What's the point of LFR these days?

[nekobaka]

LMAO at people who think one needs a guild in order to do organized raiding.

[Skrebulous]

Like it or not, I strongly believe that if you kill raiding, you kill the foundation upon which WoW PvE communities are built, which kills not just raiding, but all PvE. It's possible that PvP may persist, but I suspect that without the core game community built around raiding, even that too would soon die.

Don't underestimate how integral to the game (real) raiding is just because only 40% of the playerbase actively participates in it. It's a vital part of the ecosystem and without it, WoW would die.

Oh please, there has never been a point where ANYWHERE NEAR 40% of the population was doing raids above LFR level. Furthermore, the way you guys try to imagine yourselves as somehow being important beyond your small numbers is a joke. I mean gosh, your raiding guild fell apart when all the raiders quit, gosh that's meaningful.

Seriously, nobody cares. This isn't 2005, you're not some prestigious kings of the game, and no normal person can tell if your giant flaming shoulderpads came from a current mythic boss or if you just transmogged something from an old raid you soloed in ten minutes.

I mean jeez lately I've seen raiders on this board whining that the best stuff drops from mythic five mans. I've seen that guy from that world first guild that got banned complaining that they don't make any e-sport money while people laugh and post how nobody would watch a world first race.

The raiding community has never been more irrelevant.

[kary]

LFR? Pointless now, basically rewarding people for surviving the queue.
Does nothing to teach players about anything. LFR players will still join any difficulty higher and wipe to every mechanic.
But hey, you guys deserve these things, and will fight tooth and nail for them so, whatever.

[Raelbo]

Oh please, there has never been a point where ANYWHERE NEAR 40% of the population was doing raids above LFR level.

MMO Armory Stats from 13 January 2014

This was 4 months into the 14 months that the tier was active and 33% of all players had cleared the first boss in flex mode. Considering that over the next 10 months some raiders would have joined the fray, plus those raiders who simply skipped flex immerseus altogether but still got other boss kills, it's not unreasonable to extrapolate that the number of actual participants was somewhere around the 40% mark.

But hey, who needs actual facts when you can just shoot from the hip?

Furthermore, the way you guys try to imagine yourselves as somehow being important beyond your small numbers is a joke. I mean gosh, your raiding guild fell apart when all the raiders quit, gosh that's meaningful.

I think you need to calm down and take a deep breath. My post was never an ego stroking exercise and I am sorry if you have perceived it as a threat to your own sense of self worth within the game.

I am trying to paint a picture of the role that raiding communities play within the Wow ecosystem. From high end mythic progression guilds to casual once-a-week normal mode guilds, it is my assertion that these groups form the basis for the formation of communities in the game. For what it's worth, the same can be said of PvP oriented communities focussed on specific activities, or role playing communities. It's about people having common interests and goals within the game acting as force to bring them together into a social hub which attracts and supports a larger community around it, in much the same way as a sizeable business or industry will build a town around it. Even though that core business may only represent a minority of the people in the town, without it the town would die.

Or maybe you are right, and people like me are just retards who lack the capacity for critical thought. Maybe raiding does nothing for the game and Blizzard only implement it because they're idiots, and every other MMO that follows a similar model is also made by idiots with delusions of how important activities like raiding are. /s

Seriously, nobody cares. This isn't 2005, you're not some prestigious kings of the game, and no normal person can tell if your giant flaming shoulderpads came from a current mythic boss or if you just transmogged something from an old raid you soloed in ten minutes.

Nice strawman. You do realise that nothing I have said even remotely suggests that any of this is relevent to either myself or my argument. As it so happens I also take issue with the elitist attitude of some raiders that you allude to here. I suggest though that you stop carrying that negative prejudice into what is a more objective discussion about raiding as a whole.

I mean jeez lately I've seen raiders on this board whining that the best stuff drops from mythic five mans. I've seen that guy from that world first guild that got banned complaining that they don't make any e-sport money while people laugh and post how nobody would watch a world first race.

The raiding community has never been more irrelevant.

So because some elitist prick with a massive ego has a distasteful opinion (not just to you, but to a lot of people including other people who enjoy raiding) all raiding communities are the same?

Jeez. Get a grip man.

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LMAO at people who think one needs a guild in order to do organized raiding.

What an asinine comment! No of course you don't need a guild to do organised raiding. It's possible to get by in other ways. But most raiding groups do form guilds.

[Deleted]

MMO Armory Stats from 13 January 2014

This was 4 months into the 14 months that the tier was active and 33% of all players had cleared the first boss in flex mode. Considering that over the next 10 months some raiders would have joined the fray, plus those raiders who simply skipped flex immerseus altogether but still got other boss kills, it's not unreasonable to extrapolate that the number of actual participants was somewhere around the 40% mark.

