Yesterday, I posted that I had decided to play WoW a bit more. By the end of the evening, though, I had cancelled my account.
The reason: I joined an LFR run, and it was absolutely atrocious. Tanks letting the mobs cleave into the group. People (non-tanks) running off and pulling extra packs in an attempt to clear things faster. Rushing ahead and starting the boss fight so that people get locked out.
It was such a bad experience that I asked myself if getting the Legendary ring was worth a couple more months of this. I decided it was not. Then I asked myself if getting flying was worth a couple months of grinding blue bars, and decided that was not worth it either.
The end result is that I cancelled my WoW account.
Now, I don't know if it will stick, or if I'll get bored and start playing again. I'll probably check Legion out, I guess.
Somewhere along the line, WoW lost its basic group gameplay "skeleton". Even though WoW is technically a trinity game, it no longer feels like a trinity game. It feels closer to a zerg than to anything else. And the zerg is simply not fun.
It's the consequence of making LFR be "tourist mode". People ignore mechanics and instead zerg things down. On my alts I would see tanks routinely join groups and ask instructions on how to do boss fights. Heck, on Socrethar it is common for a dps do the robot since tanks often don't know how to do its (dumbed down to two buttons) mechanics. :sigh:
ReplyDeleteLFR Archimonde was a massive wipefest because Blizzard intentionally decided to make it hard 'because it is the last boss of the expansion'. You would see groups wipe upwards of 10 times before people were convinced that on this *one* fight mechanics actually matter. It was so bad that people would yell and curse at you for suggesting that folks try to do mechanics and that everyone needed to wipe fast so to get to a magic number of determination stacks.
At least the waves of large nerfs to LFR Archimonde shows Blizzard realized that switching raiding philosophies at the last moment was a bad idea. Siege of Orgrimmar showed that making hard *LFR* fights was a bad idea -- I once zoned into 10 stacks of determination on Spoils of Pandaria (!) -- but their solution hasn't been much of a success either. It was ironic that you needed Silver Proving Grounds to randomly queue for Heroic dungeons and so-so gear, but LFR with its better gear didn't even have that low of a bar to competency.
I think it's a bit more than just making the mechanics ignorable, though that contributes. In some ways it feels like basic group play is ignorable now, not just mechanics. Like there's zero consequence to doing something stupid like pulling extra trash packs or whatever.
DeleteIt's been that way in LFR since Dragon Soul in my admittedly anecdotal experience. It's just that the earlier raids would tend to wipe so that would tamp down on the more obnoxious people.The 'ignore mechanics/group play' crowd was already there, it's just now they can successfully get away with it now.
DeleteMy suggestion for anyone doing LFR is to do it the first or second night after a raid reset (Tuesday or Wednesday in the US). There seems to be a more serious & competent group that runs on those nights versus the weekends.
LFR isn't the best place to get a feel of it. Gear up in Tanaan jungle and get onto normal HFC. But sorry to see you go.
ReplyDeleteActually, I am geared enough from playing earlier that I don't need Tanaan Jungle. But normal would require a guild or Party Finder, and that's really more effort than I want to put in.
DeleteI am raiding 2 nights a week in SWTOR, and that's pretty much my limit for extended content at the moment.
I ended up almost completely avoiding HFC LFR, doing 2 nights a week normal mode with a casual guild instead. It's been a much more pleasant experience. We even just got H HFA down, which was sweet.
DeleteNot bothering with HFC LFR on alts.
It doesn't even resemble a zerg at that point; just anarchy.
ReplyDeleteAnd you didn't even mention the toxic atmosphere of Trade Chat, which is (frankly) amazing.
Yeah, anarchy is a good description of the situation.
DeleteI don't find Trade Chat that bad. It's no worse than Fleet chat in SWTOR, or Idyllshire chat in FFXIV.
I disagree about fleet chat in SWTOR; it'll take a while for it to reach the Trade Chat racist/misogynist sewer.
DeleteI'm enjoying Wow again, but I have never done a raid, so I haven't that experience. You make me wonder if it would be a good time to slide in and try them out if nobody else knows what they're doing either :)
ReplyDeleteHonestly, raids are fun. There's a feeling to working together as a large group that's really unmatched in the rest of the MMO.
DeleteYou could try them now and no one would notice your mistakes, but at the same time, you won't get that feeling above, so you'll kind of miss the point.
However, I do encourage you to find a Normal guild or raid, and give them a try. It's not really much harder than regular 5-mans.
LFR is atrocious. I don't ask my raiders to do LFR just for Legendary quest drops because it's *that* bad. I'd rather just...never play WoW again then step into LFR.
ReplyDeleteBut frankly, Normal+? Never been better to be quite honest. The organized raiding is as amazing as ever imho.
It's good to hear that the organized WoW raiding is still well done. However, I already have 2 nights a week of organized SWTOR raids, so I'd rather not join a regular WoW raid.
DeleteAhem.... You're supposed to be a WoW veteran.... And you're surprised that LFR runs are bad? I've been timewalking and running some instances, and I never had any experience as bad as yours.....
ReplyDeleteI don't know, they've never felt this bad before. Maybe it's because I've been doing the equivalent in FFXIV (Alexander Normal) and that actually feels like reasonable raiding.
DeleteDue to time constraints, I have been running LFR as my only form of raiding, and my experiences have rarely been as you described. Sure, there are the occasional bad groups. But by and large the groups have enough competent players to make quick work of an LFR wing.
ReplyDeleteIt's not really about success or failure. The group in my post killed everything. It just does not feel like playing in an inter-dependent team any more. It feels like a zerg.
DeleteI'll echo the whole "LFR is designed for people so bad they can't get into or make a Normal/Heroic/Mythic group" thing. What else did you expect, honestly? You have no raid leader creating accountability either mechanics or interaction wise.
ReplyDeleteOn top of that, you're making factually incorrect statements which I find disappointing -- stuff like "Even though WoW is technically a trinity game, it no longer feels like a trinity game. It feels closer to a zerg than to anything else. And the zerg is simply not fun."
That statement is false in Mythic raids. It is false in Heroic raids. False in Normal raids. False in Mythic dungeons. False in Challenge Modes. False in Heroic Dungeons (at least back in the first few months of the expansion).
LFR is the "story mode" version of raiding just like you'd find in a single player RPG -- where you can do whatever you want and never die or proceed with the "game." Does that mean, say, Mass Effect 3 is nothing but a zerg because it has a story mode difficulty?
You're better than this.
P.S. I don't know what nights your SWTOR raids are on, but I run a casual HFC raid on Wednesday nights at 9 CST if you wanted to go, which would avoid you having to look for a group via Group Finder (since you're wanting to not join a guild regardless it seems).
I've been thinking about this and have decided to try Raiding. I'll need to gear up an appropriately leveled character. Yours is the first Wow blog I ever read because I was looking for tips for my Paladin. My thought is, I always play Paladin, Shadow Priest and Warlock well in dungeons, so I should pick one of those for a first try. Any advice? Also, what Raid should I try first to see if I do well and like the format? Thanks!
ReplyDeleteI hope you don't mind, but I spun my response to this into a separate post: Starting raiding in Warlords of Draenor
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