It depends a whole lot on personal experience, too.
On one hand, introducing the tool removes players from the LFG spam channels, which starts a cycle where eventually almost no one forms parties socially.
On the other, I’m 35 minutes into trying to form a party for a 60-63 dungeon.
And I completely abandoned even the idea of running anything below 60. Soon to be 70.
I wrote this post twice, the first at 23 minutes, I got invited to a party, the second at 35, we found our last.
The feature is really useful, hope it’ll be available sooner or later.
I did like I mentioned above on my paladin alt while leveling, when this system was introduced. However right now I am using it for MGT on my mage main. People ain’t using it because FLG Bulletin board addon offers more flexibility in filtering chat for specific dungeons and has faster and more advanced interface. I agree that that manual LFG tool is not ideal and it takes some time to check it for updates, but at least I can ignore parties that are running too many classes of my own to avoid needless competition or gather a stronger setup for heroics.
With automated LFD Blizzard had to go into hard nerfing heroics with gear inflation so that random none synergetic groups could complete it anyway. They tried bringing heroics back on appropriate difficulty in Cataclysm and it failed and even made same mistake with raids by introducing LFR and increasing amount of player number volatility by creating casuals riding on hype waves and cath up mechanics in every patch. Because the automated system is unable to make good composition and lead the raid, people on the other hand can.
They should not need to add dungeon finder. Instead they should try and fix the servers instead. Dungeon finder is unnecessary tbh, just useless classes/roles that want to leech want it. Only see the value in it from 15-68.
Thats the gatekeeping we are talking about and that the RDF fixes.
Thats correct, and it also
The Blizzard option of an improved version of the current finder might help with the last point, but not as much as the RDF and it wont help with the other issues, that the RDF fixes.
I don’t mind that people who put in way less effort will have less chances on getting the gear. I think it’s fair game. Obviously casuals playing classes that can be easily replaced will think otherwise. And secondly I think that dead/low pop servers are a massive issue that should be solved itself. Not just to put a bandaid on it.
Dungeons are the casual content of every expansion in classic, while raids and arenas are for more committed players.
Telling people to switch servers, change classes, not playing lower geared twinks and telling them to keep praying in Bulletin instead of playing in Azeroth is nothing but toxic and being ignorant to the problems.
So you would like to have only meta classes in your groups and less performing ones shouldnt be part of your game experience? Players should not be able to partake in simple casual 5-man dungeons, because they play a certain class?
Blizzards solution back in the day to let these players play was RDF, since they dont like server merges. Do you think Blizzard today can come up with a better idea than that? Do you have a better idea for players on these servers, that like to play dungeons too?
You are the most straightforward gatekeeper I have seen so far in the forums. You dont care about others problems, as long as they dont affect you. In contrast, you are against the solutions for their problems, just because you are a toxic person that blames those players for playing a certain class, having started late or playing on the wrong server. Your attitude is part of the problem that the RDF fixes.
Nothing personal, but thats my impression of you.
If it was to avoid competition for an item, I’d agree, but even now in TBC (and it’ll be way more like that in WotLK), most ppl run heroic dungeons (sans MGT hc) for badges only, and don’t care at all about the items dropped there. And yet that won’t stop them from thinking they need a flawless comp while making the group, even if it’s wholly unneccessary, even if it means refusing a person with much higher gear level (that would bring a much bigger benefit than the synergy of a different class), even if it takes more to find such a group than it would’ve taken doing the dungeon with the first group they had found. A lot of people just do this acritically, and end up making each other miserable for no reason at all.
Heroics in WotLK were already a joke long before LFD was introduced (which was in 3.3).
I’ve never said LFD was a good idea for other versions of WoW. I don’t think it’d work well in TBC, for example, given the tuning of heroics in TBC (especially MGT hc, but also a couple others). I’m just talking about WotLK here.
It was a mistake, I agree, just not the “same” mistake. Just because a system is appropriate for a certain part of the content, it doesn’t mean it’s appropriate for all parts of the content. When Blizzard introduced LFR, they failed to understand that raids are the heart of PvE social interaction, and the main reason why people form guilds and interact together on a regular or semi-regular basis. By introducing a way to see the raids while basically playing solo, they removed a major reason for the more casual part of the playerbase to actually come together in the first place, and this had ripple effects across the entire server communities.
Raids and dungeons are not the same thing. Certainly not in WotLK, at least.
I really hope we do get RDF and early on. It could come with an option for “realm only” for those who want/can keep it within their own realms, or a cross realm option for those people who are stuck on dying realms, if nothing is done by Blizzard to salvage those in the meantime.
And power creep (applies to BC, …).
2009-04: Nice, I made it to 80. Switching from BM to Survival improved my dps from 950 to 1350. I’m ready to do stuff. (Been struggling with MM at 70, figured BM is better for questing and higher dps.)
2009-05: Wow, Naxx10 gear is neat. I’m doing 2000, and I’m 2nd on the charts.
2009-06: Wow, Naxx25 is a bit more serious. 3500 and such.
2010-09: Holy moly, our best damage dealer is achieving 15k spikes. IC dailies are getting beyond trivial, I’m globaling stuff myself with my puny 10k dps in off-off-spec retri. Soloing level 70 heroics casually as prot pally.
I don’t have Cataclysm memories, but then MoP was the same, starting with 30k and then having friends up to 350k. Timeless Isle was pretty obvious until things got scaled in 6.0.
I enjoyed the challenging Cataclysm dungeons, but most people define skill in achieving interstellar dps numbers and racing the dungeon as quickly as possible, not avoiding fire and stuff. I did prefer lower intensity Classic gameplay, then again, GW2 is also more like the World of Diablo that WoW has become.
