Random Dungeon Finder. Fact or Fiction?

[Illuminatus]

Dear Warmane Staff,

I write to you in these dark times as a simple citizen of Lordaeron. Like many of you I started playing WoW long time ago, in my case March 2005 version 1.8.0 (the golden days as they say) until the days of Wrath of the Lich King. Then I found Molten in 2010, played on Frostwolf x3 after which Lordaeron x1 was launched and everyone was so excited about. And I have to say it was the best Wrath of the Lich King experience I ever experienced in terms of leveling, random dungeon finding, battlegrounds and Raids - Smooth and Enjoyable. Sure it had its own flaws like any other realm, even if bugs were getting fixed at a slower pace and Wintergrasp was disabled, people didn't mind and were still loyal to Lordaeron regardless. Many were leveling on Ragnaros x20 and then transferring to Lordaeron because they knew that this server was the real deal and of course the amount of time it took to level even with RDF and heirlooms available, but they always came to back Lordaeron. Alas... most of us suffered a great deal of grief when we lost our characters during the tragedy of database loss at the end of 2014 and that has remained a scar in our hearts until nowadays. We all wanted a Rebirth of what once was our beloved Lordaeron realm. I am certain many of you will agree with what I have said. Sadly, the experience of the new realm doesn't quite feel the same as we had hoped for or as it should feel when doing dungeons and perhaps even the raids often times.

That being said, I wanna strongly suggest you consider enabling Random Dungeon Finder for us. I understand many will disagree with me on what I am strongly suggesting, but consider a few things. Many people have left the server. And the reason being is because one realizes that grinding endlessly, spending more time than you should on finding dungeon groups and on traveling turns the gameplay into a nuisance rather than pleasure. What once was has lost its charm as the game progressed and many of us simply do not have the time we had before in searching for a group up to 20 minutes just to do a simple dungeon, be that Wailing Caverns/Deadmines, Ragefire Chasm/Shadowfang Keep or a Daily Heroic. And at level 80 it's vital for saving an enormous amount of time. The population has decreased significantly since after a few months of the server's launch, the numbers speak for themselves. One of the key roles in keeping this server alive and to save what's left of it is to bring back RDF. It will definitely ease the tensions and will make the game more enjoyable. I couldn't care less about raidbuffs or heirlooms as I understand the reason why they have been removed. But to say that people socialize more and are having a more memorable adventure while the RDF is disabled is complete nonesense. It's the truth. It's everything but social and memorable., rather a penance. It's time you realize that if you don't do something about it real soon then we may not have a Lordaeron tomorrow. Lordaeron was mutilated enough by dying and being brought back to life with so many customizations that I think disabling RDF is the last nail in the coffin.
I can merely conclude that Random Dungeon Finder is an important feature that will bring only a positive impact to the realm and the community. As it was meant to do since the day it was released by Blizzard Entertainment.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Warm regards,

Illuminatus
Lordaeron Citizen

PS: Let's not forget the Yearly Events that require us to use the Dungeon Finder tool to get prizes upon completion.

[vicnorris]

I must say I have the same opinion as you, such a simply feature can give a lot of life to this server.

I play on this server to have a true blizzlike experience, but the RDF being disabled makes me don't want to do dungeons.
I'm making a characters with the hopes it will be enabled someday and I can have some fun.

Regards.

[Krzyzstof]

I've just started here on Lord (don't have much private server experience other than a couple of weeks before Nos was shut down). So I can't give you an opinion based on experience (i did play vanilla retail however).

From first glance, I kind of like the idea of having to find groups (i too don't have much time to play, lucky if I get an hour in a couple of days). I feel that it promotes interacting with the community more. On the flipside, I feel that RDF only hurt social interactions when they added cross-realm capabilities. So since it would only be this realm, it might make it easier for those who are timid to get into groups, and potentially make some new friends. At the same time, you might have more negative experiences as well, but that is the downside to playing online in the first place. It's kind of a catch 22.

I would like to point out that someone has made (or is still making) a mod that is like RDF but doesn't auto-form groups. You essentially list the dungeons you are interested in and it puts you in a list of similar people. So they can find you and vice versa. Can't rememeber who was making it but I say it in the add-on thread here in Warmane.

[Orcasmus]

our guild started some weeks ago on lord.. We all rly missing the dungeon finder and 3 ppl alrdy stopped playing here cuz its disabled and take way to much time to find a low level (10 - 60) group for dungeons.
I speak for them all if i say: bring it back! Enable RDF

[LaurensOP123]

Thank you for your thread. I joined in the beginning of Lord on molten aswell. It was the best experience of WoW imaginable, still a bit buggy but the community was cool.

