SOE changed SWG from an sandbox MMO to a theme park MMO. Blizzard with patch 3.3 just changed WOW from a theme park MMO to a multiplayer game. But where SOE failed Blizzard might just succeed.

I'm talking about the cross realm looking for group option. I didn't thought this option was important when I heard about it. I thought it was just some small change to make the game a little bit more user friendly.

But I was checking the whole evening how my girlfriend played WOW after this patch 3.3. She is an ordinary WOW player. She has several characters. She is leveling them as quickly as possible. She has joined some guilds and made a lot of friends. She doing instances and raids with her friends almost every day - playing about 5-6 hours every day.

That was before patch 3.3. After the patch she just loves the cross realm looking for group option. The whole evening she is doing instances with this option. She isn't playing with her guild or other friends, she isn't chatting with them. She almost completely forgot them.

How is this option working. You chose the instance that you want to do, you specify the role that you want to play (dps, tank, healer) and you press a button. After some seconds you are in a instance with some other random players from all the servers in one region. You never met them before and you probably will never meet them again after this instance. Then you are doing the instance. If some player leaves - no problem there are other players in the queue and instantly you get a new player.

When I asked her why isn't she doing the instances with her friends she answered that it is more efficient this way and you level and gear up more quickly. You are doing exactly the instance that you want and you are doing it immediately. This is the fastest way to level up and to gear up. During the evening she checked with some of her friends. They were doing the same.

So how will players play WOW after this patch? I think this patch will destroy most of the guilds. You don't need them anymore for doing instances. Players will level solo as quickly as possible. And they will be doing instances with random players from all the servers in a region. When your character is level 80 you can put him in a city and he wont have to leave the city ever again. Just an ordinary multiplayer game. But I think that most of the players will love it and this will be a commercial success for Blizzard.

Welcome to World of Diablocraft - the game is now more towards a dungeon crawler now and it damn well works, besides the raids which you still have to deal with your own server only, the rest of the game doesn't require you to stand about bored screaming in channels to find a group - it's just wait 5 mins tops and your away, added bonus if it's a good pug then you can rattle thru everything 5 man and enjoy.

Like I said shame it's only for normal groups

I believe you can form up a group and group queue using the cross-realm function. So in other words, she still can group up with her friends and find some random pug from whatever server to join them.

I don't think it's going to destroy guilds, as long as there are stuff to do as a 10 or 25 man.

Yeah, like I'm going to risk doing a 10/25 man raid with a PUG.

Guilds won't die. Raid Progression Guilds, anyways. Some small Guilds that are trying to start raiding will probably be killed off, but it'll be nothing like what you're fearing.

Well actually reading this feauture in this post just got me interested in WOW again, i left it over 3 years ago and never looked back untill i read this post...

This could be fun...

This brings up a concern I have for WoW's world and quests. How is it going to affect normal questing? Will players abandon the areas and storyline all together for the advantage of almost constant instancing and gear? I realize that the coming Cataclysm expansion is meant to give the world a face-lift and breath life into old content, but it still concerns me as to how this will impact the overall immersion and enjoyment of the game.

Originally posted by Lord.Bachus

Well actually reading this feauture in this post just got me interested in WOW again, i left it over 3 years ago and never looked back untill i read this post...

 

This could be fun...

Same

and this is nothing like what SOE did to SWG.....

It really is amazing watching this game go from the great game it was when it first came out to this piece of shit.   It just gets worse and worse.  Personally I lost interest after they took out 40 man raids, it was the only thing fun for me since the PvP is horrific.

Damn you all and your interest bleeding over into me...

I see this making the pure "RAID" guilds even stronger as there will be more people that have top gear from the 5 mans to make more teams within one raiding guild or multiple raiding guilds that are able to tackle the raids because of gearing up being so much faster with this option.  Blizzard may even start to increase the difficulty of the raids due to the fact you can get 5 man geared up so much more quickly than before. 

If anything is hurt by this patch it will be the casual guilds that run 5 mans and just chat, but I dont even really see it affecting those that much either because i'm sure you can keep guild chat up while your doin crossrealm instances and communicate with your guild. 

There will just be plenty of each role that a guild will need that are plenty geared enough to run the raids now that you can spend most of your time actually playing the instances instead of half  looking for group and half actually doing the instance. 

All in All sounds good to me, probally not enough for me to re-sub, only thing I really worry about is how bad people will get when rolling on loot since you will most likely not be in another party with them that often if ever again, people will become fearless in that manner as it will not effect your status in the community of your own server.

ok, so what's the correlation between the fact that SWG change from sandbox to theme park and Blizzard's 3.3 patch? I did not catch that in your OP. And no, most guilds won't be destroyed, they are just most likely to queue together since there are still a lot of incompetent players using queue.

no offense, unthoughtful posts are lame.

Sounds terrible, for us.. RPG and Group lovers. But I suppose that the instasatisfaction kids will love it. And hell.. I will probably do. 

But yea, giving the ability to players to skip everything directly to dungeons or arenas result on ... we all know on what result. 

Sounds like it mitigates the difficulty many older games have when new players log on and can't find people to group up with.  I think it's a great idea.

