Patch 5.3 interview with Ghostcrawler
Mystery of the Unborn Val'kyr
The latest patch 5.3 news
All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsBreakfast Topic: Will Raid Finder popularity be sustainable?
by Chase Hasbrouck 
Dec 6th 2011 at 8:00AM
When the Raid Finder feature rolled out on the PTR, it was terrible. Queues were long, dropouts were common, and the overall experience was poor. The Raid Finder on live, in contrast, is new, shiny, and by all accounts a success. Everybody's happy ... for now. Now, I don't want to channel Ol' Grumpy here, but will that success be sustainable?
Right now, a good 90% of the active playerbase still has upgrades they need from Raid Finder, including current raiders. This means quicker queues and better groups overall. Once those raiders have their gear, though, will they continue to participate in the Raid Finder?
With gear levels topping 380 and the heroic 5-mans reasonably easy, those seeking quick valor will likely end up there instead of the Raid Finder, which demands a larger commitment with less chance of reward. Two months from now, I'm afraid the Raid Finder queues will be full of nothing but alts and occasional players, causing the situation from the PTR all over again. What do you think?
Right now, a good 90% of the active playerbase still has upgrades they need from Raid Finder, including current raiders. This means quicker queues and better groups overall. Once those raiders have their gear, though, will they continue to participate in the Raid Finder?
With gear levels topping 380 and the heroic 5-mans reasonably easy, those seeking quick valor will likely end up there instead of the Raid Finder, which demands a larger commitment with less chance of reward. Two months from now, I'm afraid the Raid Finder queues will be full of nothing but alts and occasional players, causing the situation from the PTR all over again. What do you think?
Filed under: Breakfast Topics
Reader Comments (Page 5 of 6)
godking Dec 6th 2011 10:03AM
If you look at TB pvp grounds for an example, people still do TB even though They have done BH. Numbers maybe not high but they still go for the easy honor points and easy win if your horde. LFR is a tool for to learn the fights in a relaxed setting and also for those that don't have time. Once people are comfortable with DS lfr, they may go step it up to reg. which is one of the goals of LFR. So yeah que may die down but people will still go for alts and easy 250vp. Plus it's just fun. Let's go oil deathwing in lfr tonight. Who with me.... For the ALLAINCE
Anomis Dec 6th 2011 10:03AM
@LynMars A regular instance hasn't given mounts since I think Classic
Cata
http://www.wowhead.com/item=63040 - Reins of the Drake of the North Wind - The Vortex Pinacle
http://www.wowhead.com/item=63043 - Reins of the Vitreous Stone Drake - The Stonecore
WOTLK
Blue Drake - http://www.wowhead.com/item=43953 - The Oculus
Blue Proto-Drake - Utgarde Pinnacle
Reins of the Bronze Drake - The Culling of Stratholme
BC
Swift White Hawkstrider - Magister's Terrace
Reins of the Raven Lord - Sethekk Halls
Bapo Dec 6th 2011 10:17AM
Anomis... most of those will only drop on heroic mode. What lyn meant was regular difficulty.
eel5pe Dec 6th 2011 10:26AM
Did anyone else find it impossible to kick anyone in the raid? We were saddled with an afk guy through the first two bosses, completely unable to kick him until the auto-kick after he went offline 30 minutes in. Then we had an afk healer through the last 2 bosses.
Telwar Dec 6th 2011 11:17AM
Nope, we kicked several people, including a dps Death Knight who hit ready while dead, thus indicating he wanted to siphon loot.
Kuro Dec 6th 2011 4:02PM
No problems kicking folks from the LFR. You need a critical mass of votes to initiate the check to the rest of the group. Usually "vote kick the afk'ers" works. Though I tend to run LFG in groups with a number of guildies.
jtrack3d Dec 6th 2011 10:34AM
LFR will continue to exist because a whole class of players will be trimmed of the normal raiding rosters.
Essentially you have a spectrum of players... from completes heroic modes, tries some heroic modes, barely finishes normal, never finishes normal, barely enters a raid, to never raids.
Everyone from "never finishes normal downward" will be in LFR... this will kill casual raiding guilds because their raiders could barely attend anyhow. Even barely finishing normal group will likely take a hit. Those that hit heroic modes and up will likely be unaffected.
Smashbolt Dec 6th 2011 11:16AM
If what you're saying is that the flaky people in your raid team won't bother to show up for raid night because they can just do LFR at their leisure... then they weren't or couldn't be dedicated to your raid team anyway. Find people will be and recruit them or join their guild.
If you're raiding with each other because you're friends and want to hang out, then LFR won't change that. If they're truly raiding to hang out together, they're not going to suddenly stop doing that because they can get a watered down version of the same experience but with worse loot, and angry yelling strangers...
jtrack3d Dec 6th 2011 11:35AM
I don't disagree that a raid team is better off without low attending raiders. What I am saying is the number of people trying to get on actual raid teams will decrease (not a bad thing), but there will be less supply for existing guilds. There may be a guild collapse as far as number of viable raiding guilds per server.
coville Dec 6th 2011 10:45AM
With 25 players rolling on loot it will take awhile for everyone to get the gear they want. The que will still fill up as friends que with each other to help gear each other up.
LFR is a great addition to WoW and Blizzard needs to get huge props for making the game better and better.
