Patch 4.1 dungeon finder change places players from realms together
by Anne Stickney 
Apr 30th 2011 at 10:00PM
There was an interesting change slipped into the 4.1 patch notes a few days ago, and players may or may not have noticed it. The dungeon finder, which pulls from the combined battlegroups of all servers, has been tweaked to place players from the same realm together first, and if it can't find players from the same realm, it will move on to a wider pool of players. What does this mean for the dungeon finder? Very little -- you'll still be getting a group. But it's the motives behind the change that are interesting, as posted by Zarhym on the official forums:
Zarhym
Zarhym
That isn't just a coincidence. Many players have stated since the release of the Dungeon Finder that they like the convenience of being matched for a group automatically, but they miss the feeling of community when they're paired with strangers from other realms with whom they might never speak again. So we made a slight change in the way the Dungeon Finder sorts through the queue matching players for a dungeon.
It's interesting that Zarhym mentions community, as it's one of those intangibles that many players may be missing without realizing they're missing it. In the early days of Wrath and dating all the way back to vanilla, individual realms were full-fledged communities where everyone knew each other, or at the very least knew of each other. The dungeon finder was a brilliant, innovative change designed to allow players to group without the hassle of sitting in a major city and typing in the looking for group channel endlessly, but it had the odd side effect of taking the realm camaraderie away. But there's also a very different reason this change excites me.
Blizzard has always held a standard on self-policing; if a player is being bothersome or harassing, the option has always been there to file a report on the player. But when groups were formed prior to the existence of the dungeon finder, players always knew what they were getting into; player reputation on realms and the close-knit community on individual realms provided ways for players to monitor the less than savory types like ninjas via the realm forums and simple reputation. With the introduction of the dungeon finder, suddenly that self-policing via reputation disappeared, as players you encountered were from realms that were not your own and you'd likely never see them again.
With this change, we've been given a little of that self-policing action back again. Sure, if you're on a smaller realm or a realm without as many players queued up in that dungeon finder, you're still going to have the off-realm players -- but you're also going to start to see a lot of faces you may not have realized you haven't seen in awhile. So go queue up, and when you see players from your realm, say hello; it's been awhile, but now's the chance for everyone on your realm to get reacquainted. I think it's about time -- what do you think?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 5)
Corath Apr 30th 2011 10:03PM
This is awesome. Hopefully this will reduce the amount of "ponies" we get in random groups.
Medros May 1st 2011 10:20PM
Indeed!
Eirik May 2nd 2011 6:17PM
"ponies"? I thought the meme was that "I want a pony". Why am I not wanting ponies today?
Dbones Apr 30th 2011 10:13PM
id be ok with this if my server wasnt full of 'jackwads'
Celeane May 1st 2011 8:26AM
Same. My server actually manages to be *worse* than the official forums.
Greg May 1st 2011 8:44AM
A positive attitude goes a long way, Dbones.
Larka May 1st 2011 12:14PM
Thats what i was going to say.
REDMJOEL May 1st 2011 1:21PM
The thing in common in all of those crappy groups might just be you.
Saphieria May 1st 2011 2:13PM
you just gotta do what I did Dbones, pay for a server transfer. Its the only real escape!
Miri Apr 30th 2011 10:15PM
I discovered this last night in a ZG run...it was 4 other people from a guild on my realm. Which made it even more pleasant when they kicked me from the party to bring another guildie in -.-
I was happy to see that 2 hours later when I checked in on them that they were still in there! ;)
I was wondering why I was seeing more familiar guild tags in my runs. Problem is, I know who the crappy guilds are on my realm--so when I see one of those tags I already know the run will probably be challenging...at least with people from other servers it's a grab bag of skill.
Tri May 1st 2011 3:47AM
Oh my god, we did this to someone, and now I feel all terrible!
Sorry :(
Baba May 1st 2011 4:23AM
@Tri, you should do..
Fletcher May 1st 2011 6:29AM
Indeed. Having been the victim of this myself (and upon complaining, discovering that the guildie they'd kicked me to bring in was their actual GM), it is a rotten no good nasty thing to do.
IIRC the vote to kick rules have actually been amended so a group with four guildies *can't* actually kick the fifth, non-guildie, person now. Or at least I read about that ... but if Miri's experience was in ZG, so obviously post-4.1, maybe they didn't institute it?
mazca13 May 1st 2011 7:29AM
@Fletcher - They did bring that rule in and as far as I know it remains in effect - but the rule is that a group of 3+ people who queued together must receive an extra vote in order to kick someone. So if you queue as a group of 3, you need the other random guy to agree to the kick - but if you queue as a group of 4, then the "extra" vote is effectively coming from your 4th guildie and you can still be as antisocial as you like.
Nyold May 2nd 2011 9:59AM
@Miri, since they're on your realm, if I were you I would have sent a nice polite whispers to each and everyone of them:
"hey how is it going? It's been 2 hours since you kicked me, surely you've finished the dungeon, no? Why are you guys still there? Admiring the sceneries?"
Sagacyte Apr 30th 2011 10:14PM
This should be interesting. Will make the dungeon experience better for some. Being from a latin server, I often queued with guildies who don't know how to speak/read English. When one wrote something in Spanish over party chat, it was... annoying... to find intolerant players that take some pride in calling all spanish-speaking players "*bleep*ing mexicans" and start mocking them.
Thankfully it was a big minority, as I've partied with lots of excellent english-speaking players.
Dragonrose May 1st 2011 9:40AM
I had a similar experience, but mine was with um...I think they were from the netherlands? Meh.
Anyway, everyone in the party could speak good to perfect English except one guy. I asked them to speak English, because it's kinda annoying to feel like the outcast (even in a 5 man run). The one guy who couldn't speak so well said so, in lightly broken and "l33t" English, but understandable. I asked him to try and even suggested it could be good practice. He said ok and they all went right back to speaking Dutch. I started talking to them in Portuguese as protest.
Sleutel May 1st 2011 12:56PM
I hope you used the report feature to get that player a lovely expenses-paid vacation to Ban Land.
Amusingly enough, a friend of mine rolled an alt on a Latin American server specifically to pick up fun phrases in Spanish and Portuguese from PUGs. Hahahaha.
Anti Apr 30th 2011 10:16PM
Amazing!!!! This may actually build some accountability into the Dungeon Finding experience. Or at least let me lambast the guild leaders of the Gogogo, NINJA squad without having to make a level one toon on some other realm. It will even help me build a passable ignore list to cut down on Thunderfury trade. Good marks all around.
Tirrimas May 1st 2011 11:08AM
"...Gogogo, NINJA squad..."
That would actually be a funny name for a guild...