New LFG

[davesurfer]

Anyone else see this? Thoughts?

http://wow.incgamers.com/blog/commen...ool-available/

The World of Warcraft Team has enabled the Looking For Group (LFG) Tool on the PTR 3.3 build 10623. Many fans will feel shocked to the huge and drastic changes made to the UI and its function. In live realms, you choose whether you join LFG as a tank, dps or healer. Then you choose from a drop down menu if you will join a normal, heroic or raid group. Then you select which dungeon to queue in -- sometimes you have a very limited amount of dungeons depending the level you are. On the Looking for More tab, you usually are able to see other players queued and you can invite individual players from that list.

Well, keep your jaw tight. Say bye to the LFM tab. You no longer see other people in the queue, nor can whisper or invite them.

NEW LFG TOOL

The changes are drastic, some of those functions such as LFM tab will be very missed, but apart from the setbacks, the benefits of this new system might be a payoff.

Were you annoyed by having to go through the drop down system, and to not have access to Burning Crusade and Classic WoW dungeons because you are level 80?

Now you will be glad to hear that the dropdown menus have been replaced by a hierarchy tree that you can collapse or open. Each hierarchy tree shows:


all the normal dungeons under Wrath of the Lich King

all the heroic dungeons under Wrath of the Lich King

all the normal dungeons under Burning Crusade

all the heroic dungeons under Burning Crusade

all the normal dungeons under WoW Classic


Basically you can queue on all those dungeons at once. You will be matched with other players who also check marked any of those dungeons. So far all are enabled by default. We really hope they are disabled by default so that you only queue where you wish to queue in.

When the LFG Tool has found five candidates to create a 5-players group, all five players will get a popup message giving you the option to join or to cancel. When you click accept, you will see onscreen a window with five icons (representing tank, dps, healers) and view a ready check on each icon. Once all have successfully agreed to be ready ... drumroll ... you are automatically teleported into the dungeon itself. Goodbye, Meeting Stones !!! No more clicking individual players to summon.

Basically this system shortens the amount of time to search for a group, the amount of time to wait until two people reach the meeting stone -- yea, have you been in that situation where everyone is in Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdom, and only one is in Northrend? How many times have you had to waste 10 minutes for just one person to reach the meeting stone to help you summon players? No worries. The system searches players for you, and it teleports you straight inside the dungeon.

What about when you are in a group, and zone in, then realize the leader forgot to set the dungeon to heroic? Everyone goes ... /facepalm. Zone out, wait for the leader to change difficulty to heroic, then zone in. How often does that happen? Could that be one of the reasons there are many instance full messages? Well, this new LFG tool helps to avoid this type of mistakes, and makes sure there aren't instance limit exceeded issues.

Another issue about LFG is that not everyone always uses it, or there aren't enough people for your Occulus Achievements. Blizzard is addressing this problem by giving raiders the opportunity to earn gold and tokens for using the LFG Tool, in addition to the solo daily quests and raid daily quests. Many have used this popular raid daily quests as a means to acquire Emblems of Heroism, Emblems of Triumph and other tokens. By voluntarily joining a random Wrath of the Lich King LFG, you can get 49 gold and two emblems of Triumph. For a random Wrath of the Lich King heroic LFG, you will acquire 68 gold and two Emblems of Frost. Rewards for joining random Burning Crusade or Classic WoW dungeons haven't been enabled or specified.

Do you have questions or concerns about the new LFG Tool? Feel free to post your comments below or at our following forum thread. We are gathering questions for the developers through the US Community Manager: Nethaera.

[Deleted]

Thanks for the info, looks very nice indeed, just 1 question: did you make a typo by saying daily raid quests ? cuz i thought they'r weekly

[davesurfer]

Thanks for the info, looks very nice indeed, just 1 question: did you make a typo by saying daily raid quests ? cuz i thought they'r weekly

I wondered that too. I think they meant daily Heroics.

BTW I didn't type this, just a copy from the link I put on there

[Taurentony]

Thanks for the info, looks very nice indeed, just 1 question: did you make a typo by saying daily raid quests ? cuz i thought they'r weekly

There are new weekly(?) raid quests in 3.3 if my memory serves me right. Was on the front page not to long ago.
And i think this new LFG tool will be awesome, can't wait to use it properly!

[Bairne]

Did they replace the daily heroic with this interface. So if you use it to find a random heroic you will get a reward of gold and emblems but is there no longer a specific daily for that day that you can pick up and get a group for? Or is this just one option for completing the daily heroic?

[YigiBareTank]

Did they replace the daily heroic with this interface. So if you use it to find a random heroic you will get a reward of gold and emblems but is there no longer a specific daily for that day that you can pick up and get a group for? Or is this just one option for completing the daily heroic?

This replaces the old "Daily Heroic"
The old daily heroic quest is now the "Weekly Raid" quest, which gives 10 emblems of frost.

[Collix]

Did they replace the daily heroic with this interface. So if you use it to find a random heroic you will get a reward of gold and emblems but is there no longer a specific daily for that day that you can pick up and get a group for? Or is this just one option for completing the daily heroic?