Blizzard should consider offering older raids on LFR with beefed up stats so there is more content for end game players.
zmalmquist Dec 6th 2011 10:49AM
Blizzard needs to add more functionality to the raid finder. Like option to pass on VP and select which boss you want to start on. When I would que my dps, especially later in the week, I would wait 15+ minutes to get a que for a raid 2/8. I would keep declining que until I would get a fresh 0/8 run. One of my dps toons took 1.5 hours to attain the proper raid.
Its kind of ironic. You wipe once on a boss and you always get at least 5 players that leave. Eventually this snow balls later in the week to a large number of half completed raids, or a larger populace of players looking for that first half of raids.
Moanique Dec 6th 2011 11:37AM
If history shows anything at all, it shows that Blizzard is about iteration. They've already signaled that getting LFR ready for 4.3 was a heavy lift for them. They'll watch how it goes during 4.3. If it continues to be a success, then you can bet they'll look for ways to enlarge it with new features, different levels of difficulty and perhaps previous raids.
It would have been nice to have all of that up front but that's a huge gamble for them to take given the lack of success of their first attempt at this and clearly even if they had been willing to make that bet, it wouldn't have happened during this expansion.
Be happy for what's there.
Barry Dec 6th 2011 10:50AM
LFR is here to stay it is the next evolution in LFD, people enjoy being able to raid with a minimal social commitment.
I.e I can raid for 30 minutes and then I have to leave, you could never do that with a guild but you are more than happy to leave LFR after 30 minutes.
I think that this is more concerning for guilds as it shows that people want to participate in group activities and for some group of players, the guild concept is just not working.... Which will mean that Blizzard will add LFR to all new raids coming up. Finally the only reason people do guild runs is for slightly better gear.
Makes you wonder where the MMO concept is heading if we are enjoying auto grouping so much
Amanda A. Dec 6th 2011 12:27PM
I'm an ex-raider in an RP guild. I love my guild. I love RPing with them. I love hanging out with them. They're awesome people.
And then I tank a dungeon for them. I'm top DPS AND top healer, people stand in fire (and apologize afterward,) and most of them don't really seem to understand the mechanical part of the game, even though they're trying their best and extremely good-natured about the whole thing. I'm working on teaching them how to play well enough to run heroic dungeons smoothly-- gemming, rotations, how to find info, even how to spec. It is helping... slowly. And I'm happy to keep running dungeons and helping them and wiping with them instead of turning to LFD's heartless, but faster runs because they're awesome people and sincerely fun to run with and I want them to improve. (And I remember how bad I was as a newbie....)
I love my guild. But, until they work out how to play, LFR is my only good option for raiding.
Kylenne Dec 6th 2011 2:55PM
@Amanda: I was once an ex-raider that transferred to Moon Guard for a spell, and LFR would have been a godsend for me, for all the reasons you stated. I've been back on a PvE server and raiding again for some time now, but I think the population of folks like yourself, or even ex-raiders who find themselves in more social-oriented guilds even on non-RP servers, will keep LFR going.
araquen Dec 6th 2011 11:15AM
*shrug*
I talked with my raiders a lot about LFR. As a raid group, the overwhelming consensus was that no one wanted to deal with the pug aspect of LFR and that the restrictions on the LFR simply weren't worth the aggravation of pugging. We're not a server first team, so we don't really need LFR as a teaching tool.
There is no prohibition on individuals running the LFR on off-nights, but the team, as a whole, would prefer to just do normals and farm the daylights out of the 5-mans.
Telwar Dec 6th 2011 11:21AM
I found that running RF made the live encounters somewhat easier, since it's the same basic fight. I am almost positive that shortened the time we spent on Hagara, since we had hit the main points of the fight already.
araquen Dec 6th 2011 11:43AM
@Tel - I am positive that there is teaching value. The team, as a group, decided that having to deal with the horrible attitudes of most puggers was not worth getting a boss down in 3 instead of 5 (or 5 instead of 7, or...)
It's more of a reflection on the poor behavior of pugs in Cata than in the LFR itself.
Sally Bowls Dec 7th 2011 7:07PM
My guess is that the middle ground that feels as you do will be a smaller percentage.
The causals won't care about 39x raids. But the people who do care and are not the ones trying for H DW this week will be drawn to the LFR.
Four bosses in LFR is under an hour, gives more valor than a five man and gives better gear. In particular, tier. I.e., even a "real" raider might appreciate being able to thwart the RNG delaying their 4p T13 by wearing a piece of T13/lfr. And nothing from VP or heroics is going to be better than the Maw of the Dragonlord I got on Tuesday.
I can understand not wanting to spend $15/month to farm. But people who are farming stuff probably will include LFR; it's only logical.
Gibly Dec 6th 2011 11:24AM
After the first weekend the Raidfinder can hardly be called a succes. I was reserved about this feature due to its potential. But you have to deal with people. It is managble to deal with immature brats in 5man groups, but in 25man groups it is horrendous. You already have to deal with larger qualities of rotten apples within the WoW-Community which drains the fun out of the Raid Finder.
People already leave after beating a certain boss, because they're there to farm specific items. You already have people whining constantly about doing said boss. Not even mentioning what happens if you don't do as the brat wants.
Next to that the experience can hardly be called raiding. There is little to no tactics required. The developers probably took into account that many people would leave the group during the run. Therefore the bosses can be zerged with 15 people. It is just a cheap and easy way to get 250VP and nothing more, because the 384 items will be quickly replaced by proper 390+ gear bought with VP. I for one will no longer bother with the Raid Finder.