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[Morn]

Part of the problem (IMO) with WoW is that you need to run dungeons over and over to grind badges to get gear to run raids that you run over and over to get drops or badges to get gear so you can do the next raid they release.

To me that isn't fun. I like beating an instance once, maybe twice if there are some extra bosses we skipped. After I clear an instance I want to be done with it, and I want a reward for clearing it. I don't need to get the absolute best drop, but I think each player in a 5 man raid should be guaranteed a good drop that is enough so that they don't need to run it again to proceed to more content. To offset this, instances should be more difficult to beat the first time.

Then you're going to hate TOR.

 

[Moaradin]

So you mean the community wont be completely ruined by having a cross server dungeon finder? That's great. It does much, MUCH more harm than it does good. Maybe something that finds players ON YOUR SERVER and doesn't instantly teleport you into the instance, completely killing the persistent worlds portion of a MMO and turning it into a glorified instanced game, then I would be fine with it.

 

[Gvaz]

What's wrong with the dungeon finder? I thought it was one of the best things to happen with wow.

 

[Castor Krieg]

I actually loved the amount of effort I had to put into finding a group and then actually traveling there.
The level of excitement of actually doing a dungeon is so much higher than just pressing the queue button and waiting for 5 minutes till you're grouped with a bunch of people you know nothing about and are insta ported to the dungeon you wanna do.

Not having a dungeon finder system:

Hurrah!

Getting frustrated instead of enjoying the game: yay?

So you mean the community wont be completely ruined by having a cross server dungeon finder? That's great. It does much, MUCH more harm than it does good. Maybe something that finds players ON YOUR SERVER and doesn't instantly teleport you into the instance, completely killing the persistent worlds portion of a MMO and turning it into a glorified instanced game, then I would be fine with it.

Why so many of you think SWTOR will handle things differently than WoW? It's a copy-paste of WoW's ideas in SW universe.

 

[Einbroch]

What's wrong with the dungeon finder? I thought it was one of the best things to happen with wow.

Dungeon finder confined to your server only: fantastic
Dungeon finder with everyone on every server: terrible

 

[LowParry]

Sort of. What really happens is that people just spam trade chat. I've run a few PUG raids this way, but I was just there to fill a role that was lacking. The DF allows more people to run more dungeons, especially while leveling. Being able to pop in and out while questing beat the hell out of standing in Org and spamming trade chat.

And you wouldn't run into the problem if you were part of a guild. GAF should have plenty of active players to avoid spamming trade. It will still happen of course, and I saw no problem with it in Rift those first couple of months. But in the end, you'll see the same problem arise. A near hour wait for a dps class to find a group while tanks and healers have it easy of waiting five minutes tops (or ten).

 

[BattleMonkey]

Dungeon finder confined to your server only: fantastic
Dungeon finder with everyone on every server: terrible

This

 

[Dakota47]

I actually loved the amount of effort I had to put into finding a group and then actually traveling there.
The level of excitement of actually doing a dungeon is so much higher than just pressing the queue button and waiting for 5 minutes till you're grouped with a bunch of people you know nothing about and are insta ported to the dungeon you wanna do.

Not having a dungeon finder system:

Hurrah!

I can be nostalgic about the time that - as a sub level 40 Alliance toon - you had to walk all the way to Scarlet Monastery in order to run a dungeon. The first time I did that was an adventure in itself. The second and third time were pretty cool also. But by the tenth time I was quite fed up with it. As stated, I do appreciate that BW doesn't do cross server dungeon finding because but I would really like a local dungeon thingamajig.

 

[AzureNightmare]

Nothing's more exciting then spamming trade channel for 10 minutes......flying out to the dungeon for 10 minutes.....sitting around waiting for everyone else to arrive for 10 minutes......then finally starting only to have your tank or healer disconnect after 5 minutes.

Nothing more exciting than waiting on the dungeon finder for 20 minutes only to get a group with some holier than thou asswipe who slings every insult under the sun your way when things go awry because he fucked up and wont admit to it.

 

[Moaradin]

Why so many of you think SWTOR will handle things differently than WoW? It's a copy-paste of WoW's ideas in SW universe.

