Dunno why people are against RDF in WotLK

Triva-theradras · July 28, 2022, 11:06am

To answer the question why people are against RDF more clearly:

They dont really need RDF as a tool, since most primarily play premade with guild mates and friends. For them it seems unnecessary to form groups and holds no significant advantages, since as a dps it takes about the same time to find a group with or without RDF.
They fear that with RDF they have less people to choose from, if they need to fill spots in their groups with random players.
They honestly think, that for everything negative that happened community wise back in the day, the RDF-tool is to blame.
They prefer vanilla game design that focuses on long time consuming activities with many waiting times, because it tends to create environments where players chat/socialize. Fast group forming, fast dungeons = bad for social interactions.
If RDF is a pain for full random players, thats a good thing from their perspective. Players that are more likely to quit or dont have the time to form dungeons over an hour every time, are not fit to play their vanilla design. Others might feel forced to join guilds and although they might not like it, its still a good thing, because being in a guild is a great indicator for a social healthy game and who knows, they might like it in the end.
RDF for them is an inherently toxic environment, because they can only imagine it as crossfaction. Crossfaction means that players are less socially liable, if they ninja, leave after bosses or are offensive in general. Players doing these runs often might copy these toxic behaviors from other toxic players and it will become more toxic overall.
Additionally players cannot play with players from other realms again or add them to their usual ingame friends list.
Some are convinced teleporting to the dungeon takes away part of their exploration. New players doing low level dungeons will not even know where the dungeon entrance is and what dangers are around the corner. With RDF around, since its the path of least resist, no players will ever walk/fly to a dungeon again.
They see the game becoming a lobby game with RDF. Sitting in major cities, waiting for invites and not stepping out in the world is not what World of Warcraft should be about.
Group composition can be very bad with RDF, like having 5 paladins is possible.
The invite process is an important social aspect of forming a group. You have to talk with other players instead of being able to play a dungeon without typing a thing in chat.
Retail has RDF, so dont RDF votes should play there.
Classic should not include future retail features, but keep a vanilla spirit.
RDF wasnt really part of wotlk and released at the very end of the expansion. Even if its released it should never be earlier than 3.3, or else it would be the same as adding ICC in the very beginning.
Most dont think the RDF is adjustable and can only imagine it the very same way it was released in 3.3.0.

To address all these points myself:

