Group Finder for WOTLK is a great tool, why the hate?.

[Katchii]

Only thing they've said is they're not putting it in at launch, nothing about not having it at all for wrath.

Rewatch the launch trailer.

[Ssateneth]

Are the group finder UI/functions protected? If not, I imagine someone COULD make an addon to simulate a "random dungeon finder". Queue up with the dungeons you want (or all of them), pick your role, and have the addon periodically refresh. Addon does some magic in the background to negotiate who's been in queue the longest, match up 3 dps, a healer, and a tank, and then pops up a notification that a group has been found. You click some buttons, it sends some group invites from the button (Enchanter addon can invite people to group, no reason a RDF addon cant), wam bam, you got a fast group with little to no social interaction needed.

[Ragedaug]

Going to get super into semantics here, but I don’t really see alt content as “replayability” don’t get me wrong, I have alts too and I love playing them.

But when I’m talking about things being relevant all expansion I’m not talking about running things with alts. Otherwise everything in the entire game is relevant for the whole expansion.

But they are not relevant right now. Dungeons are not relevant to my alts right now because I can't find groups. My alts all have quest logs full of dungeon quests. And it would be really odd for dungeons to be relevant to my main at this point. You really think my main, who is T6 geared, should be looking to run dungeons as well? If that were the case, I'd probably never be able to play alts if my main still needs dungeons after being raid geared.

- - - Updated - - -

Are the group finder UI/functions protected? If not, I imagine someone COULD make an addon to simulate a "random dungeon finder". Queue up with the dungeons you want (or all of them), pick your role, and have the addon periodically refresh. Addon does some magic in the background to negotiate who's been in queue the longest, match up 3 dps, a healer, and a tank, and then pops up a notification that a group has been found. You click some buttons, it sends some group invites from the button (Enchanter addon can invite people to group, no reason a RDF addon cant), wam bam, you got a fast group with little to no social interaction needed.

"Invite"; "filled", is not social interaction. Those aren't even sentences. I mean, I think we are in a pretty sad state when we consider blurting a word at a stranger as "social interaction". But yeah, apparently, that's the social interaction the anti-dungeon-finder folks crave. I suppose that's because you know that regardless of which tool you use, you aren't going to say a word to anyone in the dungeon, and you'll never see them again. So your one-word blurt is as social as you get, so removing that could be pretty huge. I guess I can understand why you need LFG.

I mean, I still disagree, because I talk to people in the random dungeon party with me, regardless of how the group was formed or what tool was used, so I don't crave being able to blurt words at a stranger when we are trying to form the group.

[Elias1337]

wait till you play on a server that slowly dies and now youre sitting there having to pay 25 euros to move to a new server because you cant find a tank but the queue system would fix it.

the lfd wouldnt hurt anyone who has a community or guild or friends, but if anything help these servers or ppl leveling or just wanting to do profs durinig queue time just like you do for a bg, it does not add or negate anything if you use it or not, but it does add value to those who do.

Or you know just use free transfer or Blizzard will simply merge realms just like they have alredy done so. This isnt issue at all.

[Warning]

wait till you play on a server that slowly dies and now youre sitting there having to pay 25 euros to move to a new server because you cant find a tank but the queue system would fix it.

the lfd wouldnt hurt anyone who has a community or guild or friends, but if anything help these servers or ppl leveling or just wanting to do profs durinig queue time just like you do for a bg, it does not add or negate anything if you use it or not, but it does add value to those who do.

People quitting will always make things worse, but they don't quit because there is no LFD, as classic has shown. If anything I'd say lack of social ties which result from LFD and LFR existing makes people quit earlier and thus causes more empty servers.

[kingj56]

1. Classic and TBC classic world pops are less than 600k Just buy those numbers alone the raiding population cant be bigger.

2. You are not more social without LFD tool. In fact less social because players will discriminate against underperforming players/specs in general as they have in the past. I know because I have done it.

