RDF wasn’t there until patch 3.3, so I’d say if anything, adding RDF would need to revamp the underlying game design - emblems, to be specific.
They did the revamp in patch 3.3 by changing emblems
What would they have changed about emblems in 3.3, exactly? As far as I remember, all that “changed” was (1) we got Emblems of Frost above Emblems of Triumph, which was no actual news since we had been getting a new Emblem currency every patch, and (2) we got the daily bonus from RDF, which basically was a replacement of the daily hc quest which had become obsolete now that RDF existed.
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The emblems themselves, specifically which emblems drop where, in what quantities and how much cost items.
As far as I remember, at launch there was only one kind of emblem and it dropped from both dungeons and raids, so farming dungeons would be a faster alternative to raiding with dungeon finder from day one
No, at launch there were already two kinds of Emblems. Emblems of Heroism, from dungeons, and Emblems of Valor, from raids. Then Ulduar came in 3.1 and started dropping Emblems of Conquest. Then 3.2 came, and along with the new raid (Trial of the Crusader) which started dropping Emblems of Triumph, came the first consolidation: everything that dropped Emblems of Valor or Heroism previously now dropped Emblems of Conquest instead. So, basically, everything other than ToC now dropped Emblem of Conquest. And the daily hc was updated to drop Emblem of Triumph, too.
Then, with 3.3, they did the same thing again, making ICC and daily hc drop EoF while everything else (raids AND heroic dungeons) dropped EoTs.
So no, the Emblem system wasn’t changed at all because of RDF
P.S.: And no the prices never changed.
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Yes, it would require effort from the developer. In my example I think they would have to redesign the way the various Emblems are rewarded. They’d also have to redesign and balance the existing dungeons to provide more of a challenge, which is not a trivial task.
So at the start of the game you earn Emblem of Valor. When Ulduar is released Emblem of Conquest rolls out as well, but they won’t drop from regular heroics, but rather from a heroic+ difficulty. This would ensure that dungeons don’t become grindy trash content, and make WLK classic more challenging than retail WLK.
… however, I’m 100% with you here. I currently have no faith in Blizzard, but I still like to discuss design ideas on these forums. Even if #nochanges is the more correct thing to do, I still don’t think it is the right thing to do. Blizzard should have the benefit of years of hindsight, but alas.
Indeed. To think that in old school MMORPGs, inconvenience was part of the design. Like travelling from one planet to another in Star Wars Galaxies – if you were unlucky you’d have to wait several minutes for an in-game shuttle to arrive. This was an annoyance, but it made the world feel more real and was a great opportunity for people to chat. That’s one reason why I think it is important to keep the aspect of travelling to dungeons. Blizzard must’ve realized this as well as they decided to keep that particular restriction for Mythic dungeons.
I still see it as a problem. Yes, having a reason to do dungeons is perhaps better than having no reason to do them, but it is bound to become grating and unfun. Something you have to do for the rewards. A chore. Perhaps this is already true for TBCC, but somehow I think the situation in TBCC is vastly different from the experience of retail WLK (and onwards) and LFD. Running more than one dungeon per day was and is a bit of a rarity in TBC, whereas running several dungeons became a norm in WLK. This also made dungeons feel less meaningful.
A curse of many modern MMOs is that instanced content is convenient. You sit in a central hub where you have access to everything you need and you get teleported to everywhere you need to go. I for one really don’t like that particular development within this genre.
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Yes but what alternative do we have to getting gear in TBC? I have a bunch of alts there, but ultimately I only somewhat managed to keep gear up to T5 level or so on a couple, and the rest have only some sparse badge gear. In WotLK, on the other hand, thanks to the emblem system, it is feasible to have multiple top-geared alts with relative ease. I’d rather have the choice, personally.
Prove me wrong: in about 1.5 years from now people will also come up with stupid reasons to implement the raidfinder.
I think the main idea for wotlk dungeons was that all players have one basic type of group content they all get to play together with, but on the cost of difficulty for overgeared groups.
You want a wow version where new players will never get a chance to play content with experienced players besides boosting, that all the content is separated by gear progression and no inbetween. I dont think this is better from a new players perspective and the problem of finding “normal” groups grows even larger for this type of players as the expansion progresses, because the playerbase splits into too many gear progression states: pre hc dungeon, hc dungeons+naxx+obsi+eoe, ulduar, pdk+3.3 dungeons, icc10, icchc+ruby. Most servers wont have the playerbase to have all of these progression states to find groups without getting boosted in some kind of way. Because how easy and impactful boosting is, the whole idea of progression step by step becomes unrealistic.
