The multitude of systems in an MMO have to coexist and be balanced against one another in a very real symbiotic relationship. Its supposed to be a living world, not a series compartmentalized systems grating awkwardly off each other - which just invites players to do the same. And they always take the invitation. Very few players these days have the fortitude to not screw with something or someone if they know they can get away with it. The evidence for that is everywhere.
Once you introduce convenience it throws the balance off and everything else that system touches either has to be just as convenient or incentivized or both which makes those systems touching those systems also have to be brought in line.
Instanced content is already a huge player friendly concession they made among others but there are still boundaries. The scales cant help but be tipped if you dont know where they are or pretend they dont exist. Yeah, thats right, look at what happened when they tried to make dungeons actual content again in early Cata. See? Thereâs no going back. So you just continue making everything more convenient. Hereâs LFR - in Cata. Lol. Must be a coincidence I guess.
Vanilla and TBC are remembered very fondly for that very reason - relative harmony throughout the games content and its support systems. Not perfect - how can that ever be achieved anyway? Anecdotal evidence only but it seemed like everyone was having a good time. Whether you were a big time raider or not - thats not what mattered. That became less the case with Wrath and subsequent expansions - this cannot be debated.
Keep in mind Blizz wasnt alone in their folly - the players arent blameless. They couldnt have fudged it up without you and here you are, once again, not knowing when to draw the line.
Dont blame me though, I quit in Wrath. I also got tons of crap on the forum for arguing in favor of, well, classic WoW. Ahead of my time I suppose.
Iâm not likely to see the players on my own server ever again unless I knew them before we grouped up. Unless Blizzard has some super secret plan to balance server populations I have no reason to believe thatâs going to improve in Wrath.
Iâm not certain what youâre trying to argue, that even if I never see someone again, just the fact that I ran a dungeon with them is more important because theyâre on the same server as me is more meaningful? Pure hogwash.
If it doesnât result in me grouping with them again, then it doesnât matter that weâre on the same server. Thatâs whatâs obvious. Yes, the potential is there where it wasnât in wrath, and by the time blizzard got around to enabling chosen cross-realm grouping theyâd messed up LFD and half the rest of the game too.
Iâm not trying to say that RDF promotes social grouping, Iâm saying that the interactions with other players there are just as valid as same server regardless of whether youâre able to choose to group with them in the future - although we now have Battletags so that opens up opportunities that didnât exist over a decade ago.
I never had a moral compunction against RDF so of course I wouldnât avoid it. The time and energy it saved me doing all of those other dungeon runs made it easier for me deal with friends lists, guild chat, and LFG channel when the RDF wasnât up to the task.
Granny was a beast bro. Got all the 25 man hard mode achieves. Was a sight to see. Nurtured us through some rough nights with the wisdom of her years on this planet.
There was a slight bump in the road when grandpa was benched but she wasnt stopping for nothing. Had she made it to Classic the old broad woulda parsed with the best of them even though classic WoW is some super complex machine grind made for the masochistic instead of the casual friendly MMO they advertised and ultimately produced.
Before the sweet ol gal passed she did mention that the achievements felt pretty hollow as like, most everybody had them. Cuz Wrath was hard, especially after RDF.
Thatâs the thing, LFD doesnât mean thereâs no reason not to hit up your guild or friendâs list. It just puts a more honest light on why they were playing with you if they say no.
To be really honest, if we didnât have a tank, sometimes we jumped in with a guild group for the vote-kick protection. So being in a decent guild did insulate us from the toxicity that sometimes reared its head in LFD. I have to give the âJust form your own groupâ crowd partial credit on that one.
Itâs not, just the mere chance that your encounter with a person in a dungeon could lead to something different about your future experience is good enough reason.
For example, all the time during leveling phases of different fresh vanilla servers, I will see certain repeating names in groups at different level bracketsâ dungeons just due to the fact weâre all leveling on the same realm.
I might see them out questing too.
Eventually I might decide to start a chat with them, âHey nice to see you againâ. We might group up and decide to do all our quests together. Due to the sort-of comraderie weâve built, Iâd be more inclined to help with their quests that I donât need instead of just the ones we share.
I met a guy during leveling back in Classic Era leveling phase 1. We quested together, ended up in several groups along the way to 60, and we would often catch each other in different questing zones on the way up.
We still talk on real ID about our progress, despite the fact we never were guilded with one another. We talked and even our guilds participated in world boss struggles together and against each other and it was made so much more interesting by the fact I knew that guy in that guild and we talked!
This kind of unique relationship-forming and long-term experience is only possible due to the cumbersome nature of questing in Classic, requiring people to work together for some quests, and also the nature of pulling groups together requiring communication out in chat, general, and so on.
This is not a unique thing, everyone has a story like this, most people have the courage to admit that its only possible in a world without RDF-style features and mechanics.
But you dismiss this potential outright in RDF simply because itâs slightly less likely. Or more likely because it weakens your argument. I donât remember where or who, but somewhere in this mess was a guy who server transferred to join up with someone he met in a cross-realm group and that was before Battletags existed!
It is possible in retail, it is possible in classic, and it will be possible in a world with Wrath+RDF.
When it was implemented at first, the realms it would pull from were Battlegroup specific. And just like PvP battlegrounds youâd see some of the same people over and over again. I wish I had kept in touch with some of the people I ran dungeons with way back when - but the features and technology of the time made it more difficult. Now that weâve got Battletags and Discord weâve got tons more potential but for some weird reason Blizzard has decided to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
The chance of someone on another realm having a long term social ripple effect of your realm is a % that only exists in any capacity due to the ability to transfer or reroll servers, and the likelihood of that is so astronomically small.
Itâs not slightly less likely. Itâs abhorrently unlikely.
Retail has a great LFG tool that does spur communication, and cross realm hardly matters anymore due to sharding and server clusters and all that nonsense. Thatâs pretty much the only reason itâs possible.
My point is, a decade ago, before we had the superior tools we do now, it absolutely did happen. There is every reason to believe it would happen more often today.
