That’s assumptive. The data shows wrath stayed steady. You hit 10-12 million concurrent players and just say “its due to tbc for the entire 2 years of wrath”?!
That’s pretty out there dude.
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It’s very true that there’s a rampant problem of people who either want to optimize any time spent/effort out of the game or they’re in fact very insecure and think they have no chance of clearing content without min/maxing. But the solution that WORKS is building your own groups and taking less geared and off-meta classes yourself. We have to be the change we want to see.
For those of us who know what we’re doing, we should be building groups as often as we can and leaving the doors open to everyone – No more hard-reserving, no more gear check at A’dal, no more “LF caster DPS only”, no more “checking logs”, no more kicking people out of the dungeon for a mistake, no more abandoning the group the moment you realize it’s going to take 10 minutes longer than a world record run.
I never do any of these things and I pay no attention to my group comp outside of getting the appropriate number of roles and trying not to stack too many people who need each armor type, and it’s been very successful. And I’ve done this on very small and dying realms. The fact that “elitism” is so rampant necessarily guarantees that there are a bunch of people who want to join your groups.
I would generally say that’s mostly true, but you must also remember that people with those insane expectations still play using Dungeon Finder, and they absolutely bring that mentality in with them. In my experience, these issues have been less common in later Retail, but I think that’s most likely because dungeons that you can queue for are quite easy.
I remember people constantly being kicked from groups in more difficult or complicated dungeons. I wouldn’t be surprised it it happened in at least 7/10 groups in dungeons where you can’t just tank and spank everything. I would say this creates an even worse situation for the casual players in some situations because doing a random dungeon might place them in these dungeons where they’re very likely to be kicked out and then they’ve just wasted 40 minutes of queue time for nothing. That’s a very nasty experience.
Now, just because I see this huge negative for the casual player, I’m not saying that Dungeon Finder is overall worse for them. I’m saying that the positives come with enormous caveats. And beyond that, I think that the reasoning on adding Dungeon Finder to the game should hinge on more than just how easy it is for casual players to find groups. Casual players DO join dungeon groups right now in TBC Classic. Not all of them, but they absolutely do play through the content and reach out to join groups.
TL;DR:
Dungeon Finder’s benefits don’t outweight the costs – It may be an overall improvement for the casual player, but I think it’s generally a negative thing for the whole population. We should try to solve the issue of casual players being locked out of groups by forming groups they can join.
Whether it lost the most subs ever is something we can’t reasonably conjecture on – The subscriber count never declined during Wrath. Cataclysm was the first era in WoW’s history where the subscriber count started to decline, and THOSE sub losses are ones that we can actually see because there’s proof of it.
Do you actually look at the real sub numbers, or are you guessing this from memory? Sub numbers stayed perfectly steady for more than a year in Wrath and if anything, that was Wrath “riding the success of tbc”. Once ICC came out, the sub count steadily climbed to WoW all-time record and leveled out at Cataclysm’s pre-patch.
You don’t call it “riding on something’s success” when an expansion not only maintains the subscriber count steadily for more than a year, but when it also INCREASES the sub numbers more than a year after the previous expansion. Wrath didn’t inherit the highest sub count in history, it created it. The sub count didn’t climb during 3.3.0 because TBC was good. It climbed during 3.3.0 because 3.3.0 was good.
The expansion that actually fits your description is Cataclysm. It started at the highest sub count the game had ever seen because the subs didn’t decline during Wrath (Riding Wrath’s success) and almost instantly went into freefall because people needed very little time to realize they weren’t interested anymore.
The sub count is literally the only objective measure we have to go on. Going off of anecdotal experience just makes no sense. You’ve seen lots of complaints for Wrath and I’ve seen almost nothing but praise. So who’s right?
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I dont think so. I was one of them. Most of the negative issues i had with wotlk did not become so obvious until the last half. And that is when the complaining started. Pol dont just quit a game like wow because they dont like something. It is under change all of the time and we complain and exoecr issues to get fixed. I was not happy at all by the end of wotlk. I felt it was a major steo backward from tbc. As did many. But we still bought cata. Some hated that and that was when total subs actually peaked. Again showing that sales do not equal satisfaction.
No one knows what Warmane’s actual numbers are. Why do you think they got rid of the /who function rofl?? And seems a little sus when there are 12k players online but 20 people in Dalaran and the other major cities are empty. I’d guess they’re running a few thousand max which would be a low pop WOW server. Cool story tho.
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But the solution that WORKS is building your own groups and taking less geared and off-meta classes yourself. We have to be the change we want to see.
