My deepest condolences about your class choice for TBC. I had been feral druid in Classic, rerolled to mage and know no worries since then.
Here is my theory. Most geared players will not use RDF even if it was present. Especially strong tanks preferring to chill in capital and waste extra 10 minutes in chat, than wiping in dungeon due to weak dps/healers not being able to support his playstyle tempo. The only way to get them into RDF would be fat rewards, that is not going to happen.
So you might ended up with party like fury warrior cosplaying tank, feral pretending to be a healer, and 3 rogues, all wanting same leather items from that run. That’s what is dark side of pure automated RDF.
But that’s already how it was in WotLK - it’s not like WotLK dungeons were nerfed in 3.3 when RDF was introduced. And yes Blizzard seems to be intent on introducing “harder challenges” for dungeons but:
If the reward isn’t appropriate for the challenge (such as with TBC heroics), people will just do raids instead and dungeons will be more or less deserted, and
These challenges risk depriving newer players and alts of an important catch-up mechanism. You might say “the challenges are gonna be optional”, but that doesn’t matter. Look at ZA. The bear run is optional, but how many ZA have you seen that were advertised as NOT being bear runs? Personally, not a single one.
It is in fact a silly argument. An argument which easily works in both ways - if your problem is that you want to play a slower game… then play (Vanilla) Classic Era? It’s still available, as far as I can see. Why should WotLK be changed according to the tastes of people who preferred a different version of WoW anyways?
Yes this could happen, but for me personally it’s a risk I would take.
For me the best solution would be to implement both the RDF and the LFG-Tool. Both have their own use cases. And as I understood it in your other posts you would support something like this too.
I don’t understand why it has to be one or the other. The RDF has always been just an addition to the old way of building groups. There are a lot of situations, where somebody will want to pick certain classes to do a certain achievement for example or they want to go very fast or slow and look for people that want the same. Or if you’ve been running a dungeon 100 times and didn’t get one particular item, you will want to build groups, where you don’t have contest when the items drop. For all those situations I wouldn’t use the RDF.
The RDF is great, if you just want to run a quick dungeon and you don’t really care, how fast or slow the run will be, which classes you run with, what gear the players have, which achievements you do or don’t. Especially for players with few time it’s an awesome feature. But it is just an addition to the regular group building. The regular group building is still valid even with the RDF. And the LFG-Tool improves the regular group building. But it doesn’t cover the use cases of the RDF.
Why not, if new LFD won’t force em into automated groups, that tank could sit as long as he wants to gather a perfect group in his opinion.
If it will force that principal tank to join randoms, like RDF does, he would rather advertise his services in /2 for symbolic summ, like 1-10g but on his conditions relating to party members gear and loot rules.
I think you misunderstood.
The LFG text channel can only be used if you have posted a LFM/LFG post into the group finder menu. So these tanks will be forced to atleast post (something random?) into the group finder if they want to use the LFG text channel.
I guess this is an ineffective way to halt GDKPs?
Is it really that bad that they leave a minute after you invite them? I’d be relieved that he didn’t ditch half-way through the dungeon instead. Just like in retail and m+.
And what stops him from doing that exact thing if RDF wasn’t removed for wrath? He would think that the dungeon deserter debuff were shorter than running through the dungeon with people he deemed bad.
1 player leaves → click join que → finish dungeon … you could even just tp out, grab your second spec gear from bank, port back in and swap your dual talents and finish dungeon …
If someone leaves now in tbc, noone will join your dungeon half way through, everyone instantly sees that your group is “weak” even if someone just got dc or had to unexpectedly leave …
And even if you want to do it yourself, you need 3 people to go out through whole dungeon (imagine that with skip runs), 1 needs to port away, spent 50g, get ported back and walk through whole dungeon again …
The moment someone leaves now, the dungeon is basically over …
Why random? They would join list to the exact dungeons they need. But nothing stops them from gatekeeping, refusing invites, untill, at least in their opinion, they could organise a perfect group.
GDKPs will be advertised via discords and Blizzard has no influence there. Nether it seems they want to interfere into GDKPs, because who would promote their WoW Classic token, if they deside to introduce it to the shop.
Devs are going to press on hard on dungeon boosters instead, making some good karma among new/returning casuals, but at the same time getting rid of competition to their lvl 68 paid boost.
Anyway the point wasn’t about GDKPs, but rather “services” announcements in /2 used by such picky tanks if they would be denied access to /4 chat, unless they join automated RDF (if RDF crowd wins and Blizzard would be obliged to make 3.3.0 RDF).
