Facts for RDF:
- RDF helps against gatekeeping of lowgear/undesired specs
- RDF helps against boosting services
- RDF helps against “reserving loot” culture
- RDF helps players to play the game and socialize while looking for groups
- RDF tool is simple and encourages new players to play group content
- RDF daily reward instead of quests helps new players and geared players to play together more often
- Crossrealm helps to find groups at all on low pop servers and low level content overall
- RDF was part of wotlk, part of the original experience
Facts against RDF:
- Crossfaction reduces social liability, that can result in more
ninja looting
party leaving
unfriendly behavior - Crossfaction doesnt allow players of different servers to use the normal friendlist and they wont be able to queue up again at another day
- Heroic lockouts werent in the game back then with RDF
- “Draw of Luck” buff give a disadvantage to full premade groups
- Heroic dungeon badge rewards after the first make gearing too fast
- Teleporting to dungeons takes away traveling experiences
More or less anything else against RDF is speculation or subjective feelings.
- Players being less social?
No, the majority of full random groups are already not very social. - RDF destroyed the game/retail like
More or less any feature ever was a step towards retail, as they are all still present in the newest version of retail. That RDF had more influence than other features or design changes is not a fact, its speculation. - Target audience of classic is vanilla fans
That was the case in vanilla classic, and now we have vanilla era servers for these payers. Wotlk was originally aimed at a different playerbase, that was and still is much larger than the vanilla one. - RDF makes the game a lobby game
The opposite is true, since it enables players to go out in the world, doing whatever they feel like, instead looking at custom interfaces. - Blizzard knows better
If Blizzard knows better, we would not have classic at all. We wouldnt have server issues we have today. Retail would be a better game than expansions 10+ years ago. But that isnt the case, proving that Blizzard does not know any better.
And so on, listed some things here:
The real legit concern about RDF is crossfaction. I would advocate that it should be optional in the RDF (simple checkbox), so players can choose if they want fast queues or a more social experience, like being able to add players they meet as friends, joining their guilds. Anything else can be addressed easily. No lockouts? Done in 3min by 1 developer. No rewards after first random heroic? Done in 5min by 1 developer. “Draw of Luck” seems unnecessary? Removed in 3min by 1 developer.
Teleporting on the other hand is a real thing. Without it, most low level dungeons wont be visited because of the travel time and thats not a good thing. On max level the travel experience is simply flying a straight line or waiting for the teleport in the city. Personally I think the teleport is only really important for low level grouping, but not for max level content, since the destinations are reached within a few min anyway.
If crossrealm in RDF was optional or not used at all, most other legit concerns could be solved easily. The rest of the “concerns” against RDF are not RDF specific or based on subjective interpretation/memories and not facts.
Not adding RDF in wotlk at all would be a huge mistake.