I agree and build my own groups/Raid lead/ Guild lead when necessary. But sometimes i just wanna vibe. Nothing like seeing dungeon heroics being put together requiring raid BIS for 80% of groups. It’s the reason RMT’s are so rampant and one of the biggest issues of classic is the stigma that is clouding over. LFD could fix this, but i’ve given up on convincing people out of their shell. Just make something more in line with ideals that could curve the current social requirement toxicity.
Are you talking about Warmane today? I haven’t played Warmane in a couple years, but to say that Wrath private servers existed only because of mounting excitement for Wrath Classic is an absolute falsehood. Warmane was extremely popular and even overfilled when I played it.
That’s what the majority of people want to do, and that’s the reason why so many people think that their only option is to try and join groups rather than build them themselves.
No dungeon finder naturally rewards people who will put in the effort to run dungeons. The only problem is that many of the people who are willing are the ones who set the bar unreasonably high. If you want to take that power of supply and demand away from people who expect too much, no solution will work better than dilluting their supply and running more dungeons yourself!
I laugh at the people who spam “LF2M Mages MGT Heroic, shard and mount HR’d be geared” because it literally takes them longer to form a group than for me. We end up finishing the dungeon in a similar time frame even though my dungeon run is a bit slower because they waste so much time trying to sift through the people that are ‘acceptable’ to them. We both end up investing a similar time into the game, but I’m spending more of that time actually playing and enjoying it, not to mention, I get to take multiple people who would’ve struggled to find a place.
I honestly don’t know if you’re exaggerating, but I personally haven’t seen the bar set that high.
I would argue that RMTs happen because there’s no friction that stops them. Blizzard has completely ignored the dungeon carry economy and that’s a huge area where this gold is circulated around. GDKPs are obviously the single place where the highest volume of gold is circulated per person, per hour. But really, the root of this issue is that botting remains unmitigated. It seems like private servers have better automated systems for detecting and automatically banning bots.
They’re already going to be addressing dungeon carries, which is FANTASTIC. Now all we need is for them to actually crack down on botters. GDKPs will become far less common once that happens.
So in other words… You’re wrong and
You’re confused mijo. They’re not looking for caster dps because its faster or they need the CC… They’re looking for caster DPS because they’re reserving the shard and don’t want the competition.
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No, you’re just ignorant. They literally offered people a paid way to skip the queues. When I wanted to play, I would either log on before the queues started or I’d wait for more than an hour in a queue with thousands of people. And when I finally got in, every major zone was exploding with absurd numbers of people.
This popularity happened before Classic was ever announced and had absolutely nothing to do with it.
No I think you’re the one who’s confused, mijo. If you hard-reserve a drop, it doesn’t matter how many people want that drop, they can’t have it. Do you understand what hard-reserving is, or are you just making all of this up as you go?
Spell cleave is sought after because it has CC, tons of AoE and a much easier time dealing with fight mechanics. It has literally nothing to do with the drops in the dungeon. Otherwise, how do you think hard-reserving the mount works? With your logic, you wouldn’t take ANYONE in the dungeon because every class can use it.
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So in other words… You’re wrong and
I have played recently. Still high pop every year with the Seasonal Server, and both their non seasonals still are active daily.
The thing here is, the constant pressure with GDKP being so popular. It’s not the core of GDKP being the problem, it goes hand in hand with botting. Gather bots storm nodes so it’s hard to find for fresh players. But a new player comes in and tries to make gold. They don’t have flying, they are trying to get geared, groups aren’t inviting, and after x amount of time they start burning out. Well what now? Maybe join a carry? Guess what, groups are GDKP(Carry/buyer) with min bids starting at 500g for low end pieces and min 2k for tier. Now they are stuck in this hole and feel like they hit a wall but want to continue playing where do they turn? Let’s be real and understand Gold Buying and Community Standards go hand in hand.
Yea… Among it’s many issues Warmane was also well-known to be p2W. Cash shops for raid gear. Fake queues to entice whales into paying to get in. Etc etc etc.
You seem very upset. No one needs to spell-cleave H Magisters (normal maybe but not H) so this situation you described is one you made-up. You do see people primarily looking for caster dps for MGT because every group has shard HR.
Take the L
I don’t want to admit it, but Bearhands is right. If someone is trying to hard reserve something, they will build the group to their loot needs, and less about cc/damage.
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And I agree with you on Ulduar nerfs etc.
We’re not so different you and I. 
Warmane IS trash though lol. The fact that anyone is pointing to a server with a raid gear cash shop and fake queues as a good example of anything is hilarious. Not saying people don’t play on it… But its total pop would barely fill a classic server.
