Things that could count as nails in the coffin until now:
- The auction house and the mailbox were flawed designs from the beginning, because they replaced player to player interaction and socialization with an artificial interface.
- Dungeons and raids destroyed the world, because players started playing instanced mini games and were detached from the real world of warcraft.
- Battlegrounds and arenas were the same, instanced mini games, where players, who used to pvp in the open world, fighting and socializing, were now not part of the world any longer. Even worse, when auto-matching and battlegroups were introduced. Most server pvp communities disappeared back then.
Later players could even queue up from anywhere and get teleported to the bg and back, no further interaction with the world or other players required. - Summoning stones destroyed most travels of players, because most of the time only two players had to travel and 3 more were missing their adventurous journey.
- Guild banks led to less interaction within a guild, because the need to trade was replaced for most circumstances.
- Additional flight paths were not needed and made players need to travel even less. The fewer steps players did in the world, the less the game felt alive.
- Flying mounts were another death sentence, because instead of players being able to interact with each other, while waiting for ship or train or just crossing the same path on a street, they were now indifferent to other players, just crossing by. The possibility of a fight with a player on a flying mount became zero, unless the player actually dismounted out of free will.
- Classes became too strong and since players didnt need to party anymore, the need for social interaction dropped.
- Crossrealm RDF was the same as random BGs. Players were no longer required to whisper and interact with other players to play dungeons, even the last players, that used to travel, didnt need to.
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Any of these aspects of the game could arguably harm the social interaction and outer world experience within an MMORPG. Every patch, every expansion brought changes than could be argued that it was a “MMORPG-nail in the coffin”. In the end the game changed and there are hundreds of nails in the coffin of “MMORPG”. However, most players are aware that not every change made the game worse. Its the same with RDF. Yes, it drifted the game away from “traveling” and was auto-matching players, but this was all already in the game for other aspects of the game. Nothing the RDF does is new or different in itself. Its just one more feature that was introduced to make the game more pleasant to play at the time it was introduced.
Blizzard even introduced permanent layering in classic, that makes players unable to meet, although they are on the same server at the very same location. How is that not hurtful to the game experience and social interactions.
Now Blizzard seems to intend to use crossrealm for wintergrasp battles. Its the same crossrealm/automatch issue that RDF would have.
Reducing every change in the community that ever happened on RDF and thinking not adding the feature will really make a noticeable change is delusional. If players really wanted a full-fledged MMORPG, then tbc is already far too broken. If anything, it would have to be a gutted vanilla version to fit the taste of hardcore MMRPG-fans.