A mature discussion about RDF

[Bómbsqúád-draenor]

First of all I’ve seen tonnes of people on both sides throwing their opinions around as fact, if you’re one of those that are just going to sit here read this and type “you’re wrong.” then you’re welcome to leave.

Can we just have a mature discussion about this?

RDF isn’t being added but I think its important for people to be able to voice their opinions. My preference would be to add it to the game. I’ve always played wow by myself and its how I’ve always enjoyed playing THATS JUST THE TYPE OF PLAYER I AM. I know there are countless people who run their social lives through WoW and choose to play differently and that’s completely fine. I’ve also made a tonne of friends in game through, dungeons, chilling outside main cities, PVP etc.

However, I don’t think it would be fair to say that I would want to force RDF into the game because plenty of people seem to dislike it and believe it has caused historical harm to the game and would do the same now.

Lets talk about a couple points:

RDF will ruin a lot of the social aspect of the game

I personally struggle to understand this one and this seems to be the main reasons behind the decision. The reason I struggle to understand is because like many people, I’ve done a bunch of dungeons in classic and not once turned around and became friends with people, in fact I made more friends questing in the open world (Throughout my wow lifetime) and has had nothing to do with being in a dungeon or not.

Please correct me if I’m wrong but the message that seems to be pushed here is teleporting to a dungeon removes any form of social interaction (or at least a main part of it) and that it promotes a more anti-social atmosphere in the game.

Okay, that’s a fair point I see what you guys are saying, but what seems to be missing from that is that not all players play in that way and the decision to remove it forces everyone to adhere to one way of playing which works for some better than others.

They have added a new Dungeon Finder tool, stop crying and learn to use it

Okay so this again is a fair point, we have a tool its not anything like RDF but more of an enhanced version of what we had in TBC. It’s better than nothing.

My opinion, its nowhere near a replacement for people who want RDF. RDF benefits that I personally look out for are.

1. Teleporting to and from dungeons: This saves a MASSIVE amount of time and lets players do dungeons while questing mainly without destroying their questing flow to travel to other sides of the map. Once the dungeon is done I can get right back into the flow of the quests.

2. Being able to gear up easier whilst levelling, I can queue for dungeons that are my level no matter where I’m questing, and we also get access to some initially alliance / horde only dungeons meaning I have a wider range of gear (for lower levels at least).

3. Pedantic point but, Late night party finding. I’m someone who stays up late, there’s a few of us. My experience of wanting to run dungeons late is a rough one, not many people post in the LFG late, I THINK that it would be easier having RDF for those occasions also.

I think all in all the decision to remove RDF does one thing, forces people to play one way. That’s why there’s been, at least from what I’ve seen, a lot of backlash (or at least enough to get people on both sides heated).

If RDF was added there is NOTHING stopping people who like the current system from not using it and continuing to group up and make friends the way they want to. And surely the fear isn’t that everybody will just use RDF anyway because so many people dislike it, right? The people who like it will use it and the people who don’t can continue using LFG. I’m sure that sentence will cause some issues.

I’m not by any means saying we should add RDF in now because the decision has already been made, this would cause an uproar. I’m just putting points across as to why I personally would want it in the game.

It’s important to voice that there are people who want it added and we got no say, I would feel equally if it was added and people were complaining to remove it if they also got no say.

TLDR

The fact of the matter is that the people who are Pro RDF struggle to see why it would ruin the game, we’ve been through lich as one of if not THE most successful wow expansion and it seems largely due to cataclysm that the numbers declined. They also feel cheated out of a decision, from #NoChanges to #SomeChanges naturally people wonder what’s next and that’s a perfectly valid worry.

Thanks!

[Triva-theradras]

I came to the conclusion its nearly impossible to argue against most “anti-RDF” arguments. Mainly because these arguments are generic or highly subjective. It doesnt matter how little value they have, they are just there to be repeated. The few good ones are rarely heard.

Arguments against RDF:

1. Blizzard announced early at the beginning of classic, that there will be no RDF

• This is true, but was announced for vanilla classic. It was also said there will be no flying mounts. Its obvious that primarily vanilla was addressed here and this early classic discussion was specifically about vanilla. People confuse this, because “classic wow” was only vanilla in the beginning and up until now it has been 3 completely different wow versions.

2. RDF was introduced much later at the very end of wotlk in patch 3.3.5. It wasnt even part of the major part of the expansion

• It is still stated in the official Blizzard post that RDF was introduced in 3.3.5, but that is simply wrong. It was introduced in patch 3.3.0, which was more than half a year earlier. Since RDF was more or less part of half of the duration of wotlk, there is no question, that is was part of the expansion.
  The point that it was introduced later and therefore shouldnt be there at launch can be used against nearly every aspect in the game. Class design, mechanics, features like dual specialization. Since its not used against any other thing than RDF, it doesnt seem to be a good argument in general when it comes to wow classic, which is based on the final version of the game outside progression content.