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Yeah, at this point I feel like the only solution to undo the damage is to start new realms and to crack down on botting before gold inflation gets out of hand. You’re very right about the cost of entry here. There are so many people running around at gold cap because they bought it from botters, and those same people are making alts and using that gold for dungeon carries. Those of us who don’t buy in to that cancer are at a massive disadvantage. The gold inflation affects prices for materials and consumes, but since we make our gold from questing and our own material gathering, we have very little gold to spend compared to the people with dirty gold in their pockets.
But I don’t understand how you think dungeon finder fits into all of this. It will mitigate the issue of casual players struggling to find groups, but it will do nothing to stop dungeon carries, botting and GDKPs.
So what? Yeah, the P2W is pure cancer, but that has nothing to do with the conversation we’re having here.
You’ve got to be kidding me. 
Many people paid for gear, and skipping queues is bundled in with that. People don’t spend money on Warmane to skip queues, they spend money for full BIS gear and queue priority is included.
And I suppose you think that the thousands of players running around in the world are also fake, to make people think that the servers are populated? And how about the LFG spam? Is that fake too? All just a ruse to make it appear populated? Where does your tinfoil hat theory end, exactly?
You’ve clearly never played on Warmane, or you’re just lying because you don’t want me to be right about this.
How do I seem upset?
Right, so you don’t understand how HR works. It doesn’t matter who you take into the group if you HR a drop. Perhaps you don’t understand how master loot works? You could fill the group 5/5 with people who want a specific drop and only the master looter can choose who gets the item when it drops.
Once again, there are multiple things in Heroic Magister’s Terrace that are commonly hard-reserved, and I don’t understand how you think your logic holds up (though you’re probably just trolling).
-
“I want the Shard, so I’m only going to bring classes that can’t use it.”
Following precisely the same logic: - “I want the Hawkstrider, so I’m only going to bring classes that can’t use it.”
Both the Shard and the Hawkstrider are often hard-reserved, but the Hawstrider can be used by ALL classes. How, then, do you think the group leader can reserve it? With master looter. When it comes to hard-reserving drops, it doesn’t matter which classes you bring.
That makes absolutely no sense. If you were building a group around ‘loot needs’, you’d bring a combination of classes that creates less waste of gear, not stacking 3 slots with the same class who will all want the same drops.
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They don’t care about wasting, they want one piece and the rest is worthless in their eyes. This has been a thing for a long time.
But I don’t understand how you think dungeon finder fits into all of this. It will mitigate the issue of casual players struggling to find groups, but it will do nothing to stop dungeon carries, botting and GDKPs.
Idk what server you’re on, but on the one’s i play on, they definitely have a high threshold. We see Pug MGT(H) requiring double glaives on melee to get in. It’s a cancer that is plagueing the game. This is also considered NORMAL. New players don’t have a chance. With LFD. Someone can still build premades and queue in, but players don’t get left out due to still gearing. Also geared people will inspect lead, see he’s undergeared and disband. This happens WAY more than you think. You fed into the stigma.
Wow. I hope for everyone’s sake that people wise up and stop taking those groups seriously. Even on the largest realms, that’s just laughable, but that makes even less sense on smaller realms.
They do if they create their own groups, or if others will create groups without all the ridiculous requirements. Teach a man to fish and tell them to form their own groups! Most people will be amazed at how different the experience is when you’re the one leading the party.
It’s happened to me a few times and I let it roll off my back. There’s never going to be a situation where people aren’t audacious jerks. That doesn’t mean we should try to railroad the process of dungeons.
What now? O.o
I’m talking NEW players. Still learning. You just expect everyone to be ready to build groups and have that knowledge? You’re missing the point.
Everyone was new to the game at some point, and we all had to learn how to look for groups, or to form them ourselves. Effectively removing that aspect of the game isn’t going to make the experience more wholesome for new players or old.
What would help them while they’re learning is to form more groups without stringent gear/class requirements. Spoon-feeding the game to new players is going to create more problems than it solves.
Living a fairy dream. I don’t need to keep arguing cause you vocal minority already ruined it for everyone else. If they put in a voting system for changes, LFD would 100% exist.
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It’s pretty well established that they artificially inflate queues to entice people into paying.
Again… Why do you think they disabled /who? That literally says everything…
You’re just upset and arguing to argue. Go take a nap.
Their server caps are rumored to be 8k. They do inflate, but i do not know their algorithm offhand.
Source: A server owner who claimed to be on warmanes staff as a resume.
Gotta take with a grain of salt since Pserver staffs are hidden behind monikers.