Remove the group finder tool

[Jewsco]

I guess all my friends haven't noticed it as well. Because you prolly were on all the servers in Vanilla and have seen they were all perfect little worlds where everyone knew each other and people were accounted for each bad action they've commited. My server looked exactly the same as any place on the internet with hundrends of people. People cared only for themselves and their close friends - everyone else was irrelevant or just temporary means for a goal.


If I am interested in something I will activly look for people who are interested in the same thing. There absolutly no connection with xrealm and any interest people have in game. That's just an excuse. Maybe people didn't really care for that deep enough or found more interesting things to do in game instead. Back in the day except for BGs there wasn't really much to do in terms of PvP. Now there are much more options - maybe people just prefer those more. World PvP started dying with the introduction of BGs since no respectable PvPer would waste their time on noobies for nothing when they could fight the real challenge and get rewards for that.

As for 25mn raiding community, it's coming back. Sure, it took a huge hit with the 10man crap and lack of new raiders in Cata but flex raiding starts to make things better again. Pugging is back. If only Mythic raids become xrealm full time raiding scene will be ok.

I agree with almost all your points but the 10 man raiding hurting 25 man and raiding overall. What hurt raiding overall 10 and 25 was the one lockout for raiding they started in cata. In wotlk my guild was a 25 man raiding team and we would pug 10 mans all the time when not running guild raids. When that was taken away in cata and one could only raid once either 25 man or 10 man pugging on my realm died overnight. People couldn't pug or they would be locked out from guild raids. Without pugging that is where the community started to die not lfg. I found many of friends and new guildies thru pugging in wotlk and before. The seperate raid lock outs is what killed the communities. People could only raid in guilds and thus meeting new people stopped or serverly halted. With the new raid lock system it is starting to come back. But some of the most fun I had were gold for gear runs where if one had they good they got the gear and then at end the raid split the gold made from the run. You could get gear and gold. And met a lot of people doing those. The single raid lockout was single handily the biggest mistake the game has ever made.
It was blizz listening to a minority whining they had to raid both.

[Lilija]

I agree with almost all your points but the 10 man raiding hurting 25 man and raiding overall. What hurt raiding overall 10 and 25 was the one lockout for raiding they started in cata. In wotlk my guild was a 25 man raiding team and we would pug 10 mans all the time when not running guild raids. When that was taken away in cata and one could only raid once either 25 man or 10 man pugging on my realm died overnight. People couldn't pug or they would be locked out from guild raids. Without pugging that is where the community started to die not lfg. I found many of friends and new guildies thru pugging in wotlk and before. The seperate raid lock outs is what killed the communities. People could only raid in guilds and thus meeting new people stopped or serverly halted. With the new raid lock system it is starting to come back. But some of the most fun I had were gold for gear runs where if one had they good they got the gear and then at end the raid split the gold made from the run. You could get gear and gold. And met a lot of people doing those. The single raid lockout was single handily the biggest mistake the game has ever made.
It was blizz listening to a minority whining they had to raid both.

I think you misunderstood me. I ment 10 mans in Cata in terms of what you have described. WotLK was really great time for pugs and pugs were the recruitment pool for 25man raiding. With Cata pugging raids was mostly gone (hardly anyone pugged current content until late DS). Also the difficulty between 10man and 25man was all over the place in Cata. First 10mans were too hard, then they were too easy.

As for the point of raiding both - it was a valid point but the Cata model wasn't the a good solution. Flex raiding seems to fix that quite well tho Really big shame they didn't come with that idea in Cata.

[Dug]

Fuck no Group finger tool is probably one of the greatest things they've ever added. You interact with people when you join the group, spamming trade chat with LFM (insert raid here) is NOT interacting with shit it's just praying somebody sees your message in the sea of spam. Fuck that and fuck your idea

- - - Updated - - -

And also I've been dabbling in the oh so great vanilla servers and after doing VC twice I've yet to make one "friend" or "socialize". The extent of our interactions in the dungeons was "Hey, watch out for the pat" "let healer get some mana back" *boss dies* "alright cool thx for the group" and I never interact with them again.

[melodramocracy]

I voted no, though it's a bit more complicated than that. LFG and its variants are an answer for the inherent drawbacks in having realms in the first place, something that I'm sure Blizzard would simply like to have completely hidden to the player if they had the tech to do so (or wanted to invest the money in it).

Outside of being an answer to population issues, they're actually pretty bad for the game over the long term. They trivialize guilds, and greatly accelerate the outpacing of content, neither of which should be compromised for the sake of player convenience.