3. Blizzard knows better, just deal with no RDF

• Blizzard doesnt know better. They have proven this again and again. Remember “you think you want, but you dont”? If players werent persistently going against what Blizzard thinks is right, we wouldnt even have wow classic to begin with. So if you personally think Blizzard knows better, you might as well not play classic at all, since Blizzard was and might still be convinced that you wont have fun in old wow expansions at all.

4. It would not be an original experience if RDF is there from the start

• It would even less of an original experience, if its not included at all. Right now we have a custom LFG-tool that is as far from an original experience as it can be. However, since anti-RDFs are ok with this, as long as the RDF is gone, its a prove that the original experience as an argument is not really important to them.

5. RDF DESTROYED WOW

• What is meant is the social aspect. For someone, who is primarily playing the game for chatting with other people over gameplay reasons, this argument truly holds value. However, wotlk 5man content overall isnt really fit for this person. The main reason players didnt type as much in late wotlk with RDF, was because the content was well know, it was easy to begin with and outgeared hard. Players were rushing though the content without much of a mana break. Usually there was no time to type. However, this was the expansion design and not really related to the RDF. Correlation isnt causation.

6. RDF makes the players stand in cities, making the game feel like a lobby

• This might be true for some tanks, but not the major part of the playerbase. Right now most players looking for groups stand in the city to focus on the tool/chat to not miss a spot in a promising party. This is especially true on high pop servers. There will always be a waiting time for dps, no matter the queuing system. The difference is that players using RDF can always focus on open world stuff, like doing daily quests or farming materials. The current LFG version is much more of a lobby game, than RDF. Those, who will just list themselves in the new tool and wait for an invite, have the very same (social) experience when it comes to group building, as they would have with RDF. However, if their class/spec is undesired or they have bad gear, they might never get an invite with the new LFG tool.

7. RDF is the beginning of the end of wow, causing LFR and an antisocial community

• Saying RDF is bad because bad design decisions happened in later expansions holds no value. Firstly, there were many fundamental changes in cataclysm and it is impossible to be certain that primarily RDF was the main issue. Secondly, the argument “thing bad, because retail bad” could be used against any feature that was not present during vanilla release.

8. Player numbers dropped with RDF

• For nearly 1 year after RDF was released, the player numbers were as stable as the year before. They didnt drop at all until cataclysm and this expansion had multiple fundamental design changes. There is no indication at all that RDF had a negative influence on the player numbers.

9. The majority wants no RDF

• There was never any source of information that even gave an indication of that to be true. Any poll showed that the majority of voters wanted RDF. Even if someone argues that polls are useless, because of voting behavior, the impression that there might be more players in favor of RDF remains. Additionally, why changing the original experience, the main reason for the wow classic series, for a group of players that have not been proven to be the majority?

10. Classic target audience is the vanilla fanbase

• While I think that is correct, it shouldnt be that way. Wotlk design overall doesnt fit the needs for vanilla fans to begin with. Its fast, casual and much more gameplay focused and cuts many unnecessary time sinks/waiting times, that often cause players to socially interact with each other out of boredom in vanilla. Additionally the wotlk community is bigger than the vanilla one and has no other option, while vanilla fans still have the vanilla game version available.

11. If players dont quit over RDF not being added, all is fine

• The only other option is playing private servers or not playing at all. Players have been waiting for the most played and desired wow expansion since wow classic was announced and some even longer than that. Of course most will play wotlk, even if its half as good as it once was, but that still doesnt make not adding RDF a good decision. If someone is hungry and was looking forward to their favorite dish and gets an over salted version of it, without an alternative, this person will still eat it. Arguing the soup is just as good for him, because he still eats it, misses the point.

12. If you dont like wow without RDF, just play retail

• Its like saying that anyone, who wants to play more wotlk, should play a different game. Its a tool enabling content, not content itself. Implying that wotlk content and shadowlands content is the same is highly questionable. On the other hand, vanilla fans could literally play their favorite version of the game right now, wotlk fans cant.

13. Players will keep silent with RDF, while they are chatting right now

• Besides language barriers caused by RDF, players in full premade groups tend to keep quiet most of the time without RDF, too. Sometimes they chat a bit, especially when there is something new, like the prepatch is right now, but implying this is not happening in groups formed by RDF is an unreasonable assumption, that has no proof.

14. It is good to have inconvenience, because players feel encouraged to join guilds and play with premade groups

• From a perspective of someone playing primarily premade and is part of a social community in wow, that sounds reasonable. However, people are different. Some have less time, others simply dont want to be or cant be overly social in a video game, but still want to play a few dungeons a day. Original wotlk had these people in mind, too. Letting these players easily experience the dungeon group content was part and the strength of the original experience.
  Making a group search tool bad on purpose, that players feel encouraged not to use it, is not a good design. The tool is there not be there in name, but for its functionality.

