Remove the group finder tool

[Transmigration]

LFR? Sure

Group Finder? Fuck no. It's one of the best things ever added to this game. Most servers don't even have enough players to put raids together anymore.

[Hibiki]

I remember TBC times when finding party for dungeon takes like 3h. Group finder is best thing that happens to WoW.

[ShiyoKozuki]

A community is what you make of it. FFXIV's community blows WoW's out of the water in pretty much every regard, and cross-realm matchmade dungeons and trials hasn't made everyone into vindictive, sociopathic narcissists like in WoW.

But y'know what? Go for it. Remove it from WoW, it'll be hilarious to watch even more people flock away from the game and low-pop realms go dead in truth as people transfer off them when they have to spend hours putting a group together outside primetime on the weekends. Couldn't be a worse idea than when they gutted LFD and LFR in WoD because of whining like this.

FF14 cannot be played cross-server except for duty finder content. You can't premade group finder raids or anything difficult.

That's why FF14's community is 100x better. 100% of WOW can be played cross-server. That is why WOW's community is garbage.

It's very obvious what cross-server does to communities, FF14 literally proves this.

[Thage]

FF14 cannot be played cross-server except for duty finder content. You can't premade group finder raids or anything difficult.

And yet, the duty finder groups I've been in have, without exception, full of people willing to help others, crack jokes, and pal around between pulls, even when there's an inexperienced tank or healer and it ends up a wipefest for a few tries. My very first Titan Hard run, we wiped a few times and the people who'd been there before patiently explained the mechanics. That isn't just "no cross realm" at work, to pin it entirely on that is disingenuous to a fault. It also misses my point--that the existence of cross-realm group finders and matchmaking tools doesn't contribute remotely to the downfall of a community nearly as much as the community itself. WoW's community has been eating itself alive since the days of the bus shock meme if not earlier, far before cross-realm anything was a gleam in the devs' eyes.

That's why FF14's community is 100x better. 100% of WOW can be played cross-server. That is why WOW's community is garbage.

Again, you missed the point of my post: correlation and causation are not inherently linked to one another. Yes, there's a correlation between CRZ and WoW's shitty community, and the much more positive community in FFXIV and its more restricted cross-realm capabilities, but this doesn't lay the entire blame at cross-realm play's feet any more than the hemorrhaging subscribers since Cataclysm can be laid at LFR's feet. You're pinning the blame on something that came along long after things had hit the point of no return.

It's very obvious what cross-server does to communities, FF14 literally proves this.

Proof requires more than correlation and a personal grudge against something.

[Tanthoris]

As a player who's server tanked with WoD for multiple reasons beyond the simple downward trend of subs, it would be nearly impossible to find a group sometimes on my server, which back when server merging was thought about was at high pop. Do I want the LFG tool to stay how it is, no not really, i'd very much like for it to be improved upon, but I do not want to see it removed simply because people want to blame it as the evil source of the death of server community.

[Deleted]

Spamming the trade chat was not social interaction, don't be stupid.

who was spamming?
you may have been, but get a good reputation & you had no problem finding a group. as i was a bloody good healer for one of the top 3 guilds on the realm, spamming never happened & i much prefered to pug.

dont be so bloody childish, by calling people stupid. you were obviously one of the spammers no one would group with.
get over it.

[ShiyoKozuki]

Proof requires more than correlation and a personal grudge against something.

WOW PVP community was amazing. When cross server happened, it died.

WOW's PVE community was great, when cross server happened, it died.

Playing the game since release is all the proof I need.

- - - Updated - - -

I remember TBC times when finding party for dungeon takes like 3h. Group finder is best thing that happens to WoW.

Never took me that long. Asked in guild or chat channels or friend list if anyone wanted to do some heroics, got a group within minutes.

Game caters to anti-social people like you now.

[Halicia]

Spamming trade for half an hour manually to find a group isn't any more social then queueing up for half an hour to find a group.

Its what you do after the fact. Most people don't socialize in dungeons because there's no upside, and all the downside. Same happens with manual groups nowadays too.

