Dungeon Finder Needed Badly

I'm with you brother and I'm pretty sure the majority of the playerbase feels this way.

Because I like the way manual grouping works and I don't want the whole community to be sucked into the vacuum of automatic grouping.

If you didn't think all the other opinions were wrong, why would you have the opinion that you do?

However, once the grouping becomes automatic then you're foisted upon people, and your reputation, skill, et cetera is not meaningful because you cannot be effectively excluded (or preferred over other players).

Then play a game from a genre that doesn't require such a heavy time investment?

Seriously, LFD strips the soul out of MMOs.

Would you walk onto a Ferrari dealership with only five thousand dollars to spend?

Why would you play on MMO with only 90 minutes stints during which to play it?

Yes, which is how it works if the LFG tool is not automatic and is not cross-server, but as soon as either -- or both -- of these elements is present, then socialization drops out of the equation because it is no longer pointful.

WoW had such a tool, in vanilla, BC, and early WotLK. You opened the LFG tool, selected what you wanted to do, added a note to yourself (like "tank") and were then visible to other people or groups wanting to do the same thing. They could whisper you, invite you, armory you, et cetera.

Moreover -- added in BC -- you were added to the channel "LFG", where you could talk to people looking to group up for something.

However, once the grouping becomes automatic then you're foisted upon people, and your reputation, skill, et cetera is not meaningful because you cannot be effectively excluded (or preferred over other players).

Once the grouping becomes cross-server, then there's no point to socializing because you'll never see the people again. You have 60 minutes (sometimes much less) to form some kind of connection beyond "wow he's good I'll group with him again if I can", which doesn't really happen, so people just retreat to being asocial because the effort of socializing no longer has any pay off.

Which brings you to where WoW is today. Groups are commonly griefed by people who cannot be effectively excluded. Groups are commonly silent as a tomb because no one's ever going to be grouped with any other given person again in all likelihood, and therefore they just go through the dungeon as automatons, with getting the boss down replacing having a good time with others as the ends.

I'll let you in on a secret: outside of a few people you may have run with routinely, none of that stuff was meaningful to anyone other than you anyway. The answer isn't to throw out a system because it ruins your personal sense of social engineering. The answer is to include features that can help build it back up.

You're arguments are such nonsense. An automated LFG feature does not reduce the "meaning of the group."

You people claim that the current system offers choice as to who you group with.

Wrong.

Groupmates are so sparce right now I'm forced to group with whoever's interested. I have no idea who they are nor do I have any idea about their personality. But I group with them because they are available. The only difference between the automated system and the current one is that the later takes 30 minutes longer and doesn't allow me to PvP or quest during the waiting period.

Also, if you don't like the people the automated feature has put you with, you can take advantage of the kick feature. An automated group finder just finds groups, thats it. To somehow argue that this makes the group lose is meaning is a subjective statement with no evidence to support it. A PUG is a PUG regardless of how hit forms.

I can see what you mean with the cross-server though which is why they should include a cross server option on the LFG tool for those who don't mind playing with people they will never see again. Because, you know, we should allow people to play the game how they want to play and not force them to play it the same way you do.

The current system is terrible. I can' take much more of it.

I'm with you brother and I'm pretty sure the majority of the playerbase feels this way.