3.You can talk to anyone anytime you like. People choose not to. You dont need to know a person backstory to run a heroic or pug. The most social interaction you get is "ready?" "summon" "Lust?" "bres?". I was there all of pre cata. No one gave a shit, they only wanted to run the dungeon as fast as possible. Just like they do now.

4. Making your own group still requires you to spam chat for a tank or healer lmao. Come on man thats trading one problem for another haha. Both of which have no solution but wait in a city a long time doing nothing but spamming trade. When you could queue up and be running your dailies or farming mats. The player base has chosen efficiency not laziness.

5. Finally. You arent a child anymore its 2022. The "glory days" are over. Warcraft didnt change as much as the player base has. The average player as 2 hrs a day to play and doesnt want to spend that time looking for a group in Dal doing nothing but running circles around the city. When they add LFG/D in the game it will be for the better and it will probably be cross server since most realms will die after a few months. You will get over it though or quit.

[fx0rec]

Im asking you. What social aspect?

Oh, the boosting and GayDKPs?!
You spending 30min pugging only for someone to leave and group disbands because they know it'll take ages to find another guy?

Oh that social aspect

[Berrabus]

some people sure love wasting their time i guess.

i see no value whatsover wasting time on flightmaster , would rather pend that time doing actual dungeons. but hey whatever floats your boat more power to you

i would just like to hear from you what value added to gameplay such wasting time has.

if your time is so precious then why bother playing? or maybe, just MAYBE set your goals to what is realistic to YOU.
if people have to move around in the world it creates a lot of more interactions such as world pvp, if you dont like world pvp play pve.
every second, every moment is important in the game, just changing the mounting-up time from 3s to 1,5s is an insane change which affects the game a lot more than you think.

if you wanna play a simulator (sounds like it to me) then isnt shadowlands the perfect choice for you?

[BarosanuNr1]

People quitting will always make things worse, but they don't quit because there is no LFD, as classic has shown. If anything I'd say lack of social ties which result from LFD and LFR existing makes people quit earlier and thus causes more empty servers.

I don't think LFD damages or is mutually exclusive with having social ties. Even with LFD, a group that is pre-made (fully or partially) before joining the tool will always be the better experience. However, the tool helps one find groups at times when social ties are insufficient (e.g., friends or guild mates are offline, graveyard hours, raid days, late patch cycles)*. It certainly does allows one to play friendless, but you'd be diminishing the quality of your experience by choosing to only play like that (even if it is quick and efficient). Besides, should the game be tailored to min-maxers focused on eliminating fun in favor of efficiency? They will do that anyway, regardless of LFD (I'm actually curious to see how GearScore impacts Classic's community).

On the same note, LFD is often accused of causing Retail's subscriber numbers' regression. But those numbers were constant from the start of WotLK to 3.3 and only slightly increased thereafter (possibly due to the Cataclysm hype) (graph). One could say that LFD had no impact at all on subscriber numbers during WotLK (neither helping or harming). The people actually started leaving in large numbers in Cataclysm, which came with a whole set of issues (e.g., inadequate difficulty, changes in raid sizes handling, controversial world revamp, non-engaging themes etc.). Moreover, despite the fact that Retail has been phasing out LFD at end-game for almost a decade, this does not appear to have impacted the fluctuation of subscriber numbers (as far as I can determine).

*The best feature of LFD being the queue system, which: (1) guarantees that you will get a group spot eventually, even if you happen to play an overabundant class/role or you have a low gear level; (2) frees your attention, allowing you to focus on other things (e.g., questing, socializing). This is in contrast to manual group forming, which: (1) punishes you for playing the role/class that you might prefer or for being behind the curve gear-wise; (2) punishes you for not paying attention to the chat/list (e.g., due to exploring the world instead of sitting focused in Dalaran).

[Kralljin]

Im asking you. What social aspect?

Oh, the boosting and GayDKPs?!
You spending 30min pugging only for someone to leave and group disbands because they know it'll take ages to find another guy?

