What if BFA had no CRZ or LFG?

[Sansnom]

Applying personal responsibility to a community is short-sighted. I tried for years to foster good server community and I was a well-known name on my fairly small server...until Blizzard shot server communities in the jugular, my server died and I, like everyone else, was forced to move to a bigger server to start raiding again.

So you are blaming Blizzard. Perhaps you can illustrate what they did so drastic that caused your community to died.

An increasingly unfriendly and competitive game that no longer asks anyone to interact or make connections of any sort.

I call it as I see it. Blizzard has stood by while things like mass server exodus and an increasingly antisocial and hostile playerbase fostered and hasn't taken a single action to change it. You can't just boil down the death of WoW's community to "it's the player's fault!"

So you are laying the blame on the increasing anti-social and hostile player on Blizzard. Again what examples of Blizzard make people more anti-social and hostile? If people are jerks, they are. They always will be.

The animosity and the lack of reprisals allows people to behave as badly as they want. And they do. In some ways, this allows you to see what those people truly are.

I have met people who are racist. Sexist and holds other prejudice views on others. They are like that. Some were influence by others. But this the action of others.

[Irian]

So you are blaming Blizzard. Perhaps you can illustrate what they did so drastic that caused your community to died.

They abandoned all idea of cooperation. They made each individual player much stronger out in the world than they ever were in the past. Obliterated server communities with phasing and crossrealm functionality. Merged outdoor areas, completely erasing the idea of a server environment at all. Introduced LFR to give players the opportunity to participate in raids without having to communicate or obey boss mechanics. Slowly removed party buffs and debuffs from the game, only introducing them back in a shallow form in BfA as some basic stat buffs. Removed spells that incorporated some cooperate elements like focus magic, dark intent and symbiosis. Removed all concept of resource management like healer mana and all interactions other classes previously had with it. Removed group quests in low level content. Completely changed the loot system to be completely personal, even if the guild wishes otherwise.
I probably missed a few things, too.

None of these things are heinous on their own but they created a slow burn where the design of WoW shifted from being a cooperative MMORPG where you had to interact, discuss and cooperate with other players into what I can best describe as an action game in the trappings of an RPG. There's a clear redirection of what they want WoW to be or rather what they think people wanted WoW to be.

...The animosity and the lack of reprisals allows people to behave as badly as they want. And they do. In some ways, this allows you to see what those people truly are.

That's exactly my point. If people are put in a situation where they can act the way they want with no repercussions, and the environment is competitive, then yeah, people are going to be shitty to each other. Unless that's the intended effect, that doesn't make for a good game design.

I blame Blizzard because it's up to them to steer the way the playerbase acts. No, they don't have 100% control, but other games in the same genre prove with no uncertainty that WoW reaching the level of shittiness it has is nothing to do with a changing playerbase and everything to do with Blizzard designing the game to be more and more unfriendly. Yes it sucks that this is the default of a playerbase but the developers that made the first several expansions of WoW understood that an MMORPG won't function like an MMORPG on a social and gameplay level without a necessity to cooperate to some degree.

I'm not absolving the playerbase of any blame they have - they act the way they want to, and yeah, the playerbase has turned into an unsocial mess of gatekeeping and outside sources for raiding on their own - but Blizzard's responsible for changing the way the game is played in a direction that promotes this kind of behavior.

[Wolfrick]

If you ask me LFR should be changed into something more Interactive... insted of beeing such a dead mode raid group... "if you ask me" in Normal/heroic/Mythic" there should be something like "Turist" Spots in the raid group where people could join and would gave zero loot... but they could watch the fight and where they could learn something.

Since in the end LFR is just around to give people free loot and let them see the Raid + Story


I have no clue what CRZ are... but you means that Cross-realm-zones I hope, if so I hate with all my heart that system (I understand why its there) but it would be 100 times better to make MEGASERVERS...

if you ask me the "communication in World of Warcraft was slowley killed off from Cataclysm and forward... where the entire world and leveling system was made so easy that you could do everything your self with no help at all and with no need to find people to group up for dungeons...

