Be Careful for what you wish for

My personal problem is with crossrealm features of those tools (LFR, LFD, Warzones).
It's not because I think people are stupid or I will not meet idiots on my server.

But when I meet a nice guy I want to play with him again in the future. And with crossrealm features there is no way to play with him again.
Of course - if they add crossrealm friendslists / grouping features I'm fine.

Anyone saying lfg is detrimental is either bad or doesn't understand mmos.

Small group content is a stepping stone. It does not make up the whole community. To suggest that it can "destroy" a community shows a fundamental lack of understanding of how these games work.

In reality most of the anti-lfg crowd got yelled at and never got over it. I ran hundreds of randoms in WoW and had a great time. Why? I was good...

Bad players fear LFG like the plague. They need others to feel like they HAVE to keep them in the group. They think it's a good thing that replacing them is more trouble than it's worth because then nobody will want to play with them. God forbid they tried to simply play better or stick with friends, everyone must suffer.

It's ridiculous.

If you're trying to FP your way to level 50 you're doing it wrong. You'll could easily earn 10x the experience solo questing then you would over a flashpoint when you factor in time. Fact is the leveling game is a mostly solo experience and has been for the past 5 years or more.

Back in 2001, finding a group was easy and only took a few minutes despite our archaic tools. Though back then grouping was required to make significant leveling progress and honestly how it should still be. Today's game are all about the destination, to hell with the journey, kids need to be gods and they need to be gods RIGHT NOW!

+1. Massive hat tip. Great comeback (honestly & with no sarcasm).

Have you ever tried to run a real poll? It's not so easy, or simple. First, you've got to be very careful to phrase the questions in a way that won't bias the answers you receive. Then, you've got to choose what people you're going to be polling, and the manner in which you do this can also bias results. And you've got to make sure the group you're asking is large enough to be statistically significant.

Online polls fail badly on all those levels. Worse, on a technical level they're stupidly easy to game.

I'm not sure what I could provide as proof. I posted a quote from Blizzard's CEO which would seem to back up my contention (which you clipped when quoting me), and I'm not sure what I could possibly provide you with at this point that would satisfy.

If you follow this chain of thought:

1) MMOs are gear based progression games that heavily rely on socialization.
2) LFG tools remove or at least minimize much of the socialization.
3) LFG tools make it easy to gear very quickly.
4) By their nature, LFG tools require content be streamlined & made easier.*
5) With or without LFG tools, baring anything else if players complete content, they unsubscribe.

So, if you gear up in a couple of weeks and know nobody in the game, it's highly likely you'll quit. This is what Blizzard's CEO was talking about, and this is what countless players in these forums have posted.

LFG tools hasten this process (as another poster said). How or why you cannot see that, I'm not sure. Where my logic falls short and my reasoning goes off track, you've also failed to say.

* edited

I don't know if I would say "meaningless"...

But I do get your reference to grinding for a rare pet drop, which I finally got in WoW once. Unfortunately, by the time I got it, it was more about being relieved I no longer had to grind for it, than about enjoying the unique pet I just got.

I WISH...FOR A GOOOOD GAME.

lol

Wait, what? You mean to tell me that if I want to have my character be stronger so I can be better at fulfilling my role it means I'm giving in to peer pressure? What ever happened to taking a bit of pride in your character? Why would you make a dps char just to end up doing subpar dps and hurting whatever group you are in? Why would you make a healer if you are just going to suck at healing and let your group die? Why would you make a tank and not be able to take hit so you die and then your team dies? For someone that advocates for good community and team play, you aren't exactly a team player if you think being bad at your char just means you don't give into peer pressure. That has to be the dumbest thing I have ever heard or read.

Maybe instead of playing an mmo you should just join a chat room on the internet. That seems to be the type of community you want, one where you just talk to people. Then again, if you are looking to play a game and just chat with people go find some online cribbage or poker site so don't screw with anyone else in your poor team play. You are the type of player I would not want in my group. Someone that doesn't care about how well he/she does and couldn't care less if the group fails.

Most damaging element to the launch wasn't BW adding more servers. It was BW starting with ridiculously low server caps, then raising caps while simultaneously adding more servers, all while telling incoming people to roll onto the many, many low pop servers. All this while refusing to manage server pops at all, i.e. filling one server before opening another.

A post "honeymoon" phase drop in pop totally normal. But by failing to manage servers, it left many dead/dying servers and unhappy customers. Many of whom then become former customers (why pay for a game you can't play?), which just makes the problem worse, which excerbated the entire unhappy and avoidable issue.

All avoidable, and any PR issues could have dealt with by stating up front that they were going to adjust server pops/numbers post launch, and that they would open/close servers as required. Instead, the number of servers open has apparently become a "prestige" issue instead of a "housekeeping" issue.

While this is true games are supposed to be fun. Looking for groups is not fun. This has been proven time and time and time again.

That pretty much ends the discussion. Suggesting you hamstring your own game to keep people from gearing up is absurd.

"Bioware if you are reading this do NOT add features from World of Warcraft such as LFG, LFR, Cross-Server Functions etc."

Then what do you suggest the people on low pop servers do? And don't say "reroll", because people enjoying their level 50 shouldn't have to reroll just to do HMs and Ops.