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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsPatch 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 5 of 5)
Xantenise May 1st 2011 8:23PM
And, wow. Not long after I posted that I had a dungeon finder group where the tank recognised my guild tag - and me - and turned out to be someone I met years ago. Wow!
theoneunderwater May 1st 2011 5:20PM
this is so great.
I've been leveling my priest to 85 though instances, little did i know that a tank form my guild was leveling int he same manner. Least i didnt know until we were placed into the same instance together. Now we run a bunch of instances together everyday. its great!
fayth May 2nd 2011 2:27AM
Hopefully this will minimize the abuse that those of us from more casual realms have to take from elitists from really progressive/pvp realms when using dungeon finder. I know that thats curbed my use of dungeon finder previously, and am sure I'm not the only onewho's felt that way.
RG May 2nd 2011 10:02AM
Yes, but what about the long wait for a single DPS? I've re-queued dozens of times within an instance for a dropped DPS and wait 5 minutes. What's up with that? I KNOW DPS are waiting and we've been told that already formed groups take priority.
Tank and/or healer I can understand. But DPS? Something fishy going on...
Perhaps they fixed that as well.
Twilit Soul May 2nd 2011 12:32PM
Love it!
I miss the feeling of going into a dungeon like "Alright. Now's a chance to show my stuff! >:D"
Cross-realm: "I'll never see these people again. I'll do my best but big whoop."
Luke May 7th 2011 8:44AM
Next step:
Link guilds across servers, so you can be in virtually the same guild as your friend on a different serer. Each realm could even have its own Guild Leader. The dungeon finder system could even have a "group with sister guild" option.
Come on Blizzard. You know this would be the best thing you could ever do. That is if its implementation doesn't cause catastrophic server crashes...