I hated AoC long before F2P came along.

I really think they should have done just a server wide LFD first, tested that out for a few months, and then decided if they needed to make it server wide.

The one thing I love about it, is for leveling dungeons. Even if you only wanted to do it once or twice for your quests. It was almost impossible trying to find a group that just happened to be in a capital city, make it all the way out there, just to have someone drop or just not want to run out there also. Back or Org, find a new person, and process repeats, or someone quits halfway thru, and the group falls apart.

That problem rarely happens in heroics, usually if someone drops, someone would grab a guildy or you just 4 manned it.

LFD was server wide at first all the way into Wrath. It was shitty and still took you 2 hours to make a group. If anything it helped the community since unless you were guilded you mind as well have accepted you were never gonna do most heroics.

I really think that F2P and microtransactions will take over from monthly subs at some point.

If you think about it, companies actually make MORE from them than a sub. People buy things more often.

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Slywyn's Fanfiction Listing

Not really. Only like 6% of the population of your average F2P game actually buys anything and even then 4% of that group tries to spend as little as possible.

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When it comes right down to it, the future is free-to-play, unless you're WoW or an anomaly. WoW is a guaranteed sub from 5 million+ and then cash shop on top, if you're not as guaranteed you might as well let people in for free and then hope that some are fanatical enough for it to go to bank for it.

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Official Prince Kael'thas Sunstrider Harem member #42

You may call me G.P.A, Great Programmer Alice

You guys got numbers to back this up with?

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"A few nights back some guy threw a ball and told me to fetch. In response, I did the same, but with his head. Needless to say, he didn't have a witty comeback." - Sniffy Pete

That would belie all the gear and other items I see going around.

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Slywyn's Fanfiction Listing

I believe I got them from a Tobold article a few years old, let me see if I can't find it.

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Same here, at least in WoW. When Blizzard puts a mount or pet in the store I see them everywhere. With a single mount purchase you are paying for nearly two months worth of subscription time. Imagine the dough they would be raking in if they were serious about their digital shop and loaded it with all kinds of stuff.

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There's F2P where the P stands for cosmectic items and gay horses from space and there's F2P where the P stands for ridiculous weapons and armor, or, pay to win. First one is alright and I agree, probably the future.

About LFD ... I got a lot of spare time atm, so I started with a friends on a Classic EverQuest emu server (perfectly legal, no worries) and my god, it's fun.
The graphics are abysmal, the gameplay is slow, it takes hours to make a level and dying is harsh but it's just so much fun to sit on a beach and kill crocodiles for hours while actually TALKING to people. I met a girl from the US who was at the very same Tool concert I was because she toured after them.
I noticed how much I missed those things. Reputation should be a currency, even for the gamers outside of the raiding scene, those who just enjoy to trade and help.

Runescape i think it's slightly different, i think they have a very good P2P system and it's fun, and you can quit paying for a while and return to a whole new game a few months later(of course that becomes a pain in the ass when they release holyday items for members only)

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The LFD/LFR/RBG does need some tweaks it you ask me.

1) It should have a 2 minute period where it attempts to get as many people from the same server as possible, before it starts to check the mass server pool. If in those 2 minutes it can gather one of every spec required, it will do it all from the same server. If it is missing one of the specs, then it moves into the mass server pool to pull someone. It may suck for the "odd man out" in some cases, but I would prefer to be the odd man out on occasion if a good chunk of my dungeon runs end up being with people on my own server, people I can gain relationships with. In the case of Random BGs, it would just take from everyone in the server BG queue before pulling from the overflow queue.

2) They need to have a "cross server friendlist" and I don't mean "Real ID". One of the biggest reasons I rarely talk in a dungeon is because I know the people I am playing with, I will likely never see again. If I can add someone to a cross server friendlist, and I can talk with him and even invite him to dungeon runs using the new cross realm invite, it will go a long way for me to actual be more social with the people I play with, at least more then the occasional joke. I don't want to trust giving my real name to these people, however, until I actually trust them. That is why it can't be "Real ID".

3) Promote smaller guilds and guild alliances. Guild Leveling was a double edged sword in that it did promote decently established guilds to do more outside of raiding, due to guild achievements and challenges, but made it extremely hard for smaller guilds to level, thus destroying smaller communities. They need to fix that by making it easier for small guilds to level and maybe even add Guild Alliances so two guilds can join together and communicate with each other in a unique chat environment. That way some guilds can feel independent while also being part of a bigger picture.

4) Promote inter-server play with nice rewards. For instance, add SERVER challenges, similar to guild challenges. These will be things that can be done either daily or weekly, depending on the objective. Here are some examples of possible challenges they can add.

"Heroic Server" Do 500 "Max Level" Heroics with only people from your server. If successful, entire faction on server gets a bonus to gold, justice points, and/or valor points. Low level characters gain small amount of gold based on level. Just to be clear the total would be something worked towards by the server, not individuals, so once 500 server only groups have cleared max level heroics, it would finish.

"Control Everything" Own all World PVP objectives for a certain amount of time. If successful, entire faction on server get a bonus to gold, honor, and/or conquest points. Low level character gain small amount of gold based on level.

Not every server will complete every challenge all the time, and they should even add some that are very difficult like raid kill challenges. The biggest issue will be people migrating to other servers because they are more likely to beat challenges, and that is why I propose every server have an internal citizenship system. What do I mean? You start on that server, you gain all the bonuses automatically when a challenge is completed. You transfer from another server? You must TAKE PART in the challenges a certain amount before you get the bonuses gifted from them. You can't just join and then do the LFD everyday all the while you pull in extras stuff, you have to EARN the right to gain them by becoming part of the servers challenges. This will help promote the person getting integrated with the server. If he is a horrible player and ninjas all the time, he can get kicked out of the challenges and thus will never gain enough points towards his score to get the bonuses.

I love the LFD system, but I agree the community is suffering a lot because of it. They need to keep the system while adding more reasons to promote server play, both through the LFD and through bonuses.

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I meant as an automated queue that you could sit in and be teleported once a group was formed, compared to sitting in a capital city spamming. There was no system for a group being put together before 3.3 and LFD tool.