(1) Boosting will be nuked in Wotlk
(2) GDKP's has nothing to do with Dungeonfinder, as GDKP's stick to raids, not dungeons

[Celarent]

"Invite"; "filled", is not social interaction. Those aren't even sentences. I mean, I think we are in a pretty sad state when we consider blurting a word at a stranger as "social interaction".

That's not the point being made, though — or if it is, people merely saying things to each other isn't what makes the difference.

I stated it earlier: "social contracts, from negotiating to join, to the ownership of a group." Social contracts.

Great example from yesterday. Tank starts up an OH run. Run fills just as tank realizes he'll need to leave too soon to finish. Drops. Two other players drop. Last guy with me rails about how much easier it'd have been to just get a new tank. I see he's already put in LFG BB, tell him I'm in, and hand him the reins. Group fills, and vibe is so good, it's nothing to wait for two players lacking the Timekeepers quest. I notice that the new tank is in the same guild as a shaman who was super cheery, mention it, and now I have a guild on my short-shortlist to check out for Wrath. Run finishes, and new leader thanks the tank as if they've run before. New leader asks about Sethekk. Me and another DPS are in, group fills, we clear for XP. Second great run.

This might've happened within an LFD-governed environment if realm-only (impossible cross!). But the second thing I wrote earlier was this: "[social contracts from player-built groups] make a difference. Motivations and behavior change, even if some can't understand how or why."

If the difference between a matchmaker pulling you into a good experience, and onetime groups where players take initiative and sacrificed time/efficiency and built basic bonds with the other people, is too subtle — that's fine. But it exists.

- - - Updated - - -

My final point is that I see players trying to engineer a self-fulfilling prophecy of zero bond-building socializing. They don't think it's important and don't think many players want to engage in it, so don't care about a system that will heavily suppress it.

[Elias1337]

I don't think LFD damages or is mutually exclusive with having social ties. Even with LFD, a group that is pre-made (fully or partially) before joining the tool will always be the better experience. However, the tool helps one find groups at times when social ties are insufficient (e.g., friends or guild mates are offline, graveyard hours, raid days, late patch cycles)*. It certainly does allows one to play friendless, but you'd be diminishing the quality of your experience by choosing to only play like that (even if it is quick and efficient). Besides, should the game be tailored to min-maxers focused on eliminating fun in favor of efficiency? They will do that anyway, regardless of LFD (I'm actually curious to see how GearScore impacts Classic's community).

On the same note, LFD is often accused of causing Retail's subscriber numbers' regression. But those numbers were constant from the start of WotLK to 3.3 and only slightly increased thereafter (possibly due to the Cataclysm hype) (graph). One could say that LFD had no impact at all on subscriber numbers during WotLK (neither helping or harming). The people actually started leaving in large numbers in Cataclysm, which came with a whole set of issues (e.g., inadequate difficulty, changes in raid sizes handling, controversial world revamp, non-engaging themes etc.). Moreover, despite the fact that Retail has been phasing out LFD at end-game for almost a decade, this does not appear to have impacted the fluctuation of subscriber numbers (as far as I can determine).

*The best feature of LFD being the queue system, which: (1) guarantees that you will get a group spot eventually, even if you happen to play an overabundant class/role or you have a low gear level; (2) frees your attention, allowing you to focus on other things (e.g., questing, socializing). This is in contrast to manual group forming, which: (1) punishes you for playing the role/class that you might prefer or for being behind the curve gear-wise; (2) punishes you for not paying attention to the chat/list (e.g., due to exploring the world instead of sitting focused in Dalaran).

Actualy Cata numbers dipping can be easly tided to WOTLK adding LFG and creating difficulty levels bloat. Every change you made to the game will awlays have delays before players realize something is wrong. When LFR was added much people also didnt care and Blizzard thought it was good idea only to realize later on that it was big mistake. Problem is once such feature is in the game its almost impossible to take out. Classic kinda gave devs to fix their past sins.