The reason to implement it in cataclysm is simple: its a faithful recreation of the expansion. I dont think LFR is a good thing to have, but I think its a better argument for implementation, than the common counter argument “its not vanilla like”.
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You make a good point and you highlight some issues with my ideas. I won’t pretend to know what the right or wrong choice is, all I know is that the design (as it was) was not very good. It created a largely unfun environment.
However, it seems Blizzard does intend to do something about the grievenances I’ve expressed towards Heroics. In their latest Developer Update they said this:
The second goal is about making sure Heroic dungeons stay attractive throughout the entire expansion. The Emblems and items they drop should always be valuable, even late in the expansion. They should also remain an interesting challenge throughout the entire expansion, rather than becoming excessively easy as your gear improves. We are exploring plans to add challenges to Heroic dungeons as the expansion proceeds, which would also provide more valuable rewards.
How they’ll address the issues you brought up, well, we’ll just have to wait and see. Personally I think these particular news sound pretty great.
I’m actually worried of what those challenges may be. If they’re like achievements or Ulduar hardmodes, they’re just gonna make dungeons even more of a gatekeep than they are.
My suggestion to everyone at this point is: if you have any alt you wanna keep geared up, you better start leveling and gearing them up fast. If you hope to come by ToC or ICC phase and hope to gear up to current tier as easily as it was possible back then… well it probably won’t be. It’ll be hell just as it is now. Good job Blizzard.
This is not true at all 
i heard about the addon, but the thing is i quit the game, came back and realised all my friends changed server, my guild disbanded and /general was looking like NY metro station. All i wanted was to quest a bit and do a normal dungeon, i shouldn’t have to download addons just to play the game as it is supposed. Ofcourse we are not talking about raiding now, we are talking about a random easy dungeon, that I tried to get a group together for. The state of classic is so terrible, that you can’t even log in and do a dungeon??!?!?!?!?!?
If they dont add RDF with rewards and the exp bonus, 90% of people will lvl from 8-70 through boosting in dungeons, and if you can’t see the problem with that, you are the problem
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There wont be any boosting, they are nerfing the exp when you have someone of a way higher level in the group, they are also implementing the changes that made it so that mages cant just perma slow everything, so no need to think about people buying boosts through dungeons they wont
That sounds nice on paper … but you will be lvl 80 soon, and almost every class has AoE spell now … you will have reduced XP, but you will also be clearing dungeons 2-3 times as fast …
Its another solution that made blizz pat themselves on their backs, while they solved absolutely nothing …
and you can just do 4 dungeons per hour, and if someone just earns 1-2 lvls per those 4 lockouts they wont buy a boost from someone when they can semi afk killing mobs and get the same results at early levels
Edit: and before anyone says something like im too naive I think they are doing that to gear up to lifting the one boost per account towards midway through wrath
Of the last three I had there were conversations in all, ranging from discussions on upcoming changes, hype for wotlk, banter, jokes, and competition.
Personal anecdotes are not an argument against it.
Adding RDF won’t change this. People aren’t buying boosts because they can’t get dungeon groups. They are buying boosts because bot inflation has wrecked the economy and boosting is quicker/less effort for those that just want to get to max lvl. And those buying gear in raids are doing so because… well I don’t know why someone would skip endgame content… but adding RDF isn’t going to stop people buying gear.
I’d actually argue this is one of the most important reasons why RDF is bad. I actually might support a system that automates building a group from people on your server, but doesn’t teleport you there. Might.
This really sounds like a you problem. I’ve had more social interactions just this week on Firemane than I have in years on retail.
Because some people have huge disposable income or are too young to know the value of money. For those only the end goal maters which is to flex in full BiS on those with less money and less time.
That’s the thing, why play a game and pay to not play it…
I can understand skipping a part of the game you don’t like, but people pay for boosts to get to end game, and then they pay to skip end game… and then complain there is nothing to do
Boost sellers and GDKP spam are a separate issue.
You have a revamped LFD interface so I don’t see the issue.
Automatic forming groups and teleporting you to the instance goes against the philosophy of MMORPG. The whole point of classic was to go back to the roots of the MMORPG concept.
While there have been many failures on blizzards end (did nothing against bots, nothing against gold sellers, paid character boost, portal pass, etc), RDF is still the wrong solution to the problem. Its disadvantages trump it’s advantages.
If you advocate for RDF, then it’s of my opinion you either don’t understand the MMORPG concept or you just don’t care.
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Did you see that group finding tool they are planning to add into wotlk ? Its absolute garbage and wont help anything …
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