WOTLK doesn't need RDF

[Aurumai-whitemane]

@Elorael-remulos

I’d really love to know what you define as the negative aspects of “Retail” because you throw that term around like it’s the devil.

Retail just didn’t feel like WoW to me anymore. It looks totally different, it plays totally different, leveling is different, running dungeons is different, the amount of busy work is different. It felt like everything was tuned for maximal convenience, yet somehow also bloated to an absurd degree. It just didn’t feel satisfying anymore, even when I was accomplishing tasks and goals. The experience just felt kinda sterile and watered down by pure quantity. I dislike how fast everything is. I dislike how gear is earned. I dislike how the specs were unlocked and your gear automatically changed to suit it. I disliked that everything is account-wide, and any semblance of my individual characters’ accomplishments and uniqueness were dilluted because they were distributed across all of my characters. I disliked that transmog and account-wide gear appearances removed any sense of what a character was wearing or what they had to accomplish to wear it. I disliked that the sheer number of mounts, pets, achievements, toys, etc made it feel so much less rewarding when I got a new one to throw onto the pile. I dislike the there’s a Blizzard-endorsed way to buy gold with real money and then spend that gold on literally anything in the game including gear, achievements, PvP rank, etc. I disliked the direction they took the lore. Man, there’s a lot of stuff.

That being said, it’s not “the devil”. It’s just not for me anymore. It’s pretty obvious that I don’t like it, but what makes you say I throw that term around like it’s “the devil”? xD

@Feywaif-atiesh

That’s what you’re asking now but that’s not the question you asked me. My answer was to your original question

I still think you’re misunderstanding my question. Maybe I can break it down even further, I might not have explained myself well enough:

• [X audience] likes “Old WoW” (roughly speaking, Vanilla to Wrath. Maybe some Cataclysm)
• Many people in [X audience] dislike Retail (roughly speaking, WoW after Wrath/Cataclysm)
• There are many changes that happened in WoW which led to “Old WoW’s” evolution into what most would call Retail.

If we took every single one of those changes that [X audience] thinks were pivotal in “Old WoW” turning into Retail and ranked them from most significant to least, do you believe that Dungeon Finder would be in the top 5? Top 10? Or do you think it’s hardly at the forefront of their minds when it comes it?

I’m asking you what your perspective is on the people who tend to want less changes and often talk more about “authentic experience”. I’m curious to know how much you may understand the other side of things. I’m not asking and I never asked whether you personally liked Dungeon Finder or thought it was a good change for WoW. I want to know what your perspective is on the people who tend to be called “purists” here.

@Ziryus-pagle

And this is the issue, people like to scape goat LFD as the problem because it was highly visible.

This is a very nuanced conversation, and we have to be very specific about word usage here, please bear with me. Do you actually mean the singular problem? Or a problem among many? I don’t think I’ve witnessed a single person on these forums who would call Dungeon Finder the problem as you put it.

Just to be clear, the very part of my post you’re replying to here is me explicitly saying that Dungeon Finder is not the problem.

@Ziryus-pagle

But don’t want to look at deeper issues why the problems they blame on LFD actually happened and how retail ended up where it is. Some of which we’re seeing in classic despite 3 years of no LFD.

It’s a case of correlation does not equal causation, LFD happened to come out before Cata which had a lot of other less visible but actually far more damaging changes in it. So people like to glom onto LFD as the problem.

What issues are you referring to? Dungeon Finder happens to be the single topic that I and many people here have been talking about the most lately, but I’ve brought up other problems many times during these discussions.

[Ziryus-pagle]

@Aurumai-whitemane

@Ziryus-pagle

And this is the issue, people like to scape goat LFD as the problem because it was highly visible.

This is a very nuanced conversation, and we have to be very specific about word usage here, please bear with me. Do you actually mean the singular problem? Or a problem among many? I don’t think I’ve witnessed a single person on these forums who would call Dungeon Finder the problem as you put it.

Just to be clear, the very part of my post you’re replying to here is me explicitly saying that Dungeon Finder is not the problem.

It’s possible to reply to someone’s post in agreement not just to argue. And yes that’s entirely correct there is a lot more going on than just LFD. But I see a lot of people who don’t want LFD laying all the problem retail has squarely at the feet of LFD. With no acknowledgement that LFD solved a lot of very real problems for a lot of people, problems which exist today in classic or that “muh community” by and large doesn’t exist anyways for many in classic.

@Aurumai-whitemane

@Ziryus-pagle

But don’t want to look at deeper issues why the problems they blame on LFD actually happened and how retail ended up where it is. Some of which we’re seeing in classic despite 3 years of no LFD.

It’s a case of correlation does not equal causation, LFD happened to come out before Cata which had a lot of other less visible but actually far more damaging changes in it. So people like to glom onto LFD as the problem.

What issues are you referring to? Dungeon Finder happens to be the single topic that I and many people here have been talking about the most lately, but I’ve brought up other problems many times during these discussions.

Cata introduced a number of changes that were quite detrimental, keep in mind LFD was out in wrath for over a year with no problems, but those aren’t as easy to pin down as ZOMG LFD Evil!!!

