Blizzard just give up on LFR

[Bullettime]

Blizzard had 10-12 million players before LFR, i don't think LFR is making the game popular.

It also wasn't a 13 year old game.

At this point, it's less about attracting new people and more about retention and keeping the barrier for entry low for the newbies that do come.

[ThatsOurEric]

Unsurprisingly, in a topic like this, the elitist raiders come crawling out of the woodwork
to vocalize their "back in my day" rhetoric, having learned nothing from the past.

[Bullettime]

Unsurprisingly, in a topic like this, the elitist raiders come crawling out of the woodwork
to vocalize their "back in my day" rhetoric, having learned nothing from the past.

Dungeons and raids sections on fan forums, and even the official forums, tend to have more vocal members of that party doing the bulk of the posting since the boards tend to be about high mythic+ discussion or mythic raid discussion/strategies.

[ComputerNerd]

As a mythic (7/9 atm) raider, I really dont understand the point of such threads. Why the hell you people care about LFR?

LFR is for people that dont give a shit about the mechanics and dont wanna learn the game and just wanna say they killed the bosses: LET EM HAVE IT.
If you think its too easy there is normal, hc and even mythic to keep you challenged. Why the fuck you whine about LFR is really out of my mind.

Every time I do LFR I usually do, alone, 20% of the total dmg... i dont give a shit if people are afk or watching tv series, I just do it for runes and AP.

Do the same and mind your own fucking business, for once, and you'll live 100 years.

PS This AINT school, you dont have to teach anybody anything. If people want to learn, they have million ways to do it on their own, and if they dont wanna learn, dont give a shit, its their right to do so. God how much i hate people that FEEL the need they need to tell others what to do, mind your own fucking business.

Because they simply have to be "better" than someone.
And LFR is a popular representation of "sub-par" players in their mind.
If someone insists on telling me what measures make them better, then they aren't.
A better player is someone I can respect, and that need not be tied to skill.
Someone can be skilled and or a better player.
They are both very different things.

To those whining about LFR.

If you think there should be better standards there, do something about it instead of whining about the consequences.
Talk to people, and there is anyone lacking skill and experience but showing effort, then actually offer them opportunities.

[Advent]

LFD didn't kill the game's community. The convenience of it in peoples' minds, and their lack of desire to maintain their friendships with people did. You don't get anywhere by forcing people to manually create groups with each other. Just look at Guild Wars 2, it has no queue system whatsoever yet players in 5man dungeons and fractals STILL don't talk to each other or form bonds of friendship all that often. This leads me to believe that people don't WANT a community, otherwise they would go out of their way to interact with people. You want a community? Great, then start chatting and forming bonds. LFD didn't TAKE that away from you, it simply gave people additional options. If I recall, the LFG matchmaker was put into the game to automate the process of what was taking some servers hours to get done by themselves. I know this, because I was on one of those realms, "Farstriders", back during Wrath when it was implemented.

[Requimortem]

Blizzard catered to you when they shouldn't have, truthfully, if it wasn't for the terrible addition of LFR/LFD, you wouldn't be playing wow or atleast not raiding regularly as you do LFR.

No offense, but blizzard is destroying the game by catering to you, more and more.

The only thing that can fix this is a wow 2, or a complete revamp of instances/difficulty in general, similar to warlords. Warlords just did it in the opposite direction making it worse.

Blizzard is destroying the game by ignoring people who offer them feedback on their moronic decisions. LFR has nothing to do with it, if anything, catering to the 1% who are able to run Mythic is what's harming the game. As is removing content, setting aside mounts/pets for their cash shop in a subscription based game, writing out large chunks of the story to be sold off in books/comics so that when an expansion hits, you've already had so much happen that you'll likely never be aware of, etc.

[Hctaz]

Unsurprisingly, in a topic like this, the elitist raiders come crawling out of the woodwork
to vocalize their "back in my day" rhetoric, having learned nothing from the past.

Well here's what we know. Vanilla-Wrath was good and saw more and more and more sub growth. Cata-now is decline.

I meaaaan if it ain't broke, don't fix it. They fixed it too hard and now it's broken.

[Osmeric]

This games largest subscription numbers existed in an era where LFR didn't exist and a minority of the game entered raids. Trying to correlate sub numbers dropping due to not being able to raid is just factually incorrect.

This is a very flawed argument. What it ignores is that the environment in which early WoW existed was very different from what came later. The most important difference is that early WoW was the first mass market MMO, and was tapping into millions of MMO newbies. It was an amazing and new experience for them, and it burned through this population like an epidemic. All manner of game design flaws can be masked in such an environment.

