RDF is not what killed WoW, and back in WotLK it was a very good addition for quality of life. The social aspect was still there, I recall people in RDF groups were chatting all the time in Wrath. RDF was a good addition both for max level and for leveling new characters and alts. You could choose to level up as a healing spec and spam dungeons all the time, which was great. Without RDF if you choose to level up as a healing spec you are pretty much doomed.
If someone leaves a dungeon group you struggled to create manually, there are less chances for a replacement player to join in. Via RDF you have more chances to finish your dungeon.
If Blizzard only added RDF and kept it there without adding LFR later on, WoW would have been in a much better state, since again, RDF is a very good quality of life addition.
I think not adding RDF in WotLK Classic is a big mistake. At least consider adding realms with and without RDF. To be honest, I’d rather play on a private WotLK server that has RDF active rather than Classic WotLK without RDF. And I don’t even have to spend money on a monthly subscription for that.
What killed WoW IMO:
LFR
All the stupid changes to PvP, especially the removal of Resilience
Removal of stats like Hit, Expertise, MP5, etc (back when these stats existed you had to balance out more things therefore if you took time to tweak your character you were better rewarded than others who didn’t).
Timelock + Grindfest systems such as Renown
Not being able to buy flying with gold but rather having to spend your life to earn an achievement rather than having fun
Professions being made obsolete
Class changes that gave every class a heal, stun, etc
Classes not having their own identity via specific buffs, Bloodlust, etc
Removal of old school buffs that added a lot of flavor to creating groups
dont necessarily think this is true, but do you think its possible people were chatting in RDF back when it was released in wotlk because it was only out for 1 patch of the entire expansion before it turned everybody into a silent nancy?
people tend to keep memories of stuff in their final stage or when they last saw something. the last patch with lfd in wotlk was nearly half of the expansion too (10 of 24 months). i myself didnt see much difference in random groups from via lfg-chat and the dungeon finder tool. same thing can be seen on any wotlk private server till today.
I think silent groups are the product of a combination of factors. One of those combinations are RDF & Easy content, which makes it less necessary to form friendships so u can do content together.
Gotta keep in mind that alot of people are probably coming from retail, so a good portion of the playerbase are gonna be the type that don’t like talking to people. Essentially people are gonna be silent not because of RDF but because thats the new gameplay.
Either way, I don’t care about if RDF is in the game or not. It’s not why I play the game and wotlk is probably gonna be a toxic fest anyway. Its an elitist expansion.
Is there a big social activity in the average full random formed dungeon group today in tbcc? Would it diminish noticeably by skipping the LFG-spam / inv me part if the dungeon finder was introduced today (lets say realm wide restriction for the sake of the argument)? I do not think so, since i havent experienced that change back in the day playing wotlk, nor on any wotlk private server.
At the beginning of WoTLK, I remember having social groups for Heroics and making lots of friends.
At the end of WoTLK, I couldn’t even get a “hello” out of anyone in Heroics.
There was one thing that changed between that time period:
Random Dungeon Finder.
You can argue that it is a good feature, and that’s up to you. If you ask me, I think WoTLK Classic should have RDF as it is a feature that was in the original expansion. It’s silly to cherry pick and remove things.
But don’t argue that it didn’t contribute to the poor social state that modern WoW is in. You are not fooling anybody, and you know it.
This is not actually true. Firstly even in retail LFD from my experience people usually do still greet each other at the beginning of a dungeon. Especially if you say it first because it’s kind of rude not to respond.
And second…there was one more important thing that changed in regards to dungeon running between the start and end of Wotlk. The gear level of players. Most people in LFD were overgearing the content and were only there for badges. Which meant they were blasting through the already easy at launch wotlk heroics with 0 downtime. There was no need to strategize or take mana breaks or wait for patrols to pass. Which meant no downtime to chat in.
There is nothing magical about forming the group manually with ,LFM, and ,inv, that makes people more social. It’s just the fact that you can’t do your rotation and chat at the same time.
Which is why I think they should add LFD to Wotlk classic in phase 2 or 3 when we have all seen the dungeon entrances and the content is so easy that the social side of it is greatly diminished. Thats when the QoL benefits of LFD far outweigh the negatives imo.
One thing more happened. Dungeons got WAY easier, relative to player-power. In the end of Wrath you could run through, mega pull and never eat or drink. Not so in the beginning-middle.
I am indifferent to LFD for my self, but would like it added - but not at launch - simply because it was in original Wrath.
First thing that comes to my mind was definitely flying mounts, but I didnt see the classic community try to get them removed. There were many steps, starting in classic. Like summoning stones, more graveyards/flight paths, battleground ports, catchup systems. All were part of the process, just as RDF. However, just like tbc flying, RDF was a defining key feature and is now needed more than ever, since server populations are either too big or too small for the originally intended way of finding groups.
You choose from a list of dungeons/zones etc you want to queue up for. Then people who are making a group for it can see you have listed yourself for it (as well as anyone else lfg) and invite you. Also you can see other people who have made groups and have listed themselves in dungeon finder and ask them for an inv if you want.
It’s a nice compromise because you don’t have to spam chat to find a group but also you can choose to not group with certain people you don’t want to (e.g people you or your guild have blacklisted).
That’s the same we have in TBCC. Nobody uses that and for a reason; you have no idea what the listed players’ gear is like. They may be full epic, but they may also be full green. Game gives you no info. It’s more efficient to just spam for a geared DPS on chat.
While wotlk dungeon finder has a minimum item level for entry. So a player that is ABLE to queue for phase 1 heroic means that he has gear with average item level 180+ (majority of items from normal dungeons/crafts/boes).
Not to mention that, if you’re the one queued, you have no idea if you’re any closer to finding a group than before, or not. Which means that, for the most part, you’re just better off whisper-spamming people as we do now and hope you did it faster than other players. Especially if you’re a DPS.
No system without at least auto-queue deserves to be called a “replacement” or “compromise” with LFD. They’re just different (generally worse) variants than the LFG chat we already have.
Honestly on a small EU server with a low Alliance Population it can be Hell to try to finde dungeon groups on weekdays and I’m not even talking about super low pop servers just servers with 2k or lower alliance pop. Forget leveling alts in dungeons, you buy a boost or you never go at all. So where is the player interaction there?
And using the LFG tool ? Yeah sure, i try for 2 hours to finde a group if i finde one at all for low level dungeons.
It’s time to take off the nostalgia glasses, wotlk classic is a different beast than it was back than, the player base is only a percentage of back than, the people are also differnt. The massive boosting services and bots are a clear indicator.
The thing that killed a massive part of the community was not the RDF it was long contend droughts, the LFR that made Guilds for casuals useless because they can raid anyway and the fact that they didn’t communicate with the Players in the later expansion. Couple with that the insane amount of Daylies as endgame contend instead of something fun and that’s the reason why I left retail.
Like so many others said, in today’s day and age there is no real replacement for the RDF.
RDF in wotlk will kill retail wow though and Ion will have to explain then why a decade old expansion from previous developers deleted his retail version… They hope that will keep players on retail with that change