Example: the new Classic servers... show how important it is to keep things "interesting and challenging in the world" that pushes people to band up and do thing together... so many streamers say that and have turned their Oppinion on vanilla 100% from opposit to favorit

So to me we need to fix the leveling system, and maybe remove the LFD system since it makes dungeons just brain dead mode... or "keep the LFD and make it work just for your server" (having in mind that we need MEGASERVERS)

I have been here since vanilla, and I always try to speak in Duegeon and raids "lfg lfd" but the systems makes it so that you can just don`t care... since now days people are used as Bots.... they are just a tool... not people...

In vanilla every player you met was important since he was from your own server and in the future you would meet him and maybe that same guys would help you out... so there was some kind of Real life Reputation system with other players.

But with the cross-realm-toxic system pushes people to be "their bad side" since there are no Consequenses.


Solution: All blizzard need to do is to look at Classic World of Warcraft... it almost Forces you to start to think different in a very good way!

PS: people that say that the Community from vanilla are all dead... is just very narrow eyed or just a very negative person... the RP servers are full of people that like to talk and have kept the Vanilla Communites up and running... so trust me we just need to change some small things to World of Warcraft and we would be "back in game"

[Th3Scourge]

Id love to be on a low pop server, therefore your argument such as it is, is invalid. I care nothing for "better" economies, players, or guilds.

Lol I disagree with you and will provide personal experience as evidence, therefore your argument is inavlid. Compelling argument you present there.

CRZ is also completely detrimental to server communities because they can any community cohesion. Everything is temporary, just randoms from other realms and increases toxicity.

Thankfully, classic is there for me without the CRZ nonsense

[Zyrinx]

Lol I disagree with you and will provide personal experience as evidence, therefore your argument is inavlid. Compelling argument you present there.

CRZ is also completely detrimental to server communities because they can any community cohesion. Everything is temporary, just randoms from other realms and increases toxicity.

Thankfully, classic is there for me without the CRZ nonsense

Wait - we totally agree on this why are you.... heh you know what, nevermind.

[avitush]

BfA's story isn't even bad. You guys are just salty that you're probably gonna lose your undead waifu by the end of the expansion.

Sylvanas can go jump off Icecrown Citadel a few more times for all I care, so I'm not sure where you got the "undead waifu" idea. I'd be perfectly fine with losing her by the end of the expansion.

[Thage]

It would not make any noticeable difference.

This. Dungeon design, barring Waycrest, is largely boring in BFA with dungeon maps designed for performance in Mythic+ rather than feeling like enemy strongholds (the MOTHERLODE!! being one big ring is especially egregious). Class design is abysmal for most classes. Reputations move at a snail's pace. Professions are largely worthless. Story progression is so staggered out mid-expansion droughts have become a recurring issue in BFA. PvP balance is akin to running a blender with the cap off.

None of these core design issues would be remedied by removing tools meant to keep zones feeling populated and easier methods of joining dungeon groups and getting to the front door. Before we start going after the low-hanging fruit everyone here adopted as their pet peeve, let's address actual, deep-rooted gameplay issues first and make the core gameplay loop enjoyable.

- - - Updated - - -

BfA's story isn't even bad. You guys are just salty that you're probably gonna lose your undead waifu by the end of the expansion.

I've had little use for Sylvanas since Vanilla took her from a dark antihero into willingly preparing to commit genocide for nebulous reasons at best. The story is shite in this expansion.

[Walross]

I've had little use for Sylvanas since Vanilla took her from a dark antihero into willingly preparing to commit genocide for nebulous reasons at best. The story is shite in this expansion.

Oh, I get it now. You're one of those that rush through the game without paying any attention to the lore whatsoever and is only shitting on BfA's lore to be a part of the circlejerk before next expansion launches and everyone starts praising BfA.

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

Being held accountable is not the same thing as being social. A social environment where good behavior is enforced by blacklisting isn't really very healthy. Realms are useful for getting to know people but communities could serve the same function. In fact, if players would see the possibilities in communities they could and would be better.

We do the exact same thing in real life and it's for the better of 'the rest'.
You go to the movies and start talking on the phone? You get kicked out, for the better of 'the rest'.
You go to a restaurant or bar and act inappropriate? You get kicked out, for the better of 'the rest'.

Rules are written by the society that uses it, people got (and still would) blacklisted because they broke the unwritten rules that the community they shared. Subtitute 'realm' with 'town' and you could see it in a differently, just because it's a 'game' doesn't make it any less subject to human behavior. I remember when I was a teenager in the early to mid 2000s and I used to go to computer parties (LAN-parties) one time in a game tournament a kid was exposed as a cheater and he was thrown out and people packed his computer (not kindly), put it outside in the rain and he was banned from all future events in the region. If you don't conform to the rules of society you're always going to be an outcast, is it always a good thing? No, there are exeptions ...but the vast majority of examples are good ones.