As usual when this (bad) argument come up the person using it is mixing all classic versions into one. Vanilla classic and wotlk classic isn’t the same.
May I suggest that if you don’t like wotlk as it was, and as it should be, that you stick to your slower vanilla classic.
Maybe not immediately when the RDF was introduced, but they did nerf content after its release. Then in Cataclysm they promised that “Heroics are hard” only to cave in to complaints about one-two months into the expansion where they then proceeded to make things a lot easier.
Raids are more of a logistical challenge than dungeons. I’ve never been in a guild where they’ve just spontaneously decided to go and raid 10 o’clock in the morning because people got time to kill. It is usually scheduled, and raids can also only be run once per week. So I really don’t think this is an issue. People will still run dungeons. Maybe not as many dungeons as they used to, and perhaps that’s what the rewards need to reflect.
I have always been of the opinion that Classic should have had #somechanges. I think you can improve on many areas of the game without breaking the Classic “spirit”. Minor things, like being able to click on the quest text in the interface to open your quest log, being able to filter for reagants in the crafting window, being able to use the flight master without dismounting, being able to zoom in the inspect window etc. These are minor no-brainer improvements that wouldn’t impact the game at all.
Then you have changes that do affect the gameplay, such as the summoning stone, being able to see the duration of spell effects, being able to use buffs in PvP without spending mana or reagants. These things are not part of vanilla but they’re convenient and useful. Question is, how much convenience can you incorporate before it becomes too much? Not an easy question to answer. I’m okay with summoning stones but I am not okay with the dungeon finder. I think the dungeon finder is too convenient.
Besides, the Dungeon Finder was added late into the expansion’s life cycle. When you first experienced the WLK-dungeons there was no automated group finder to use. It only came into the existence after the dungeons had been trivialized by gear progression. If you’re looking for the legit WLK experience you would not be in support of the Dungeon Finder day one. But I suspect it’s the convenience you’re after.
The RDF doesn’t change the experience in the dungeon in any way. It just changes the process how you get into the dungeon. And seriously the tedious group forming process of ancient days isn’t worth cherishing, because it doesn’t add any value to the game. It just keeps you from spending more time playing valuable content.
You don’t think the Dungeon Finder changed the dungeon experience? I think Blizzard chose to dumb down dungeons in order to increase the success rate in an effort to combat toxicity. If you can’t fail people won’t get mad at each other (well, they’ll still find things to complain about but at least they’ll be placated by their shiny rewards).
If the Dungeon Finder did not change the experience then people ought to be social in dungeons in retail. But they are not, and this has been the case since Cataclysm. We have evidence of this. If the Dungeon Finder is not to blame then what is?
I just remembered that players in wotlk wanted dungeons to be more difficult. Once they increased the difficulty in cataclysm even more players wanted the difficulty to decrease. The majority of players is casuals and easier content is what the majority of players prefers. Only a few players back in the day or playing classic look for a min-max challenge like M+ on retail.
And yes, the RDF changed the dungeon experience, because it was easier to get invites. A downside regarding RDF was that entitled players got matched with new/bad/low geared players and ranted on them, sometime even votekicking them. With the current or future tool this rarely happens, because these players will barely ever get an invite in the first place. Still, having a chance to prove oneself is usually better than not getting an invite at all.
I’ve been forming PuG Kara raids at 8 am st on Wednesdays with hr on Mongoose for months now. On other days I’ve been forming ZA bear runs at the same time to farm the damned healer brooch that happens to be Alliance Arcane Mage game BiS. Thank Elune I finally got it last week, no more ZA for me.
Anyway, my point is Raids are EASIER to form than 5mens and will be even more so in Wrath. I couldn’t dream of making Arca HC or SHH HC (the other 2 enchants I miss) at that time, I’d never, ever get a tank.
I am telling you now, as a man who suffered through forming many hundreds of dungeon runs in TBC, there will be NO dungeon to be found in Wrath by the time of Ulduar patch 3 months in. People will cry out in desperation for RDF, and Blizzard will swoop in, magnanimously granting what should have been in the game frankly from the Phase 3 of Classic. After all, all the 70 boosts likely to sell would have been sold by then. Or worse still, they literally do nothing. What do they care. They’ll be too busy introducing classic token to fuel all the gdkps.
Prove oneself to who? Randoms from other servers who you’ll never communicate with again anyway?
