Just like in a same server pug, most people just want to get the instance done with minimal hassle. You’ll get a bad group sometimes, but then the same happens outside of LFD.
WotLK was like THE expansion of drastic changes. Every single patch had titanic changes to design philosophy and direction, from beginning to end. I’d go so far as to say that Blizzard really didn’t appear to have any guiding philosophy for the expansion so they seemed to play it one patch at a time, incorporating early feedback from one tier into the next.
To address some of the OP’s points:
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Changing TOC lockouts is an amazing change and was the single biggest bit of player feedback from back then regarding the raid. People HATED feeling compelled to raid the place 4 times a week and it is simple truth that the ease & quality of the loot killed Ulduar way too early. I hope they keep 10s and 25s separate, which is the change they did make for ICC back then as well.
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I really wish people would stop bringing up sub numbers as proof that WotLK was the absolute best. Subs barely grew from TBC and flatlined throughout most of the expansion until the pre-cata launch hype of players return. WotLK was famous for alienating seasoned players to the point where new players coming in could no longer mask the impact of older players quitting.
Personally, I wish they limited changes as much as possible and largely stuck to how it was back then. I agree with some of your points like giving people the chance at pre-nerf ulduar. Even introducing LFD near the end like they did back then would be ok by me, though I largely suspect there’s technical difficulties they aren’t telling us about re-creating the original Wrath era LFD system and that’s the real reason why they’re leaving it out.
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I think you’re right and dungeon finder’s removal is a technical issue, not a design reason. Reading Pardo’s interview when they added it back in the day, he said it was basically a giant pain in the butt to get it working right. So if that’s the case with Classic Wrath it would explain why they take it out. We know how little effort they put into this project.
cough cata
People HATED feeling compelled to raid the place 4 times a week
You weren’t compelled. You did it for trinkets, now its gone, its only gonna complicate things.
Subs barely grew from TBC and flatlined throughout most of the expansion until the pre-cata launch hype of players return.
12 million players and you think it could get bigger if it followed TBC. This is just theory without any evidence.
WotLK was famous for alienating seasoned players to the point where new players coming in could no longer mask the impact of older players quitting.
also, cata, not wrath
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I’m getting tired of repeating myself, but if I must … your experiences are not the same as everyone else’s. LFD is not LFR. I had a much more positive experience in LFD overall - specifically during WotLK - than without it.
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But there is a distinctly different atmosphere in a group you make, than a RDF group.
If you put a small effort into making a group, people cooperate because they have to invest a little time. If someone has to /afk for a few minutes for example, that’s fine.
Contrast that to RDF group, if you have to brb for a few minutes, you’re kicked. There is no incentive for cooperation, you are disposable, and people are nasty about it.
Because dungeons are such a grindy / farmy experience as well, people are just in a hurry all the time.
You’re right, maybe we did have different experiences.
My experience however, was that grouping for quests, dungeons etc. was almost always a positive, cooperative experience before RDF.
After RDF I never enjoyed dungeons again, unless I was exclusively running heroics or something with friends.
The dungeon finder auto-grouping system got so far rooted into the game, first RDF, then LFR… do you remember world group quests in Battle for Azeroth? -
You see a boss mob, hit the green eye button, magically people appear out of thin air, you demolish the mob in seconds, then everyone magically disappears without even “thankyou”. And that was every group quest, or world boss, ever.
That’s the final form of the LFG system, and it started with RDF in WotLK.
No it’s not, you’ll be kicked real quick if you go afk for too long in a chat pug, especially if you’re a dps.
If you aren’t available for a summons by the time 2 people reach the stone, you can expect a kick as a dps.
An organized group is always going to be better, at least socially, but it’s not about comparing the two. It’s about giving people the option to run the content that they otherwise wouldn’t - behind the curve, smaller servers, less desirable, etc.
It’s also nice to be able to avoid reserved runs.
And of course LFD does not prevent people who want to from preforming their group.
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It’s weird that one side of the community, however small, wants to gatekeep the other - despite that other side not wanting to.
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I’m sorry that happened to you. I had an absolute blast in wrath and mostly a good time in Cataclysm. I see your point about the world quests but there’s nothing preventing the dev team from drawing the line after RDF.
By all means, share the drastic changes between T11, T12, and T13. Beyond the addition of LFR with T13, there’s nothing to compare with how drastically different every single tier in WotLK was from each other.
Yes you were and it was a huge bone of contention amongst players at the time. Ulduar runs evaporated and most guilds filled their raid schedules with as much TOC as they could because that was the path for the best gear and you can bet they’d keep running normal modes until there wasn’t a single upgrade left to help them complete heroic.
The data speaks for itself. Wrath added about 500k from TBC and remained at about 11.5M for almost the entire expansion until the VERY end where it added another 500k to 12M, right before Cata launched. It marked the first time WoW stopped consistently growing.
I’m not going to argue one way or the other if Wrath would’ve been more successful if it followed TBC design but the way they did design it kept subs relatively flatlined.
Cata made it worse but that doesn’t change the fact that it was true for Wrath. You don’t get millions of new players and flatlining total sub numbers unless others are leaving in equal measure.
Well let’s start with, T12 was only 7 bosses which was a very small tier comparatively but was at least a decent raid. T13 on the other hand was 8 bosses and was a very very mediocre raid especially compared to ICC.
Boss number is not the same as fundamental shifts in raid design. The differences from T7-T8-T9-T10 are all tremendous and show that all throughout Wrath Blizzard was trying very hard to figure out what they wanted raiding to be going forward.
I’m not saying it’s a bad thing that Blizzard kept trying to improve the raiding experience, I’m just saying that WotLK was an expansion of near constant changes, more so than any expansion since.
The big changes in cata were made up front, particularly merging the raid sizes and going to VP/JP system which had a weekly cap. And those had a pretty dramatic impact on Cata which was never corrected.
Bro cata changed the entire core of the game from the ground up. Class redesigns, talent system redesign, redesigned Azeroth. Wrath only improved QOL of things severely lacking in TBC.
Ulduar runs evaporated
You were on a bad server then. Ulduar was consistently run through TOC and ICC. Guilds who were serious wanted Frags. Sorry your personal experience sucked but its not the same for the rest of us.
It marked the first time WoW stopped consistently growing.
Everything caps. If TBC was so big then we would’ve seen that same growth return. We saw it with Vanilla classic with double sub count, but sub count dropped by 41% since then. This counts with shadowlands as well. But if it was so good, why did overall drop then?
You don’t get millions of new players and flatlining total sub numbers unless others are leaving in equal measure.
Once again, everything has a cap. 12 million is a LOT of people, no such thing as infinite growth. There is a huge possibility if not for the drastic cata changes and if they continued momentum we wouldn’t have seen such a steep decline. But cata was the decline, not wrath.
There’s no reason why they couldnt have hit 15 million subs. They dropped the ball, in more ways than one.
They started making it more difficult to get gear in cata. When you aren’t improving, you probably aren’t having fun. Cata was not fun.
You’re talking 3 MILLION people. You act like that’s small. You also have to consider Consoles were huge with Xbox 360 and Ps4 taking over the market during that time and evolving quickly with insane marketing. Meanwhile the news was sharing how wow was like a drug and telling parents not to let their kids play.