Guild perks, these were absolutely devastating to smaller guilds as they weren’t just fluff that was easy to ignore, some of the stuff there was really really broken like mass summons, mass rez, gold flow, a number of rep/honor/exp/profession bonuses etc…

Merging 10/25 mans. Having those separate had created a pretty vibrant raid pugging experience in Wrath that lead to a lot of interaction between more serious raiders and casual players. That disappeared over night. And there also weren’t filler raids like ZG/AQ20/Kara/ZA to fill in that gap.

Something that gets over looked, changing to the Valor point system which had a weekly cap shared with raids. Instead of a daily dungeon. Which generally lead to people not logging in as often, can’t be social if you aren’t in game.

[Xanthak-durotan (Xanthak)]

Just nitpicking, but imo “old wow” would encompass Vanilla and TBC only.

“Wrath baby” existed for a reason.

[Shay-grobbulus]

@Zipzo-atiesh

Realistically, not having RDF isn’t going to be that big of a deal.

Couldn’t agree more. I feel this change actually preserves the “spirit of classic” and that it’s more of a good gesture than a bad one. Take away what began to make WoW modern and keep it CLASSIC.

Just kind of makes me scratch my head as to why they’d do this yet continue to sell level boosts and such…

[Lowstrung-old-blanchy]

There are plenty of aspects of retail that have nothing to do with RFD I find negative. The classes and gameplay are drastically different post wrath. The fact that gear started to become randomized was the beginning of the loot treadmill it is today. If I wanted to play Diablo, I’d play Diablo. The entire world of world of warcraft changed and the lore transitioned to something that became more and more hyperbolic and unintelligible.

The last half of Wrath was the most fun I had in the wow franchise (I quit about 2 months into cata as it wasn’t my bag anymore). RDF was actually a big part of that fun. It enabled me enjoy dungeons of all types in a time frame that fit with my available time. I’m older now and have even less available time.

I don’t mind having to wait for a group. I do mind having to wait 2+ hours for a group and being locked out of doing anything else while waiting. If my guild tanks or healers aren’t on or are busy doing their own thing, why should that be the “end of my playtime” as well? How does having RFD detract from your enjoyment of the game? The community is already borked.

RFD might even make things better as all the players who are fed up with the state of the community will likely flock to RFD and be quite happy doing it. They might even be more willing to socialize since the people they’d be grouping with would have been in the same hellish boat for the last 3 years.

[Heyford-muradin]

@Zipzo-atiesh

Realistically, not having RDF isn’t going to be that big of a deal. I see you, people who are threatening to cancel their 4 accounts over it, but the most folks aren’t interested in WOTLK because it has RDF. They’re interested in the raids, the PvP, the class mechanics, Death Knights, the dailies, and other major elements.

You don’t realize how important reputation is in Wrath and the only way to get some of the reps is to run dungeons. No LFD is fine if you rush and get your reps done as soon as possible, but if you are a slow leveler or playing an alt after you’ve got your main set it won’t be enjoyable since you’ll have to do what we do now, watch and spam the LFG channel until you get a group, which can be 30 minutes, an hour or two hours. Leveling, gearing and getting reputations on your main will take a few weeks, but doing it on your second alt will take months most of which will be standing some place watching and spamming the LFG channel looking for a group.

@Zipzo-atiesh

RDF barely existed for much of WOTLK’s active content rollout.

That’s not a good reason not to have it. We didn’t have fire for centuries either, but the world is much better with it.

[Croofus-remulos]

The reasons I don’t like Retail, and DO like TBC Classic (and am looking forward to Wrath Classic), have nothing to do with LFD. I will definitely still play Wrath Classic, even if they don’t introduce the LFD. As the OP said, the reasons I’m looking forward to Wrath Classic are the zones, music, dungeons, Wintergrasp, raids, and the Lich King himself. I am fully pumped.

However… I ALSO believe that Wrath Classic will be made better by a judicious use of LFD. There are problems already occurring in TBC Classic – not with the Outlands dungeons, but with the levelling dungeons. Boosting. The difficulty of getting groups together for certain dungeons (BFD, for example). For these dungeons, at any rate, LFD would be a genuine boon. It would make the game better.

[Drofftank-faerlina]

I can solve everyone’s problems since there is such a break between no changes and blah blah blah. How about they can decide if it comes out when it is suppose to come out which is the ICC phase. I don’t really understand why people would think it would of came out at the beginning of the expansion anyway when it wasn’t there in the first place. If your answer is well I assumed, well maybe next time don’t make assumptions.

[Zaalg-mankrik]

They said it won’t be in Wrath at all. That’s not an assumption.

However, then they said they’ll tinker with it and ‘improve’ it and who knows what the Hell that means. But do you have faith in 2022 Blizzard not to screw it up?

They had a winning formula. They have the biggest mmo ever designed for them already. All they had to do was release it like it was. And they couldn’t manage that.

[Drofftank-faerlina]

Everyone is crying it isn’t going to be out at launch though regardless it came out towards the very but end of the expansion.