I believe they replaced the Daily Heroic with the first Heroic you do using this tool. Also it gives you gold for having random people in your group (which increases for each random person).

SS:

[Bairne]

I believe they replaced the Daily Heroic with the first Heroic you do using this tool. Also it gives you gold for having random people in your group (which increases for each random person).

So does this mean that you will be able to form a group of your choosing and then use this tool to enter a random heroic...and that doing it this way will only result in you receiving less gold for doing the run? This way I can just get a group of guildies together and get our emblems for the day...I'm not too concerned with the amount of gold.

[davesurfer]

So does this mean that you will be able to form a group of your choosing and then use this tool to enter a random heroic...and that doing it this way will only result in you receiving less gold for doing the run? This way I can just get a group of guildies together and get our emblems for the day...I'm not too concerned with the amount of gold.

Pretty sure one will have to be a PUG. This is the new LFG tool. The old one will be gone. I am not sure that it replaces the daily heroic, haven't seen any info saying that

[Rocktard]

I believe they replaced the Daily Heroic with the first Heroic you do using this tool. Also it gives you gold for having random people in your group (which increases for each random person).

SS:

Just wow

I wonder if this is good or bad.. Are they gonna expand the ignore list? For ninja's, asshats, really terribad players, etc etc? (That is a serious question, I tried to sound not to sarcastic..)

[wadeol1]

this is gonna make ninjas happy as a pig in slime

[Freedom]

So that's FOUR Emblems of Frost from just running Heroics? lulz... Daily + this reward.

[Elovan]

So that's FOUR Emblems of Frost from just running Heroics? lulz... Daily + this reward.

no the daily is being replaced by the random dungeon reward, and the guy who gives the daily will now give the raid weekly.

[Preach07]

Here's what I'm wondering. Probably never gonna happen but I'm still wondering.

What if on patch day, a group of 25 people get the realm first down of the Lich King and they used the random LFG tool and they are spread from like 15 different realms. Does that mean that they cockblock all those realms in one raid by getting the realm first?

And similar situations that might occur.

[Ashvael]

There are no realm firsts for normal mode and I doubt you'll find a random PuG getting the hardmode first for their respective server.

[stillnotking]

Well, it's early yet, but my reaction to this is... mostly negative. Here are what I see as pros, cons, and unanswered questions.

Pros
- Teleport to the instance (about time -- waiting for two people to fly to UP or Nexus doesn't exactly add value to the gaming experience)
- No need to watch the LFG queue constantly for a healer or tank to show up
- Will make doing the daily heroic easier (but dammit, I was really hoping it would be outright replaced by a weekly raid quest in 3.3, so that I would never have to run Halls of Stone again as long as I live)
- Every instance included! Yay for AQ40 PUGs when I'm bored!

Cons
- Zero accountability = ninja paradise
- Zero accountability = slacker paradise
- Wholesale, sudden replacement of core functionality is almost always a Really Bad Idea (tm)

Unanswered questions
- What happens if someone has to leave in the middle? Do you go back in the queue? Is there a way to indicate in LFG that you've killed the first boss, or whatever?
- Related to above: will it be possible to maliciously save people to cleared instances by telling them that only the first boss is down? (If you think this won't happen, then Hi! Welcome to the internet! -- and remember, zero accountability.)
- How does gear checking work? Is there some way to tell that scrub in blues that no, he can't come to your ICC 10-man PUG? Is there a "group leader" and, if so, how are they chosen?
- How does loot work? Are all PUGs now going to be Group Loot? That's fine for 5-mans, but totally unacceptable for raids.
- Will people who want to "legitimately" run lower-level instances be able to exclude toons over a certain level, or will your SM group just be looting bodies in the wake of a bored 80 DK?
- *Edit: one more I just thought of: how does this work with achievements and/or hard modes? If someone wants to start a group for Glory of the Hero, will they be able to at least indicate that somehow so they don't get stuck with people who don't care if Moorabi turns into a mammoth or not?

My $0.02: I think this system would work better if it were paired with some kind of eBay-like player-rating system, to introduce at least a little incentive for good behavior. Obviously, Blizzard will never do this (or they'll do it and then offer a service that lets you reset your ratings for $25). Timear foresees trouble with the new LFG.

[Milamber]

I think we will soon need X-Realm Ignore lists.

[gyoz]

Basically their tired of people crying about the lack of people doing instances, but this is going to just cause more problems than its worth and the idea should be throwen in the trash before it goes live

[Milamber]

Basically their tired of people crying about the lack of people doing instances, but this is going to just cause more problems than its worth and the idea should be throwen in the trash before it goes live

I think it will work out fine in the end, after cleaning up the bugs and other issues.

[superstargoddess]

This is going to be freakin awesomesauce! No more spamming trade chat for an hour and no more waiting for lazyasses to come to the stone to meet you to help summon! This is possibly the best thing to ever happen to the game.