself only gets 4/10 points. It’s not good, but automating things instead of having chat spam and an addon to sort it all is appealing. This is assuming it was only “server-based” LFG.
The cross-realm aspect of LFG, though, gets 10/10 social destruction points. As you point out, that’s when the “I’ll never see these people again” mentality sets in. No incentive to make friends, no incentive to be ethical. Your group members are no longer people, but adversarial robots. You need the robots to get through the dungeon and acquire loot, but they’re also your competitors, because they’ll roll “need” on everything too.
Those addons should be bannable, just cause the spam (same with that whisper/g-invite spam one)
There are advantages and disadvantages to both systems, not saying the Classic way is inherently better. I was challenging someone on the idea that spamming LFG is social engagement, and I pointed it out that it, specifically, was not, but that due to the way the system works there is a certain social engagement created due to the way the game as a whole is designed.
I haven’t played much FF14, but that game is apparently designed in a way that promotes a ton of positive social interaction. People praise it because it’s designed in a way that seems reward positive social interaction, it’s practically memeworthy at this point. Whereas you look at the way Retail is designed and people are challenging why the game is designed in a way that punishes people which causes a toxic environment.
If we can’t acknowledge that the way the game is designed is going to influence behavior then we don’t have a lot to talk about here. Retail’s system certainly promotes good use of IRL time to get stuff done, but I think that comes at the cost of social interaction.
Neat.
Anyways, I’m over here playing Classic and been experiencing exactly what I’m describing. I’ve met casual/nice people in pug M+ who are relaxed about wipes, and I’ve met tools in Classic who get mad over a single wipe. I can give you broad generalizations based on my experience, but obviously there are are always exceptions.
Ok, your own experiences are a demonstrable contradiction of the belief that the lack of a dungeon finder somehow makes people more sociable. I think we can both agree that removing that option doesn’t actually have the intended effect. If anything, it just reduces the number of people who are willing to participate in the content because standing around spamming the chat is so… so boring.
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“Level 10” = fresh out of the starting zone, not “mythic+ 10”.
I have never understood the mentality that “when I started everybody I saw was on our server and we had to work together to learn how to play the game, now most of those people have left the game, everybody know all the basic stuff, and I can’t treat people on other servers like human beings and make friends with them.”
That’s a you problem. You have chosen not to be sociable and treat others well.
If that’s what you want to believe then you do you.
Because, by and large, people are crappy. The more anonymous and less watched they think they are the more willing they are to be crappy or look the other way. It’s been studied to death, and shouldn’t surprise anyone.
If Blizzard said they were going to implement some sort of system that would internally rank players based on a bunch of different social metrics and this ranking would impact various aspects of gameplay, and a higher ranking would result in better benefits…even if it was absolutely fake but players thought it was real tons of people would clean up their act simply because they would be operating under a belief that that they were now being watched.
If there is a chance you’ll see someone again, the rules of the game change. Now it’s in everyone’s best interest to ensure that happiness is maximized (easier to find another group), and that everyone agree to only take what they actually “need” (more likely you get your items when the time comes, the power of the group is also maximized). It’s not that complicated.
I would say that people who hang out on the internet are inherently less sociable than people who make friends in real life and hang out with them there. The early game was a special place that cannot be recreated by trying to force people to spam “LFM” in the group finder and walk to a dungeon they already know because they’ve done it many times.
They would figure out soon enough if there were no consequences for bad behavior. Level 1 trade chat spammers are back on many realms. It appears the rules are not being enforced.
We see often the claim that “being a ‘bad player’ is toxic behavior that should be punished”. I see this as a direct result of the emphasis on an esports mentality that attracts players who want to win at all costs and have little tolerance for those who they see as playing the game wrong.
If you see it in your own best interest to treat people poorly because they didn’t start wow with you on your server 18 years ago and you may never see them again, that’s still a you problem. Wow cannot and should not force a large number people to play on your server so you will be surrounded by people you will see again. You really want people to be forced onto your server and made to play with you?
The idea that people in Classic didn’t leave groups that weren’t working out because they’d have to walk back from Maraudon is nonsense.
To an extent yeah, but the social ramifications of anonymity and how people change their behavior based on their environment isn’t inaccurate. It’s not the only variable to consider, but it is a major factor. Classic and Retail both appeal to players who have enjoyed the exact same game in different time periods, but the social differences in each version of the game is pretty stark.
So what you’re saying is they’d adapt their behavior based on a belief, and then once they realized that belief was not accurate they would revert?
Seems to prove my point.
Monday comes back once a week, December comes back once a year.
Social will come back eventually 
When there’s everything to gain from being a jerk, and nothing to lose. Yes. That’s what I’m saying. There is no need to be community-minded when you literally don’t have and can’t have a community (Cross-realm LFG).
Also I’m not forcing anyone to be on this server, everyone chose classic and this server (the best one) for a reason. It’s got a very healthy population. No need for LFG.
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No
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Go play Classic then
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Stop trying to ask to remove QOL.
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the addon doesnt also teleport you to the dungeon.
Man, if you like taking 3 months to level a character NOTHING is stopping YOU from choosing the way you like to play.
This anti-choice crowd hasn’t leveled the account limit of 50 yet.
That’s a shame. Maybe more people wouldn’t get lost on their way to RFK. That’s a hell of a hike.
Agreed. Dropped retail altogether. If LFG comes back to WOTLK, I’ll be there.