But hey, who needs actual facts when you can just shoot from the hip?

Hmmm.... because it isn't all that correct and as "fact" as you think. Let's have a look at the disclaimer in the opening.

The data used today is a sample made up of 6.9 million characters from 2.5 million accounts, with at least one character active after November 1. The sample is slightly biased, as players who are not in a guild are much less likely to appear in our sample.

So that means there are potentially a lot of people left out who do or do not raid. And 2.5 mio. wasn't even half the people that played back in those days.
It is almost as iff you would be saying "Look, 100% of all raiders raided the actual content"..... Well, what a surprise. Well if you only people into account that are in a guild and are raiding it is normal that the numbers Shift more towards raiding. But it doesn't matter that for the rest of the 5.2 Mio. Players at that time there is no data available.

So it is NOT that 33% actually raided. The data only showed that 33% that raided had downed bosses in the actual raid. But hey, who needs actual facts when you can just shoot from the hip?Right? ;-)

[Raelbo]

Hmmm.... because it isn't all that correct and as "fact" as you think. Let's have a look at the disclaimer in the opening.

As you quoted "The sample is slightly biased"

That implies a relatively small error, not a massive error.

So that means there are potentially a lot of people left out who do or do not raid. And 2.5 mio. wasn't even half the people that played back in those days.

Sampling almost 50% of a group is, statistically speaking, a massive sample, and provided you can get a reasonably random distribution will be very accurate when predicting the results for the entire group. Granted, they did acknowledge a "slight" bias since they seemed to be more likely to catch people in guilds.

It is almost as iff you would be saying "Look, 100% of all raiders raided the actual content"

Except it's not. Stop trying to strawman the argument.

Well if you only people into account that are in a guild and are raiding it is normal that the numbers Shift more towards raiding.

They said only that it was biased in favour of people in guilds, not towards people that are raiding. You get PvP guilds and Role-playing guilds and guilds for other things too. Not only do you not know what percentage of the active player base is not guilded, you have no basis for saying they are even less likely to raid than guilded people (even though I suspect this would probably be true).

So you're basically arguing that because I can't know for certain that what the other half of the playerbase not randomly selected is doing we should just assume none of them raid? Please, at least try and be objective here. The bias is "slight". That means probably somewhere in the region of 1-5%.

So it is NOT that 33% actually raided. The data only showed that 33% that raided had downed bosses in the actual raid.

No. You've got it totally wrong.

They sampled 2.5 random player accounts (with a bias in favour of guilded players for some reason). 33% that were sampled downed bosses. A reasonable conclusion of that, considering that the raid tier lasted another 10 months and that some raiders may have been taking a break, and that some people may have ignored flex mode and done only normal/heroic, is that close to 40% of the playerbase killed at least one raid boss in Flex or higher.

But hey, who needs actual facts when you can just shoot from the hip?Right? ;-)

Dude, you just got owned, your sarcasm is misplaced.

TBH I don't care what the exact number is. When I constructed my argument my "from the hip" guess was 25%. I then went and found some data which showed me my guess was actually on the low side, so I edited my post. The principle of the argument is that raiding groups form the cores of communities, and nothing in your argument is doing anything to counter that. All you have is a bit of ad hominem and a (poor) attack on some stats whose accuracy isn't even core to the principle.

At this point it's pretty clear to me that I have put a lot more effort into thinking about this and investigating facts than you have. So instead of just attacking me because you want to be right, how about actually trying to figure out what is right?

[Yhcti]

the only thing that annoys me is that the loot is worse than stuff you get from WQ's.

[Osmeric]

The worst thing about LFR is the idiocy on display in zones that have a lot of trash. Il'gynoth, I'm looking at you. Players try to skip trash, which invariably gets aggroed anyway.

[Deleted]

Just curious about one thing, all the people who have said in this thread they would remove LFR, because of the dumb gameplay it provides, would also remove world bosses from the game because of the same reason?
Because i have not seen any thread or anyone asking for the removal of world bosses from the game, because let´s be honest here, it is the same or even easier than LFR.

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the only thing that annoys me is that the loot is worse than stuff you get from WQ's.

Do you know what is really annoying?, getting items 850+ from world quests, and emmisary cache items being capped at 835, despite they require four world quests instead of just one.

[Simon_Moon]

I get better loot from world quests, I get challenged by mythic +, my play sessions are very rarely ever longer than an hour these days. I do not feel entitled to see the story arcs that are hiding in raids, but as long as there is a way to do it that fits my schedule I will.

