What's the point of a fansite these days?Follow

Maybe things were different on your server, but that's exactly how getting a group on mine worked before the advent of the LFD tool. Even the version that flagged up people who were looking for a group (without automatically putting anyone in) took a substantial amount of time and effort to get a group together. Not to mention trying to get everyone to the instance (especially before summoning stones) and even after you could summon people using the stones there was the dilemma of who could be bothered to get off their butt and move to the instance and/or who had the flightpath to get there.

If someone left or was so terrible you had to kick them you then most likely had to send someone back to the main city to recruit a replacement (with a nice hour long cd on hearthstones you'd better hope it didn't happen too often) all the while hoping those people who had spent time looking for the original group and slogging their way through the dungeon didn't get bored and leave or run out of time.

The old system was not a good system and the new system even improves your experience of looking for a same server group (you are able to queue and instantly be teleported to the dungeon, if someone leaves you can port straight back to the instance once you've gone to a town to find a replacement). Dungeons take less time to set up and run than they used to, so there is little need to communicate with your fellow players. Potentially not a good thing for an MMO but on the other hand I can think of two people that I met through the old dungeon method that I went on to socialize with, there were more than that who ended up on my ignore list for being twats. The vast majority were simply filling space, decent enough players but no desire to get to know any of them better.

Maybe your experience of the pre-LFD era were different to mine, filled with shared experiences that forged lasting friendships amongst your fellow dungeon companions. Mine was mostly about wasting a lot of time trying to find a group that would scrape through enough to get my quests done/item upgrade and not be full of players with no skills or idea of grouping etiquette.

That being said the LFD tool could be improved to make it facilitate socializing a bit more. The option to flag players you enjoyed playing with would be one way. Possibly it could also be programmed to make it more likely that you'll be grouped with players from your server if any are looking (though most of the players I've been grouped with from mine have made me want to state in party chat that I don't know them).

As for leveling dungeons I don't remember them ever taking more than about 30 minutes myself, except maybe for something like BFD, but that didn't mean we found a full group every time.

Didn't have a tank, but had a hunter and a warlock? Then you pet tanked. Couldn't find a healer, but had a shadow priest and a boomkin? You could make do. Only 4 friends online, and you don't want to spam chat? Then you ran with 4, or 3. I remember doing a lot of dungeons with odd/adhoc groups. 1 tank, 1 heals, and 3 DPS were more the exception.

Also there was the 1 person who was 30 levels higher running you through thing as well.

I played FFXI for just over 6 years; I'm not sure what my MMO pedigree has to do with the relevance of my opinion with regards to the ease of putting together a group in WoW. I frequently get 1-4 people from my server to group up and do dungeons or quest. Sure, we use the Dungeon Finder to fill out the group instead of building the group purely from the server, but that doesn't preclude me from making friends with the 1-3 members in the group who are actually from my server. I'll concede that a new-to-MMOs player might not even think to make an on-server group, but that doesn't affect the ease with which one can be formed.

If you bothered to create a friends list, then getting parties together was way faster. Make friends with a few healers and tanks, and you could usually scrap something together quite quickly.

And I never once had any issues creating a groups until gearscore appeared. The problem was never that there weren't people wanting to group up, it was that there weren't people willing to create the group. Seriously, by taking the initiative I doubt that I ever waited longer than 20 minutes for a dungeon group (if I was making it).

And what is there to do when lfg, exactly? Dailies. That's it. There is no other endgame content you can do while in the dungeon finder. Since they introduced it, I've spent way more time just sitting around than I do now. Back in Vanilla (and to a lesser extent BC), there were actually things to do at endgame that mattered. Crafting, farming mats, etc. Now, most people have more than enough gold from their dailies (even if they just do MF) and crafting is the least important it has ever been. And they've intentionally gated craft progression this expansion, so you can't even really do much of that at a time.



If it was taking your group that long to down a mob, they sucked and your chain bonus must have been awful/nonexistent. Yeah, melee classes didn't have much to do until higher levels (when they had more abilities and could WS every 6-8 hits).

But you know what? It wasn't the time spent standing around. It was the fact that you spent large amounts of time in groups with people who PLANNED to spend a large amount of time there. Even though pacing (in good groups) had a go-go-go attitude, the people you were with were planning to spend an hour or two (or more) in that group. And that made getting to know each other actually seem important.

In WoW nowadays, when there is downtime, most people are just silent in group chat. They have no desire to get to know each other, because there is largely no point in doing so.

