Give me a legitimate reason to NOT have a LFD tool.

So then the LFD was introduced to give free equipment away?

You must realize that this is all rhetorical. Everyone knows both tools were introduced to give more players access to more content.

This is just not in dispute no matter how hard you try.

If you don't like it thats fine - but you it is inarguable that they were made to give more people, better access.

oh yes- I remember this, we called it barrens chats. When rap e was a regular topic of conversation and some epic sword was spammed non-stop.

From this magical land of yours where everyone was friendly and belly button gum drops fell from the sky, we got this:

http://www.wowwiki.com/Barrens_chat

an example from the chatlog of the barrens during this time

[1. General - Barrens] [Player 1] Anyone here like metalica?
[1. General - Barrens] [Player 2] Metallica sucks and ur a noob!
[1. General - Barrens] [Player 3] all metal bands suck, u guys are both ****.
[1. General - Barrens] [Player 2] %#$@ u, u just listen to rap crap and think ur so cool
[1. General - Barrens] [Player 4] Who likes starburst?
[1. General - Barrens] [Player 2] losers like starbust
[1. General - Barrens] [Player 4] I bet your mom is a loser
[1. General - Barrens] [Player 6] guys where is mankriks wife? I cant find her
[1. General - Barrens] [Player 5] Can you guys just shut up an play, plz? kthx?
[1. General - Barrens] [Player 7] LFG WC
[1. General - Barrens] [Player 1] **** player 5
[1. General - Barrens] [Player 2] shutup player

ah yes - I miss those days of a tight-knit community.


edit - mankirks wife still makes me laugh though.

There is no legitimate reason.

So answering the title of this thread is impossible.

except for the fact that you failed to mention if you wrent heals, tanks, or the best current dps you werent gettin parties to make your so called friends. vanilla ret pally ring a bell? Believe me the minute they add dmg meters its gonna be the highest dps that gets parties while everyone else gets left in the dust. want an example ffxi they dont have lfd and if u were certain classes before abyssea u wasnt getting a party no matter how good you were

There's nothing wrong with it being easy to find groups. You could make finding groups instant at the push of a button and it doesn't affect the game's difficulty one bit.

No it isn't.

Just to add. After they added LFG they also complained that it was now to long for them being casuals that they cant run them in 15 mins.

Also dont say that you just want a LFG and you dont want the difficulty decreased so you can do it quicker, because we all know thats a lie and once you get a LFG you will be complaining about it the first day. Then since its in the game already they wont take it out and you will somehow still cry that Bioware is catering to the hardcore again and ignoring the casuals because they dont have enough time to do the instance even though before when they wanted LFG they had the time but just couldnt waste the time to find the group.

Once Bioware opens the door and inch with putting in LFG its over. From there it will be nerf nerf nerf untill everything can be done in 10 mins.

What keeps getting lost in all of this is that those who supposedly don't want a LFG tool keep getting mischaracterized as such.

Those with issues with tool typically do want an automated LFG tool and matchmaking system. They just want it tied to the server that the player is on rather thana cross server system similar to WOW's. Most of them have experienced the pain that comes along with the convenience over in WOW and wonder if maybe it can be done without killing the local server comunities the way that WOW's did.

See I know some of you are concerned about low pop servers. BUT do those concerns mean that we need to kill of what thriving comunities there are?

An automated LFG tool if restricted to the local server has great benefits. It would allow players to queue up for content that they wish to experience, go do other activities while waiting, and overall give a seemless interface for experiencing the games instances etc. By keeping it just to the local server it also GROWS the community. The people that you are randomly paired with, you can remember them. Add them to your friends list. Play with them again. Those people that you random group with that all seem really nice, well look they are all from the same guild. Maybe you might want to join them? Maybe after meeting a few people this way you can put together a regularly scheduled night. Do operations, whatever. It is win win across the boards. There is no downside to such a mechanism.

Whereas look at the pro/con analysis of the cross server mechanism.

Pro's - Above and beyond the single server LFG, it allows for slightly faster queue times, for some lower population servers, and some roles. However experience with WOW seems to give the impression that this may simply be illusionary or at best only really be the case during extreme off peak play times. Otherwise there really is very little difference in queue times. But is it worth shaving 5 minutes off the queues for low pop servers is...

Con's - The mechanism of pure anonymity kills the social aspect of the game. You will never ever see or group with the people you are teamed with again. There is no history. There is no making long lasting friends (and those long lasting friends. THOSE are what drives long term paying game subscribers). There is no building of guilds from anonymous cross server groups. Further the anonymity leads to a rampant non cooperative antisocial style of gameplay, whereby large portions of the gaming population are only grouping for their own personal narcisitic needs and not the enjoyment of the social gaming aspects of the game. This leads to griefing, harassment, bad experiences and just all around @zzhattery.

So what exactly is the overall long term benefit of outright demanding that any LFG tool MUST be cross server? What is the logic behind this? What clear benefit is it to the game, the games operators and the games playing population at large?

And lets not forget. When WOW put such a system in, they did not start with a LFG tool. That system is simply a modified extension of the MASSIVE infrastructure change that they had put in place when they added PVP Battlegrounds several years prior. At that time it required an incredible amount of re-engineering and total system overhauls at the WOW datacenters. Just to permit the WOW servers to in some ways communicate with the other specific world servers that were located within the same physical datacenter infrastructure. (That's what the WOW Battlegroups are. They are clusters of servers that are all in the same room, at the various datacenters). It took years of engineering to get to that point. And a massive hardware overhaul just before TBC.

Now if SWTOR did not release with such features in place, and there has been no real public discussion about such features clearly on the development horizon, than there is much better than a good chance that the server and network infrastructure and the games overall engine was not initially built with such a system in mind. It's not something that they can simply turn on. It's not some simple game code that they can program. If it isn't there already than it is a HUGE infrastructure undertaking. Which would probably take about 18-24 months to design test and implement. (So I would not expect to see any such system until the first expansion released).

Whereas a local same server only LFG system is just local server code and can be simply programmed. It could probably be setup within a weeks or months time frame.

So remind me again? Which way is it that they absolutely positively MUST do it?

This is the chat log when i pug a party without LFG tool.

Me spamming 100 times in chat "LFG for any HM FP"
Player 1 pms me" Ill go"
player 2 pms me "ill tank"
Player 3 pms me "ill heal"

Invite all 3,
I say "hi"
Player 1 says "hi"
player 2 says "hi"
Player 3 says "hi"

middle of the dungeon.
Player 3 says "CC left mob"
Player 1 says "ok"

repeats multiple times.
Then get to end of dungeon and kill boss

I say" Bye"
Player 1 says "bye"
player 2 says "bye"
Player 3 says "bye"

Some community isnt it? This happens every time.

Right..and pug groups you form through geneal chat are so much different aren't they?

NO. Actually they aren't.

You can still group with your friends and guild evildestoryer. That is where 90% of the socializing on MMORPGs is done anyways and where this so called "community" exists, so stop this false and ridiculous debate that a cross-server LFG tool is going to bring down the level of intimate conversation between players. It's not.

All it's going to do is let players create groups when their friends are offline or their guild doesn't have anything planned, and that's a GOOD thing, especially considering how little there is to do after 50 on this game without a group.

You may be right. It is obvious they are already so bad at finding groups they need someone to do it for them.