Only groups I socialize in are guild groups, and without LFG, that's all I'd be doing. Which would prolly encourage me to unsub if the content available to me on off-hours is diminshed by LFG's removal.

[ComputerNerd]

It certainly impacts the content you are doing, and the people you are doing it with. It also completely undermines the progression part of the game, which is one of the biggest things that keeps people subscribed.

If everyone had a button that let them instantly kill other players in PvP, it wouldn't be a choice to use that button. Which is why your entire "It's a choice" thing is invalid. More choices is better, the illusion of choices is not.

Edit: If I don't do LFR, I lose out on nothing. Other people might get an upgrade from doing them, or progress their legendary quest. I would get a little gold and some valor, I don't want that, so I don't do LFR.

If I don't use the winning button, everyone else is going to outperform me in all types of content, and I'll be rockbottom in pretty much all scenarios. That ruins the fun of the game, and so I have to use the button. Then I have no more progression to do, and that ruins the fun of the game.

Your vendor analogy is terrible, please stop with it. You are only making yourself look dumb.

If it undermines it so much, why is no other format criticised in that way.
Why the singling out of LFR ?
There is no legitimate reason for that.

who was spamming?
you may have been, but get a good reputation & you had no problem finding a group. as i was a bloody good healer for one of the top 3 guilds on the realm, spamming never happened & i much prefered to pug.

dont be so bloody childish, by calling people stupid. you were obviously one of the spammers no one would group with.
get over it.

Everyone who was just "average" and in an over-represented dps role.
Tanks and healers got groups quicker simply because they were a tank or healer.

[ShiyoKozuki]

Spamming trade for half an hour manually to find a group isn't any more social then queueing up for half an hour to find a group.

You didn't spam trade unless you were anti-social.
Social players had a friend list, guildmates, and private chat channels for asking people to do content with them.

That's no longer needed because we had to cater to the anti-social trade spam spamming crowd who was probably blacklisted for ninjaing and thus literally had to spam trade for hours and hours to find someone who didn't have them blacklisted to tank or heal for them

[shimerra]

You didn't spam trade unless you were anti-social.
Social players had a friend list, guildmates, and private chat channels for asking people to do content with them.

That's no longer needed because we had to cater to the anti-social trade spam spamming crowd who was probably blacklisted for ninjaing and thus literally had to spam trade for hours and hours to find someone who didn't have them blacklisted to tank or heal for them

In my first TBC raiding guild I literally pissed off the other two tanks so much because every single DPS and healer in the guild wanted me to tank heroics for them. In Wrath I had a dedicated group of friends who did every single heroic except coccus in a day to help my DK catch up to raid with them, and more who wouldn't fit. I had respectable connections with a GDKP group, the old EJB/Serious Casual group which was a compilation of top guilds on Mal'Ganis, the two guild's I raided that expansion in, and randoms I met pugging content. In cata and early mop I even got a RL group of friends on my server and while we'd occasionally pick up a regular or two attendance was often an issue and we'd on the regularly have to hit up trade chat to flesh out the group.


I frequently had to go to trade chat to find groups for things or get the remaining X number of members, your argument and example is shit. I'm sorry but even in a giant ass guild like Goon Squad, which I joined cause a WoW buddy was playing with them in SWOTR, I had issues finding people to do shit all the time and their guild was massive. Even if you have a massive friends list you don't always have friends that want to do what you wanted to do or they'd frequently be locked to what you wanted to do. So cut your bullshit that the only people who had issues finding groups were anti-social people.

In this current patch i'm able to raid with people I hadn't in ages because of quitting, rerolling, etc and I in fact met a lovely group of people on Arthas that I was raiding a few months with until they died these last couple of weeks that I never would have ever known or gotten to meet. Getting rid of the LFM tool would be one of the most stupid things the Blizz devs could do. I didn't talk to people in Vanilla when I didn't want to and I don't do it now. Removal of these tools isn't going to change that just like adding them didn't.

[Flakstorm]

Bad idea.
You actually can spend 30mins on live looking for a group in trade chat or just /yell on cities, you are not forced to use LFG, so dont and be teh happiest player u can be, done.

