Why I believe LFD/R has and is continuing to destroy the WoW community

[feralminded]

This whole idea of community is romanticized.

Honestly, it's like listening to grandpa go, "Back in my day....".

I recognize that you are very young, but some day you will realize that your grandpa has a point. Now I'm not really that old but I have been here playing this game since vanilla and I can tell you with certainty the LFD did in fact destroy the ad-hoc server communities. That's a fact. There's nothing today anywhere CLOSE to what we had "back in the day." Now whether that's good, bad, or otherwise is obviously open to personal opinion ... but one I think is only valid if given from people who actually experienced this game back when those server communities were at their height (Vanilla/BC). Indeed some people in this very thread HAVE been there and DID dislike it while others enjoyed it ... clearly no one is romanticizing it into something it isn't.

I'm merely stating here that I believe there is room for a compromise within blizzard's game design that will enable some amount of adhoc community building while leaving the LFD/R in place to support the people who need it most (weird schedules/playtimes) or who just don't want to deal with other people or for people wanting to gear up alts quickly and efficiently. Honestly there's no good reason for blizzard NOT to seek a compromise unless they either see no value in ad-hoc communities OR they just don't understand them. If it's the former, well that's their choice. If it's the latter then I feel compelled to at least attempt to raise awareness of the issue and start a dialogue.

For myself and many of the people who have been playing this game since vanilla the lack of a definitive server community since the inception of LFD has been one of the worse things missing from "the old game." No its not the only thing wrong with the game, indeed lack of content, too much streamlining, too much item bloat, rapid deprecation of content any many other things are problems ... I made another thread for that discussion though.

[Kahmal]

Keep in mind while we complain there isn't enough to do outside of raiding, that stuff we used to do in the old days while we weren't raiding, while something to keep us busy, it was more tedious then fun.

gathering proff. for gold, rep grinding (way more long and tedious back then), crafting epics took way longer, working on an offset, doing dailies etc, grinding badges took longer in TBC

Now I personally have no problem doing things that were tedious in order to progress your character cause its an mmo, not sure about everyone else though.

[feralminded]

Well considering one of the common themes of complaints about cataclysm as a whole is "too streamlined" I think there's a balance between too much and too little tedium. Honestly this goes to the whole "raiding should be hard" argument. Effort vs Reward has to be in place or else there's too much reward and too little effort and people grow bored or feel little sense of accomplishment. So yeah, we definitely had A LOT of tedium at times in the old game and I'd be happy to argue that it was maybe too much (specially for raiding ... back in the days of having to drink 10 elixirs per pull) ... but today there's almost NOTHING to do so the pendulum swung too far in the other direction. Effort is a good thing, it gives meaning to our rewards and makes us proud for attaining them.

[Kahmal]

Well considering one of the common themes of complaints about cataclysm as a whole is "too streamlined" I think there's a balance between too much and too little tedium. Honestly this goes to the whole "raiding should be hard" argument. Effort vs Reward has to be in place or else there's too much reward and too little effort and people grow bored or feel little sense of accomplishment. So yeah, we definitely had A LOT of tedium at times in the old game and I'd be happy to argue that it was maybe too much (specially for raiding ... back in the days of having to drink 10 elixirs per pull) ... but today there's almost NOTHING to do so the pendulum swung too far in the other direction. Effort is a good thing, it gives meaning to our rewards and makes us proud for attaining them.

Cata tried to make raiding challenging again and even the hardcore complained about it, did they not? As someone said before the WoW player base is far too volatile, its impossible to please everyone as opposed to other mmo's that have only a few 100,000 players were most of them can see eye to eye.

[feralminded]

You know that almost begs the question of why don't they tune specific servers for specific player bases? Wouldn't need much tuning but you could effect some very different environments to appeal to very different player bases.

[sifuedition]

Although that does sound appealing, there are two large issues I see. Neither is insurmountable.

1. New players have no idea where they fit and no in game way to find out which would likely Require the expense of a transfer At Least once.

2. People are Horrible at self assessment. Everyone will be rolling on servers where their skill is a little to a Lot underwhelming relative to the tuning.

[Kahmal]

Yeah its been discussed already implementing servers based on different versions of the game probably wont happen until WoW officially dies.

Best thing I can think of is Blizzard moving to a Free to Play model. Too much content makes the game hardcore and makes casuals whine about how they pay the same amount of money and get less content, but now alot of people are crying that there paying monthly for not enough content. If the game is Free to Play then everyone can shut up and Blizzard can do whats overall best for the game.

[Theotherone]

You know that almost begs the question of why don't they tune specific servers for specific player bases? Wouldn't need much tuning but you could effect some very different environments to appeal to very different player bases.

Then once you skill up they can charge you for a Realm transfer.

Actually, they have servers designated for new players, I mean they're not tuned any differently, but it appears they want to try and get people to learn together. I have a few horde toons on Shandris which was a server for new players; it was East Coast and my main server was down for Maintenance so I rolled a female orc DK.