What? They have came out and SAID their opinions on Cross-server dungeon finders. They say it hurts the community, which is 100% right. That's completely the opposite of what blizzard seems to think.

 

[LowParry]

I can be nostalgic about the time that - as a sub level 40 Alliance toon - you had to walk all the way to Scarlet Monastery in order to run a dungeon. The first time I did that was an adventure in itself. The second and third time were pretty cool also. But by the tenth time I was quite fed up with it. As stated, I do appreciate that BW doesn't do cross server dungeon finding because but I would really like a local dungeon thingamajig.

Warlocks were awesome those days for summons. Then when Blizz put in the summon stones, those were something I really loved having. Now? You're just ported into the dungeon. Everything is so care bear now about WoW. It can really ruin the experience for new players.

 

[border]

What's wrong with the dungeon finder? I thought it was one of the best things to happen with wow.

To try and put it nicely and concisely, there are people who believe that it should take the better part of an hour to put a group together because it will either "hurt the community" or "ruin the immersion".

The "hurt the community" people see some inherent value in the interaction that takes place in group formation. The "ruin the immersion" people think that the sense of a huge world is messed up if you don't have to manually travel to a dungeon every single time you want to run it.

 

[kodt]

Then you're going to hate TOR.

Yeah, that's what I am afraid of. I might just level and quit at endgame like I do with WoW.

The "hurt the community" people see some inherent value in the interaction that takes place in group formation. The "ruin the immersion" people think that the sense of a huge world is messed up if you don't have to manually travel to a dungeon every single time you want to run it.

I think it does hurt the community and ruin the immersion. But making the trek out to do an dungeon wouldn't be so bad if you only had to do it once or twice. If you are going to force players to grind dungeons then you might as well have a dungeon finder.

 

[Enosh]

dammit I am so divided on this game

+playing as sorcerer looks awesome, basicly a mage class with a lightsaber
+raids sound just like they are in WoW which was a huge draw of that game for me, multistage bosses, nice medium sized groups (15 or 16 isn't it?), bosses have multiple stages you have to learn etc
+the story thingy with voiced dialog sounds nice and I am quite sure motherfucking Kain from LoK is one of the voice actors

-art and graphics in general look kinda meh
-the sorcerer class can also be a healer, which just like in wow means one thing, everyone and their grandmother will shit on you if you aren't a healer, since everyone expect you to be one, even more true if other ranged dps can do more damage and has worse healing, it's basicly being a shadow priest, no one wants you and no one needs you
-the part of getting to the raids looks like it's just borring as fuck grinding, wanted to shoot myself at certain points in wow already
-subscription, not exactly swimming in money here

idk, realy divided, not wanting to make this into a vs but it's kinda similar with GW2, both have things I love, but both have also things I fear I won't like ("raids" in GW2 seem to be way worse, 5 man only, and the open world ones seem like they are just mindless bashing on the boss since making them complex like the wow ones means one idiot can fuck you up, they have to be fool proof beacose of their open world nature)
but I am still 100% buying GW2 for the simple reason of it having no subscription, even if I won't like the end game content I can still get quite a few decent hours out of it to justify the purchase, can't realy do this with ToR

 

[Castor Krieg]

What? They have came out and SAID their opinions on Cross-server dungeon finders. They say it hurts the community, which is 100% right. That's completely the opposite of what blizzard seems to think.

Dude, this is Bioware we are talking about - These guys perfected focus group development technique. They are doing this to appear anti-WoW. Dungeon Finder will get patched within 2 months.

Nothing more exciting than waiting on the dungeon finder for 20 minutes only to get a group with some holier than thou asswipe who slings every insult under the sun your way when things go awry because he fucked up and wont admit to it.

Why are you waiting? You can be doing other stuff in the meantime. Oh wait, without the Dungeon Finder you cannot.

 

[The Lamonster]

Part of the problem (IMO) with WoW is that you need to run dungeons over and over to grind badges to get gear to run raids that you run over and over to get drops or badges to get gear so you can do the next raid they release.