[Kretan]

Removing the group finder would be an awful change for this game ug. I remember the days before group finder....you want to do ANYTHING obscure? Too bad noe wants to do it with you. Pugging mythic from the last raid of the previous expansion? Too bad can't find a group. LFG tool is one of the few things that keeps the game enjoyable for me.

[Sastank]

Remove this thread. Keep the tool a lot of people use. Harder for a lot of people to find things on low pop servers/off hours. The days of spamming /2 at 4 am for something wasn't exactly the pinnacle of excitement. Don't know how many groups would actually do world bosses these days

[Zenny]

Considering the "no" is at 75% on this forum should indicate to anyone that removing the tool will be a monumentally stupid idea.

[Deleted]

Considering the "no" is at 75% on this forum should indicate to anyone that removing the tool will be a monumentally stupid idea.

The problem isn't with the tool but how the game is built around it.

LFD worked through most of wrath because players still had standards of tanking, healing, and damage from tbc. If people didn't perform well enough they where quickly removed and replaced it was a good system that fostered decent levels of play.

Blizzard fucked this up by adding kick timers. Encouraging people to carry trash. When that wasn't enough they added a desertion penalty so you couldn't run from trash without being punished. Finally they added kick protection so the drooling retards who people would actually go watch a tv show to be able to kick would be carried.

This stripping down of tools to destroy groups ability to police groups and enforce standards. Ultimately lead to the lfd/lfr of today. empty meaningless content you are not allowed to lose at...

The tools or at the tool of lfd is fine , however blizzard HAS to allow players the power to remove whoever they want whenever they want. It is the only way content can ever be decent rather then utter faceroll.

[Aurabolt]

It's not gonna be removed. EVER.

It was added out of necessity: Dungeons were not being accessed by the majority of the player base. The communtiy-imposed gating to access FoS, PoS and HoR (Wrath's last 3 dungeons) using Gearscore forced Blizzard to intervene. Not that those asking for LFD and LFR to removed care: ThEY were likely the reason it was added in the first place.

I didn't have a problem with attunements but I had a big problem with Gearscore and the other community-imposed gating used to exclude the majority from dungeons and raids. I was no slacker. I did dailies and dungeons and was just barely geared to tank each tier of content. Yet I did it anyway. Even though I struggled, it was clear to the groups I tanked in I knew my shit. The problem was I didn't have strong enough gear to do the job. Why? Because of Gearscore. If your GS is below 1600 (my GS was 1840 before LFD was introduced), you're automatically excluded from raiding the current tier. The problem with this "logic" is you often couldn't find enough people either willing or geared enough to raid the previous tier so you could get some gear. That or folks would sign up then decide after you start they suddenly can't stay for the whole run and the run falls apart. It's a catch-22: You need to run dungeons and raids to get geared for the current content but if you can't find people willing take you, you're screwed.

This was my situation until LFD was introduced. It wasn't from laziness or looking to be carried. Folks just looked at my gear and cheevos and politely told me to fuck off and go do the previous tier. LFD changed the game and for me, it was a fucking godsend. I was able to do current content for the first time. I got geared enough in Wrath to clear 25-Man Argent Tournament. Cataclysm was the first time I did all raid tiers of an expansion while they were current. I did them with a guild but LFD made it a hell of a lot easier--and faster--to get geared.

The pushback from Blizzard on this topic when Cataclysm was in Beta should've been the wakeup call for the elitists. If "the server community aspect died with LFD/LFR", it wasn't a very strong community to have quickly died off. The better arguement would have been to say Faction Change killed the server community: I remember when it was introduced--whole guilds faction changed to make the already lop-sided Alliance/Horde ratio on the server WORSE. LOL.

I was on 4 servers around the time Faction Change was introduced. Folks have NO IDEA how much it changed the game, especially when it was first introduced. You literally had a max exodus. Guild Transfer simply sped up the process. LOL.

[Deleted]

Because you prolly were on all the servers in Vanilla and have seen they were all perfect little worlds where everyone knew each other and people were accounted for each bad action they've commited.

Do you really not understand what people are explaining to you? Is this really what you think people are saying?

If I am interested in something I will activly look for people who are interested in the same thing.

You seems to be very removed from the reality of the game. You can "actively look" all you want (whatever that means), but it's not going to help you. The communities like dueling communities are not there anymore, and in a game where everything is xrealm they are not going to be coming back no matter what you think or do.

[Lilija]

Do you really not understand what people are explaining to you? Is this really what you think people are saying?

You claim there was a good server community in Vanilla and TBC. I claim that not on every server cause on my server people were jerks and ever sane person sticked to their guild. You claim my observation is false because it doesn't fit your narrative.

Btw, I've seen several people on the forum point out very similar experience when it comes to early WoW server community. All my friends that have played WoW and I spoke with them about it recall very similar experience to mine.