When Kaer was the boss of Molten all thinga went well, lord started to suffer when Hermes became leader up untill the point of the meltdown.

Now Kaer and the team tried to give back to the community by let them decide the future of Lordaeron, the community has spoken and that's how Lordaeron became as it is now.

The community wasn't wrong with their decisions (buffed raids) and in an attempt to relive the Vanilla days the RDF got voted off. Now in 2017 alot of people realise playing this game without RDF is too much.

What some people suggest here is bringing Kaer's vision on Lordaeron back and relive THOSE days. Molten was great, make Warmane even better. To get a better view of the community's thoughts there should be made a poll.

Thanks for these great years, I hope to join Lordaeron as it used to be soon.

[Kalymako]

They said NO to RDF like 100 times already... just let it go... we all tried but its wortless effort... you are waisting your time writing these long messages

[Skuddy]

lord was designed the way the staff wanted it. it was never ment to be a public realm to start with. but players got wind of it and wanted in. but the staff still keep the realm the way they want it, meaning no rdf. if they ever change their mind they'll add it. players opinions on it are irrelevant.

[Zellow]

I am playing Lordaeron from its start on sept 2015 untill now without any break.
I can say that whole idea of disabled RDF was a catastrophy and did not brought the socialization or more fun to the realm especialy not when exping from 1-80 not to speak about 80lvl dungeons.
I don t even remember when was my last 80 dungeon, but it was months ago.

[Zellow]

What I think Warmane should do, is to create new hardcore realm after LK and RS is downed, similar to Lordaeron.
The difference between this Lordaeron and the new realm would be that the new realm would be practicly 99% fixed (based on Lordaeron core), staff already knows what buffs to put on bosses, all the fixes would be done already (that was reason why so many ppl left during/after Naxx and UD season - too many bugs/changes on weekly base).
Also, I think there should be a pool about new realm where people will vote for enabled RDF for sure (disabled RDF was one of the things why people were not coming to this realm or left this realm).
Practicly all the main issues of Lordaeron which we expirienced for last 2 years are fixed now (bugged Naxx, bugged UD, bugged TO(g)C, ICC, quests, ...).

[UnderStinger]

"it was never ment to be a public realm to start with. but players got wind of it and wanted in."

You're right about it being designed for staff by themselves, but I don't remember any instance of them mentioning it wasn't meant to be a public realm. Can you post source?

"I can say that whole idea of disabled RDF was a catastrophy and did not brought the socialization or more fun to the realm"

Now, I wouldn't wholeheartedly agree with you. I've met several very decent people over the course of my adventures and communication between us arose due to the fact that we had to group up several times as we progressed through the game at a more-or-less similar pace.
Despite the fact that this can happen on a RDF-enabled realm, I don't recall ever actually talking to people I got teamed with through the RDF.
The act of us having to try harder to group together made us close, you lose that when your entire goal is to just get to the end of the instance as soon as possible so you can queue again.

However, I have to agree with the OP that the enjoyment has run its course. Too many people whose goal is to raid enjoyed the maybe first two characters they leveled. I'd guess the third one felt more of a chore and I can't say I blame them for it. There's only so much content in WoW and some is flat-out more rewarding, to the point where it's practically self-detrimental to level through some zones, which leaves you with your only option being running through the same zones two, three, four times in a row. At some point it stops being fun.

If the server had a constant influx of people acting as a supplement or replacing the ones who left, I'd still be fine with it. However, too many seem to choose Icecrown over Lordaeron and this is where the problem begins. Right now, we're at the point where there's about an average of 1.5k players online during the game's low hours and we peak at about 4k for those three hours of the day when everyone seems to log on (17h - 20h).
If you take into account that about half of the players online at any moment are max level (I know it fluctuates, but it's still surprisingly close from my experience), this leaves us with a frighteningly low number of players leveling.
It's gotten to the point where it's almost impossible to find a group for any dungeon besides the starting ones and late-game. I've spent the three last days in Outland trying to form a team to run Mana Tombs, Sethekk Halls, anything Auchindoun - no luck. Each Outland zone, based on my /who probes, contains approx. 5 players that are level-appropriate. What do you think the odds are of those five people being a tank, a healer and three DPS? Yeah.

How do you think this leaves the newcomers feeling, once the pass the initial rush of conquering Deadmines and Wailing Caverns? That they're in for a long grind? You'd switch to Icecrown too, if you /who'd Stranglethorn and saw literally 13 people in it - four of them level 80, clearing the swashbuckler beach for their multibox alts.. I remember a time when you couldn't see the ground in STV over the whiteness of corpses, both Alliance and Horde.

