I don’t think the playerbase outcry for RDF is about convenience, it’s rather a consequence of design philosophy.
Hear me out. The gather group and venture to dungeon system worked for classic, and TBC to a lesser extent because you spent a substantial amount of time in the dungeons. The design makes sense because you’re expected to spend a certain amount of time with your group. You don’t have to repeat the gather group phase too often since (especially in classic) a dungeon can take an hour, and in some cases several hours. Looking at you, Maraudon and BRD.
In WotLK, the dungeons are designed in another way. With an average group, most if not all will be cleared within 30 minutes. Some way less. During the leveling process I ran Gundrak once and it took us about 12 minutes to clear the place. Unless you find a group willing to do several dungeons, you have to repeat the gather group phase way more often than previous iterations of the classic game.
This is why I think players are craving for RDF, since it really doesn’t make sense anymore to spend more time to gather and prepare for the dungeon than actually completing it. Taking my example above, my estimate is that it took us a good 30 minutes to gather the group and travel there. And then it was over in about 12 minutes.
Dungeons in both Vanilla and TBC were long and took a lot of time for the most part, even with a seasoned group and people had to communicate properly for the duration of said dungeons.
In Wrath dungeons, you just don’t bother chatting with anyone because the dungeon will be over in just a few minutes.
I remember when leveling in BRD, it took 4hrs to do a 100% run including all the quests available for it.
Escape from Durnholde? Now that’s another time consuming dungeon as well.
Wrath introduced us to a new way of doing dungeons, with new mechanics and less trash packs to deal with on our way to the bosses compared to the previous expansions, which meant less talking and communicating.
The anti-RDF crowd will say that ‘it will ruin the game’, ‘it has an impact on the social aspect’ etc. No it won’t ruin the game and no it won’t have any impact on the social aspect or any other aspect of the game.
I made a suggestion to keep the current group finder tool’s features and add the RDF on top of it so both factions get what they want aka those who want to spend their time building their group, the way they want, it in terms of composition can do so, while those who want to skip that part, can queue for randoms. Still they keep whining and nagging about the ‘impact’ of the RDF tool, without even looking at any of our arguments. They’re both blind and ignorant, sadly.
Its important to not have rdf in wotlk, or any other expansion for that sake.
And the reason isnt just about social stuff, there are other reasons more important than that. And for the same reason that you dont teach your opponents how to play poker better I dont explain my opponents how to play wow better. Among other things I enjoy the competition and I dont give my competitors any freebies, not an inch.
Not only are they short, they’re super braindead easy. In TBC you wanted some classes to make things smoother (like a mage).
In the current Heroic dungeons all you need is a tank, a healer and any 3 DPSers, it all doesn’t matter.
Because you can do it with a complete random set-up, RDF makes grouping eassier for everyone ESPECIALLY those 50k plate Pallys/DK’s that are unwanted atm.
But rdf and flying mounts both ruin the game. You will see less people travelling in zones. Making zones feel dead, flightmasters zeppelins and boats useless. It also affects negatively less world pvp happening. (I would be for 1-2 daily rdf, but not unlimted spammable standing in a city and teleporting from 15 till 80)
I saw more ppl in the game tho with red, cuze with red i actually did alot of Dungeons and met alot of players. Before that i was just mining in sholozar basin back in the day…
its funny how pretty much the first anti rdf comment is:
“screw other people, I am the one who decides how to play the game” …
You can see it literally in every rdf thread … Wait you want groups where I cant kick other people, decide if they get to play and have nonsense demands on them? HOW OUTRAGEOUS !
RDF, especially with smaller dungeons, exacerbates this issue.
The act of forming a group takes time. The larger percentage of time it takes versus total time spent forming+running, the less appealing it is to leave at the first hurdle you face with a group. Spending 5 minutes recovering from a wipe is preferable to spending 15 minutes reforming a group and travelling all members there.
Due to the quick dungeons now I’ve noticed one other emerging trend: At the end of the dungeon people automatically want to go for another more often than i’ve seen in the past. The average “gains per hour” doing back to back dungeons far outweighs dropping group and finding a new one immediately.
There’s more time spent with people, more time to form a connection, more time to adjust to classes, specs and playstyles. Overall you get to play more “more wow”.
Often 15 minutes isn’t a long time, but once you’ve been in group for an hour, someone’s real life comes into their play time, leading to more actual conversations.
It’s not every dungeon. it’s not every player. But it’s enough to make the game an MMO in the social sense, and not a series of linear teleports to instances where the group becomes faceless and transient.
I disagree with you. Because we can mirror your statement, we shouldnt abolish the last incentives to be in the wow world. You want to spam afk dungeons whole day and wondering why world of warcraft feels less fun in retail than vanilla