So what exactly I'm not understanding?

You seems to be very removed from the reality of the game. You can "actively look" all you want (whatever that means), but it's not going to help you. The communities like dueling communities are not there anymore, and in a game where everything is xrealm they are not going to be coming back no matter what you think or do.

And you seem to deny everything that doesn't fit your world views. Didn't it cross your mind as a possibility that dueling community died out cause people have found something better to do? In Vanilla there were BGs - and that's it for the PvP. It's natural people dueled to show off their skills and gear. Then Arena was introduced, more BGs, more rewards, achievements. No wonders people stopped dueling.

An interesting note. I've metioned this statement that xrealm killed dueling community to my boyfriend (he was playing WoW since Vanilla till half Cata). Without telling him any of my thoughts on this topic he answered: it died since now they have better things to do.

Tbh, this whole argument about how xrealm/LFD/LFG/LFR killed server community looks a lot like a discussion with SJWs. It's the only possible narrative and don't you dare say otherwise. Claiming that those things has made people be anything different than they were before is taking away all the agency from people. People are individuals with different views, different goals, different motivations. You cannot say you know how they will act cause you have no bloody idea. There will always be someone who will not fit your view on things. Your view of things isn't any better than anyone else's. Blizzard decided to go with something you don't like. Many other people like it. You have no ground to claim your view is better than anyone else's.

P.S. Each time I've need to find people to do something with in game I just looked for them... activly. You know there are internet forums, pages, open raid... If there was a need for a dueling community it would exist on the internet and they would meet and play in game. Raiders somehow have no problem with finding people to enjoy the game with. Why should it be hard for any other group of in game interest?

[Howard Moon]

It can't be done with current WoW.

<snip>

(the game) is mostly a single player game with chat interface.

Sums up my thoughts.

[Deleted]

You claim there was a good server community in Vanilla and TBC. I claim that not on every server cause on my server people were jerks and ever sane person sticked to their guild.

Right, you're not understanding what people are saying. The game design caused the formation of communities, nobody is claiming the whole server was some Kumbaya singing hippie community as you seem to think. It was the same small group of people on your realm so you kept bumping into them, they existed in the same persistent world as you, and there were benefits from getting to know people and grouping with them -- that inevitably results in communities forming. With the introduction of xrealm/LFG/LFR those incentives are gone, and so are the communities. It makes perfect sense, it matches what can be seen in the game, and it matches many people's experiences.

[Cathbadh]

Removing the group finder tool won't make the game more social. Hell unless you're on 3 or 4 specific servers, it'll make it even less social. How am I supposed to put a group together on a dead server during a content dought?

[Lilija]

Right, you're not understanding what people are saying. The game design caused the formation of communities, nobody is claiming the whole server was some Kumbaya singing hippie community as you seem to think. It was the same small group of people on your realm so you kept bumping into them, they existed in the same persistent world as you, and there were benefits from getting to know people and grouping with them -- that inevitably results in communities forming. With the introduction of xrealm/LFG/LFR those incentives are gone, and so are the communities. It makes perfect sense, it matches what can be seen in the game, and it matches many people's experiences.

Anegdotal evidence is not a proof of anything. My experience also happened to many people. My experience also aligns with how internet is: PEOPLE DON'T CARE ABOUT POLICING OTHERS. Yes, there are internet communities but they are much smaller than whole server. Maybe there were people who liked the "server community mythos" therefor they fueled it more on their server. But it didn't happened everywhere and the majority of people on that server were exluded from that special club anyway. That's why they formed guilds and kept it to themselves.

If all those traits of "server community" where as important and needed for everyone they would have survived. I personally don't even know what exactly those traits were as they did not exist on my server. My Vanilla server was exactly the same as people are in WoW nowadays... tho nowadays it seems slightly less toxic.

Oh, one more thing. As I have observed:
LFD and LFR tend to prioritize your own server
So well... you still mostly bump into the same people if you aren't on your ignore list.

[torque6]

Like many mentioned, it was added out of necessity.

[Deleted]

But it didn't happened everywhere and the majority of people on that server were exluded from that special club anyway.

There's little point continuing this when you don't seem to understand what people are saying to you. It's not about any "special clubs" or some "server community mythos". It's about the fundamental the difference between being a town in a cross roads where the majority of the people just travel through never to be seen again, and being a village where most people live their whole lives and depend on each other to get things done. In the former you don't get communities forming, and in the latter you do. The former is WoW today, and the latter was WoW in vanilla -- and it's a direct result of the xrealm/LFG/LFR tools.

So well... you still mostly bump into the same people if you aren't on your ignore list.

