Say No to Cross-Realm Instancing

Q u o t e:
Cross Realm instancing is a terrible idea.

The current system, limited to your server, creates friendships, forges bonds, and allows people to know who and who not to group up with. If this is taken out of the game, people will be unable to make new friendships that will be able to be carried out of the instance portal.

So what if it allows groups to form faster? It will destroy a Realm's Identity, and prevents people from forming lasting friendships. Keep (almost) everything else, but remove this.

The Looking For Group channel will return in patch 3.3. If you wish to run dungeons with players on your realm, you can use the Looking For Group channel in any major city to create the party.

Q u o t e:


Will there be any way to join the channel when NOT in a city? I know I prefer to go out and mine or something rather than sit around twiddling my thumbs while waiting for a group,

It works exactly like the Trade channel currently does.

Q u o t e:
All PuGing ever did for me on my server was max out my ignore list.

And hey, the Ignore list is being expanded! You can also ignore players on other realms if you have a bad group experience with them. The Dungeon System will not place you in a group with any character on your Ignore list.

Q u o t e:


All bad.

I like to jump in the LFG on any toon, any time, and watch for grouping opportunities while I quest or fish.

We already have a linked chat channel in the cities.

If you jump into the new Dungeon System tool, you likely won't have time to do much before finding a group. Groups will be created quite rapidly in most cases, particularly if the Random Dungeon option is chosen. If you don't want to use this system because you might have to play with people not on your realm, you're only restricting yourself.

Q u o t e:


That's all well and good, but do you have any answers to what this does for servers with differing rulesets? RP vs. PvP, for example? Many of us picked RP servers because we want to play with people from, well, RP servers.

Similar to cross-realm Battlegrounds, the RP ruleset will not apply to cross-realm instances. If you want to run instances with other people who like to role-play, I'd imagine you wouldn't be alone with that desire. Run instances with your friends, your guild mates, or check the Loooking For Group channel.

Q u o t e:


no i'm avoiding the ninja's, bad players, and people who have no acountability .

I join pick-up groups all the time. Sometimes I get grouped with bad players on my realm because I don't know everyone. I don't expect that threshold to rise incrementally simply because I'm playing with people from other realms. Ultimately, World of Warcraft players are part of one big community. Sure there are smaller communities within, but to assume your realm has more integrity or experienced players than any other realm is just... well, assumptive.

As far as ninjas go, the default loot system will be Need Before Greed and cannot be changed if the group is cross-realm. The Need Before Greed system will be more intuitive as well so a player can't just roll Need on everything to try and ninja items by luck.

Ultimately, if someone's being a huge jerk in the party, Vote Kick them. Ignore them. You won't play with them again.

Q u o t e:
Wait, if I queue for a random heroic, I don't get saved to the instance if we down 1 boss and the group falls apart/fails/etc.?

Not if you use the Dungeon system, select the Random Heroic Dungeon option, and that same Heroic dungeon comes up for you.

Q u o t e:


No, it makes it more difficult because the tools a lot of us ARE CURRENTLY USING are being taken away.

If they were still there, which they wont be, and -then- everyone was using the new system, therefore making it harder, you would be correct.

The tool is not being taken away. The functionality is being infinitely expanded to make finding a random group for an instance faster, easier, and more reliable than ever before. But instead of trying it out, you're putting your foot down on the idea of being selected to run a dungeon with players from different realms.

Maybe try it? Am I naive for thinking that World of Warcraft enthusiasts would be anxious to try something out and provide us feedback on it before spending hours on the forums expressing assumptions about all of the least-ideal situations which could arise?

Q u o t e:


It was posted by a blue that the LFG channel would be just like the trade channel, available in city's. I'm not sure what more "confirmation" you need than that. It's why there's lots of us asking them NOT to do this, as we don't want to be stuck sitting in a city somewhere just to monitor this channel. Instead I'd rather be out playing an alt, etc. I mean worst case, I have multiple accounts, I can just park one account in a city and write some kind of LFG broadcaster app to send it to my other toons. I guess I could work around this, but it does seem like a step backwards.

Just to be clear, you can queue for the Dungeon System from anywhere with any number of players from your own realm (if perhaps maybe you have a couple of friends who want to run an instance with you). I'm just not sure if I should assume in your response that you're outright refusing to ever use the Dungeon System and will only use the Looking For Group channel, or if you've mixed up the difference between the Dungeon System tool and the Looking For Group channel.

Q u o t e:
Now the problem I do have however is with the raids. There is no clear understanding from what has been posted if the LFR tool is going to be cross-realm or still single realm. If it's going to be cross-realm, and it's going to be fast to find a raid (again 5-10 minutes), than fine. I won't have any problems. However if it's going to be only the current realm, like it is today, than it's going to be an issue, as this is the other reason I use the LFG tool. Getting raids (especially the older ones that few run anymore such as OS 10/25, Naxx 10/25, etc.) can be a very time consuming process, and gives me plenty of time to go level an alt. If the change goes live as is, I will have to sit in a city on some toon just to watch for these raids, while I level my alts. This is the functionality that we seem to be losing, and maybe I'm a minority. I will work around it if I have too. I just see this as a step backwards.

