WOTLK doesn't need RDF

[Robocannon-yojamba]

I’ve been on Yojamba since classic released, I’ve raided every tier as it was current, and spent a lot of time in BGs, and have been doing arena in TBC.

There is a lot of social interactions in same faction, and some good rivalry cross faction. Although if you asked me to name 5 Alliance players, I probably couldn’t.

All of the ‘community’ that I can identify with was born as a result of guild interaction, or PvP interaction. Neither of these things as they are would be impacted by LFD if introduced as and when it was. LFG on Yojamba is almost entirely boosts and GKPs. Hardly anyone runs dungeons.

We have a system for PvP where you can AFK queue in your chosen city to be thrown into a group with strangers from other servers to earn currency to buy purples (which wasn’t in TBC). But a system for PvE where you can AFK queue in your chosen city to be thrown into a group with strangers from other servers to earn currency to buy purples (which was in wrath) is somehow detrimental for the community let alone the game? I just don’t buy it.

LFD in 3.3 please.

[Bumjockey-arugal]

I dislike the cross realm PVP and I have said on these forums I didn’t want US merged with OCE arena queues and such because of it. But that doesn’t mean adding in a tool to make PVE content a soulless grind with 0 reason to ever interact is a good idea. You and I have both seen this product in retail, nobody ever talks to one another on the oceanic battlegroup with LFD. I at least get to talk to some people currently and sometimes even join their discord and make friends. They even began adding ESL speakers to the LFD queue to the stage where you literally couldn’t interact with other people remember? Americans leaving because of high ping sound familiar? It sucked.

I’d still be fine with LFG alongside ICC (I don’t say 3.3 because wrath will technically launch on patch 3.3.3) but still you have to admit that LFD within OCE was never good. And frankly the dungeon queue times aren’t that bad either for me on arugal, idk about Yojamba but it can’t be that much worse.

[Zalanii-faerlina]

So we should have dual spec at launch but not LFD?

[Kelgar-the-scryers (Kelgar)]

no body wants to answer why they dont want it…lmao

[Robocannon-yojamba]

I dislike the cross realm PVP and I have said on these forums I didn’t want US merged with OCE arena queues and such because of it.

What do you mean? That week or so of fighting what felt like bots in AV was a great change of pace from zerging each other’s base.

You and I have both seen this product in retail, nobody ever talks to one another on the oceanic battlegroup with LFD.

I really think this is people retro-actively applying slippery-slope fallacy. I’ve said so many times; LFD was fine for what is was, when it was added. It never should have been scaled up, it never should have been applied to any content other than 5 man dungeons. The state of retail is a result of compounding design decisions from multiple expansions that all happened after wrath. They systematically dismantled the need for guilds, garrisons killed off hubs, LFR turned what should have been end game content that required you to coordinate and interact into an easy mode face roll. Systems on systems compounding to reward people for not being social and chasing rewards as efficiently as possible. People look at this chain of events and instead of treating it like the succession of screwups it was, they got all the way back to LFD and pin all the blame on it. LFD wasn’t the problem. It never should have been scaled up or out.

They even began adding ESL speakers to the LFD queue to the stage where you literally couldn’t interact with other people

You mean like OCE where you actively have to filter out entire guilds of Indonesian gold farmers / bots and half the pugs you put together will be 3/5 mages and hunters that can’t speak english? Hell, I’ve run ZA’s recently where pug tanks clearly didn’t understand us in discord.

I’d still be fine with LFG alongside ICC (I don’t say 3.3 because wrath will technically launch on patch 3.3.3)

ICC and LFD was 3.3.0. 3.3.3 was when they gave BGs the LFD/RDF treatment.

you have to admit that LFD within OCE was never good

I was on Thaurissan during Wrath. I’m being completely genuine when I say I can’t remember many, if any negative experiences with LFD. I remember one time a hunter swiped a weapon I wanted from a heroic. That’s it. I used LFD as a holy pally, DK tank, and ele sham.

And frankly the dungeon queue times aren’t that bad either for me on arugal, idk about Yojamba but it can’t be that much worse.

You’re mostly reliant on guildies for groups on Yojamba (at least this is my experience since everyone grinded to 70 on release). I can send you screen caps of bulletin board at peak hours to show you it’s almost entirely boosts and GKPs. I feel bad for DPS because the few times an actual dungeon group pops up, they’re always looking for tanks and heals.