But it wasn't KEEPING those players, overall. A very small fraction of them got into the end game design that Blizzard had first intended. And Blizzard had stats on what players in that situation would do. It very often wasn't "keep playing to support an endgame designed for the hardcores".

Blizzard saw this, and changed the end game, and kept changing it. The old end game design simply wasn't working. The early growth was in spite of that end game design, not caused by it. And when Blizzard tried to dial back this casualization, it didn't help at all.

There have been games that tried to go back to earlier WoW end game, under the mistake impression that your argument there was valid. They flopped pretty dramatically. The one that tried to be the most hardcore in its endgame, WildStar, collapsed most spectacularly.

I suggest the problem with WoW these days isn't that it has LFR. It's that Blizzard has still tried to include hardcore content. The game still sends the message to most players that they are casual scum, not worthy of the true reward of the game. The devs have tried to have their cake and eat it too, and I think it has cost them. They needed to jettison the hardcores entirely, but were unable to force themselves to do this.

[Restors]

As a mythic (7/9 atm) raider, I really dont understand the point of such threads. Why the hell you people care about LFR?

LFR is for people that dont give a shit about the mechanics and dont wanna learn the game and just wanna say they killed the bosses: LET EM HAVE IT.
If you think its too easy there is normal, hc and even mythic to keep you challenged. Why the fuck you whine about LFR is really out of my mind.

Every time I do LFR I usually do, alone, 20% of the total dmg... i dont give a shit if people are afk or watching tv series, I just do it for runes and AP.

Do the same and mind your own fucking business, for once, and you'll live 100 years.

PS This AINT school, you dont have to teach anybody anything. If people want to learn, they have million ways to do it on their own, and if they dont wanna learn, dont give a shit, its their right to do so. God how much i hate people that FEEL the need they need to tell others what to do, mind your own fucking business.

Oh if I only could upvote your post! So beautiful put.

[yetgdhfgh]

LFR has survived 4 xpacs now

Please its pointless to complain about it now cause it aint going nowhere!

Ask yourself why do you still do LFR? and dont give me that old trope of oh i dont have time when you have time to wait 20+ min to go into LFR when you have the tools to start your own group and do normals at the very least!

Why does LFR still exist? It exists because most of wow playerbase is full of social anxious people who are scared of real raiding for fear of chatisement and rejection after all if you are a casual how many times can you see the words 'Your application for X raid has been rejected' before you say fuck it and play something else!

So please lets drop this LFR hatred cause it seriously aint going anywhere!

[ls-]

LFR has survived 4 xpacs now

Please its pointless to complain about it now cause it aint going nowhere!

Ask yourself why do you still do LFR? and dont give me that old trope of oh i dont have time when you have time to wait 20+ min to go into LFR when you have the tools to start your own group and do normals at the very least!

Why does LFR still exist? It exists because most of wow playerbase is full of social anxious people who are scared of real raiding for fear of chatisement and rejection after all if you are a casual how many times can you see the words 'Your application for X raid has been rejected' before you say fuck it and play something else!

TBF, you just described majority of people on any social media platform. That's just how people are, introverts were always the majority.

[yetgdhfgh]

TBF, you just described majority of people on any social media platform. That's just how people are, introverts were always the majority.

Way of the world

[Torrasque]

Considering the purpose and reasons for implementation, LFR still does succeed in its design. So, I don't see them removing it anytime soon, as it works as intended.

[Bigbazz]

When LFR was harder people still afk'd it. It has never been difficult but originally it was multiple times harder than today and wiping was a real possibility, didn't stop people afk cruising through while being carried by a few overgeared tho.

[munkeyinorbit]

I agree again. At the moment the only reason many raiders do lfr is for AP or chance at loot we have missed from normal, HC or mythic. None of us do it for fun.

In my guild we often take pugs and are more than happy to teach them patiently.

I just wish lfr would do more to contribute to a newer players learning. This would help those newer platers get into normals and beyond if that's what they wanted.

Your argument about getting players into normal from LFR has been proven wrong close to 100 times. The average LFR player has no interest in doing normal mode or better. It just does not matter what you say because you are wrong. It is just that simple. Blizzard is looking at LFR and it loks like their idea to making LFR more engaging is to get rid of the mechanics that are just unreasonably hard to do for average players with no voice communication and concentrating on mechanics that will kill, but are obvious or are easy to communicate. Look at KJ. Many, many people on these forums and in game have said that KJ is too hard. It has been dumbed down a lot in LFR but there are still mechanics that need to be followed over wise it is a wipe. Stand in the fire. Face boss away from raid and taunt. Find illidan relatively quickly.


