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General: Looking for What?
Stradden
Managing EditorMember CommonPosts: 6,696
MMORPG.com's Player perspectives columnist Jaime Skelton spends this week's column re-considering her position on the World of Warcraft Dungeon Finder feature.
When the Dungeon Finder (aka the Looking For Group tool) was announced for World of Warcraft months ago, I took my stance in the “this is going to ruin the community” camp. I admit, I was grateful my druid would finally be able to find groups, since her server was notorious for a thinly spread population at higher levels. Otherwise, I was sure the system was going to prove to be ruinous to the server environment.
Months later, I have come to admit that I was wrong.
The Dungeon Finder tool in World of Warcraft (for those of you who have avoided the game) is an in-game interface which allows you to select your role (tank, healer, or damage), what instances you're interested in, and then places you in a queue. The system will then automatically put together a group from across multiple servers. Blizzard also threw in a small, but not inconsequential, bonus for using the system. The idea behind the system was to remove the hassle of putting together a group manually, while expanding the pool of available players.
Read Looking for What?
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Jon Wood
Managing Editor
MMORPG.com
Comments
I will never understand how introducing such a handy tool can destroy the community. I also do not understand why people consider it as a sign for catering to casuals. Afterall what is so hardcore about standing at one place and spamming LFG for hours? the challenge should be inside the dungeon and not in forming teams. However, players can still form their own groups so yeah more options is always good.
Blizzard is a smart company and by introduction of team tool they are only encouraging players to do group content which they would have other wise skipped due to lack of groups/teams. Its a lot better option then just getting rid of team based quests like Turbine did with LOTR. (easy way out isn't it?)
Games like EQ2, AOC etc can use such a tool as it is always a pain to find teams on lower levels.
It was something that developers and publishers never thought it could be true. Alot of people who just want to solo all the time will actually pay a monthly fee to be able to do so in a persistent world instead of on a single player RPG. There is no going back after that. Everything else will become a niche. But who says that a niche has to be made of a small amount of people? After all, there are more gamers every day. Who is to say that someone who played WoW as his first mmo and knows nothing else isnt going to stand up and ask himself what else is out there?
If you stand VERY still, and close your eyes, after a minute you can actually FEEL the universe revolving around PvP.
One of the prime reasons that I get frustrated/bored with games is finding people to do group content with,usually about 3/4 of the way through the advancement to 'endgame'. I am not a completeist but like to have a crack at most dungeons. When I last played LOTRO (a game I essentially enjoyed) round level 40 it became virtually impossible to find a group for some of the instances, even some of the main plot line ones.
In short it sounds like a great idea though I guess there will still be a tendency for people to only queue for popular content. I am not a fan of WoW's raid centric end game but might have a run through and see how things play out through mid and late levels.
I might actually resub my account (closed in 2006) cuz of this.
I can also roleplay the tower in a chess game and shout "is that a peasant at the horizon I see? I will smash it I will! Oh damn I broke one of my merlons!". -- maji
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This change has again proven to me that Blizzard is on another level when it comes to game design. Taking working systems and making them better. It definately revitalized my interest in the game and I was not disappointed in the system at all... of course my view is skewed though. I'm a tank, and tanks get instant-queues. DPS on the other hand have to wait 10-15 minutes, sometimes up to 20-25 minutes to get a single queue. Healers are almost as lucky as tanks with queues in 1-2 minutes most of the time.
Additionally most people are max level (80) so they do not realize the implications for the leveling characters too. Since tanks have almost instant queues 1-80 one can now level as a healer or tank with ease, doing non-stop instances the entire way and getting decent gear so you never fall behind.
OH! And not to mention because much less people are leveling than at max level, when you do the queueing to level your character you do end up running into the same people a decent amount.
"They essentially want to say 'Correlation proves Causation' when it's just not true." - Sovrath
This tool has actually allowed me to enjoy this game. I never thought I'd actually say it, but I'm having a good time playing World of Warcraft.
In all the times I had played World of Warcraft before, it was alone. I would solo and run around doing quests, nothing else. I didn't do any dungeons, I didn't even party with anyone unless it was for that one quest I just couldn't do solo. This become very monotonous and boring, very quickly, and I would eventually quit. I didn't have a large network of friends, being a newbie, so I wasn't willing to put in the huge amounts of effort it would take to join a dungeon group which may end up falling apart before the dungeon was even complete. This is why, despite having first started playing back in 2006, I have never been above level 32.