[Charge me Doctor]

Make the game more social again I don't care if I have to be in a main city for 30 min to make a group.
Merge more servers so every single one has at least a medium population and it should be no problem to build a group.

Pure innocent child. 30 minutes. Oh my, how naive.

No, anyone who would want group finder to be removed is a party pooper and hates having fun in games

- - - Updated - - -

How does spending hours trying to find a coherent group to do anything make the game more social? I don't have fond memories of my vanilla group finding days. Even when you had friends and guildies to play with, they weren't always all online at the same time. Now I can group with friends at their convenience, but still get things done when they aren't available.

Too often you just skipped over dungeons because it was pain in the ass to find a group that won't stuck in it for 3 hours. Better stick to questing. Only when you had to do dungeons (aka - "that-last-bunch-of-exp-that-i-need-to-get-to-level-up-and-go-to-next-location-and-i-hate-grinding-that-much", or "i'm 60 now, i guess that's my life now").

Just a reminder - people came up with gear score when they were looking for a solution for finding a group being horrible experience.

[Thrif]

I agree with your final point (Removing it doesn't solve anything). I would argue that communities do exist in the game though, they are called guilds. I honestly have no idea why people keep saying that the community etc is dead, when you can just join a guild, get friends there, and do stuff with them. That's no different today than it was in Vanilla. I've always tried to run dungeons and raids with guildies, and for the life of me I can't understand why people somehow think that this is gone.

The community called guilds exists yes, but before X-realms the whole REALMS used to be communities. You ran into the same people all the time, whether you were doing dungeons or battlegrounds or farming out in the world. Eventually you got to know these people, and you even got to know the enemy side through BGs, where you had your arch nemesis and stuff like that. This kind of community was something extremely amazing and really made the game an MMO. It's by far the biggest fuck up Blizzard did, to remove this aspect of the game. And since they did it so early, most people who play today doesn't even know how amazing it was and what they're missing out on, so the possibility to get it back is non-existant.

Basically, today I can name around thirty people on my server, as in knowing their in-game name and what class and race they play. In Vanilla, I could name hundreds. And no, not just because the guild was bigger for 40 man raiding. Heck, I knew more people from the opposing faction than I know people from my own faction today. Everything outside of the guild is non-existant in a social aspect, they could just as well not exist, and this wasn't always the case.

[Spiral Mage]

Doing this would not accomplish anything you think it would, so no, it is what it is. Make use of it, don't complain about it. LFD had to be done in the end.

[Lilija]

For me progression means spending a few weeks working on a boss, and when it finally goes down, moving on to a brand new part of the instance and a brand new boss that I've never seen before and could not see any other way. The way raiding worked in TBC. To me grinding stuff in increasing difficulty modes is not "progress", it's just grinding.

This is how Mythic raiding is... go do it and stop finding excuses. LFR doesn't stop you from doing Mythic.

[Bathory]

No thanks, I really don't wanna sit in town spamming /2 and /4 just to find a group. The social aspect of the game goes way beyond "hey let's remove this and things will become social again"

[FelPlague]

back in vanilla, i got all the way to the start of naxrammas without making any freinds, being a lonley pug, not meeting anyone, just going "mage, doing this" and then never talked to them again after the run... till i decided i wanted some freinds, and to up my clearing and gearing speed...

thing is about wow, is you can choose to be anti social
group finder/LFR all the time
or choose to be social
join a guild, do mythic, and actuallty get content done

your choice, the game has not FORCED PEOPLE to become less social, it has let those who want to be less social, do so

[Kryos]

For me progression means spending a few weeks working on a boss, and when it finally goes down, moving on to a brand new part of the instance and a brand new boss that I've never seen before and could not see any other way. The way raiding worked in TBC. To me grinding stuff in increasing difficulty modes is not "progress", it's just grinding.

So with the release of youtube there was no more progress since you could see all bosses before you killed them yourself? Why do you join LFR anyway? Join or create a mythic raid and you can progress the way you described. Mythic also adds or changes boss mechanics and even adds new npcs in the fight. So if you killed Archimonde LFR you haven't seen the same you see on mythic.

[derpkitteh]

no thanks. i like not having to speak to people unless i want to.

and i usually do not want to.