And so on, I have seen so much unreasonable stuff, its unreal. Now Id like to add the real concerns about RDF, too:

15. There is no daily dungeon lockout in RDF, so players can farm endless badges

• Yes, there should be a daily dungeon lockout until patch 3.3.0. After that, players can farm endless badges anyway with FoS and PoS normal version, too. Every private server got it working, so the currently Blizzard team might be able to accomplish it, too.

16. Crossrealm causes bad behavior is unhealthy for the game and connected with RDF

• While RDF doesnt necessarily need to be crossrealm, it is indeed one of it strong points for low pop servers and leveling content overall.
  Crossrealm does have multiple flaws. Players feel less socially accountable, so they are more likely to ninja at the last boss. If they ninja before, they risk to get kicked and they wont be able to continue the id for the day, losing badges and potentially gear.
  Players from different realms have a harder time to stay in touch. They can only add each other as Blizzard-friends and not the usual friend list and they cant play together at a later time with their characters without swapping servers.
  Some players might be less active in chat and misunderstand things, because they usually play on their native language server and arent confident in their English skills.
  I personally would like to have the option to enable and disable crossrealm in the RDF. That way everyone can choose their priorities themselves, like a better experience or a faster queue.

17. The teleport of RDF kills open world experiences

• I agree to some degree with this argument. On max level, players know where the dungeons are within the first 2 weeks of the expansion. After that time, 2 players afk fly to their destination and the other 3 get a teleport. With RDF the experience wouldnt change much, since statistically less than half of the player base travels to the dungeon even without RDF.
  On lower levels, many truly miss out the travel. However, this is because most dungeons are never visited or run in the first place. And the main reason is, because the travel is too much of a pain, even for 2 players. Even with the teleport to the destination and back, the players wont miss out on the adventures travel experience, because they wont visit the dungeon and have the experience in the first place.
  Overall the dungeon teleport is definitely important for low level dungeons, but only a nice to have at max level to skip the afk flight/waiting for the teleport time.

18. The additional badge rewards make gearing too fast

• While its good to encourage players to queue random to fill groups as fast as possible, it should indeed not affect the gearing progression. However, it would be reasonable to only grant gold similar to finishing a quest for queuing random. This way the content progression doesnt get affected and players still have reason to choose the random dungeon over a specific order.

19. The “Luck of the Draw” buff favors random groups over premade groups

• A legit concern. The reason it was implemented was because random groups can have multiple disadvantages like worse communication and team variety/composition. However, removing the buff completely to not decrease the difficulty and disfavor full premade groups would be completely reasonable, too.

This list of arguments against RDF might be missing a few things, I might add them later.

Overall, besides the completely unreasonable arguments against RDF, there are legit concerns regarding RDF, too. Most of them can be easily addressed/fixed within a day though. Saying that altering the RDF is not true to the original, that I have read too many times, is right, but all these changes would make sense if it was introduced earlier than 3.3.0. Additionally, even the adjusted RDF would still be much more truthful to the original experience, than what Blizzard is currently doing.
In the end, the game will not be more social by making most of the players play less group content and have less social interactions.

[Djansoul-chogall]

My answer here based on 12 years Wotlk pserv, with and WITHOUT RDF + Classic + TBC Classic.

Prove me i am wrong :

1. The RDF killed the social: In 2010 maybe, in 2022 not. Wotlk private servers that disabled RDF proved it, TBC too, the “You think you do but you don’t” has never been so true.

2. The RDF has killed the social bis: The RDF tool allows to empty the channels in order to let us speak freely on it, today the channel is spammed with announcements and if we have the misfortune to speak for fun we are insulted or ignored

3. RDF is a tool, therefore not RP: The BG tag when slacking in front of an NPC or via the tool has never bothered anyone and it dates from Vanilla

4. With the RDF people socialize less to group: Spammer “LF last tank for” with a reply in pm “Hi +1”, is not sociable. In addition, the Salute in question is still retrieved via the RDF once TP in the dungeon and/or grouped automatically, it’s just politeness

5. With RDF people no longer talk in dungeons: RDF does not impact a person’s willingness to talk in dungeons, and this has been proven once again on Wotlk who disabled RDF. What makes players socialize in the dungeon is the combination of discovery + difficulty

6. The cross-server RDF has killed the social: True, and we can very well not activate this feature, however we are already drowned in the mass since the servers are 2 to 3x more populated than at the time , in other words this defect is already implemented natively. In addition, the BGs are cross-server since Vanilla, and it has never bothered anyone

7. With RDF I can’t group manually: False, you can make an announcement in the channel, group them and tag. Or go there on foot if you wish, it’s a principle called the Walk-in