I think you raise some valid points but I don’t think the Dungeon Finder is the solution. Anyone can play a dungeon in retail and on its own that sounds like a good thing, but for years now retail has catered to an audience that seeks more of a single player experience. The Dungeon Finder is the ultimate tool for this audience as it allows players to play group content without having to socialize or even learn the game. I think Blizzard is making the correct decision in choosing to not go down this path with Classic, even if that means they’ll have to tackle new problems that crop up.
I’ll admit that I see your point, but I am not sure that it is going to be as bad in WLK as it is in TBC. The problem of TBC is that dungeons don’t really give anything except badges, and the badges are only interesting for a very limited time. It’s been too many years since I played Wrath so I can’t remember why I ran as many dungeons as I did, but there was a reason for it. I did not run them for fun. So long as they manage to maintain that reason I think people will run dungeons even if they are more challenging.
It was mentioned thousands of times, but the social interaction while forming groups for dungeons right now is “inv [role/spec]” and maybe “port”/“123”.
You dont have to socialize right now either during a run, as long as its going smooth. Some players do, some players dont, same with RDF. If you have questions, its not really different from asking players while matched in RDF. Its not like everyone is muted by using the feature.
I personally dont like the idea of vanilla-retail-anyexpansion hybrids, because I prefer the old experience over an experiment that might turn out way worse. Those players that like retail or vanilla more than wotlk will disagree though, since they dont want the original experience to begin with.
I mean, what they did in Cataclysm is not really part of the argument - what they do here in WotLK Classic has nothing to do with what they can or cannot do in Cata Classic. It’s not like sticking to nochanges in Vanilla Classic prevented them from changing their policy drastically with TBC and WotLK Classic, right? That’d be like claiming, I dunno, that we shouldn’t have got daily quests in TBC because of what dailies did to WoW from MoP onwards.
I think you’re seriously misremembering WotLK here, or applying your current TBC/Vanilla Classic experience to WotLK. Throwing up an OS10 or Naxx10 in later WoW required next to no preparation - any raid with people in decent gear would absolutely melt those places with next to no coordination required (for example, by the time ICC came out, any Naxx10 pug could kill Heigan before he even got a single dance phase off).
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not literally saying every single person won’t run dungeons at all, but the need to run those (save for any change Blizzard hinted to that we know yet nothing about) is greatly diminished in later phases compared to TBC, and mostly confined to ppl desperate for gear (newcomers or late alts) that will have a way harder time finding a group than they currently do because geared chars have way more opportunities than they currently have to get what they need from raids.
The problem is, what the “Classic spirit” means is largely subjective, and mostly used by people appealing to this idea as a thinly veiled disguise for “Vanilla spirit”.
Case in point. You, like many others, appeal to the fact the Dungeon Finder was introduced later into the expansion as a justification for not having it into the game at all - but you seem to have no qualms with systems that weren’t ever introduced to original WotLK in the first place, such as the retail LFG tool. You just come up with excuses for justifying removing parts of the game you don’t like, while welcoming additions that you like even if those same excuses would apply to these additions as well.
The root of the issue was Blizzard (1) trying to appeal to players who preferred Vanilla to WotLK and (2) putting in charge of WotLK Classic people who also preferred Vanilla to WotLK.
This isn’t really an argument for the Dungeon Finder, though. I read it as: “there is no social aspect, ergo it is fine to introduce this feature that is notoriously known for having destroyed the social aspect.” In my personal experience, dungeons have been way more social in TBC classic than in retail.
I feel like Classic vanilla and TBCC are proof that you won’t ever be able to get the original experience again. This has been evident since the first week of Classic when some guild defeated Ragnaros in spite of not having everyone at max level.
The point I was trying to get across is that the Dungeon Finder did have severe ramifications on the gameplay, as has been evidenced in the nerfs seen in WLK after its introduction and what we’ve seen happen to normal/heroic dungeons in retail ever since.
I’ve already admitted as much.
No. That argument says that if you want to have the “original experience” then you can’t have the Dungeon Finder at launch. The argument assumes a later introduction of the Dungeon Finder in order to stay true to the “original experience”; it is not used as a justification for not having it in the game at all. The point of the argument is to highlight the fallacy in the counter argument of using “the original experience” as justification for including the Dungeon Finder.
Then there are many other arguments as for why introducing the Dungeon Finder is a bad idea, just as there are many arguments for why introducing the Dungeon Finder (from the start) is a good idea. But if we want to stay true to the Classic experience then the Dungeon Finder should not be in WLK Classic at launch.