Frankly, the amount of tears that LFR has produced is mind numbing. All you are doing is acting like a child and showing how pathetic you are. If you don't like it then don't do it. Stop carrying on like a spoiled brat because other people can have nice things too.

[Flurryfang]

The primary reason why LFR is shit atm, is simply because it is so easy, that players are not afraid of not making it. People can go AFK, because they know the encounter can be done with 12 people or so, so nothing happends if they slack off.

This will be the situation aslong as Blizzard have long, but easy fights.

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As a mythic (7/9 atm) raider, I really dont understand the point of such threads. Why the hell you people care about LFR?

LFR is for people that dont give a shit about the mechanics and dont wanna learn the game and just wanna say they killed the bosses: LET EM HAVE IT.
If you think its too easy there is normal, hc and even mythic to keep you challenged. Why the fuck you whine about LFR is really out of my mind.

Every time I do LFR I usually do, alone, 20% of the total dmg... i dont give a shit if people are afk or watching tv series, I just do it for runes and AP.

Do the same and mind your own fucking business, for once, and you'll live 100 years.

PS This AINT school, you dont have to teach anybody anything. If people want to learn, they have million ways to do it on their own, and if they dont wanna learn, dont give a shit, its their right to do so. God how much i hate people that FEEL the need they need to tell others what to do, mind your own fucking business.

People care and have a problem with LFR because it has an effect on the people coming into the game and the potential new raiders. As a mythic raider you might not notice this, but when you are a normal/heroic raidleader, you get to see what LFR can do to potential raiders. LFR does not only create a false image of raiding, but can stomp out the wish for some people to go into raiding. I have had a few m8s actually say no to raiding, just because they thought it would be like their runs in LFR.

We need more players who want to go into organised raiding and LFR is not helping at all. It does nothing when it comes to hyping the raiding experience or prepare people for higher diffculties, often it does the opposite.

[oldgeezer]

We need more players who want to go into organised raiding and LFR is not helping at all. It does nothing when it comes to hyping the raiding experience or prepare people for higher diffculties, often it does the opposite.

I'm not sure that I accept your assertion that we need more players who want to go into organised raiding, but putting that aside for now, what's your solution to the problem?

How do you make organised raiding more attractive? It's already got shinier gear + mounts + titles. What else can you add to motivate the playerbase?

[Deleted]

if you have AoTC and 920 itlv - if not you wont get into any groups - so you point is kinda moot because lfr audience dont have neither

So much BS in one post.

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That's the most ridiculous thing I've read all day. You should take a 30 day internet break.

Well he aint wrong.

Even thou the comparison is abit over the top.

[mysticx]

I'm not sure that I accept your assertion that we need more players who want to go into organised raiding, but putting that aside for now, what's your solution to the problem?

How do you make organised raiding more attractive? It's already got shinier gear + mounts + titles. What else can you add to motivate the playerbase?

Well, from a cost/benefit perspective, the more people run content (In some way or another) the better, all those art assets that go into raiding add up, Blizz once said that the number of people now running raids justify all the effort going into making those raids...

And maybe organized raiding outright just isn't attractive to many people, with the preparation work (getting food/flasks, studying the bossfights on YouTube and stuff) and having to plan playtime beforehand especially turning people off, so there really isn't much Blizz can do to get people into raid instances other than making a "Queue when you feel like it"-version with adjustments to accomodate the lack of coordination that slapping 25 random people together brings...

[Soxoffender]

That proves my argument thank you.

It also has to do with the next generation but i wont get into that.

All i will say is, blizzard can still save this if they try to do what wod did, but successfully.

You talk about WOW as if it's a religion that's deviating from the foundational texts. They're just trying to make a game that sells to as many people as possible.

Blizzard had 10-12 million players before LFR, i don't think LFR is making the game popular.

Solution: remove LFD LFR Mythic difficulty, keep norm/heroic and make mythic+ be heroic +

WOW introduced MMOs to a new audience at least in part by being more casual than the alternatives and it's been steadily moving in a more casual direction ever since. You haven't had to stand in Org/Ironforge and yell "LFM 1 dps. No hunters!" for years - you certainly didn't have to during the peak subscriber period of Wrath.