To me that isn't fun. I like beating an instance once, maybe twice if there are some extra bosses we skipped. After I clear an instance I want to be done with it, and I want a reward for clearing it. I don't need to get the absolute best drop, but I think each player in a 5 man raid should be guaranteed a good drop that is enough so that they don't need to run it again to proceed to more content. To offset this, instances should be more difficult to beat the first time.

Dungeon Finder wouldn't be necessary if you only needed to run it a few times. A LFG tool would work fine. But since you need to run multiple instances every day for weeks to get badges you sort of need a dungeon finder to prevent yourself from going crazy. I just think it is a silly system that artificially extends game life by making you replay the same content over and over.

This is why I think all MMOs need a player driven end game that is more dynamic. Such as world PVP with real benefits, legendary items that can be stolen/looted, guild housing that can be attacked/defended, etc...

I actually loved the amount of effort I had to put into finding a group and then actually traveling there.
The level of excitement of actually doing a dungeon is so much higher than just pressing the queue button and waiting for 5 minutes till you're grouped with a bunch of people you know nothing about and are insta ported to the dungeon you wanna do.

Not having a dungeon finder system:

Hurrah!

Two great posts. The reason I was relieved when Blizz implemented the DF is because of how many times you have to run their dungeons. If that wasn't the case I'd be thrilled to work harder to find a group and travel to the dungeon manually.

 

[LowParry]

Part of the problem (IMO) with WoW is that you need to run dungeons over and over to grind badges to get gear to run raids that you run over and over to get drops or badges to get gear so you can do the next raid they release.

To be fair, the loot system is different because it's based on a loot bag system to which every player will get a piece of their loot. This is with Operations but for the 5 mans, I'm not really sure if that same loot system applies. I'd would assume yes. So in a way, it saves you from less runs because you know you'll be getting a piece of loot that fits your character.

 

[border]

Nothing more exciting than waiting on the dungeon finder for 20 minutes only to get a group with some holier than thou asswipe who slings every insult under the sun your way when things go awry because he fucked up and wont admit to it.

I've rarely had this problem with dungeon finder -- and I don't see how the exclusion of a dungeon finger is going to prevent people from being an asswipe.

If a pug is going to fail, a pug is going to fail. At least with the Dungeon Finder you could fail in 20 minutes instead of taking an over an hour. At least with the Dungeon Finder you weren't up shit creek when your tank or healer disconnected or was unsatisfactory.

 

[Filth]

To be fair, the loot system is different because it's based on a loot bag system to which every player will get a piece of their loot. This is with Operations but for the 5 mans, I'm not really sure if that same loot system applies. I'd would assume yes. So in a way, it saves you from less runs because you know you'll be getting a piece of loot that fits your character.

you have a chance to get loot. i remeber them saying if you get a drop it will be for your class but its not a 100% that you will get a drop and if you dont get an item drop you get some sort of badge drop.

 

[Alex]

Why are you waiting? You can be doing other stuff in the meantime. Oh wait, without the Dungeon Finder you cannot.

Haha, other stuff in WoW, good one, enjoy your two recycled troll dungeons from five years ago because that's your entire non-raid PvE end game.

I've rarely had this problem with dungeon finder -- and I don't see how the exclusion of a dungeon finger is going to prevent people from being an asswipe.

The same way it did in WoW, by forging server communities and having repercussions and bad reputations formed from that.

I'm not against a dungeon finder though, I'm just against how WoW implemented it.

 

[kodt]

To be fair, the loot system is different because it's based on a loot bag system to which every player will get a piece of their loot. This is with Operations but for the 5 mans, I'm not really sure if that same loot system applies. I'd would assume yes. So in a way, it saves you from less runs because you know you'll be getting a piece of loot that fits your character.

Yeah, I was happy to hear about that. I don't like "dumbing things down" but I also don't see the point of running the same thing over and over. I would rather there be skill based requirements to get the best drops such as "down this boss in under 5 minutes and you get the best drops" etc.. This gives you a real incentive to improve and earn a drop instead of just getting lucky or grinding.

 

[Morn]

To be fair, the loot system is different because it's based on a loot bag system to which every player will get a piece of their loot. This is with Operations but for the 5 mans, I'm not really sure if that same loot system applies. I'd would assume yes. So in a way, it saves you from less runs because you know you'll be getting a piece of loot that fits your character.