As far as it hurting guilds, I think they serve other purposes beside running instances, namely friendship and a sense of community. 

Oh, well it may be a good shot in the arm for the game as a whole. We will see in the long run. It does nothing for me as instanced raiding and BGs are the biggest things I dislike about Wow.

Honestly from your thread title I thought you meant Blizzard had sodomized Wow using red hot sand, broken glass, and chili powder as lubricant. This patch doesn't sound like it will have all that bad an impact on the game since the biggest mindset of players it would upset have already moved on from the game.

Nothing like the NGE. Please dont use that to over dramatize this update. You should be thanking Blizz IMO.

The cross server battlegrounds removed most of the fun for me from battleground pvp.  Before the queue's were a lot longer, but you got to know the enemy and the combat at least had some feeling of worth to it. Once that system was introduced the queue's were extremely short, but the fun was almost completely gone.

I made a lot of friends in the past while pugging, most pugs were crap, but some gave me longlasting friends. Now that is gone as well. Ah well, things change, people change and both wow and myself have changed in opposite directions. At least I still got some fond memories of the game, but I am beginning to think that after this even the next expansion won't get me to play again.

I was thinking of going back to wow lately, but this new cross server LFG system made me decide otherwise.

Originally posted by TJKazmark

This brings up a concern I have for WoW's world and quests. How is it going to affect normal questing? Will players abandon the areas and storyline all together for the advantage of almost constant instancing and gear? I realize that the coming Cataclysm expansion is meant to give the world a face-lift and breath life into old content, but it still concerns me as to how this will impact the overall immersion and enjoyment of the game.

That's a good question. I think it'll just make it easier for those who prefer grouping... Not all of us do, at least not all the time. It's very helpful for level 80s at least.

When Cataclysm goes live with a revamped world, levelling 'the normal way' should get back on track though. Going through 5 years old zones is a turn off for me.

Why would it kill small guilds? This system just allows them to complete their groups quickly, you won't have people pissed off because their guild only had 4 online and it is taking over an hour to find a player for the last spot.

If anything this just proceeds with the gearing threadmill philosophy, that no one should be surprised with anymore, "RPG" + "Dungeons" simply means "Gear Progression Grinding" for them, couldn't be anymore clear than that as they "finalized" this aspect of the game with this feature. Not a bad thing though, they effectively reduced waiting times for groups to form, and with Cataclysm a lot of new features and gameplay options will be coming in the game to increase diversity in the game.

Originally posted by alecbr

SOE changed SWG from an sandbox MMO to a theme park MMO. Blizzard with patch 3.3 just changed WOW from a theme park MMO to a multiplayer game. But where SOE failed Blizzard might just succeed.

I'm talking about the cross realm looking for group option. I didn't thought this option was important when I heard about it. I thought it was just some small change to make the game a little bit more user friendly.

But I was checking the whole evening how my girlfriend played WOW after this patch 3.3. She is an ordinary WOW player. She has several characters. She is leveling them as quickly as possible. She has joined some guilds and made a lot of friends. She doing instances and raids with her friends almost every day - playing about 5-6 hours every day.

That was before patch 3.3. After the patch she just loves the cross realm looking for group option. The whole evening she is doing instances with this option. She isn't playing with her guild or other friends, she isn't chatting with them. She almost completely forgot them.

How is this option working. You chose the instance that you want to do, you specify the role that you want to play (dps, tank, healer) and you press a button. After some seconds you are in a instance with some other random players from all the servers in one region. You never met them before and you probably will never meet them again after this instance. Then you are doing the instance. If some player leaves - no problem there are other players in the queue and instantly you get a new player.

When I asked her why isn't she doing the instances with her friends she answered that it is more efficient this way and you level and gear up more quickly. You are doing exactly the instance that you want and you are doing it immediately. This is the fastest way to level up and to gear up. During the evening she checked with some of her friends. They were doing the same.

So how will players play WOW after this patch? I think this patch will destroy most of the guilds. You don't need them anymore for doing instances. Players will level solo as quickly as possible. And they will be doing instances with random players from all the servers in a region. When your character is level 80 you can put him in a city and he wont have to leave the city ever again. Just an ordinary multiplayer game. But I think that most of the players will love it and this will be a commercial success for Blizzard.

The same way we always have just now we don't have to spend an hour putting together a group that might fall apart doing heroics. It isn't a bad thing nor does it change the game. Many people still find groups the regular way. Your completely overreacting. Also now people can find groups for dungeons that most don't run anymore.

Originally posted by Fyendiar

The cross server battlegrounds removed most of the fun for me from battleground pvp.  Before the queue's were a lot longer, but you got to know the enemy and the combat at least had some feeling of worth to it. Once that system was introduced the queue's were extremely short, but the fun was almost completely gone.

I made a lot of friends in the past while pugging, most pugs were crap, but some gave me longlasting friends. Now that is gone as well. Ah well, things change, people change and both wow and myself have changed in opposite directions. At least I still got some fond memories of the game, but I am beginning to think that after this even the next expansion won't get me to play again.

I was thinking of going back to wow lately, but this new cross server LFG system made me decide otherwise.

i couldn´t have said it better, how anyone can think that the changes are for good? I don´t get it.

(stoped playing anyways months ago)