[Robocannon-yojamba]

@Bumjockey-arugal

I dislike the cross realm

This is one of the thing that gets me. No cross realm is one of the choices they could have made rather than just outright killing the system.

• Introducing it in 3.3
• No cross realm
• No tele
• Can’t queue unless you have the achieve earned from first clear

So many reasonable steps they could have tried/tested before cutting the whole system. Steps that would have mitigated or outright circumvented these negative impacts they like to hand wave at.

[Bumjockey-arugal]

@Robocannon-yojamba

The state of retail is a result of compounding design decisions from multiple expansions that all happened after wrath. They systematically dismantled the need for guilds, garrisons killed off hubs, LFR turned what should have been end game content that required you to coordinate and interact into an easy mode face roll. Systems on systems compounding to reward people for not being social and chasing rewards as efficiently as possible. People look at this chain of events and instead of treating it like the succession of screwups it was, they got all the way back to LFD and pin all the blame on it. LFD wasn’t the problem. It never should have been scaled up or out.

Not all slopes are slippery but we all saw what already happened with LFD in retail and we are watching a very sudden large influx of retail players demanding that it be in Classic. Doesn’t this concern you? Do you think that they would stop at just LFD for wrath? We are recreating the exact same mistakes made in WoTLK. It’s going to be very difficult to stop moving towards failed retail game design once its started, Even “some changes” have turned into a swarm of people demanding LFD, which would never have happened in TBCC or Classic.

To add to that a reminder that LFD is being largely argued for on the basis that it will fix dead servers. Servers killed by megaservers and transfers, two retail game design mechanics already used. LFD would be the third used to fix the other two problems.

@Robocannon-yojamba

You’re mostly reliant on guildies for groups on Yojamba (at least this is my experience since everyone grinded to 70 on release). I can send you screen caps of bulletin board at peak hours to show you it’s almost entirely boosts and GKPs. I feel bad for DPS because the few times an actual dungeon group pops up, they’re always looking for tanks and heals.

I think Alliance may be different because it’s not hard at all to get a group as a DPS especially as a warlock on Arugal. I usually add my tanks and healers I enjoy playing with and have guys I know on hand.

@Robocannon-yojamba

This is one of the thing that gets me. No cross realm is one of the choices they could have made rather than just outright killing the system.

• Introducing it in 3.3
• No cross realm
• No tele
• Can’t queue unless you have the achieve earned from first clear

So many reasonable steps they could have tried/tested before cutting the whole system. Steps that would have mitigated or outright circumvented these negative impacts they like to hand wave at.

These are the most reasonable and moderate requests for LFD and would make more sense than what people are generally demanding on here. But we both know they are not going to happen. Almost nobody who is demanding LFD would accept this on these forums. It’s a sad reality for me that if I wanted a LFD system like the one you suggested it’s never going to happen, so it’s better to just advocate against it.

[Ziryus-pagle]

@Bumjockey-arugal

Not all slopes are slippery but we all saw what already happened with LFD in retail and we are watching a very sudden large influx of retail players demanding that it be in Classic. Doesn’t this concern you? Do you think that they would stop at just LFD for wrath? We are recreating the exact same mistakes made in WoTLK. It’s going to be very difficult to stop moving towards failed retail game design once its started, Even “some changes” have turned into a swarm of people demanding LFD, which would never have happened in TBCC or Classic.

People expect LFD in Wrath Classic because it is literally a feature of Wrath. And as for seeing what happens because of LFD? Well we’ve seen in classic what happens without it, and it’s hardly the awesome experience people claimed life without LFD was.

And whether you like or dislike LFD remember that the spirit of classic was supposed to be warts and all

[Robocannon-yojamba]

@Bumjockey-arugal

Not all slopes are slippery but we all saw what already happened with LFD in retail and we are watching a very sudden large influx of retail players demanding that it be in Classic. Doesn’t this concern you? Do you think that they would stop at just LFD for wrath? We are recreating the exact same mistakes made in WOTLKC. It’s going to be very difficult to stop moving towards failed retail game design once its started, Even “some changes” have turned into a swarm of people demanding LFD, which would never have happened in TBCC or Classic.