WoW has the loot bag system for the 1-60 game too. You still have to run dungeons over and over. After 60 the bag is replaced with badges.

 

[Dakota47]

The "hurt the community" people see some inherent value in the interaction that takes place in group formation.

It is not just group formation but also actually playing together. While leveling up you will run into the same bunch of players every time you do a flashpoint or an operation. You get to know them, add them to your friend list if they are friendly people or know how play the game well. Heck, you might even invite them into your guild (or get invited foreveralone.jpg). With a cross server dungeon finder you don't have that.

 

[Morn]

Haha, other stuff in WoW, good one, enjoy your two recycled troll dungeons from five years ago because that's your entire non-raid PvE end game.

Really? I have 11 Heroics to run, not 2.

 

[LowParry]

you have a chance to get loot. i remeber them saying if you get a drop it will be for your class but its not a 100% that you will get a drop and if you dont get an item drop you get some sort of badge drop.

Which to me, will encourage those who hate to raid because of the little to no chance they'll get loot. Getting that bag, gives them that change and the badges they can collect to purchase more gear from.

WoW has the loot bag system for the 1-60 game too. You still have to run dungeons over and over. After 60 the bag is replaced with badges.

True. But items that are pretty insignificant that end up getting replaced at the next quest turn in you do.

 

[Castor Krieg]

Haha, other stuff in WoW, good one, enjoy your two recycled troll dungeons from five years ago because that's your entire non-raid PvE end game.

I don't play WoW anymore, nor any other MMO. Try harder.

Also, you are aware SWTOR will be exactly the same? The only MMO that shows promise with end-game and PvP is GW2.

 

[Alex]

Really? I have 11 Heroics to run, not 2.

So, tell me, after you've run the launch heroics once what benefit do you gain from doing them again?

Oh, that's right, you get half the valor and to do content so easy you could probably just slam your fist on the keyboard and succeed.

So, if you want full valor, which is the sole and only reason anyone is running a heroic at this point and to be the slightest bit enthused, you get to run the same troll dungeons from a half decade ago into the floorboards, seven times a week. Yum yum, Blizzard game design.

Also, you are aware SWTOR will be exactly the same?

SWTOR could be another toss away like Warhammer, Conan and everything else in recent years in the end, it doesn't mean that modern WoW isn't a gigantic piece of shit though.

 

[Dysun]

Dungeon Finder should be a staple of MMOs for years to come.

The only complaint I can see to it is that it hurts the community and if you limit to each individual server that problem is gone. And even that is a huge stretch to me, if you want to meet new people and talk their are a million other ways to do it and its not like you cant find people in trade for dungeons anyway

 

[Morn]

People, please don't mind Alex. He's still reeling from the cosmic disaster that FFXIV was.

 

[Dresden]

-the sorcerer class can also be a healer, which just like in wow means one thing, everyone and their grandmother will shit on you if you aren't a healer, since everyone expect you to be one, even more true if other ranged dps can do more damage and has worse healing, it's basicly being a shadow priest, no one wants you and no one needs you

You guys haven't played WoW recently.

 

[LowParry]

I don't play WoW anymore, nor any other MMO. Try harder.

Also, you are aware SWTOR will be exactly the same? The only MMO that shows promise with end-game and PvP is GW2.

All GW2 has for end game is 5 mans. PvP is still up in the air. Game isn't even coming out till next year and they still haven't even revealed the last class (and I will laugh hard if it isn't the Mes). Don't spread shit for lies.

 

[Castor Krieg]

SWTOR could be another toss away like Warhammer, Conan and everything else in recent years in the end, it doesn't mean that modern WoW isn't a gigantic piece of shit though.

I very much agree.

Btw, is your avatar RoF chick? Is that outfit in the game?

 

[border]

I think it does hurt the community and ruin the immersion. But making the trek out to do an dungeon wouldn't be so bad if you only had to do it once or twice. If you are going to force players to grind dungeons then you might as well have a dungeon finder.

Some people just like dungeons though, and want to run them over and over again. Nobody is ever "forced" to run them except for endgame progression. There's other stuff to do in both WoW and TOR besides the dungeons.