But today it doesn't matter even if you're on the ignore list of every dungeon player on your realm, you'll still get groups just the same. In vanilla it would've mattered a great deal. It's a perfect example why the 5-man dungeon communities disappeared from the realms.

[Lilija]

There's little point continuing this when you don't seem to understand what people are saying to you. It's not about any "special clubs" or some "server community mythos". It's about the fundamental the difference between being a town in a cross roads where the majority of the people just travel through never to be seen again, and being a village where most people live their whole lives and depend on each other to get things done. In the former you don't get communities forming, and in the latter you do. The former is WoW today, and the latter was WoW in vanilla -- and it's a direct result of the xrealm/LFG/LFR tools.

The example you are giving isn't comparable. WoW server used to be more like a small town rather than a village. In a smalle village people know each other so ofc they will become dependant. But the moment the amount of people in one place grows over certain value the sense of community starts dying out because people are not capable of knowing each other therefor they stop carying about anyone outside their closer circle.

I was always extremely interested in different kinds of communities and I actually at the start looked for something like server identity. But I did notice it's pointless cause people did not care to be part of that. So I focused on something much more reliable: a guild. If you had a good guild you didn't need a server for anything. Best players on the server usually were in good guilds therefor they had no need to bother with the "scrubs" outside of their guild and they mostly kept to themselve. That is how people act.

As I've said before, on my server there were whole guilds of trolls whose main goal was to be annoying to other people, so ninjaing, camping, trolling, etc. They had no problem what so ever to still get content in game done. And "server community" didn't really care. If someone shouted on /general that someone is a ninja, people just shut them with calling that person a noob or just showing off how much they don't care. If someone asked for help they were told check thottbot and called names (that was actually some other server I jumped to level an alt when my server was down).

I do believe on some servers some people put effort in order to creating server identity but I'm quite conviniced the majority of the server didn't care much for that. Most people didn't even visit forums and without that you had no way in knowing all those "best crafters", "best tanks", "best whatever". If something has changed is most likely that those people who put the effort into creating the server community left and realized how little their effort is valued.

But today it doesn't matter even if you're on the ignore list of every dungeon player on your realm, you'll still get groups just the same. In vanilla it would've mattered a great deal. It's a perfect example why the 5-man dungeon communities disappeared from the realms.

Except it didn't matter cause trolls had their own troll groups. They were still invited to guilds if they were good players because believe or not enough PvE guilds cared much more about killing bosses than being nice to people.

[Deleted]

The example you are giving isn't comparable.

It's an analogy, and just like every analogy it is flawed. Instead of wasting your time picking at the holes in it, how about reflect on it to try to understand what it is that is being communicated to you by it?

I was always extremely interested in different kinds of communities and I actually at the start looked for something like server identity. But I did notice it's pointless cause people did not care to be part of that. So I focused on something much more reliable: a guild. If you had a good guild you didn't need a server for anything.

I give up, you're clearly incapable of comprehending the point here and just hold on to your own argument which has nothing at all to do with what I'm saying here. It's not about "server identities" or whatever. And it's not about people choosing to be in some named and labeled "community". You can be a hermit living in a village and you'll still be a part of the community -- people will know you and you'll be the "village hermit".

[Lilija]

It's an analogy, and just like every analogy it is flawed. Instead of wasting your time picking at the holes in it, how about reflect on it to try to understand what it is that is being communicated to you by it?

I give up, you're clearly incapable of comprehending the point here and just hold on to your own argument which has nothing at all to do with what I'm saying here. It's not about "server identities" or whatever. And it's not about people choosing to be in some named and labeled "community". You can be a hermit living in a village and you'll still be a part of the community -- people will know you and you'll be the "village hermit".

You are playing semantics here. Yes, we could agree that every group of people everywhere is some kind of community. But the influences of the community on a single persona will depend certain aspects. What I am trying to tell you is that if a community is big, people's perception of it shifts and the influence on the individual starts to weaken. WoW servers in Vanilla or TBC had too many people to make that influence significant. That's why mostly bigger servers in Vanilla were identical to how the internet is as a whole. They just passed certain point of perception where a single person is unable to care for more people than their own, close circle.

The other thing I am trying to tell you is that from the perception of an individual, being part of vast WoW community in game didn't change much since Vanilla to now. Just because it was too big to begin with. People weren't nicer in Vanilla. People weren't behaving better in Vanilla. On average they behave exactly the same. Certain interests have shifted because people have more choises for their gameplay therefor some more niche aspects like dueling or world PvP have diminished. If there were no BGs, no arenas, no rewards for PvP, people would still hunt each other in the wild or duel because what else would there to be for those who like PvP.