No Cross Realm LFG tool please!

I think you have found the crux of the issue, the "real" underlying issue with the LFD.

Basically, there are really 2 camps of players. Those of us who want the tool are more about playing the game than we are about other players. As long as we have a quick, efficient way to play all aspects of the game, we are content. We worry very little about what other players have or what they are doing. A LFD fosters this.

The other camp of players, the "community builders", play these games for the people, or rather, "their" people. They are more interested in protecting themselves from a vast majority of the players (whom they consider bad), more interested in setting up cliques of players at the top who can impose their will on the other players on the server. They want to control how much of the game these "other players" get to play, how much gear they get to collect, and the guilds they can join. And a LFD tool removes this ability from them.

These are just my observations; I'm sure many people won't agree, but that is the funny thing about opinions, not everyone thinks they are all good.

I know the perks to having cross server LFG and whatnot, but honestly it kills the community and i really wish people could understand that.

Make friends with the people on your server =/

That's a nice workup, but it suffers from the same issues that the current system does. Specifically, it requires people to manually refresh the list to see if new groups for their missions form.

If we're going to start spitballing ideas to make heroic missions easier, I say why not automatically add you to the queue when you pick up the quest? They could put a checkbox in the mission log that will remove you from the queue or put you in, next to each heroic mission. The benefits of this is that by putting the onus on the player to remove himself from the queue, most people who are ambivalent or lazy will just stay in the queue, increasing the number of people available to group with.

The other camp of players, the "community builders", play these games for the people, or rather, "their" people. They are more interested in protecting themselves from a vast majority of the players (whom they consider bad), more interested in setting up cliques of players at the top who can impose their will on the other players on the server. They want to control how much of the game these "other players" get to play, how much gear they get to collect, and the guilds they can join. And a LFD tool removes this ability from them.

It's internet group-think, it comes from the WoW-hate cult and its amazing ability to radiate its thoughts to the unthinking through catch phrases. Politicians use the same technique, gullible people will start to think whatever you tell them to think if you drive the thought home hard enough, repeat the phrase constantly and never deviate from topic.

Nevertheless, my heart goes out to those who get all excited to log on and get something going only to log off two hours later with an empty feeling. I recommend using the same technique, come up with a catch phrase and abuse it in every dialogue, every channel available to you. Bioware may take notice of you at some point, or you can lead with your money and let EA take notice before Bioware does.

BioWare saw merit to not implement X-server. Case closed. Unsub or enjoy!

Cross Realm LFG brought the community together in Rift. It made the community game-wide instead of server wide. It's been a big bonus over there.

So why was it such a negative experience in WoW and such a positive experience in Rift? (as seems to be the general consensus). And what can developers learn from the success of a system like this in Rift and a seeming failure in WoW?