[Kazeyonoma]

I never understand all this doom and gloom talk about dying. yes subscriptions are down, and the community within a particular server is all but gone due to the lack of necessary inter server interaction but i'd argue that aside from a few rose tinted glass moments for ALL of us, our servers were never REALLY that tightly knit.

The particular thing that always bugs me in discussions like this is the thought of 'wow dying'. Sure it'll happen eventually, but it's still got over 10 million subscribers. 10 MILLION. The next closest competitor is less than HALF of that. hell we've seen MMO's survive on <100k subscribers. All this sky is falling talk gets old after reading through these forums every day. I wish there was more positive discussion, or even suggestions in a positive manner rather than all this talk of 'death, losses, killing' and more on cool stuff that's coming, or what blizz can do to help the communities be more interactive.

[Aggathon]

But kazey we love drama and sensationalism!

[leethaxor]

My 2 cents.

[Theotherone]

Death sells.

[kasanagi]

No one is screaming the death of WoW, just the server community... calm down Kaz, put that ban hammer down slowwwly, don't wanna drop that and trigger the next Shattering.

[Kahmal]

The only thing I"m trying to comprehend is the 5 man philosophy they devoloped for WotLK. They stated they wanted 5 mans to take about an hour to clear. Have to admit spending two hours in Shatt Halls or Blackrock Depths no matter how enjoying the challenge is really takes a toll on what you could be doing in RL or in game.

But turning the 5-man content into a straight up AoE fest was absurd. Also Heroics were always worth doing during TBC due to people not making it past Karazhan content aswell as badge gear consistently upgrading. Now people weren't happy about casuals getting gear that was T5 or T6 ilvl but giving us a reason to revisit Heroics on a regular basis. Something the current conquest system does not do. Bare in mind Heroics still required a level of intellect in Tier 4 or Tier 5 gear.

[feralminded]

I never understand all this doom and gloom talk about dying. yes subscriptions are down, and the community within a particular server is all but gone due to the lack of necessary inter server interaction but i'd argue that aside from a few rose tinted glass moments for ALL of us, our servers were never REALLY that tightly knit.

The particular thing that always bugs me in discussions like this is the thought of 'wow dying'. Sure it'll happen eventually, but it's still got over 10 million subscribers. 10 MILLION. The next closest competitor is less than HALF of that. hell we've seen MMO's survive on <100k subscribers. All this sky is falling talk gets old after reading through these forums every day. I wish there was more positive discussion, or even suggestions in a positive manner rather than all this talk of 'death, losses, killing' and more on cool stuff that's coming, or what blizz can do to help the communities be more interactive.

Unfortunately my first and earlier posts here were quite bitchy. As the discussion evolved over time I changed my tune and started discussing compromises that would be a net gain for all. If you actually go through all of the posts, the last half by me and others are all mostly constructive and positive. I know despite my reservations/issues with the current design I personally am excited for MoP as I believe the devs have acknowledged some of the issues and are taking steps to remedy them ... which is good for all of us.

[Theotherone]

It struck me over the weekend as I as spamming Trade Chat looking for an FL pug, how much better it would be if you could see a channel like Looking for Group while you're out in the world, not just sitting in SW looking at Trade Chat. That would free people up to mine, herb, explore, etc while looking for a raid. Might help with the whole community aspect of the game; then again it could just make for world wide idiot talk too.

[Bovinity]

then again it could just make for world wide idiot talk too.

That's exactly what happened when LFG was a worldwide channel for a short time.

[Theotherone]

Yeah, see that's why we can't have nice things. It would be so much better for getting out into the world and doing things instead of sitting in Org or SW.

Back in WoLK people actually used the Looking for Raid tool, that's been dead on my server since Cata dropped. It used to be you listed your name, roll, experience and you'd get pst'd. No more.

[feralminded]

In vanilla and BC on my old server we had a channel called "HRU", short for "Horde Raiding Union". Basically it was handed out word of mouth to people who were non-tards and by the beginning of BC had a good 100 or so people in it. It was fairly well controlled and since lots of GMs were in it if people were tards there were consequences. It worked pretty well for about half of BC at which point enough human turnover had happened that it fell on the wayside.

In the end things like that only work when there's some kind of meaningful consequence. This is by and large the failure of LFG ... very little meaningful incentive to not be terrible or a jackass.

[Libellus]

The principle of sever wide channels (run by the community) is great, but my experience is that they tend towards cliqueness and eventually people have a hard time getting in. Furthermore, depending on the nature of the server community, some sub groups will prize playing ability above everything else. So you can be a colossal asshat, but because you're good at what you do (not to mention punctual and reliable) the community won't ditch you.

Blizz introduced LFD because it perceived that people were struggling to access the content. Which I think is a fair conclusion to reach. Player led communities reach natural sustainable sizes after which point, people stop getting in. If people can't get in, they can't play etc etc. LFD solved that problem but, I agree, it created others.

The solution lies, not in an either or scenario, but additional functionality to allow server communities to offer something that LFD can't, while curbing the worst of a server led community's excess.