Archaeology--the only thing in WoW more boring than staring at your screen in a city. There's little reason to go out and mine/herb/skin unless you need something specific, because cash is way too available this expansion. Making money through trade is pointless, unless you find the activity itself fun. You should have funds for everything you want if you just do the MF dailies every day.

Hunting for rares is equally boring. And it isn't something a large (or even moderate) number of people can do, so it's frankly a joke to include it in activities that someone can fill their time with. Loremaster is fair, but most players probably don't find the idea of doing low-level quests appealing at all.

As for crafting... In vanilla, if you didn't raid and wanted nice loot (or even if you did raid, for somethings) you were going to spend a looooooot of time generating the cash you needed to buy it, or farm for the mats, etc. Add in resist sets for if you wanted to start raiding. In BC, there were resist sets and some nice items (though less than Vanilla). But cash wasn't just given to you for logging on, so there was actually merit to the act of making gold. Wrath provided some reason to get into crafting, at least due to the fact that character bonuses were decent. And there were some nice items.

Cata? Lol, okay. Character bonuses are largely mediocre. There are some nice items, but Cata nodes provide WAY too much ore/herbs--it's way too easy to get all you need to cap a profession just while leveling. And there are some nice items you can make, but there's still little effort involved, especially since you need to do Heroics to get the mats for them. If you are still doing dungeons, nothing for you. And you can't exactly fill your time in the queue with crafting if you can't make anything until afterwards...

And let's face it--most of these activities simply aren't interesting. The MF is the best option, since it at least tries to be interesting. But that's going to get old fast (I already can't stand the idea of doing it on a second character).

Frankly, I don't see any reason to accept that these activities are necessarily more fun than hanging out in town forming a group. When you are bored, trade chat is noticeably more bearable...



But you've failed to explain how that's a bad thing.

And it's definitely more like a lobby now. Most players just queue and then browse the web and such while they wait for the trumpets to sound. Sure, you could go do mindless activities. But it's nothing worth doing unless you care about it specifically. You used to have to actively engage with the community to form a group. That's gone now. And with it every major social aspect of non-guild gameplay.



If we are talking low levels, then sure. Some classes had little to do. Once we get to the middle-higher levels? No, they largely had plenty (not by WoW standards, but in terms of a game that actually encouraged player cooperation and coordination). NO class lacked abilities to use besides auto-attack (even excluding weapon skills). If you played that way, then you weren't playing well. And that's ignoring weapon skills and whatever they got from their sub job.

Warrior--Easily the least, but that's because their major ability is for tanking. But they got 14-15 tp a hit, so could WS after 7 landed hits without JSs. But they had a variety of activated buffs to use, and would be very active with a Thief in the party as well.
Thief--Steal, Sneak Attack, Trick Attack, and Mug.
Drk--heavily party dependent, but you'd at least make use of the absorb spells. Possibly cast debuffs as well, and use Drain/Aspir as necessary. Some nice JA buffs as well. And Weapon Bash.
Dragoon-- 3 Jump abilities on separate CDs.
Ranger-- Ranged Attacks were manual, they also got a few special shots (like Barrage).
Ninja-- Most active DD in the game. Manually throw Shuriken and spin the elemental wheel nonstop.
Sam--some nice abilities and they got to WS way more than other classes.
Bst--only valid one. They had no useful JAs in a party environment. But were very active when soloing, which is what they were designed for.

I mean seriously. Is WoW way faster? Of course. But stop pretending like all you were supposed to do in XI was stand there and auto-attack. That might have been true at level 10, but if you were doing that at 40 then you could GTFO of my party.



That might be true, but it isn't really relevant to my argument. I never claimed that the LFG tool offered nothing good. I only argued that it destroyed the social aspects of the game, which has made WoW worse overall, imo. The ability to play for 30 minutes at a time doesn't seem objectively valuable to me.



So what do you chat about with these people you'll never meet again? Small talk is the devil. [EDIT] I should add that I do start conversations every so often. But, frankly, there's not much to say beyond small talk, because you don't spend enough time together to get anything more interesting on the table. And the fact remains that there is realistically no reason to converse with them--you are never going to see them again.

When I go to the grocery store, I don't talk to strangers there. It's weird and there's no reason to. Before class at school? I'll talk to people there, because there's actually potential for there to be a deeper relationship. And even if there isn't, they still are going to be part of my life for longer than 20 minutes.[/EDIT]



Which is really the only point I was making. That was what Vanilla WoW was like as well (though more concentrated at cap). Now I'm probably almost never going to see another player again unless they are in my guild. XI/Vanilla actually had in-game communities. WoW doesn't anymore.

Edited, Jul 21st 2011 12:21am by idiggory

I agree w/ idiggory.