This new tool helps immensely with that. I still quest and solo, as I always have, but I can now do dungeon runs almost at a whim. This helps break up the monotony of the solo questing, while getting good EXP and equipment as well.
well now things will be more easy, sure its a pain to form partys and all but you like or no things I can see will happen.
people will not talk at all anymore, sure maybe sometimes you find a more talkative person, but normally if I have to do a pug I just talk about what I will do or what should we do there other things I don't care, also you will never put in your frind list after party because he will not be on your server so to form a static group will be dificult, also I can see people selling cheap items on his server to others servers, but it will save a lot of time to form groups for certain easy or plot dungeons(because no one descent will do a hard dungeon with a pug).
well to me it will help people with less time to play, with is normally aim for casuals players.
off. the hate for casuals from some people is because a lot of games are too easy or without a good content who tend to cater the casual player, some old schools still like to feel some satisfaction on finish a hard game nowadays its a hell dificult to find a game who make me say "yes, I finish it", a lot of games now are like "what? already done it? hell only 10 hours of gameplay now I will need to find another game". and WoW is the simbol of casual for MMOs, so its one reason to hate it :P
I left a couple months ago but the new dungeon group finder was a good thing. The community in WoW was already bad. My problem was always the end game bored me to tears as I loathe raiding and pvp gets old.
"This change has again proven to me that Blizzard is on another level when it comes to game design. Taking working systems and making them better. It definately revitalized my interest in the game and I was not disappointed in the system at all."
CoH did this years before WoW implemented it, and it was a working system that DID build community and aid in team building tremendously. Its apparent they most probably played CoX and said, "hey look how well it does in this game, lets utilize it" as they've done with the majority of their mechanics. They aren't on another level, they just know what they should take from other games and what they shouldn't and then they implement them well.
::edit:: fix your coding MMORPG quotes are jacked, you know this ::/edit::
The tool has its good and bad points: the bad points, I am happy to see, are being addressed by Blizzard, most notably in the recent patch.
One of the bad points I have seen and commented on before, is that a group of 4 can get together from a server and "PuG" the fifth, only to kick the "PuGged" player when the time comes to loot the final boss (I have seen this happen numerous times). Blizzard is in the process of addressing this by requiring that players voting to kick a grouped player give a reason for the kick. I'm happy to see this, as it does help with abuse of the tool. Still, even with giving reasons for a kick ("crappy tank," "crappy healer"), I am concerned that Blizzard may not investigate: If 4 players are from guild "We Rule WoW" from Alexstraza kicking a player from guild "I Play for Phat Lewtz" from server Medivh, those 4 players can use guild chat, Ventrilo, or any number of tools to get their stories together - and the Medivh player may be a more than satisfactory tank or healer who was simply kicked over loot, but now the story is 4 against 1 that the Medivh player was not performing to an acceptable standard, so, in my opinion, the tool still needs some work in that regard...but since I am not a programmer or game designer, I do not know what would be a feasible solution to the dilemma.
Firebrand Art
"You are obviously confusing a mature rating with actual maturity." -Asherman
Maybe MMO is not your genre, go play Modern Warfare...or something you can be all twitchy...and rank up all night. This is seriously getting tired. -Ranyr
The dungeon finder tool was the one thing that kept me playing the last couple months out of the 8 or so that I did play. My pally could always get a group within 5 minutes and my priest even quicker once I specced him to holy. It was a blast because I was on a pvp server so exploring to find these new places was difficult. Not sure if this worked with both my realm and other realms' players but I thought we could queue ourselves as a group at the end of a dungeon and continue on together without having to regroup. Anyone know if this is possible with members of another realm? Either way I do recall spending an evening with the same people running through a few different dungeons.
Now that wow has only 13 servers (known as battlegroups) they needed a tool to help connect the login nodes together (what were the old servers) , it is funny that no one picked up on battlegroups being a very clever marketing ploy to cover up server merges.
So this tool was always going to help, the game has lost substantial numbers in the north american market over the last couple of years since its peak in 2008. It famous claim to the 11 million players also clever marketing when people finally realise that most of those players are in asia/euro etc.. leaving a peak pop best guestimates from around the web put the NA wow crowd at arouind 2-3 million or so in 08.. so yeah its not that much of a lead over other subscription titles if you look at NA market players only.
Blizzard = good business models and marketing.
if you want to see wow's 13 servers it has left look at this page, your node will be in the list :-) http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/pvp/battlegrounds/battlegroups/
Oh btw any mmo in china with less than 10 million subs is considered a failure.
The biggest problem is that there is not gameplay mechanics in place in most MMOs that actually encourage a community. There are no conceptual ideas in WoW that encourage a group of players to hang out at a tavern or to meet there. There are no persistent concepts that encourage players to place objects in the game world whether it be to show off their home, or to sell a product, or for some other purpose that while not necesarily essential in the MMO to level, gain experience, or raise a skill it is essential for social development; and in my opinion essential to be called an MMORPG.
With that said, I continue to express that most of the so called MMORPGs out there today are, in fact, not MMORPGs at all.
To create a social community there has to be an environment that encourages players to communicate or to interact. You cannot force a player to do that you must encourage it. By creating these featueres there will be incredible communities springing to life.
I think too much goes into MMOs these days that does not encourage players to do things, instead, we see to much of these random dungeon tool concepts while convenient do nothing in the way of community.
You....have absolutly no idea what you are talking about.