8. With the RDF I can’t make friends and keep them in contact: False, nothing prevents it, however there is no reason for others to keep in touch while the dungeon is clean in 15min chrono

9. The RDF which allows TP in the dungeon is bad: True when you discover the game, False when you have played 10 years of play. The Wotlk private servers which have disabled the RDF have proven it, 5min of auto fly in afk Alt+Tab Google

10. The RDF allows abuse of kicks: False, there is a 15min cooldown before the first kick, in other words the dungeon is already clean at this time. While a manual group gives full power to the lead and can kick at the slightest whim (lack of dps, no cc, not enough stuff, too much of the same type of stuff to need etc.) Worse yet, a person can leave the group without ANY penalty, once they get the loot they want right in the middle of the dungeon, imagine that if it’s a dps that tag tank to make it faster, roll dps, gain the loot and quit, with the RDF the person gets the “deserter” for 30min.

11. RDF is not Classic: Indeed, that’s why Classic ERA exists, a server that has been neglected by its own fan base apparently “the best version of WoW”

12. If you want RDF, go to Retail: If you don’t want RDF, go back to Classic ERA, the server you abandoned and which was nevertheless el famoso “the best version of WoW”. The RDF is part of Wotlk.

13. It’s Classic not retail: Wrong, it’s Wotlk, just stop.

14. Players will prefer soloQ RDF to get the buff 15% : Ok just remove the buff then.

15. RDF should be implemented with ICC only : Wrong, RDF was a part of 40-45% of the total Wotlk life, and RDF is not a dg/raid content, it’s just a tool so as the game is in 3.3.5 it has to be in day one, exactly as the fly is 150%, 1.5sc casting, double spec, no CD every 3 days to craft an Titan Bar and 200 others things that we can list.
    For more exemplaination read that =>

@Nikkyblond-firemaw

Way back then we did not have RDF untill ICC patch. So…

Yes and we did not have these things until ICC

• Summoning Stones: To use any Summoning stone, a character must be at least level 15. There is no maximum level to use these meeting stones.
• Health and Mana Regeneration: These regeneration rates have been increased up to 200% for low level characters. As the character level increases, regeneration rates gradually decrease, until returning to normal rates at level 15.
• Troll and Orc shaman totems now have their own unique appearance.
• Nerfed Oculus
• The distance at which these health bars are visible to players has been increased by 40 yards. (oh wait, isn’t already enabled on TBC ? )
• The speed of improving the Norfendre reputations has been increased by approximately 30%.

Yes and we did not have these things until ToC

• Cast duration to summon any ground mount is now 1.5 seconds, down from 3 seconds.
• The skill Apprentice Rider (75) can now be learned at level 20 for 4 gold. A letter will be sent to characters reaching level 20 to direct them to the riding master.
  Companion Rider skill (150) can now be learned at level 40 for 50 gold. A letter will be sent to characters reaching level 40 to send them again to the riding master.
  The Expert Rider skill (225) can now be learned at level 60 for 600 gold from Honor Hold or Thrallmar masters. Faction discounts are now applied (Honour Hold for the Alliance, Thrallmar for the Horde). Flight speed at this skill level increased to 150% of run speed from 60%.
  Artisan Rider Skill (300): Faction discounts are now applied (Honor Hold or Valor Expedition for the Alliance, Thrallmar or Warsong Offensive for the Horde).
  To continue harmonizing the number of mounts available for purchase for each race, a new 60% speed ground mount has been added for night elves, and a new 100% speed ground mount has been added for Forsaken.
• Object comparisons: by pressing the Shift key. while hovering over an item with the mouse now displays the stat differences from the currently equipped item in the corresponding slot.
• Portals have been added to Orgrimmar and Stormwind to lead players to the Stairs of Destiny at the Dark Portal.
• A new zeppelin dock has been added to Thunder Bluffs to allow Horde players easier travel to and from Orgrimmar.
• The local mail department got tired of walking so far each day to collect mail and decided to install a large number of new mailboxes in Stormwind, Undercity, Darnassus and Orgrimmar.
• All stackable potions are now stackable by 20.

Yes and we did not have these things until Ulduar

• All ground mounts can now swim without unhorsing their rider. Flying mounts still cannot swim and dismount their rider when entering water.
• DOUBLE SPEC
• Applying a glyph no longer requires being near a Lexicon of Power. The same rules apply for changing glyphs
• Players no longer need to complete the Nat Pagle, Extreme Angler quest to become Artisan Anglers. The quest rewards you with a special premium fishing rod. Players who have already completed this quest can visit Nat Pagle in Dustwallow Marsh to receive this new fishing rod.

RDF is not a RAID or a DUNGEON, it’s a mecanic/parameter like all i listed before.

You just want a CUSTOM WOTLK, you don’t like this game, go to Classic ERA and stop trying to ruin our game.