Since they can still form groups the ordinary, old fashioned way and the RDF is a new option to form dungeons, this is not really an argument against RDF, but simply the statement, that not every player needs the tool. Currently, how fast players are able to find random groups, is related to their class and gear. So some players find groups faster and some barely get an invite at all.
While its true, that the player pool diminishes, its not as bad as one might think. There will be many players spamming dungeons with RDF, that would never do these many dungeons or dungeons at all without the tool. On the other side, those players with guild communities, friends or simply very good gear will still look for premade groups, to have smoother/faster runs and an overall better experience. Carrying nonames they might never meet again is not something many players like.
While its likely that the RDF has influences on how the game was played back in the day, with all the big and small design changes, the game became a different one anyway. It was more for players, who wanted to play the game for an hour or two a day and less focused on committed social players, like it was in vanilla.
In the end there is only speculation about to what degree the RDF had an impact on future design decisions and the community as a whole.
Starting wotlk, the game was more and more designed for players with less time to play. Unnecessary time sinks were removed and therefore players had less time to just look around and chat/socialize, because of the lack of other input. Examples are players could queue for battlegrounds from anywhere and got teleported to the location and back. The dungeons were designed to have less trash npcs and to be shorter. With the reduced need for downtimes and everyone having aoe, wotlk dungeons are designed to be about gameplay, not about taking your time and chat.
Of course less time to chat and more action is bad for social experiences, but thats what wotlk was all about, not specifically the RDF.
Whether MMORPGs are about inclusion or exclusion is a design question. Wotlk was about inclusion, so not only social vanilla fans had fun, but players aiming for a few hours of gameplay a week, too. Its understandable to want a game specifically made for ones needs. However, wotlk was not designed for the hardcore vanilla target audience to begin with. Even with not adding the original RDF feature, vanilla era servers are still more fitting for vanilla fans than a game overall designed for more casual players.
This is a legit concern. Crossfaction has upsides and downsides. The upsides are obvious: players on low pop servers and low level players overall can get queues all the time instead of having to wait for peak hours. The downsides are already mentioned: the reduced social liability. While this might be fixed with a different votekick/punishment system (less kick downtime, restriction if kicked by too many random groups), it stays a concern that has to be weighed against the upsides. Making crossrealm optional by using a checkbox might be a solution. Players looking for the fastest invites or ones not being able to find groups due to server activity can enable the option, while others, that want the best experience and liability, can keep it turned off and play with players from the same realm only.
The inability to play with others again is the biggest downside of crossrealm in my opinion. However, choosing to play with “one time friends” or not at all isnt easy. Personally Id rather choose the option to be able to play dungeons at all, but the downside hurts.
This concern is something I can understand, but not agree with. Of course every player will use the teleport, if all members have the required itemlevel. The travel to the dungeon will be gone compared to no RDF. However, there are only few players happily volunteering to walk/fly to the dungeon and teleport the others. Those players asking for teleports dont want to walk/fly there anyway. So for 3 out of 5 players nothing changes, since they get teleported anyway and of the two players teleporting the others, it is unlikely they think their experience was meaningful.
Looking at low level players, as it is now, half the low level dungeons are almost never visited at all, mainly because the travel is a pain. 99.9% of the players wont miss the traveling experience to mauraudon, because they would have never gone there in the first place without RDF.
Arguably its the opposite. Currently many players use their time to snipe promising groups in LFG/bulletin and to do that, they have to keep focus nearly all the time. Since its hard to focus on other things, there arent many activities they can do in the meantime. However, with RDF players do not have to focus on the chat at all. They can do whatever they like in the open world, like questing, farming, dueling or whatever they feel like. Things that are more mentally straining without RDF. So RDF actually encourages players to go out in the open world, while without RDF they are more likely to stay in the city.
This is definitely a downside, but since RDF is optional, this is a risk anyone willing to use RDF has to take. If it was different, the queue times for specific classes/specializations would become too high. Players, who want to avoid this, can still form premade groups.
While its true there is no need to type anymore, typing “inv [class]” and [need port] usually doesnt break the ice. If someone doesnt want to chat, they usually wont. I think that the mix all different language servers caused by crossrealm is a bigger factor, because players whose English isnt fluent, will stay silent more often compared to runs with players speaking their first language.
While I heard the argument many times, retail is a completely different game from wotlk. RDF enables content, but thats it. A bus can take you to Russia or take you to France. Liking a bus as a form of transportation doesnt mean you like the destinations equally.
“Classic” was vanilla once, because there werent other classic expansions yet. Now we are about to have 3 different “classic” games with 3 different original designs. The definition of “classic” changed. The “spirit of classic” changed, because its no longer vanilla only. As a vanilla enthusiast it might seem sad to see vanilla go, but wotlk and classic are just too different, that removing RDF will create a vanilla-like experience in wotlk. Blizzard even alters the game by adding more retail features like no more arena teams, which potentially harm the game more than RDF, because it makes boosting, boosting services and boosting culture overall more present.
Everyone has their favorite expansion, this is what we need era servers for. I personally think classic expansions should be more like a museum than a Blizzard test laboratory.
RDF was part of wotlk about 42% of its duration. Its not that no content was released after RDF was out. 2 months after RDF was introduced, ICC was fully opened and another 5 months later Ruby Sanctum was released.
Furthermore, its not content, but a qol feature, comparable to guild banks, which were implemented earlier, too. Raids are actual content, so they can only be released at a specific point in the progression timeline. Features can potentially added/removed any time without influence on the content progression.
RDF was not a feature that was deemed harmful, but helpful. They removed the fire from Ring of Valor and later even removed the whole arena to rework it, because the design was flawed. Not adding the fire, an aspect REMOVED for good reasons, makes sense. However RDF was ADDED and stayed in the game until today, because it did more good than harm. Removing a feature because it was added later, was never even considered for any other feature either.
I dont get behind this. If there is a problem, lets say the votekick having cooldown at the beginning, then this is taken as a hard fact against RDF, like there is no solution. Instead, it would be just as reasonable to consider the possibility to address the problem by making an adjustment, but this part is usually ignored. Same with crossfaction. Why obligatory refuse the possibility for making crossrealm for RDF optional, besides the sake of the argument. Or what about the no heroic lockout, which could be easily addressed, or the additional rewards? Sadly, it is practice to turn down or even consider solutions for the sake of the argument.

Its not that every person against RDF thinks all of these arguments are true, but these are the most common arguments and each person against RDF would use at least one of them.