[Raivo LV]

So my 2 cents:

I would like to ask a philosophical question. Do we want to be put in a random group, be instantly teleported to a random dungeon and then mindlessly run it? If the answer is YES, then something is wrong with the games philosophy. Why would you turn this activity into this mindless anti social activity that you are forced to do every day?

I guess I am more against the tool. I feel like it took out the soul of the game, the adventure part. Instead of being in a world, meeting people, forging relationships, traveling, you got this UI, single player feel like system. To me that was one of the many changes that took the WORLD out of WOW and middle M out of MMO.

+ anyway, reading the news they say there is going to be a looking for group tool, that will help put groups together and you won't have to spam tradechat anyway.

[Orange Joe]

I've got numbers and you have your feelings. That about says it all, doesn't it?

No you don't. You have an assumption that everyone playing BC doesn't want the LFD tool in wrath.

[Relapses]

(1) Boosting will be nuked in Wotlk
(2) GDKP's has nothing to do with Dungeonfinder, as GDKP's stick to raids, not dungeons

Curious -- why are you certain boosting will be nuked in WotLK?

[storn206]

Curious -- why are you certain boosting will be nuked in WotLK?

Because you will get next to 0 xp if a higher level character is in your party. This was introduced in SOM and will be implemented with the 50% xp buff

[Woods123]

No you don't. You have an assumption that everyone playing BC doesn't want the LFD tool in wrath.

Which is kinda funny considering I’m probably one of the oldest of old school wow fans out there (I’ve played certain servers since 2012) and I want it too.

[BarosanuNr1]

Actualy Cata numbers dipping can be easly tided to WOTLK adding LFG and creating difficulty levels bloat. Every change you made to the game will awlays have delays before players realize something is wrong. When LFR was added much people also didnt care and Blizzard thought it was good idea only to realize later on that it was big mistake. Problem is once such feature is in the game its almost impossible to take out. Classic kinda gave devs to fix their past sins.

But... LFD did not introduce a new difficulty level. The first new dungeon difficulty level after "Heroic" (from TBC) was "Challenge mode" (from MoP). As far as Heroic goes, WotLK came with an overall lowered difficulty out of the box, meaning that it was not caused by LFD. Cataclysm raising overall difficulty again did contribute to subscription losses, yes. It was a first attempt to move away from the LFD ecosystem that formed in the second half of WotLK.

LFR is a different issue and I've no strong opinion on it.

[threads]

So my 2 cents:

I would like to ask a philosophical question. Do we want to be put in a random group, be instantly teleported to a random dungeon and then mindlessly run it? If the answer is YES, then something is wrong with the games philosophy. Why would you turn this activity into this mindless anti social activity that you are forced to do every day?

I would like to ask a philosophical question. Do we want to be put in a random group, be instantly teleported to a random battleground and then mindlessly run it? If the answer is YES, then something is wrong with the games philosophy. Why would you turn this activity into this mindless anti social activity that you are forced to do every day?

[Woods123]

So my 2 cents:

I would like to ask a philosophical question. Do we want to be put in a random group, be instantly teleported to a random dungeon and then mindlessly run it? If the answer is YES, then something is wrong with the games philosophy. Why would you turn this activity into this mindless anti social activity that you are forced to do every day?

I guess I am more against the tool. I feel like it took out the soul of the game, the adventure part. Instead of being in a world, meeting people, forging relationships, traveling, you got this UI, single player feel like system. To me that was one of the many changes that took the WORLD out of WOW and middle M out of MMO.

+ anyway, reading the news they say there is going to be a looking for group tool, that will help put groups together and you won't have to spam tradechat anyway.

Let’s see the alternative, and be just as gracious to the other side.

You spam in chat 24/7, hope to god you find a tank or a healer in a decent amount of time before people leave, you finally get the group, you wait outside for at least one more person who isn’t afk to meet you at the stone, you then mindlessly run the dungeon anyway, then everyone leaves without saying anything or maybe a “gg thanks guys”.

So I have to ask, why is this better?