Blizzard needs to let people below level 50 to use the premade group finder.

[TBenoit]

There is still a lot of content(raids/dungeons) outside of BFA and Shadowlands that is fun and engaging to play in a group setting. I understand you can always solo old content but myself and many others enjoy the social aspect of MMOs. All this level squish and "rush to endgame" has done is make most of the pre BFA content obsolete and makes it harder to find people who want to play it. It feels too separated now, there's everything before level 50 (which has been made mostly solo) and then there's everything after 50.

[Gratz]

Yes, there a plenty of reasons people might want to group before 50. Would have helped yesterday to kill the Grinch as well.

[Tziva]

Blizzard makes a lot of decisions I don't agree with or think are so great, but this is the only one in recent memory that I am legitimately salty about.

I used the group finder all the time for various reasons before 50 and it really sucks to have this awesome tool closed off to players just because they aren't in current content. Worse, it was done to combat people advertising groups for sale and as anyone who uses the tool can attest, listings for boost selling sites are still extremely numerous since Blizzard appears to have made zero other efforts besides just banning low levels.

If you want to ban level 1s then fine, those are almost certainly only there to advertise, but there are plenty of reasons between, sya, level 20 and 49, when one might avail themselves of the tool. They could have made the minimum like 20 with almost no impact on real players and probably the same impact on fake listings.

[Razion]

The only issue with opening it up to earlier levels is bots and ads being prolific in the finder. I already see a ton of groups advertising runs via Twitch promotions and other offsite services - the issue would only exacerbate with lv1s spamming selling of certain goods or services through other sites and so on. It's not policed enough to discourage that kind of behavior currently and until it is it may not be worth it.

[starast]

The only issue with opening it up to earlier levels is bots and ads being prolific in the finder. I already see a ton of groups advertising runs via Twitch promotions and other offsite services - the issue would only exacerbate with lv1s spamming selling of certain goods or services through other sites and so on. It's not policed enough to discourage that kind of behavior currently and until it is it may not be worth it.

They could solve the problem by just paying someone to moderate it. That's how cheap Blizzard are.

[theLavs]

They could solve the problem by just paying someone to moderate it. That's how cheap Blizzard are.

I think with the speed of posts into the tool and with the number of realms, it would be a full time job for several people and i can't see Blizzard ever going that route, i dont think it's a matter of Blizz being cheap, just that the benefit wouldn't outweigh the cost.
I think a more tenable solution would be if they implemented an 'upvote' system, and the tool would sort based on that. On topic, i was unaware that lowbies couldn't use the tool, that stinks!
The group finder tool is probably the best addition to this game since vanilla. I
I've met so many people that have become long time friends with through that tool

[GreenJesus]

If blizzard had a better filtering/tag system in the group finder then the boosts wouldn't be an issue and you could let lower levels use the group finder again. Just fix the underlying issue instead of punishing the players.

For example:

[Spires of Ascension Keystone]
[10+]
[Looking for Healer]
[Exclude Phrases: WTS, Sell, Boost, http, www.]

[Puri]

Easy quickfix: Just make it usable at level 30+

[Gratz]

Getting tired of companies blaming railroad bandits for things we can't have.

[Tesshin83]

After leveling 40 characters to max level, I cant even possibly imagine why you would need a premade group. All the content is soloable.

[Tziva]

After leveling 40 characters to max level, I cant even possibly imagine why you would need a premade group. All the content is soloable.

I don't think anyone is arguing that it is necessary. I used the group finder pretty regularly on midlevel guys before it was restricted but I'd never sell it as mandatory. There are definitely some things I couldn't solo on some characters -- the Legion invasion bosses are a good example of that -- but I could have done other stuff instead. But I liked being able to list a group when I found a rare in case people were needing (or looking if I was in the area myself and needed), to build groups for chain dungeon queue leveling, for transmog and achievement hunting when the main wouldn't work, etc. You can't park some low level alt in Icecrown now for TLPD, or find a Herald of the Titan run, or any of the other things that even people who infrequently used the group tool might have still occasionally popped in it for.

Closing off a tool that many people did use regularly just to combat boost sellers and spammers (who don't give a fuck and just do it on high levels or switch to trade instead, resulting in no real benefit) is disappointing and frustrating. The tool is still full of dozens and dozens of groups selling boosts and advertising their websites. They could be more aggressive on sellers in a dozen other ways but have chosen not to, they could have restricted the group finder only to super low levels (sub20) but chose not to. It just seems like a decision that has negatively impacted some people without any positive impact for the community.