Well Zahrym, I for one, completely support this and think it's an excellent idea, particularly in combination with some of the tweaks Blizzard is making to deter ninja's.

As my main is a Priest, I've never had particular trouble getting groups since I go as the Healer, but anything that further reduces the wait time for groups is all good by me.

Not everyone who plays WoW gives a damn about making friends ingame. Cause when you log off, and get on with your life, I'm sure the last thing you think about are the folks on WoW. This also applies to why I think internet dating fails lol.

But yea, I welcome the change because it would make looking for a groups faster.

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Q u o t e:
Cross Realm instancing is a terrible idea.

The current system, limited to your server, creates friendships, forges bonds, and allows people to know who and who not to group up with. If this is taken out of the game, people will be unable to make new friendships that will be able to be carried out of the instance portal.

So what if it allows groups to form faster? It will destroy a Realm's Identity, and prevents people from forming lasting friendships. Keep (almost) everything else, but remove this.

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Sorry but I think Cross-Realm instancing is a great idea.

It's been impossible to find groups the entire time I've been leveling. For example, I'd really like to run some of the Auchenai and Coilfang dungeons but there's no one around doing them. The current LFG system has maybe 1 or 2 people in it.

Will it really matter? Whens the last time you seen anyone in LFG channel, on Area 52 you have to go to Dalaran portals to make sure your gear score is high enuff to run in anything, so bye bye under 4500+ people.

I dont think Blizz has anything better to do with there time than fool with the game. Good part is say bye bye to another million subscriptions when you fool with pally heals. And before long there were none.

Games will come and go but this one wont leave a legacy like UO or EQ either one did. This game is designed for 5 yr olds who have to be spoon fed everything.

There's a ~big~ difference between this and what happened to battlegrounds.

With battlegrounds, you were playing against Alliance on your realm. You couldn't really whisper them and say "hey wanna bg against each other?" The most you could do is go on the realm forums and say "hey guys, let's pvp at 8!", or for some people, go into vent, join ques at the same time, and hope they got into the same battleground.

Regardless, you still saw a lot of the same faces, simply because it was your realm and your realm only. That dissipated almost entirely with cross-server bgs. Now I don't even pay attention to the names, because it doesn't matter, whereas I used to be like "OMG ITS HABORYM LOL!!!!".

The cross-server instancing will be completely different. If you ~want~, you can still group exclusively with people from your realm. You can still go into trade chat and say "HAI NEED A TANK FOR NEXUTH ANYONE?!?!?" Unlike bgs, you aren't required to que for cross-realm instances.

So really, it's a solution to low pop servers having trouble finding groups, not a destruction of your realm's identity. Personally? I'm on a high pop realm, and I have a guild full of real life friends. I never, ever have trouble finding groups, in fact I usually have to wriggle my way out of going to instances most of the time. : P So for me, this doesn't change much.

For others, it's a huge deal. I've read stories of people who can barely sc*@@* together a 5 man, their realms are so small. I'll be happy to give them the bountiful wealth of players that my realm has. I really don't mind!

Regardless, it's not required, so you can keep grouping with your friends, loved ones, guild mates, or random dudes from trade. Noooo worries. : )

Cross-realm instancing is great, we just don't want to lose the other option of being able to track groups/individuals globally rather than in a chat channel.

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Q u o t e:
Cross Realm instancing is a terrible idea.

The current system, limited to your server, creates friendships, forges bonds, and allows people to know who and who not to group up with. If this is taken out of the game, people will be unable to make new friendships that will be able to be carried out of the instance portal.

So what if it allows groups to form faster? It will destroy a Realm's Identity, and prevents people from forming lasting friendships. Keep (almost) everything else, but remove this.

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not only this but the lfg tool as a whole sucks.

to get your daily frost emblems you must group with strangers.

if you dont group with friends and group with strangers you get rewards

Id be fine with grouping with strangers normally becasue I could make friends. But theyll be on diff servers so that wont be the case.