With a cross server dungeon finder you don't have that.

The cross-server aspect of the dungeon finder is the only thing that can cause problems. You could still build community with a local server dungeon finder -- you certainly don't have to go back to the archaic vanilla WoW LFG crap.

To be honest, I feel like playing vanilla WoW made me put a lot more Non-Friends on my Friends list than it had me adding actual friends. Which is to say most of the names on my Friends list were just there as a reminder NOT to play with certain people. So I'd have this "Friend" but with a note attached saying something like "DON'T EVER LET HIM TANK" or "DISCONNECTS RANDOMLY" or "LEAVES AFTER THE BOSS HE WANTED DIES".

 

[Alex]

People, please don't mind Alex. He's still reeling from the cosmic disaster that FFXIV was.

Er, what? I don't own Final Fantasy XIV, nor have I laid a finger on it beyond one days worth of play in beta.

But I would agree that one day entitles me to some free therapy, yes.

Btw, is your avatar RoF chick? Is that outfit in the game?

Yes and yes.

it's basicly being a shadow priest, no one wants you and no one needs you

Shadow Priest was useless (besides PvP) in classic, fucking AWESOME in BC (and every caster would claw at the walls to get you in their group) and another generic cog in LK/Cata =/

 

[Enosh]

You guys haven't played WoW recently.

nope, stoped somewhere after BC, some 4 years ago, I am talking from that point of view

 

[erragal]

I don't play WoW anymore, nor any other MMO. Try harder.

Also, you are aware SWTOR will be exactly the same? The only MMO that shows promise with end-game and PvP is GW2.

GW2 endgame PVE is going to be very small group oriented, at least the instanced content. There's also no real indication that anyone there can design a complex and challenging PVE encounter; they're no more promising than SWTOR in that regard.

Rift is also doing a far better job at content delivery than Wow for this past year and have shown at least some ability to create meaningful and dynamic PVE encounters. Though nothing quite to the level of a Vashj, KT, Sunwell, or Ulduar quality it's pretty impressive considering their game has been out for barely half a year.

It'll be interesting if Bioware can set up a great content pipeline for PVE endgame encounters; they have a great license/setting but will they bother to make it worth paying for month after month.

 

[LowParry]

Though nothing quite to the level of a Vashj, KT, Sunwell, or Ulduar quality it's pretty impressive considering their game has been out for barely half a year.

Best dungeon that Blizz has put out.

 

[Moaradin]

Best dungeon that Blizz has put out.

Yup. Too bad Icecrown never lived up to it. So much potential. They should have stayed with the Ulduar way of doing Hardmodes. Why they would stick with the TOC way, which is widely considered the worst raid in WoW history, is beyond me.

 

[Dresden]

nope, stoped somewhere after BC, some 4 years ago, I am talking from that point of view

One benefit of homogenization (along with all the negatives) has been that hybrids are more viable than ever now, and accepted as well. Shadow priests are top dps.

 

[border]

Haha, other stuff in WoW, good one, enjoy your two recycled troll dungeons from five years ago because that's your entire non-raid PvE end game.

His point is that there's other stuff to do in WoW while you wait for your group to come together. You can run daily quests or check the auction house or work on your gathering profession(s) or do any other other solo stuff in the game. Before the Dungeon Finder you were pretty much stuck in a major city spamming the trade channel, and you had to devote all your attention to that. With dungeon finder you can at least get something productive done while you wait.

 

[Alex]

His point is that there's other stuff to do in WoW while you wait for your group to come together. You can run daily quests or check the auction house or work on your gathering profession(s) or do any other other solo stuff in the game. Before the Dungeon Finder you were pretty much stuck in a major city spamming the trade channel, and you had to devote all your attention to that. With dungeon finder you can at least get something productive done while you wait.

You could pull a group together while doing all that in the past though even through mass communication, that's back when they had global channels.

You can certainly do quests/check auctions while posting in Global LFG.

But most of the time I didn't, back then, if I wanted a group I used my friends list, or other relations that I met on the server and I knew a lot of people. That's what's a bit sad to me in modern WoW, my friends list is entirely empty because the social climate was dead. The world is empty, everyone just random queues, there's no real guild to guild rivalries anymore, it was sad.