The Looking For Raid system is entirely separate from the Dungeon System and is only for your realm. Players are not automatically grouped with this tool and it can be accessed from anywhere. From the 3.3 PTR notes:

Q u o t e:

Looking For Raid

• There is a new Looking For Raid option available to players that can be accessed via the Raid Information screen in the interface or by typing “/LFR.”
  
  
  • Players will be able to browse the system manually for any other players looking for a raid dungeon group.
    
  • While browsing LFR players may sort the list ascending or descending by left-clicking the following headers: Name, Level, Class, Tank Role, Healer Role, and Damage Role. The crown is the Leader Role (representing a raid group with 2 or more people). Players can left-click on this header to sort the list with groups at the top or at the bottom.
    
  • Hovering over players listed in LFR will display their name, class, level, roles and comments. Hovering over a raid/group will display the leader’s name, the raid information (number of people in the raid), comments, if there are any bosses dead (and which ones), and if there are any friends from your Friends list or ignored players from your Ignore list in the raid group.

Q u o t e:



not only this but the lfg tool as a whole sucks.

to get your daily frost emblems you must group with strangers.

That's not true by the way. You can form a group of five players, have the party leader open the Dungeon System and select the Random Heroic option. The pre-made group will be able to port to the selected instance, not be bound by any of the cross-realm restrictions (such as mandatory Need Before Greed, trade restrictions, Vote Kick, etc.), and will receive the daily reward for completing the dungeon. Your pre-made group could continue to select the Random Heroic option again and again to continue running any Heroic that pops up each time -- even if a Heroic dungeon pops up that you've already done -- and you will continue to get loot and Emblems of Triumph from each boss, plus two additional Emblems of Triumph for completing the random Heroic instance.

The system does not punish pre-made groups.

Q u o t e:
if you dont group with friends and group with strangers you get rewards

This is true for the pick-up group Achievements and associated non-combat pet.

Q u o t e:


Enjoy getting griefed with no means of defense, then. Alternatively, enjoy being unable to avoid the endless stream of players who do under 2k DPS.

The downfall of the new system, as I see it, is threefold:
1) While players can relatively easily compile a list of others on their realm with whom they do not want to group, that's all but impossible to manage across an entire battlegroup,
2) Even if you could compile such a list, the auto-join feature does not let you avoid more than 50, without accepting penalties (if I understand correctly, leaving the group even at the very start would incur the 15 minute deserter debuff), and
3) The further degradation of accountability means that even more players will continue to grief, or be unmotivated to improve their gameplay (as they'll be rewarded regardless).

Taking the cap off the /ignore list would help, but still be insufficient--there are (presumably) enough players you'd want to avoid across a battlegroup that it's unlikely you'd ever get all of them, meaning that, as opposed to the current system where you can eventually be reasonably confident you have 4 decent group members, you'd never reach that point with the new system.

I think I get the point. You really don't like playing with most of the people on Laughing Skull and feel that this system will either A) unleash the Laughing Skull hounds on the rest of your Battlegroup, or B) infinitely expand that amount of people with whom you don't want to group because there are so many spiteful, bad people across every realm.

I almost wonder how fun it is to group with you. :p

Q u o t e:


Don't pre-made groups lose money? I was under the impression that you get more cash out of the deal if you join a completely random group instead of starting with a pre-made.


-EDarkness

That is/was the case on the public test realms, but is under review.

As a reminder, all of the information I'm providing today is subject to change based on feedback and testing. I just ask that players not jump to too many end-all, be-all conclusions without ever having tried this feature, particularly if misinformed assumptions are being used to draw said conclusions.

Q u o t e:


Aww, I was really, REALLY hoping that the looking for raid interface would also be active for cross realm instancing. Let's face it, normal difficulty raids have become very doable in a pick up group in Wrath of the Lich King. In addition, it doesn't take many heroic runs before a character would be primarily focusing on raiding to progress their character. Are the difficulties in making a heroic run using only your server's population just suddenly not a problem in raiding?

The risks in raiding are exactly the same to the players (bad players, ninjas etc.) as they are in heroics, but the solutions to prevent that seem sufficient. In addition, the instances are already linked cross realm, the looking for raid interface seems to have everything it should need to function cross realm, it just seems like there is a switch that is arbitrarily set to "not cross realm."

So, why no LFR x-realm grouping?

It's something that has been discussed and is not out of the question, however we have no plans for allowing cross-realm raids in patch 3.3.