[Dumbcake-westfall]

There is going to be a huge surge at the beginning of wrath. How long are people going to last when they either wait an hour to find a willing tank or pay for one like in TBC?

If they wait a year to add convenience (Dual spec, LFD) the lost subs won’t be there.

@Drofftank-faerlina

I don’t really understand why people would think it would of came out at the beginning of the expansion anyway when it wasn’t there in the first place.

Launch class balancing is the 3.3.5 version, not launch version. So… why not have all it’s features?

[Bloomsday-sulfuras]

@Dumbcake-westfall

Launch class balancing is the 3.3.5 version, not launch version. So… why not have all it’s features

Because people want to experience the progression from patch to patch authentically.

With your logic, why don’t they just launch with ICC as well?

[Zaalg-mankrik]

@Drofftank-faerlina

Everyone is crying it isn’t going to be out at launch though regardless it came out towards the very but end of the expansion.

Listen, I could name dozens of systems in Vanilla and TBC that weren’t implemented until the end of the game’s lifetime but were there at the beginning of the Classic versions. So that argument is utterly irrelevant.

However, if Blizz chooses to do that, then that’s fine. And that seems to be the prevailing sentiment around here. Authenticity does matter and a lot of people value it. I think LFD should be there from the start (with some adjustments to the rewards), but if it’s not then it should definitely be added when it was originally. It’s that simple.

Here’s a better way of looking at a Wrath Classic server. Imagine it’s mid 2010 and Blizz adds a new server. That is what we’re playing. Really the only difference is they’re staggering content release. But are content and systems the same thing? Why put in some systems, but not others?

The when it gets added isn’t so much the issue. It’s the fact they removed it completely and announce some new and improved version of lfg. Which, quite frankly, doesn’t inspire a lot of hope. This is quintessential Blizzard making an issue where none existed to begin with.

[Ziryus-pagle]

@Drofftank-faerlina

I can solve everyone’s problems since there is such a break between no changes and blah blah blah. How about they can decide if it comes out when it is suppose to come out which is the ICC phase. I don’t really understand why people would think it would of came out at the beginning of the expansion anyway when it wasn’t there in the first place. If your answer is well I assumed, well maybe next time don’t make assumptions.

Because LFD doesn’t apply to just the ICC dungeons and has nothing ICC specific about it, it’s used for all wrath dungeons as well as earlier dungeons.

So yeah it’s very reasonable to want it at the start of the expansion.

[Dumbcake-westfall]

@Bloomsday-sulfuras

Because people want to experience the progression from patch to patch authentically.

What? It’s 15 year old content. There aren’t going to be any exciting discoveries on the line here.

@Bloomsday-sulfuras

With your logic, why don’t they just launch with ICC as well?

Not my logic at all. Class balancing is set to 3.3.5, so they already tossed out the patch to patch progression you claim you want so bad. If you want Wrath like is was you should be mad as heck that by adding 3.3.5 balancing it’s deviating from the original progression.

You took a shot and ending up contradicting yourself in the same paragraph. Kind of impressive really.

[Drofftank-faerlina]

Listen I don’t think it should be released at launch, I wouldn’t be opposed for it to be released for classic vanilla dungeons however, but not for TBC and WOTLK dungeons. You also state about dozens of systems about systems being in at the beginning and calling that part of my discussion irrelevant, but it is relevant. This is the reason people were expecting it and making the assumption it would be in the game at launch. The real issue that people miss out is the fact that there is now a global channel that exists instead of using the current LFG system which I will say is garbage. So instead what would really make a difference would be the removal of world chat and instead put in dungeon listings where they are suppose to be done. If that happened then you could do all your quests and everything while waiting for a group would it not?

[Drofftank-faerlina]

It isn’t reasonable and in fact isn’t intelligent by any factor to put it in at the beginning. It was originally put in to help gear alts or new characters catch up by easily finding groups along with helping out low pop servers.

[Ziryus-pagle]

@Drofftank-faerlina

It isn’t reasonable and in fact isn’t intelligent by any factor to put it in at the beginning. It was originally put in to help gear alts or new characters catch up by easily finding groups along with help ing out low pop servers.

There are going to be low pop servers at launch

Since blizzard refuses to do anything about them.

And there will be pre wrath dungeons at launch as well.

[Drofftank-faerlina]

Listen I am all for putting it in for vanilla dungeons to help out the grouping for it, but there was free transfers for low pop servers awhile ago not to mention the low pop argument could be solved with the same thing as free transfers. No reason to punish players with putting it in because blizzard doesn’t want to deal with it. I dont think it should be in for TBC and WOTLK dungeons though.

[Croofus-remulos]

@Drofftank-faerlina

It was originally put in to help gear alts or new characters catch up by easily finding groups along with helping out low pop servers.

I always thought it was an attempt to revive the Vanilla and TBC dungeons. By the time LFD was introduced, it was almost impossible to get one of these dungeons. I still think that judiciously implementing LFD for Classic (1-60) dungeons at launch would be hugely beneficial to people levelling alts.

By comparison, I couldn’t care less if they brought in LFD for Northrend (70-80) dungeons. I’ll be running them with or without LFD, just as I’m running Outlands dungeons now.