While it was ultimately a bad thing (due to the queue times) some of my favorite bits of PvP even are when we'd do a post-raid game or two in classic and we'd go up against our server rival which was a Horde raiding guild, it made it really intense and man were there some forum arguements over that shit.

I see the benefit of a dungeon finder, and I'm for a dungeon finder, I just don't like the blatantly cross server anonymous stuff. There's better ways to handle it, IMO.

 

[erragal]

Best dungeon that Blizz has put out.

I read awhile back in the rumor mill it was the last dungeon by their 'A' team before moving on to Titan. Certainly feels that way compared to Argent Tournament/Icecrown (I haven't played Cata). Personally I prefer Sunwell and Vashj from a mechanical standpoint but Ulduar has much tighter art and theme design.

To tie this into the thread: I actually like what I've seen for Well of Eternity; it seems like a great basic place to start for Bioware's first major group based encounter. I'm really a big fan of their 8/16 raid size choice as well (Never been a 40 man person, the politics/industrial organization requirements aren't worth the psychic gratification).

It's also refreshing to see them think outside of the box and try to create 'encounters' instead of just 'kill the boss'. It's also a good way for their design team to learn how to merge the puzzles into the game mechanics themselves (One of the reasons I feel like Lady Vashj is the best raid encounter ever designed).

 

[Emitan]

Don't understand why people are against dungeon finders. It's not "immersive" to hunt through chat logs looking for a party.

 

[Cystm]

I remember when an evening's worth of WoW was basically me standing around trying to get an UBRS group together and failing pathetically even though I was a tank and had the dungeon key. I don't know if that makes me a "WoW veteran" but it sure as hell makes me not look forward to going back to the old system. Dungeon Finder was not perfect, but it was a hell of a lot better than the old way of doing things.

I don't mind that I cannot find other players on other servers, but they need something better than WoW's old LFG tool. It blows my mind that I won't even be able to tell if someone is heals, tank, or DPS. So you look up a dungeon, you get a list of names and classes of people that want to run that dungeon -- then what? I have to ask every single person on the list whether they are tank, healer or DPS?

When setting up groups you had to know what to look for in a party member. Easy examples would be the old gear inspection and class value to the group based on what instance you were running. Class was so integral to your groups success that if you had an under geared shaman you would take them over a geared hunter or insert dps here. So if you were not a tank or healer, you got to wait longer.

I imagine in ToR Class value discrepancies are alleviated by the fact that classes are more balanced (based on the information I have seen) so that you are not going to have to worry so much about finding that class that fits into your groups holy trinity formula. That alone will make finding group so much easier by comparison.

Group size is another factor to be considered. Their dungeons or flashpoints or whatever the fuck they are calling them require less people to complete.

Aside from that, I met more people through pugging 5 mans in trade than I ever did after they introduced the group finder. Add cross server to that and you just didn't even bother trying to communicate anymore because if they were bad you could just kick and replace.

I met some people that actually became RL friends that up until we all just quit playing WoW would met up at Blizzcon. IMO having been able to meet them in a string of BRD runs that was initially set up by one guy spamming "LF4M BRD" is fucking awesome.

 

[border]

I never had that much success with using Global LFG exclusively. Putting together a group manually is such an ordeal, you want your messages to be seen by the widest possible audience. I'd rather spam General or Trade in Orgrimmar than run around the world wondering if anybody is even listening to the LFG channel.

I understand why people don't like WoW's dungeon finder, but I have no idea why people like the idea of going back to the nonsense group-finding of vanillla/Burning Crusade.

 

[Alex]

Don't understand why people are against dungeon finders. It's not "immersive" to hunt through chat logs looking for a party.

It's not about immersion though. It's about the health of the social climate of the server. I think a lot of people are cool with dungeon finders and tools they just don't necessarily want Blizzard's solution to it.

I was giddy about the dungeon finder when it hit WoW but seeing the effects it had on the game on a long term player was pretty shitty. That's also due in part to Blizzard's game design though, Blizzard has a difficult time properly balancing and scaling dungeons to a large audience and they always wind up taking some extreme. (personally I thought they got the difficulty right at Cata launch, just that the damn things were far too long for a mismanaged PUG)

 

[erragal]

Don't understand why people are against dungeon finders. It's not "immersive" to hunt through chat logs looking for a party.

