The game is being retrofitted based on anecdotal experiences. That’s what eliminating the lfd is. Your claims about the damage lfd did to the game is not objective, it’s anecdotal. Your personal experiences, your subjective likes and dislikes. Your arguments are just as easy to poke holes into.
There is absolutely no objective point in time that defines retail. It’s all totally a subjective opinion and it differs from person to person. You’re just so attached to your personal likes and dislikes that you think they objectively define retail.
Except this is a video game we play for fun, fun is subjective. What you consider fun, forming groups manually, others don’t care about or consider a nuisance.
So no it’s not just about efficiency, it’s that many people simply don’t see forming groups manually for dungeons as adding any value to their for fun video game.
Maybe if dungeons were actually more meaningful? But noone wants to discuss that…
I literally would not whine if they simply decided to have it in the game at launch.
I didn’t care at all about LFD before they axed it.
However since we’re all putting our opinions on the table, I think it was a crappy feature that never should have been implemented.
Unfortunately for you there’s no contradiction. I would have no issue with it being in the game for the sake of “how things were” precisely, but if you ask me how I feel about the feature? Imma tell you.
WOTLK is a different context than Vanilla and TBC.
As others have explained, it is when the playerbase began to blur between those who like things “the old way” and those who like “the new way”.
WOTLK is unique from Vanilla and TBC in this very noteworthy regard, meaning my perspective on what is “acceptable” or good or beneficial for it is different from TBC.
Something you’ve always struggled with, Ziryus, the dreaded “nuance”.
Oo… is someone angry they got called out on not having any actual reasons why a feature is bad, again?
And now you can’t even fall back on authenticity. It must really suck having your only legitimate argument(which you didn’t even really believe in) be invalid in wrath.
You realize this is a bad argument right? “Authenticity” has never meant #nochanges. After the countless times explaining to you about how there were #somechanges that worked and still kept things authentic.
If no LFD is in their vision, then it is authentic.
Authenticity isn’t harmed.
You’re just mad that twice now, Blizzard has shown you that you do not speak for them or what they wish for Classic.
…and yes, authenticity is fluid to whatever Blizzard deems to be so. That’s their right as the developers of their own game.
You, however, do not decide what is authentic, and thus, relinquish all right to use it as any sort of argument club.
It’s not. For you and some others it’s the point. For many, especially on pvp servers, it’s when flying was added. For others it’s when the talents were changed. The line between the old way and the new way is personal to each person. You just think your personal likes and dislikes define the line.
jeez, of course they do. And the vast majority of the people who think like me believe the lfd isn’t part of the “new way.” The difference is I don’t think my personal likes and dislikes is an objective truth even though the vast majority of the people who think like me believe the things I believe.
Honestly, leaving Dungeon Finder out of Wrath Classic is much more complicated than that, I think. You have to remember that discussion of subjective vs objective is important to us as players of the game, but the WoW team also has an obligation to deliver a game that follows a certain set of design principles. The vision they have for the game doesn’t necessarily need to align with subjective or objective reasoning.
This is why I’ve been saying, subjectively, I don’t ever want to see Dungeon Finder again, even if we have another decade of Classic ahead of us. But objectively, I wouldn’t complain if they implemented it in the ICC phase even though I dislike it, because I know the point of Classic was to be a recreation and Wrath did have Dungeon Finder late in its life. Also, I (and apparently everyone else) can’t think of any objective reason why a faithful recreation of Wrath necessarily needs to include it.
Classic was always on the path to this fork in the road where they would have to decide between going down the path of Retail again, or choosing the other (perhaps original trajectory) path this time around. They can’t do both.
Correct. Though, objectively, Classic isn’t Retail. It’s plainly obvious to every that they are entirely different things even though the line that separates them is incredibly ambiguous and difficult to articulate in a way that satisfies everyone. It’s because it’s a subjective issue that objective discussion is the only thing of value we can do here (at least in discussing what should be done in the game’s development). If we leave it at the subjective degree, then it’s just “I want Dungeon Finder” and “But I don’t” and there’s no point to discussing it because the decision is already made.