Battlegroups are not servers but are CLUSTERS of servers (there are over 150 servers in the US alone) and both the dungeon finder and BG finder only group you within your battlegroup.
It's simple some people feel this way because they have taken a thing meant for enetertainment and have turned it into some really fucked up lunch room cool table. I have my own theory of why this is, but I won't get into it here.
Personally I have always thought tools that brought people together we're a good thing. And yeah I have met more friends that using the Dungeon Finder then I ever did using that lame chat channel or hanging out looking for PUGS. So much for ruining the community......
Well maybe it did ruin a certain demogrpahics community....but it's not like they matter a hell of a lot to me anyway.
This sword here at my side dont act the way it should
Keeps calling me its master, but I feel like its slave
Hauling me faster and faster to an early, early grave
And it howls! it howls like hell!
I was still playing when the lfg tool was introduced. It was great because I was able to stop doing quests and group with people. I actually made some friends from other servers and often would do several instances in a row. The problem though, these people were from other servers and I rarely saw them again.
It might actually feel like a community if the servers could be clustered like how daoc did it and move between servers in one's respective clusters.
Of course by the time I got to end game and started gearing and raiding, I was extremely bored compared to when I played in vanilla WoW. The only fun I had in the game was from all the grouping while leveling, heh.
Doesn't talk about the problems with the dungeon finder? check
Doesn't address that maybe some servers did have communities? check
Another award winning column if I do say so myself.
I have to agree with Jaime. "But the Dungeon Finder has not destroyed server communities, because it's impossible to destroy what didn't exist in the first place. WoW never really had a community, atleast not one worth worrying about.
As also mentioned in the article, WoW is about getting the loot and getting out, so most of the players really do not care about making friends or enemies, they care about the loot/achievements/mounts, all things they can show off.
wow= loggin, press the imba looking for group button pve or pve, watch tv waiting...go inside dungeon finish repeat.
Want to go out to the huge beautifull worl, and specialy to de dungeons entrance to find some world pvp and its empty..no one needs to go to the dungeon entrance anymore...
Wow is not an mmo anymore..its a co-op dungeon crawller and bg online game.
I have benefited from the LFD function and from what I see, so has my server community. And it's a godsend for good guilds. More often than not, people I am already friends with (usually guildmates) join together and our LFD groups que up instantly. The biggest speedbump we have is when someone wants to log off to be a dps instead of healer/tank or vice versa.
I can understand the fear that it would destroy communities, but I agree that you can't destroy what doesn't exist and if good communities do exist, then the LFD functions simply makes them stronger.
EDITED for typos
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"Ad eundum quo nemo ante iit"
How does it possibly make them stronger?
Before I'd get together with some friends. We'd PUG for the extras we needed. We'd get to know those extras and sometimes make friends.
It doesn't work that way anymore. Getting groups is quicker (which is great), but the people you "pug" in are almost always people on other servers. These are people you won't be friends with because you'll likely never see them again, can't ever talk to them, and can't ever do anything with them again (certainly you can't plan on it).
Frankly, someone else vaguely proposed they should just merge battlegroups into single servers in some fashion. I'd say that would do more to build a community, since then if you met someone nice in LFD you could add them to your friend list and do stuff with them later.
One of the bigger fallouts of the LFD system though is that it has greatly encouraged the "get lootz now" mentality in the game. Dungeons used to be more social and have more communication. You used to get to know the people you adventured with. Now 99% of it is complete and utter silence, only focused on getting loot and getting out. In general the whole game seems to be getting stirred up into a "get lootz" frenzy with other things (such as community and other socialization factors) falling by the wayside.
I stopped reading right at the player bond rationale. The new feature is great, I tried it myself and so far it works for me. I queue, get teleported inside the dungeon and have fun. I do not play MMOs to find friends or make virtual bonds. For those that get emotional because they wont see those players again since they are from other servers, I am really, really sorry.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that it makes it easier for my already strong community to group together specifically for dungeons. It's very easy for people to join together now- even if someone can only join up for a single dungeon run.
I realize that we're likely in the minority. We're a bit casual and when we group together we care less about loot and more about chatting/cracking jokes, seeing how well the mage tanks, etc. Sometimes we stay for 10 minutes or more after a dungeon is completed just playing around or dueling. Sometimes we que up one dungeon after another. We have fun.
More fun= more of us wanting to play more often. So, like I said, it makes an ALREADY strong community stronger. I will concede, however, that It's not bigger, and it's not better in terms of meeting new people.
_____________________________
"Ad eundum quo nemo ante iit"
If any of you think spamming in the LFG channel was the best evolution that could ever be in an MMO, you havnt played MMO's very long.
If you think picking up these pugs from spamming the channel somehow "bonded" you to the person you pugged, then you obviously havnt pugged many players.
If you think being able to cross realms and group with players outside of your realm totally destroyes community and makes a game less interactive, you're just afraid of change.