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Q u o t e:

The Looking For Group channel will return in patch 3.3. If you wish to run dungeons with players on your realm, you can use the Looking For Group channel in any major city to create the party.

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Also this is irrelevant. The xserver tool will still be there. And so will the negative impact on any sense of community that is left.

What you just said is comparable to replying with, "You can always not smoke if you dont like it.", when someone complains about second hand smoke.

Nothing's preventing you from grouping with friends.

There's this wonderful tool called ''friend list''.

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Q u o t e:
Well Zahrym, I for one, completely support this and think it's an excellent idea, particularly in combination with some of the tweaks Blizzard is making to deter ninja's.

As my main is a Priest, I've never had particular trouble getting groups since I go as the Healer, but anything that further reduces the wait time for groups is all good by me.

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Enjoy getting griefed with no means of defense, then. Alternatively, enjoy being unable to avoid the endless stream of players who do under 2k DPS.

The downfall of the new system, as I see it, is threefold:
1) While players can relatively easily compile a list of others on their realm with whom they do not want to group, that's all but impossible to manage across an entire battlegroup,
2) Even if you could compile such a list, the auto-join feature does not let you avoid more than 50, without accepting penalties (if I understand correctly, leaving the group even at the very start would incur the 15 minute deserter debuff), and
3) The further degradation of accountability means that even more players will continue to grief, or be unmotivated to improve their gameplay (as they'll be rewarded regardless).

Taking the cap off the /ignore list would help, but still be insufficient--there are (presumably) enough players you'd want to avoid across a battlegroup that it's unlikely you'd ever get all of them, meaning that, as opposed to the current system where you can eventually be reasonably confident you have 4 decent group members, you'd never reach that point with the new system.

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Q u o t e:


Why is the new LFG being limited to cities? One advantage of both the current LFG feature and LFG channel is that they can be used while completing dailies. All this will do is pack even more players into Dalaran, which lags enough as it is.

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My guess is that people are going to be joining the LFR and use it to look for groups for dungeons.

Z,

Thanks for all of the good information in this thread -- I think you've cleared up a lot of confusion about the new system.

Plus your "If you don't like it, don't do it... though you'll likely be poorer for having missed out on the shared experience"-style responses were right on.

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Q u o t e:

That's not true by the way. You can form a group of five players, have the party leader open the Dungeon System and select the Random Heroic option. The pre-made group will be able to port to the selected instance, not be bound by any of the cross-realm restrictions (such as mandatory Need Before Greed, trade restrictions, Vote Kick, etc.), and will receive the daily reward for completing the dungeon. Your pre-made group could continue to select the Random Heroic option again and again to continue running any Heroic that pops up each time -- even if a Heroic dungeon pops up that you've already done -- and you will continue to get loot and Emblems of Triumph from each boss, plus two additional Emblems of Triumph for completing the random Heroic instance.

The system does not punish pre-made groups.

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Don't pre-made groups lose money? I was under the impression that you get more cash out of the deal if you join a completely random group instead of starting with a pre-made.


-EDarkness

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Q u o t e:

I think I get the point. You really don't like playing with most of the people on Laughing Skull and feel that this system will either A) unleash the Laughing Skull hounds on the rest of your Battlegroup, or B) infinitely expand that amount of people with whom you don't want to group because there are so many spiteful, bad people across every realm.

I almost wonder how fun it is to group with you. :p

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Oh skully boy, you went there!

I think it's ok to be cynical about the community at this point.

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Q u o t e:
The system does not punish pre-made groups.

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No, but it does restrict our ability to be selective in setting up a group.

Provided that you're not willing to lack a defense against the potential of being grouped with those out to grief or those you view as likely to not pull their weight, you lose the following functionality:
1) Selectively searching for group members while not in a major city.
2) Selectively searching for group members via a list (rather than being required to post regarding the run, and, accordingly, having to sort through tells).