Yes, that’s correct. So it’s what I want versus what you want. Your preferences aren’t more important than mine and vice versa. So what do we do? Just keep going back and forth? Or should we try to use some actual sound reasoning? If we’re not trying to be objective, isn’t this discussion just a gross waste of time? I already know what you want and you already know what I want.
It’s about both things. There are many people who see no merit in the necessity of traveling, communication and/or cooperation, as well as people who do see merit in it, but will simple do what’s most convenient. That being said, WoW was designed around those things, and there’s a very strong case to be made that Dungeon Finder is antithetical to the design philosophy of the game before it became Retail.
It’s a moot point, really. We’re playing a re-released game. That was always the point of it. I’m fine with some changes in the name of preserving the quality of the experience, but there’s a limit to how much can be changed before it’s actually just a different game.
Do you think those perspectives exist in equal amounts? I don’t disagree with you that there’s a group of people who saw the beginning of the end with every single new change that was implemented in Wrath. But do you earnestly think that each of those perspectives are are held in equal numbers?
If you’re actually being honest, I think we both know the primary culprit behind Retail’s birth wasn’t Dual Spec. It wasn’t the haircuts. It wasn’t the experience eliminator. It wasn’t a new Class. It wasn’t achievements. It wasn’t Hard/Heroic mode raids. They all contributed, but I think we both know that none of these were the killer of “old WoW”.
Can you at the very least admit that Dungeon Finder, while it may not be the #1 thing, is at least likely to be in the top 5 things (or very close to it) that sent WoW down the Retail path in most peoples’ eyes?
We can discuss it and make our best subjective arguments for why it should or should not be in the game. What you can’t do is claim your arguments are better because they are objective. They are not.
No I don’t. I think it was one of the best changes made to the game that was well liked by most people. But I don’t claim that’s objective. It’s based on personal experience and anecdotal evidence from reading the forums and talking to people in game. I don’t have any raw data but if you have some raw data to use as evidence to support your personal subjective opinion link it and I will absolutely look at it. If that raw data supports your opinion I’ll admit I was wrong.
I honestly don’t know how many more ways we can word this sentiment but it’s nice to see someone do it competently.
You’re telling me that you believe LFD falls in line with the “classic” set of principles?
Speaking of, this might be a good time to establish just what the heck it even means to be “classic”.
To me, classic is essentially a world design and feature set that emanates not having been purely designed to convenience the player.
I want to tackle this world, and the challenges created for me, organically with solutions that are not handed to me, but me taking the reigns and utilizing the minimum that is there to overcome it. It makes doing anything that much more rewarding.
So, naturally, this allows us to identify a few things that are pretty classic, and a few things that are not.
“classic” stuff
things cost more gold or there is more expenditure of gold to stay “afloat”
things take longer
things require more communication and planning to do right or well
engagement with other people on your server happens organically, either out of necessity to work together, or to overcome some sort of temporary challenge (enemy faction, or an elite quest)
and a few others.
Things that are 100% convenience-driven and definitively not “classic”
LFD
LFR
The disambiguation of spec choice and the importance of it
the reduction of time or cost to do anything with no drawback
etc etc
Now do you mean to tell me that LFD is 100% a “classic-esque” feature?
Classic is a faithful recreation of the game and earlier expansion with only minor qol changes. A museum piece mostly. Any large deviation from that faithful recreation is no longer classic. We each form out own opinion when the game became “retail” and that would be when we quit again as most of us did years ago.
I consider the removal of LFD to be a fantastic QOL change.
That might be because I don’t interpret “quality of life” to simply mean “makes things easier for me because I dislike having to do anything that isn’t being rewarded”.
To me, the quality of my life playing the game is improved when the game design is better.
Classic is not about whether you consider a change good or bad but whether it’s a large or small change. I consider it to be a very large change. Weren’t you just arguing that it was a big change?
That’s an opinion. I disagree. The only objective evidence we have is that wrath deadlined and lost subs one quarter before the lfd was added and deadlined until the very end of wrath when it gained a small amount of subs.