[PaladinBash]

Megaserver? No way, I like my server. It has people on it that talk and lots of people know each other.

As for no LFG, I don't really care. I raid with people on my server. I do a single +10 per week with people in my guild. I do WQs with people I know if I do them at all. The only people that use LFG are people selling/buying boosts. Pugging is dead due to boosting.

[plz delete account]

Believe me: In BfA Blizzard didn't listened to their playerbase at all when they created the new classes; only few weeks before it was released, and they couldn't rework the classes anymore. Sorry, but sometimes listening to the playerbase is better. Because everyone for example said for months that enhancement shaman was total crap, and it is actually total crap right now. Especially since the overwork wasn't an overwork, instead it's still as crappy as it was since launch of BfA.

And they also didn't listened to the playerbase when they created BfA: Absolute nobody wanted a faction war expansion, we got one, and it's as corny as possible.

But you are right: they listened to their playerbase on absolute stupid things too: like "my class has far too many buttons", "i can't play the game on my controller"; "there are too many daily-quests in MoP; i hate dailies" and so on. (even if it wasn't the fault of dailies that people burned out, instead of tying valor-gear with daily-reputations that ruined the 5.0 experience)

Sadly they always listen for stupid things, and always ignore the smart ones. I would wish they would listen more to players in terms of class design. They only did far too late in the beta, and then it was too late.

Enh is dumpster? ...it's top 3 according to several guilds I've been kicked from on my mythics udk for not rerolling enh.

[Cosmic Janitor]

A hearty "lol" for all the people saying it wouldn't make a difference. Most servers would be fucking dead and elite WQs would be an incredible chore. Pretending that it wouldn't have a noticeable effect is just patendly false.

[mysticx]

A hearty "lol" for all the people saying it wouldn't make a difference. Most servers would be fucking dead and elite WQs would be an incredible chore. Pretending that it wouldn't have a noticeable effect is just patendly false.

Yeah, you wouldn't see anybody out in the world, and elite quests would be either soloable or a hard pass.

That being said, i think what most "Wouldn't make a difference"-people mean is that it wouldn't suddenly make people nice, cooperative and social again, and i agree with that.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Yeah, you wouldn't see anybody out in the world, and elite quests would be either soloable or a hard pass.

That being said, i think what most "Wouldn't make a difference"-people mean is that it wouldn't suddenly make people nice, cooperative and social again, and i agree with that.

Of course, I think that as well. People choose to not interact with one another. A funny quote in that regard is someone saying earlier that it's only mythic raider and high-end m+ players that actually talk. I have to disagree with that notion, because the usual people that try to strike up a conversation in your random dungeon group are certainly not the ones that engage in these high.end activites. We know that because they already have groups where they do that effectively (also their achievments..).

I think most people just get the chatty busybody vibe from people that try to start a conversation in chat. People just want to get the shit they came for done quickly and move on. It's also not like forcing people to strategize would change that, because you can see how that works in raids. One person (usually the one with the most inflated ego) steps up, forces a strat on everyone and people either swallow it, try to execute it and succed or move on. The same is true for the bottom of mythic raiders as well btw. In large part that can probably attributed to (larger) group dynamics in general. Blaming all of that on the game is laughable. The same is true for other MMOs btw, which makes me wonder where people got the notion from that this is a WoW problem. Of course I've had interesting conversations ingame, that is true for wow and others, but at no point in time was that a standard.

[RobertMugabe]

I think alot of WoWs problems started with CRZ and LFG , we lost our sense of community and stopped interacting with our fellow players.
What if BFA had no CRZ or LFG? Do you believe this would be better or worst?

Me personally I don't mind LFG but i do hate CRZ as i don't play with anyone from my realm and it seems like no one interacts anymore you just do your WQ and fly out without a word


Edit: What do you guys think of one big mega server?

What do you mean with LFG? The Group Finder or the automatic Looking For Dungeon? Either of them didn't kill interaction tbh. You don't need to communicate in random dungeons, because they simply don't require any communication. If they were hard and required things like CC, kiting etc then players would communicated.