But that is a slippery slope argument. I am treating wrath LFD as LFD in the context of what it was, when it was, in wrath. I don’t care about what came after wrath because that didn’t happen in wrath. If they want to consider removing things like LFR from the expansions they existed in, fine. But that’s not relevant to wrath. Those systems and problems didn’t exist or were very minor in wrath. #nochanges died because people quickly realised that their rose tinted glasses were pretty damn thick. The game was jank, flawed, and not nearly as difficult as people liked to pretend it was. And even if you can perfectly recreate the game, you can’t recreate the players. min-maxing is the meta and if there is no tangible benefit to engaging with a system, most players seem to choose not to.

@Bumjockey-arugal

To add to that a reminder that LFD is being largely argued for on the basis that it will fix dead servers. Servers killed by megaservers and transfers, two retail game design mechanics already used. LFD would be the third used to fix the other two problems.

There’s many reasons being put forward from both sides with many of them being very disingenuous. For me it’s simply the fact that it was in the game, it was fine for what it was, when it was introduced. The state of retail is a result of a loooong chain of decisions that were made long after wrath had been and gone. Any argument about the state of retail is irrelevant hand-wringing because those problems weren’t in wrath - at least not to my recollection or experience.

@Bumjockey-arugal

I think Alliance may be different because it’s not hard at all to get a group as a DPS especially as a warlock on Arugal. I usually add my tanks and healers I enjoy playing with and have guys I know on hand.

Locks pump though. I’d take a lock in greens over a mage/hunter indo-bot any day of the week. Locks are high demand.

@Bumjockey-arugal

These are the most reasonable and moderate requests for LFD and would make more sense than what people are generally demanding on here. But we both know they are not going to happen. Almost nobody who is demanding LFD would accept this on these forums. It’s a sad reality for me that if I wanted a LFD system like the one you suggested it’s never going to happen, so it’s better to just advocate against it.

They are very reasonable concessions. I’d be more than happy with 3.3 + no cross-realm + achieve required. LFD in wrath also gated heroics behind ilvl. This is why I don’t understand why they went straight to killing it off when they’ve spent most of TBC creating an equivalent system for PvP.

[Bumjockey-arugal]

@Robocannon-yojamba

There’s many reasons being put forward from both sides with many of them being very disingenuous. For me it’s simply the fact that it was in the game, it was fine for what it was, when it was introduced. The state of retail is a result of a loooong chain of decisions that were made long after wrath had been and gone. Any argument about the state of retail is irrelevant hand-wringing because those problems weren’t in wrath - at least not to my recollection or experience.

@Robocannon-yojamba

They are very reasonable concessions. I’d be more than happy with 3.3 + no cross-realm + achieve required. LFD in wrath also gated heroics behind ilvl. This is why I don’t understand why they went straight to killing it off when they’ve spent most of TBC creating an equivalent system for PvP.

I don’t want LFD as I had a very different and clearly a much more negative experience with it (I was a Barthilas alliance player back then), but if they do implement it I really hope it’s in 3.3 and at the very least attempts to add some further restrictions to incentivise people to use both systems and keep as many social aspects in the game as possible.

[Robocannon-yojamba]

@Bumjockey-arugal

I don’t want LFD as I had a very different and clearly a much more negative experience with it (I was a Barthilas alliance player back then), but if they do implement it I really hope it’s in 3.3 and at the very least attempts to add some further restrictions to incentivise people to use both systems and keep as many social aspects in the game as possible.

This is a some what common sentiment from people who are anti-LFD and that’s absolutely fair. I can completely understand how you could have a much poorer experience depending on your class/faction/battlegroup.

They’re looking to add restrictions to dual spec. Why not LFD? I’d prefer to have both as they were, phased in with appropriate timing. But I’m more than willing to accept concessions to mitigate negative experiences over outright removing the system. But the devs don’t seem willing (currently) to make or even try these concessions despite a substantial amount of the playerbase wanting the system, who had positive experiences with the system, that was part of wrath.

[Alexmorrison-sargeras]

I love reading this post and then seeing a poll linked at the bottom “Should LFD be removed from Wrath Classic” “88% No”
They can either accept now that this is a terrible decision and will kill Wrath for a lot of people (as the feedback has already shown) or they can be like retail devs, keep their pride and arrogance equally as potent, and then swallow it when they are inevitably proven wrong.

[Aurumai-whitemane]

@Zalanii-faerlina

So we should have dual spec at launch but not LFD?

I don’t think I’d mind either way if dual spec was implemented at launch or in phase 2 like it originally did.