It used to be that you worked on something so that you could do something else. (Example: Farmed Mats so you could make items. Make items so you could raid.)

It seems like now you work on things so that you can have a more shiney Epeen. (Example: I have 525 Archeology. Arch does nothing for me. It's not an enjoyable task that I do for fun or excitement. It provides no reasonable bonus or benefit to my game play, but I have an achievement now. Example:
ME: I've completed my daily quests.
Friend: Did you need Rep?
ME: No.
Friend: Did you need to buy an item?
ME: No.
Friend: Did you need to get gold?
ME: No.
Friend: Then why did you do it?
ME: I don't know. They were there. If my guild isn't raiding (2-3 nights per week) I have nothing to do other than one (1) daily dungeon and then a handful of daily quests.
Friend: You could collect Herbs (Insert any Mat)
ME: Why, I don't need them or the gold?
Friend: You could complete old quests.
ME: Why, they serve no purpose other than ePeen?
Friend: You could finish old dungeons you skipped.
ME: Why, there's no challenge.
Friend: You could collect pets
ME: Why, they are just another form of ePeen
Friend: You could buy a new mount.
ME: Why, I have several. Another one is just a new skin.
Friend: You could do something else.
ME: You're right, I'm gonna Log. /g Gnite everyone

*It seems like if you are not raiding, you are doing some repeatable task over and over and over again for the sole purpose of getting an achievement that really only alerts people to the fact that you have an excessive amount of free time to waste on boring lonely tasks. Why would I want to read every book in azeroth? Really. Why? I don't care about the stupid achievement. If WoW can't find the content to fill up my playing time, why should I do boring things in WoW just to say I'm playing?

**As an aside, I have starcraft 2. (also a Blizzard product) The achiements in that game are actually a challenge. Of course many of them are easy, but many are hard. You never get so over powered that the completion of an achievement is a total joke. (Why do people 40+ levels above an instance get an achievement for completing it?) It would be nice if Blizzard implimented a system where you would somehow be nerfed when entering an old dungeon if you wanted to win the achievement.

That's just it...

I don't need the gear. I don't need the orbs. I don't need the mats. I don't need anyone else to make it for me. (Guildie or otherwise) I don't need fish. I don't need achiements.

The original design of the game was different.

Right now, you have two options: 1) Raid. 2) PVP.

After about 2-3 months you have completed Everything the expansion had to offer. After that the entire game was raiding. If your guild only raids 2-3 nights a week. There's really no reason to log on.

Do I need gear from Heroics, Rep, etc - No.
Do I need mats for gear - No.
Do I need mats for Raiding (Think Pots/etc) - No. With about 3-4 hours a month, I can get the Mats to make enough pots for ~4 weeks of raiding.


I love hearing people say, "The game is what you make of it." Ok ~ so you're suggesting that grinding worthless rep for long-dead factions "is what I make of it."

For a while, I was just logging on. Looking at the character screen, and asking myself why do I need to do the 1 daily heroic...? That was it. That was the only thing I actually needed, the quick points from that one daily. And you know when things REALLY got sad. When you'd kick someone close to the end of a dungeon. (For whatever reason, Jerk, AFK, Fail-tank - Someone leaves before the final boss.) You queue up for that random person - and when they come in and /cheer because they realize that they only have to play for about 5 minutes to get the daily done. They were actually excited that they could play less. It was like finding out your daily chores were 1/2 way done...


If you can't see that, I can't help you. (Last post in this thread)

It depends what you enjoy doing in the game, every game has a life span. Even in MMO's where they keep releasing new content there will be a point where you no longer want to do what is offered. Going back to a situation where you need to craft gear to progress to raiding and spend a significant amount of time gathering the mats for that gear doesn't increase the amount of content you have available it just means you take longer to complete. Now for the people who like or need grinding as an incentive to log in that might be great, each time you can play you can inch a little bit closer to having that nice bit of gear you need to raid.

For people who don't like grinding it creates an unnecessary barrier to content, my ability to spend hours gathering rare skins (or other things to sell and fund buying gear) has no bearing on how well I perform in a raid setting. I'm pretty adverse to any sort of grinding activity (I hate doing the same thing over and over again, e.g. my highest repped toon with Baradin Wardens is still honoured) queueing for dungeons and waiting for raids to start is pretty much the only time that I will do dailies, fish, herb, etc at max level. I can work a little towards the things I don't like doing whilst waiting on something I do want to do (grouping or improving my gear depending on how optimistic I'm feeling about pugs). If I really can't be bothered grinding while I wait then I'll do something outside wow whilst waiting for the dungeon queue, like reading a book, hanging washing up, I've even been known to exercise while waiting.