Also LFR always let's you come back if you had to run mid fight for family reasons.

[antelope591]

Sadly LFR is more useful than ever. With the possibility of getting 880+ gear, legendaries and basically the only source of runes. Blizz knew what they were doing by adding so much RNG. They created replay value without any effort.

[Deleted]

He has said that he regretted it. He has commented and mentioned LFR a dozen times, you'd have to check every message he posted on the matter and i'm certainly not going to go dig through his post history for it, especially when the denialists do whatever they can to twist, warp, and refuse to believe things put right in their faces. Complete waste of time. But if you want to actually know the truth of the situation, the info is there for you to find.

Like i've always told my little girl, i'm not going to do your homework for you, just point you in the right direction.

Sorry but if you're going to want me or others to accept that then the burden of proof lies with you. I have read a number of quotes from him and they support my comment, not yours, and I do not feel it is for me to search every single thing he has ever said just to substantiate your claim.

Personally I have only ever seen him say he didn't like how it was implemented and each time I have seen someone claim otherwise it was down to them mis-quoting or selectively quoting taking it out of context.

[Deleted]

LMAO at people who think one needs a guild in order to do organized raiding.

You don't 'need' one, but it makes it a lot less painful.

I'm in a very casual guild as I'm recently back to the game and can't commit to a raid schedule anymore, but I've been in top 200 guilds before. Whilst the rest of the guild were dragging their feet on gearing up, I was pugging EN Heroic and let me tell you, that was a horrible experience. The merest hint of a wipe and the raid would disintegrate with people leaving or the lowest DPS would be bullied into quitting. Fast forward a few weeks to when the rest of my guild had caught up on gear and we started clearing the place as a guild. The whole experience was much better. Incremental improvements in performance after a wipe and funny banter on voice chat.

I haven't even bothered PUGing ToV and I doubt I'll bother with Nighthold either. I'd rather wait and run it with my guild.

[Dasani]

Sorry but if you're going to want me or others to accept that then the burden of proof lies with you. I have read a number of quotes from him and they support my comment, not yours, and I do not feel it is for me to search every single thing he has ever said just to substantiate your claim.

Personally I have only ever seen him say he didn't like how it was implemented and each time I have seen someone claim otherwise it was down to them mis-quoting or selectively quoting taking it out of context.

I don't care what you accept or don't accept. I'm not going to go out of my way to convince you of anything, just like i'm not going to fly to africa to give educations to communities with no schools or education systems.

If you are content to be ignorant, that is a choice and you are free to make it. And that is fine. Some people prefer ignorance because it is easier. To learn about virtually anything in life, you have to take initiative and go out and seek that information, you have to work for it to some degree. It isn't spoon fed to you, especially by the unwilling. You've made your choice to be ignorant, i've made my choice to not teach you. Where ever you want to place blame in this situation is up to you, I just don't care enough. I reluctantly help my niece with her math homework and that is something that is actually important in life. You are your opinions (about LFR of all things) are not even on the list.

If I got off on pointing out people's mistakes and rubbing it in their faces, i'd go scour the logs just to spite you, but I just don't care. It changes absolutely nothing in this world whether you believe the truth or not and I have zero incentive to show it to you. If I had something to gain that I valued as being greater than the value I have for my time spent, perhaps. So again, you've made your choice, i've made mine, nothing to gain by going on about it.

I do recommend reading through ghostcrawler's old messages regardless because they provide interesting insights. Personally I like learning and knowing things, but I guess that isn't your cup of tea so.

[Rudkobing]

to be able to mastubate in peace????

[Deleted]

Dude, you just got owned, your sarcasm is misplaced.

TBH I don't care what the exact number is. When I constructed my argument my "from the hip" guess was 25%. I then went and found some data which showed me my guess was actually on the low side, so I edited my post. The principle of the argument is that raiding groups form the cores of communities, and nothing in your argument is doing anything to counter that. All you have is a bit of ad hominem and a (poor) attack on some stats whose accuracy isn't even core to the principle.

At this point it's pretty clear to me that I have put a lot more effort into thinking about this and investigating facts than you have. So instead of just attacking me because you want to be right, how about actually trying to figure out what is right?

Dude, i did not get owned. Especially not from you. Why should that be? You brought up ONE source that ist "slightly" inaccurate, whereby "slightly" is such a stretchable term. But hey you just don#t care about the exact number.... strange that you get all emotionally about it.