CRZ doesn't exist anymore.

Yes, sharding and all cross-realm technologies are a problem where you just see random people that you'll never see again, but this is also a thing that most people don't care about.

The reason why BfA sucks is very simple: The gameplay is very bad, that's it. Class design as well as azerite armor is just very bad this expansion, the gearing/progression path is very bad (mainly because of titanforging and again azerite) and the new features (warfronts and ie) are way too easy and also just a mindless grind.

[Roar-Powah]

LFG is ok but it needs to account for latency which it doesn't and needs to be looked at.

CRZ should've never been forced into the game like it is, but it saved Blizzard money on servers and that is why it's in the game for. If Blizzard truly cared about the players they would've merged servers by now or at the very least connected more realms together. Money talks with server transfers and as long as people keep using the heavily over priced services this will never change.

I don't understand how people defend CRZ as it is, when the only thing it does for the player is give an illusion of a population. The people you see out in the world might as well be NPCs. No one talks, no one groups and nodes and people appear and disappear right in front of you and it kills what WoW use to be.

Keep CRZ as a tool to play with other people from other servers but don't force it, would really like to play again and see people from my own realm and not some random i never see again. As for LFG, keep it to region specific as the latency when you join group from people in LA/Brazil is damn annoying.(and the Language barrier is very annoying)

[Mightytasty]

Sorry, but that's BS. The game died not because of LFG/LFR, but because BfA is simply a crappy, lazy, corny expansion, with homogenized classes, pruned to oblivion, a story that's utterly bad, especially when you play alliance, trying to ignite alliance vs horde-crapfest that didn't never worked out in the entire of WoW (it didn't worked in cata, MoP, WoD with the iron horde-bs and bfa too), 3 leveling-zones, no endgame-content, no fun in many specs, removals of sets, replacing it with 1 set per armor type and azerite-crapfest.

As said before: without LFG/LFR there would be even less people playing. But since they also removed Tier-Sets this expansion, why bother with raiding at all?

No, CRZ are not the big issue; Sharding maybe far more than CRZ. But the biggest issue of all is simply creating an crappy expansion like this. They actually managed to create an expansion that it worse than WoD. So yes, that's probably the issue, NOT LFG/LFR!!!

- - - Updated - - -

Oh, and i didn't want to let the biggest offender go of driving community away: WORLD QUESTS. In daily-questhubs, you can actually go there, even with other players, get all dailies and then do everything together. This does not work with world quests, since some players already done them a few hours ago and so on.

I don't say let WQ go; i would like to have them as optional feature too, but daily quests were much better in this regard.

Is it okay to agree with both of you? WoW’s problems stem from antisocial systems put in place AND BFA being a bad expansion.

[Roar-Powah]

What do you mean with LFG? The Group Finder or the automatic Looking For Dungeon? Either of them didn't kill interaction tbh. You don't need to communicate in random dungeons, because they simply don't require any communication. If they were hard and required things like CC, kiting etc then players would communicated.

CRZ doesn't exist anymore.

Yes, sharding and all cross-realm technologies are a problem where you just see random people that you'll never see again, but this is also a thing that most people don't care about.

The reason why BfA sucks is very simple: The gameplay is very bad, that's it. Class design as well as azerite armor is just very bad this expansion, the gearing/progression path is very bad (mainly because of titanforging and again azerite) and the new features (warfronts and ie) are way too easy and also just a mindless grind.

CRZ does exists, CRZ and Sharding work hand in hand as sharding will create another CRZ shard when one is full.(I've seen this happen a lot last year when BfA first came out and it drove me to quit.)

You're right, CRZ isn't the sole reason why BfA is so bad, i wouldn't ever think i would say that i rather play WoD over BfA. But WoD never forced CRZ in the open world tho =P

[Aeula]

I’m on a RP server so no CRZ to begin with.

By LFG do you mean LFD/LFR or the non-queue group finder?

If it’s the former then there’d be fuck all changed because I don’t use those tools anyway, if it’s the latter then I wouldn’t have done the minimal Dazar’alor raiding I bothered to do or any Mythic 0’s on launch week. So I’d have ran out of content much faster.

[This One Time At Bandcamp]

One big mega server would be such a pain to quest on..

They should just migrate dead servers to popular ones, but no phasing or CRZ, so people can get to know eachother.