As someone who likes leveling alts I'd rather not go back to a game where it takes an obscene amount of time to get ready for raiding and where you have to complete each tier multiple times before being ready for the next.

You say you don't want (or need) to do any of the current filler activities, but are there alternatives that you would like to do? Or do you just want things to take longer for the sake of it so that you have a reason to log in more often or for longer periods of time?

I have to agree with idiggory. The game has become pretty dry. Everything you can easily do is handed to you on a silver platter, cooked, dead, and ready to eat. Alternatives are raiding or arenas. If you don't have a decent sized guild with decent raiders raiding is out of the question, and if you're not a fan of arenas...well you can go smash your head against a wall in what is now battlegrounds.

Rep grinds involved either running some heroics until you throw up or doing dailies until you throw up. In making things "more accessible" they removed any and all aspects of a challenge. The only challenge is whether or not you can endure yet another day of the dailies you were sick of 6 months ago.

I remember back to the BC days before there were dailies coming out your ear. You had to actually farm your materials. Farming regulars for gear wasn't a joke, it was a requirement. And most of those regulars were pretty fun. You couldn't mindlessly round up everything and spam AoEs. You had to actually think. Yes, even in regular. You couldn't even set foot in heroics if you hadn't achieved a certain level of rep. And bum rushing heroics? Yes it happened, but usually only with the best raid geared groups.

Maybe I'm living in nostalgia land... and maybe its because its 6am and I desperately need sleep...but the current WoW of "accessibility" has really killed it for me. I'm a casual player and I'm not looking for mind numbing time sinks, but if I'm playing I want to feel as if I'm not facerolling my keyboard for insignificant little achievements.

Accessibility in of itself is a great idea, but they've gone so overboard with it, they put so much effort into making everything convenient, that they removed the thought process altogether. Now all you do is go on auto and the game does most of the work for you.


Maybe I'm old school to think that the closer I get to the end of the game the more difficult it should be. Now you get to the end and unless you go raiding, its not really any more difficult than the first 15 levels...heck sometimes the last 15 levels are easier than the first 15 levels. As a gamer, that just seems so wrong.

Edited, Jul 22nd 2011 5:48am by ekaterinodar

You're obviously not going to budge from your position that there's nothing interesting to do in WoW now, no matter how many ways I point out that the model really hasn't changed since I started playing.

1. Do repetitive task A, B, and C so you can make/buy shiny purplez.
2. Use shiny purplez to raid/PvP.
3. ???
4. Profit.

There are more repetitive tasks that get you purplez now, but you don't seem to like most of them. When you can name one way to get epics in Vanilla that you can't do in Cata, you'll have a point.


You're resorting to taking what I said completely out of context to make a point? +1 internets man, you're pro. Borsuk was lamenting that the old way, farming mats for gear, using gear to raid, is gone. I pointed out it's not.

You're over simplifying it. We're not arguing that they aren't repetitive. Its the level of thought and challenge that now goes into it.

For example, the epics in Burning Crusade required the farming of multiple mats in numerous locations and usually took a couple of weeks (not a couple of hours) of farming. Rep grinds were more involved and required a mixture of questing, farming, and heroics. You couldn't hit 70 and buy a nearly full set of epics and jump right into raiding or even heroics (unless you intentionally quested in the appropriate areas to make sure those heroics were open for you).

The gearing process took months. Not a week. You can easily make heroics completely worthless in less than a week after hitting 85. Leaving you with grinding dailies or heroic dungeons for rep, and even then its more for the achievement because you've already bought or crafted better gear.

Once again leaving you with only repetitive bland actions that have no significance to your character. At least the repetitive bland actions of the past had significant purposes. Now they are an after thought. Heroics are a joke. There is nothing heroic about heroics anymore.

Back in Burning Crusade heroics were actually heroic. They were for more skilled players and were not meant to be foolproof. If you messed up or you couldn't CC or you couldn't properly use your groups class mechanics there was a penalty. Now, heaven forbid a group not be able to faceroll ANY heroic they want.

The troll heroics were a step in the right direction, but were too few too late.

I am not playing WoW anymore, but that doesn't devalue my opinion. Just because you enjoy it, doesn't negate the fact there are many people who do not. 600,000+ people left the game, and there is some very valid reasons for it.

Edited, Jul 22nd 2011 10:45pm by ekaterinodar

I had the Clefthooof Set for a minute back in BC, that and the pimp hat.

The pimp hat was awesome.

I hope bears have to get a pimp hat to raid again in the future.

I loved that clefthoof stuff, made a killing farming those poor animals...