Something you need to remember is that dual spec isn’t a contentious issue here. I don’t think anyone in significant numbers looks at dual spec as something that put WoW further down the path of Retail in a bad way. If it was a controversial topic, you’d think people would be making posts about it. I could’ve missed it, but I haven’t personally seen a single person saying whether dual spec should be a launch feature or not.

Dungeon Finder on the other hand is something that many of us feel is a harmful thing for the WoW experience and isn’t true to the path WoW was on before Activision merged with Blizzard’s parent company.

[Aurumai-whitemane]

@Alexmorrison-sargeras

I love reading this post and then seeing a poll linked at the bottom “Should LFD be removed from Wrath Classic” “88% No”
They can either accept now that this is a terrible decision and will kill Wrath for a lot of people (as the feedback has already shown) or they can be like retail devs, keep their pride and arrogance equally as potent, and then swallow it when they are inevitably proven wrong.

There was a moment in time where a strawpoll asking “Should HvH battlegrounds be a thing?” and the results would overwhelmingly be in favor of it. Literally one day later after it was implemented, that same strawpoll would’ve have the opposite results.

People generally come to the forums when they’re pissed off and have something to say. Polls on forums and social media mean absolutely nothing.

[Robocannon-yojamba]

I’m skeptical the devs read the forums and BB’s twitter is just him engaging with people who agree with his decisions while muting/blocking those who don’t. There’s the occasional talk of “We’ll consider it! ” or “Thanks for your feedback, we’re listening ” Which is just corporate double-speak for “No, we aren’t changing our minds and don’t care what you have to say about it.”

They’re either not aware of what the player base wants, or don’t care. Either way they choose not to engage with people who disagree with their design choices. The forums probably aren’t a great place because historically players haven’t come to the forum to heap praise upon the devs. Probably why they choose to only engage via their personal twitter (ALL MY OPINIONS ARE MY OWN AND DON’T REPRESENT BLIZZ-ACTI ) where they can filter out negative opinions.

[Bumjockey-arugal]

@Robocannon-yojamba

They’re either not aware of what the player base wants, or don’t care.

It’s a more complex situation than that especially from a business perspective. The issue (depending on how you look at it) is that they don’t particularly care what the retail player base wants because they want those people playing retail where they stand to make more money. Classic is of course for the classic players who would not play retail and Blizzard would lose money if they chose to play another game.

We don’t know for certain either way where people stand on the matter but I do understand their decision to stand by what is frankly a more sensible business model in addition to being a safer choice. They don’t want to fold to pressure (whether it’s real or not) and end up having only retail players playing classic.

[Robocannon-yojamba]

I think this is largely true for most of classic so far. But no LFD is a decision that seems completely isolated from any design choice they’ve made so far. VanillaClassic was #nochanges. TBCC has been #somechanges where the playerbase has expressed significant grievences. Now WrathClassic is #changesnooneaskedfor. All changes they’ve made so far have been reactive to address problems creating a significant negative experience for the classic players. But for wrath they seem to be making pre-emptive changes, seemingly with no regard or consultation to what the classic players want or even expected.

[Aitnan-bladefist]

It does not damage the community . I became friends with some of those people I was grouped with from that dungeon finder tool. To this day We all are still friends.
This version of wotlk isnt not classic if that tool isnt in.

[Chernobyll-malganis]

@Aitnan-bladefist

It does not damage the community . I became friends with some of those people I was grouped with from that dungeon finder tool. To this day We all are still friends.

A lot people recognized me while we ran dungeons back then.
If Blizzard would even allow cross-realm groups, people could add friends if they wanted to play together.

They have the technology.

[Ziryus-pagle]

@Bumjockey-arugal

@Robocannon-yojamba

They’re either not aware of what the player base wants, or don’t care.

It’s a more complex situation than that especially from a business perspective. The issue (depending on how you look at it) is that they don’t particularly care what the retail player base wants because they want those people playing retail where they stand to make more money. Classic is of course for the classic players who would not play retail and Blizzard would lose money if they chose to play another game.

We don’t know for certain either way where people stand on the matter but I do understand their decision to stand by what is frankly a more sensible business model in addition to being a safer choice. They don’t want to fold to pressure (whether it’s real or not) and end up having only retail players playing classic.

What they’re finding out is that a lot of people in classic do not like retail and do not play it but also don’t necessarily fall into stereotypical classic vision they thought, which was vanilla perfect, LFD and QoL bad.

So now they have a problem as it’s not as simple as just go back to retail for blizzard.