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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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?
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.