Let’s say that was true, and it was an even 50/50, assuming the goal of Classic is to reproduce to some degree the overall authentic experience, in general, I’d venture that the players who no life’d wrath and did all the content at patch cared less about LFD than those who started later. And the people who did do all the content at patch had a better perspective of what the overall experience was like.
The way I see it and not to say it wasn’t important, including LFD for alts, convenience, etc added less to the overall experience than not having it.
In short, it’s not about an individual players experience, but what the actual OVERALL experience was. And again, I have no horse in this race.
RDF was not there for more than 50% of the literal duration of the expansion.
So not only was it not there for a vast majority of the content rollout, it also wasn’t there for a majority of the actual time duration (even though this stat is cheating because Blizzard padded the last patch of this expansion by many months).
I played the entirety of Wrath. As I stated earlier, LFD was fine for what it was, when it was added. It was added in 3.3, it should be added in 3.3 again. It was added in the last raid tier when the majority of players had little incentive to dungeon otherwise. I was actively using it while raiding ICC, and even after getting full BIS on my main - I had no incentive to run dungeons otherwise and I still got the Looking For Multitudes achieve less than a month after it was added.
That’s at least 20 dungeons I healed on my pally that I had no other incentive for. Not even counting the dungeons I tanked on my DK, or DPS’d on my ele sham. Most if not all of my guildies and in-game friends did the same. All active raiders of current content.
LFD never should have been scaled up or applied to content other than 5 mans. That’s when it became a problem.
I think you missed my point where I was assuming that Blizzard wanted Classic to be some form of the overall authentic experience, that I’d lean towards not having LFD.
I’m not attacking LFD at all or saying it wasn’t useful or used.
Given a true 50/50 split whether or not it’s true, I personally would lean towards not having LFD being the true authentic OVERALL experience.
But the real bona-fide 100% authentic experience would be having it - in 3.3
That’s what the REAL wrath experience entailed. It shouldn’t even be a discussion of LFD or no LFD. It should be a discussion of when LFD.
Ultimately I think the discussion is pointless. I think the devs saying they’re not including it to protect some nebulous concept of ‘community’ is a bold-faced lie to cover up that they don’t have the technical capability to reproduce the LFD system from wrath in the current engine, and don’t want to invest the work required.
So while I wouldn’t be opposed to it being added in, like Corpseknife, I can’t find it in me to fault them for trying this out, and that’s especially because I never liked RDF either.
I’m not sure you understand the point of removing RDF, because it has nothing to do with dungeon incentivization or grouping accessibility.
I don’t even believe that theory is entirely full of that many holes either, but I can’t imagine this is something they’d need to lie to us about. They’ve been pretty open about “design limitations” in regards to other things so I don’t see why this particular feature somehow needs the conspiracy.
Ultimately I think the discussion is pointless. I think the devs saying they’re not including it to protect some nebulous concept of ‘community’ is a bold-faced lie to cover up that they don’t have the technical capability to reproduce the LFD system from wrath in the current engine, and don’t want to invest the work required.
LFD was perfectly fine for what it was, when it was. It never should have been scaled up or applied to other content than 5 man dungeons.
I mean, this is possibly the most controversial decision they’ve made in the entirety of classic.
What do you think would go down easier?
“We aren’t including a major system because we lack the skill to make it work”
or
“We aren’t including a major system because we just love our community so much”
There’s so many concessions or compromises or nerfs they could have made rather than axing it completely;
Introducing it in 3.3
No cross realm
No tele
Can’t queue unless you have the achieve earned from first clear
It’s so weird because cross-realm same faction PvP is fine but cross-realm same faction PvE is somehow toxic and detrimental enough to warrant killing off an entire system that was in the game, and widely used?
There’s a long discussion and I have tried to read the entire thing between you both. And for the record I have no issue with LFG provided it’s released alongside ICC like it originally was. But I disagree that a concept of community is nebulous and especially that they do not have the technical capacity. You are aware that classic is using the engine from legion right with Warden? And that LFG is already inbuilt into it and then removed? There’s no question if they COULD do it or not.
LFD was introduced, and existed in Wrath for the entire year when WoW had it’s peak subscribers. Rob Pardo (Lead Designer who went on to become the Chief Creative Officer) even stated that LFD resulted in more people running dungeons, leveling alts, and an increase in over all play time.
I think it’s very reasonable to assert that the majority of the active player base in wrath used LFD.
I was there. I genuinely don’t remember all the controversy people talk about now. That seemed to come later when it became the scape goat for LFR and welfare epics being fed to you at just the right interval to keep you in the skinner-box.
Its very weird to me that people are trying to preserve the current social experience of wow, which is basically none, i guess spamming a city for a tank for 2 hours and being whispered by some guys who’ll do it for 100g and all unneeded blues is the social life a lot of people are craving from wow. The systems are not the issue, the players are
It is extremely nebulous. Ask 10 different players what community is and you’ll likely get 10 different answers. For some people it’s being social in discord. For some it’s raiding with guildies. For some it’s doing PvP with friends and rivals. For some it’s putting together a group of rogues and griefing lowbies in cities. For some it’s sitting in barrens chat making xbox 360 jokes.
You will not convince me that “community” is spamming LFG for 45 minutes only to end up paying a tank/healer.
/w inv
/p sum pls
/p rdy?
/p gg ty mage port pls
Wow, so social, I really feel the sense of community.
LFG on my medium pop server at peak hours on a weekend is almost entirely people selling boosts, people looking for boost, or people advertising GKPs. People just have no incentive to run dungeons for fun. I main a healer and I still struggle to put together groups for the daily heroic. Guildies aren’t always available, or the tanks don’t want to drop another 100g on respecs because they spec different for arena between raids. People don’t want to come home from work and slog through a heroic for 3 badges.
We both play in a very similar community situation. I think there’s more horde on yojamba than Alliance on arugal. I 100% disagree about the sense of community not being a tangible or real thing for either of us especially in OCE. I can say at least for my server people clearly do enjoy the feeling of getting to know new people or taking their names down. Poaching, sh1t talk and funny crap happens all the times in dungeons too.
I just had a good friend of mine swap from Arugal Alliance to Yojamba Horde to play his warlock there because he said it was a good and tight community of nice people. So I don’t buy your argument about the community being nebulous in or out of LFG and i’ve seen evidence that it’s alive and well.