Cross Server dungeon finder eliminates individual server communities. It makes it much more difficult to find who the good players are in your community to build a guild with if you aren't even playing them. Keep it restricted to players on your server and it becomes a much different type of tool, particularly in a game like SWTOR where teleporting to operation entrances isn't going to break immersion because they're scattered across the galaxy anyhow.

 

[erragal]

When setting up groups you had to know what to look for in a party member. Easy examples would be the old gear inspection and class value to the group based on what instance you were running. Class was so integral to your groups success that if you had an under geared shaman you would take them over a geared hunter or insert dps here. So if you were not a tank or healer, you got to wait longer.

I imagine in ToR Class value discrepancies are alleviated by the fact that classes are more balanced (based on the information I have seen) so that you are not going to have to worry so much about finding that class that fits into your groups holy trinity formula. That alone will make finding group so much easier by comparison.

Group size is another factor to be considered. Their dungeons or flashpoints or whatever the fuck they are calling them require less people to complete.

Aside from that, I met more people through pugging 5 mans in trade than I ever did after they introduced the group finder. Add cross server to that and you just didn't even bother trying to communicate anymore because if they were bad you could just kick and replace.

I met some people that actually became RL friends that up until we all just quit playing WoW would met up at Blizzcon. IMO having been able to meet them in a string of BRD runs that was initially set up by one guy spamming "LF4M BRD" is fucking awesome.

A whole lot of this! There are a lot of skills and teamwork that you learn from those failed attempts at forming groups as well as skilled teaching less knowledgeable players rather than just kicking them because of how much more challenging it would be to replace them.


I also want to add that there's significant value to keeping your group size low, especially when compared to the number of classes you have. Minimizing duplication of classes within groups has an enormous positive psychological effect upon the way players view their individual class choice; particularly in a game like TOR where a huge percentage of the player base is already going to lean towards force users it's even more important for them to keep the group size count down.

Selfishly I like that 4 player operations means my friend (BH tank/dps) and I (IA medic) should be able to duo a lot of the content if we play well.

 

[Fonds]

I guess there are pro's and cons with the dungeon finder system.

Yes looking for people to form a group could really be a bitch in the vanilla days. But then again, if you had a decent guild it really wasn't that much of a problem.

The biggest problem for me with the dungeon finder is that it takes such a massive chunk of immersion out of the game.
You dont get the sense traveling large distances, seeing the scenery change around you. A lot of hard work that blizzard put into making the right setting for a dungeon goes completely to waste.
I like seeing and experiencing the large worlds that MMO's have to offer.

If I wanted to play one dungeon after another and sit in a lobby (SW or ogrimmar) for the rest of the time it would hardly need to be an MMO. But I guess peoples views vary on that, and legitimately respect that.

 

[border]

I imagine in ToR Class value discrepancies are alleviated by the fact that classes are more balanced (based on the information I have seen) so that you are not going to have to worry so much about finding that class that fits into your groups holy trinity formula. That alone will make finding group so much easier by comparison.

Everything I've seen thus far makes me believe that the tank/heals/DPS trinity is at least as rigid as it is in WoW.

Beta Tester Q&A:

Q: I'm curious how rigid BW is making their trinity system. Do tanks mitigate a ton of damage and anything else won't stand a chance? Is it at all feasible to have a Jedi Sentinel tank a flashpoint or would you absolutely rely on a true tank for any group content?

A: Non-Tanks ACs can tank the lower stuff, but once you get into the 20's it's pointless, the damage they take is much more then the healing the group can put out unless you run Sent/3 Healers.

It sounds almost exactly like WoW, where any mail-wearing class could get away with tanking at low levels, but eventually you needed both plate and a mitigation spec to stand a chance......then eventually you needed plate, mitigation spec, and a lot of defense gear.

The difficulty of finding people for particular roles will probably depend on itemization and how easy it is for people to switch their talent specs. Bioware hasn't said anything about dual specs, but I don't think it's in the beta at all.