I didn't attack you, i just said that your "stats" are not correct and paint a wrong picture. Obviously you seem to believe those incorrect numbers but that is up to you. But in reality there are way less people raiding than you might think and raiding isn't, and never has been, the main reason to play this game for the majority of people (the over 100 mio. that ever played WoW) to play this game. LFR alone did rise the participation in that particular area of the game by 500 - 700%... even though most of the "better" players claim that LFR isn't a raid.

Just do what ever floats your boat. Just don't expect your sight on things to be the ultimate correct answer to everything. In terms of raiding and how many people actually do raiding you just showed me that you are wrong and therefor owned yourself..... pretty hard.

[Raelbo]

Dude, i did not get owned.

You absolutely did. If you're going to discredit a source of information then you need to do it properly. The basis of your assessment of the stats was totally wrong. I proved how, on several points, you completely misinterpreted them.

You brought up ONE source that ist "slightly" inaccurate, whereby "slightly" is such a stretchable term. But hey you just don#t care about the exact number.... strange that you get all emotionally about it.

I made an argument about why raiding is more important than just a percentage of how many players actually raid. An argument you still haven't countered btw. In defence of that argument I went and found what so far has been the only statistical data presented in this argument.

What you have done is attacked the accuracy of a statistic I quoted, but:
1) Your attack was illogical and failed to demonstrate that the statistics were wrong - at least sufficiently in magnitude to have a material affect on the argument at hand.
2) Even if we assume that the statistics are wrong, you still haven't tied it back to the argument, nor demonstrated how the "slight" error affects the argument.

My argument doesn't rely on the accuracy of the statistic. While I accept fully the premise that a reasonably significant number of players do need to be organised raiders in order to support my argument (a corollary of which is that a sufficiently small player participation would disprove it), you have in no way whatsoever given any facts, sources or arguments to support that those numbers are sufficiently low to meet that criterion.

I didn't attack you, i just said that your "stats" are not correct and paint a wrong picture.

1) You did a useless attempt at "correcting" the stats.
2) Even if I choose to accept your unproven premise, the picture is the same (for the purposes of my argument) whether raid participation is at 20% or at 40%. It's enough of a critical mass to form PvE communities

Obviously you seem to believe those incorrect numbers but that is up to you.

I believe the numbers can be reasonably guessed at by using the stats I found. I believe they're close enough to what is real to substantiate what I am saying.

I don't believe stats that are quoted by people with a clear anti-raid agenda with no sources to back them up. I am prepared to accept that 40% participation in SoO flex-heroic may be a little on the high side (let's say 5%). I am not prepared to accept that the "real" number is half that though.

But in reality there are way less people raiding than you might think

Based upon what? All you've done thus far is tell me that the stats that I found are wrong, but honestly, your reasoning was awful and I answered why already. Either go and show me where more accurate info is to support your claim, come up with some logically rational arguments for why my source is off by as much as you say it is, or get lost.

raiding isn't, and never has been, the main reason to play this game for the majority of people (the over 100 mio. that ever played WoW) to play this game.

I never said it was, nor is it important to my argument. Remarks like this tell me you're not really interested in hearing me out because you have a preconceived notion that I am an elitist raider pretending that I am more important than everyone else and want the death of LFR. None of which happens to be true.

My argument is that organised raiding creates basic communities within the game around which a significant portion of the PvE community forms and therefore that the removal of organised raiding from the game would have a detrimental knock-on effect to a significant portion of the gaming population. You haven't answered that assertion with any kind of argument.

Among the things I have not asserted that it seems to me you think I have:
1) Raiders are more important than non-raiders to the health of this game
2) Raiders are a majority of the playerbase
3) Raiders deserve special attention
4) LFR needs to go/doesn't have a place in the game/is less important than the higher difficulties

I heartily endorse LFR and think it is of vital importance to the game. But that doesn't mean I have to support some idiotic notion to scrap other raiding difficulties. Whereas some people seem to think it has be one vs the other, I see them in a symbiotic relationship, both playing an important role in the ecosystem of modern WoW

LFR alone did rise the participation in that particular area of the game by 500 - 700%... even though most of the "better" players claim that LFR isn't a raid.

I happen to agree (although based on what you have been saying I think your understanding of "500-700% rise in participation" is not the same as mine)

Just do what ever floats your boat. Just don't expect your sight on things to be the ultimate correct answer to everything.

Then bring me a solid argument.

[Deleted]

This is the point of LFR.
Kthxbye.

[kary]

People who still think LFR is anything but a mindless zerg amuse me.

[Deleted]

I don't care what you accept or don't accept. I'm not going to go out of my way to convince you of anything.

Then your claim is worthless, and the rest of your post the above quote is from pointless hence why I didn't bother reading it. Sorry.