The point I'm trying to make here with this wall of text is - people are not having fun anymore. The zones look deserted, the AH's been empty for months and there's no one in Stormwind selling portals to Dalaran, goddamnit!
I'm not saying that enabling RDF would bring new life to the server, there's no way of knowing that. But it would make life a lot easier for those of us who remain and want to continue to play on a x1 WotLK realm.
I understood the ideal which led the devs when they were creating Lordaeron, I really liked it too. However, right now we're at the turning point where reality kicked in and punched the ideal in the face. If the trend of people leaving the server continues (which seems likely judging by my friends list), by the end of 2017, there will be 2k people playing at peak - all of them max level and guilded.
At that point, you might as well turn RDF on, as no one will have need of it anymore.

[LaurensOP123]

Comments in this thread may or may not be fully visible to all people. By that ofcourse I mean not everyone agrees and therefor the gm's are giving a helping hand to clear things up.

[BenSzybki]

I have to agree with the above statement. Additionally I'd like to add my explanation into a concern of breaking the community with enabling RDF.

People claim (correctly), that searching for a 5man dungeons through channel advertising brings people closer while using RDF to do the same, breaks the interaction part. That was true when Blizzard introduced RDF with cross-realm application in it. You would join the dungeon, meet random people you'd probably never meet again. There was no concern in behaving wrong - no reputation loss, no consequences.

Loradaeron is just a single realm. You recognise people after certain amount of time played. If you would team up with a guy and he would ninja/be toxic/afk- he stlll has to consider that later on, PuGs doing certain raids (probably created through channel advertising anyway, rdf is bad for this) will simply not invite him into a group.

Those are simply my thoughts, maybe I'm wrong at this point but spamming global will also be a valiable option anyway. And all the low levels will have much easier time.

[Illuminatus]

@BenSzybki What is your point? How is the RDF going to 'break' the so called 'community' that you're talking about? Last time I tried to interact with people after I gathered a group on global and asked where is everybody from, I hardly got any answer. Only one guy replied back while others remained silent throughout the whole dungeon. And this happened many times at level 20, 60, 70 especially 80. People just don't give a rats a$$ about 'social bonding'. Needless to say they all want to do Gundrak because it's faster and they ignore all other dugeon recruiting - and that proves my point. Frankly, all what people care about is to do their daily Heroics at a fast pace without too much hassle or drama along the way. If anyone misbehaves - a vote to kick will be along the way and a replacement is IMMEDIATELY found through Dungeon queue - which is better than spamming and running towards a summoning stone. In other words, it's saving everyone a big amount of time! And that's what the majority of people want, myself included: A Smooth, Less Time Consuming Enjoyable Gameplay. We already socialize being in social leveling guilds and raiding ones, including global chat. Besides nobody's stopping you from socializing in your dungeon party after you got in with RDF.
So when you say that RDF breaks the community, I sincerely don't know WHAT you're talking about.

[LaurensOP123]

@BenSzybki What is your point? How is the RDF going to 'break' the so called 'community' that you're talking about? Last time I tried to interact with people after I gathered a group on global and asked where is everybody from, I hardly got any answer. Only one guy replied back while others remained silent throughout the whole dungeon. And this happened many times at level 20, 60, 70 especially 80. People just don't give a rats a$$ about 'social bonding'. Needless to say they all want to do Gundrak because it's faster and they ignore all other dugeon recruiting - and that proves my point. Frankly, all what people care about is to do their daily Heroics at a fast pace without too much hassle or drama along the way. If anyone misbehaves - a vote to kick will be along the way and a replacement is IMMEDIATELY found through Dungeon queue - which is better than spamming and running towards a summoning stone. In other words, it's saving everyone a big amount of time! And that's what the majority of people want, myself included: A Smooth, Less Time Consuming Enjoyable Gameplay. We already socialize being in social leveling guilds and raiding ones, including global chat. Besides nobody's stopping you from socializing in your dungeon party after you got in with RDF.
So when you say that RDF breaks the community, I sincerely don't know WHAT you're talking about.

I Agree with you. I had a nice comparison between todays lordaeron and the one we all remember. One of the gm's deleted it without any reason. Decide yourself what to think about that

[BenSzybki]

@Illuminatus Maybe I got misunderstood.
I greatly support the idea of enabling RDF for the points you mentioned. It is possible that community will alienate itself to some degree but still - raids have to be pugged they way they are now in my opinion. Otherwise they will fail in like 90% of the time.
I just don't see any serious cons in enabling RDF at this point. It will only help the realm.