When people started using dungeons to farm mats and currency, it became a game of efficiency and rush.
This can all be empathized with, to an extent, but there’s already at least one version of WoW that suits your personal vision of the game. That does not mean that all the rest of WoW should be rewritten according to the same vision. Just because you have more fun playing WoW in a certain way doesn’t mean everyone else has to.
Personally, I’ve never found dungeons fun, especially not the long boring slogs they were in Vanilla. Even in TBC, I often end up having more fun (more challenging gameplay, better rewards, better social experience etc.) in raids such as Zul’Aman and Sunwell Plateau than I do in dungeons. At least WotLK’s RDF removed a lot of the drawbacks of doing dungeons compared to raids by making them faster - allowing me to do them with the same ease with which I can queue in a BG if I want to. Not having RDF will just push me more towards raid logging, and that’s hardly just me.
And before you say “why don’t you go play Retail instead?”, I don’t want Retail. I want friggin WotLK. I’m not the one who wants to change the game as it was, it’s the anti-RDF crowd that wants. Including our incompetent devs.
For sure 
Well, does it have players…
I just wish to spend those 30 minutes it takes to form a dungeon group better.
Sure, it must be faster on Firemaw, or playing the current phase of endgame on Mirage Raceway, where we both are.
People are tired of spamming (only 2 of us yesterday on Bulletin at 62) but I’m sure with a fire and forget sign up system, many more would opt in.
Dungeons are my endgame. Putting aside many hours every few evenings - and the supporting time to get prepared in the first place - is a luxury I’ll never anymore have. Work, friends, wife, kids.
Without a DF, the game is either super social or essentially single player.
The thing is, without RDF, the time it takes to get a dungeon going and actually finish it is almost comparable to most raids. I could do a Sarth 10m, ToC10m or even Naxx10m in the time it takes me, right now, to find a group for a non-daily dungeon as a DPS.
So if you’re looking for a “supersocial” experience, but don’t have the time for it, then I’m sorry but you’re probably screwed either way. Socializing takes time. The thing is, I feel like the social experience in raids is generally superior, because people are not only more committed but also more frequently use voicechat which makes human interaction a lot more natural and enjoyable (I refuse to consider “hello” → “CC moon plz” → “thx for the group” a social experience, sorry), and not having RDF means having a harder time gearing up alts which means less opportunity to experience the social interaction of raids.
I literally wrote in my post that they should fix the low pop issue, but nice try at being intentionally missleading. Wanting to play the game while looking for groups is something you obviously can. It’s not exacly difficult in any sense of it. The 2 other points with playing a less favored class and having less gear than others ofc it should impact your ability to find a group. You want it to be some welfare system where you can take my loot while providing nothing?
You have no idea how to fix it, Blizzard doesnt know how to, and the only reliable fix for the mentioned issues that has been proven to work till this day is the RDF. Saying “just fix it”, while knowing there is no better solution, is the same as being ignorant to the problem.
Im not sure which server you play on and which dungeons you try to join to say that. I have chars on Firemaw and a medium pop server, and while on Firemaw I have to check bulletin like all the time to see if something new pops up to whisper fast (LFG is unusable anyway), not being able to concentrate on anything else, there are at best 1-5 groups searching on the medium pop server for all dungeons together. On “dead” servers, there is barely one random group at all.
Of course I can do something else on Firemaw while looking here and there in LFG/Bulletin, but the time it takes to actually find a group will significantly increase.
“Not difficult in any sense” is simply wrong from my perspective, since I am not playing with premades.
Blizzards whole class rebalance idea in wotlk is “bring the player, not the class”. No class is useless and comparing the ability to join a group as a 5-10% weaker class to a “welfare system” is strongly missing the point of the wotlk-idea.
You think that its “your loot”, just because your class/gear level might perform slightly better? You think they provide nothing, just because of their class? Do you think twinks dont deserve gear? Is their time not worth anything compared to yours? I can understand being mad, if someone else gets something you aim for, but if you dont like it, dont play in random groups.
The “bring the player, not the class” idea was introduced because of people like you, that were already a problem back in the day and even Blizzard agreed that this behavior is neither social nor good for the gaming experience, especially for new players.
If I make the group, get a proper setup and tank the dungeon then yeah I think I can reserve things that I think I deserve. If there is RDF then no1 will make a group outside of it really. RDF doesn’t really belong in the game pre cata. Go play retail if you find the game too annoying to find a group. Perhaps no1 takes you into groups because you have no gear and put in no effort? Why would I want a random system that will make me get matched with you? You will most likely not be on the same skill level nor gear level as me so it will be frustruating losing items to someone like that.
Soon you retail players will probably ask for raid finder since no1 will invite you to raids and think it’s too difficult to find a raid allowing you to leech in. What a sad state of the classic community.
That is a really good question. They have the best wow expansion on their hands and all they need to do in order to be successful is to launch it as it was back in the day. But no. For some weird reason they feel the need to start changing things which are not broken and limiting the features they give us. And at the same time add questionable other things to the game like gender change barbershop.
Dungeon finder wasn’t intriduced until ICC basically. Stop claiming it’s “part of WOTLK”. it snuck in at the end.
And the majority of people DON’T want it. Majority are happy and are silent. The loud MINORITY are on the forums making threads about it.
I always blamed Blizz for ruining WoW, but I’m starting to think the players did it to themselves.
The majority clearly want Dungonfinder.
Show me your source. Qualify the research method.