Many people are talking about how the new Dungeon Finder in World of Warcraft patch 3.3 has revolutionized the game, including me. Overall, the ability to quickly and near-instantly find a a dungeon group at any point in time seems to be a smashing success for a wide variety of player types. Some people see this as a huge win, and others are viewing it as a net loss. Syncaine at Hardcore Casual thinks that this is taking away something very important – the guild structure as a reputation and bragging mechanism.
It’s somewhat interesting, from the outside looking in, that such a feature would be cheered in an MMO in the first place. Personally the social aspect has always been a huge draw for me, not just the aspect of playing with a set group, but also how that group’s progress and reputation is regarded among other groups and the virtual world as a whole.
In my opinion, this is huge for guilds in WoW. There will be some fallout as a result, I have no doubt. But for the first time in an MMO, joining a guild strictly for friendships, social communication, and likeminded interests will not be penalized. Really, if socializing and immersing yourself in game with real people because of their personality traits is the main motivator behind MMO games, why is it that guild applications are 95% about your gear and ability? Why is it that I can’t get into most guilds because my play time doesn’t coincide with theirs? Why is it that no one cares about my knowledge of games or my ability to heal, when my Gearscore isn’t 5000?
We as gamers like to think we’re in it for the social features. Sometimes we like to criticize those “solo players” for not wanting to take part in a fundamental game system in MMOs like guilds. I’m personally thrilled with this because it means that staying in my gigantic social guild provides all the benefits of having likeminded people to talk to and the potential to make new friends – but doesn’t hurt my ability to play the game at the rate I want to play. It means that someone can stay guilded with their 5 real life friends and still have fun and interact with the game’s mechanics every time they log in despite not having a raid force online at a time.
A big part of WoW (and a lot of other games) is dungeons. A big part of social structures (in games and out) is cliques. The combination of these two things can make finding groups (even within a guild) frustrating and unbearable for people who have full time jobs, kids, families, pets, and other obligations that come first. The new Dungeon Finder lets me group with people when I want to, and socialize and help out a guild of people that I connect with rather a guild that my gear just ‘qualified’ me to get into.
Finally all of the solo-heroes in WoW can rid themselves of the annoyance of a guild and go it alone, queue’ing up as easily for an instance as they have been for battlegrounds, reaping the benefits of showing up without the hassle of being concerned who else is there.
Why make the assumption that people only have guilds to find groups? I join guilds so that I can have a guild tag below my name and a guild charter to uphold. I join guilds so that I can ask for help when I don’t understand something, or answer questions for others if I do. I join guilds to have meaningless off-topic and on-topic conversation to entertain me while I play. I join guilds to have people that I can help do things, and have people help me. I join guilds so I can pop in and do something with them if they happen to be doing something.
I don’t join guilds for bragging rights, or to raid. I’m not in a guild so that I can find groups with them over and over, I’ve never been that picky on who I group with. I find that I make more friends when I join PUGs anyway. I like having the freedom now to make groups quickly and easily by picking up some guildies, grabbing a person or two on the Dungeon Finder, and getting into the instance with rapid speed.
Does this make sense to anyone?
Tami Baribeau is the Associate Producer for Metaplace, Inc, currently working on Island Life. She is also the Lead Editor of feminist gaming blog The Border House, and the National Facebook Games Examiner for Examiner.com. She can be reached on Twitter or by email.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks for posting this, Cuppy. I’ve had to take some time off to count to 10 and catch my breath, having apparently subjected myself to five brutal random dungeons in a row. It’s good to be reminded of the positive spin, especially when the negative is so close by.
I saw this feature as a chance to finally see some of those dungeons I missed out on while levelling from 70 to 80, given that my social guild still (thankfully, but bittersweetly) focuses on old-world and Outland groups. The reality is that most tanks and the majority of other players run these random heroics purely to farm the emblems – I’m lucky if the group even stops to loot. I find that the pro-social game I and my friends have created within our little guild often has no place there.
There is the odd diamond in the mix, and I’m always very grateful to those approachable and fun players who’re happy to actually have fun with the run. Still, for this player keen to play the dungeons and who lacks the appropriate number of guild-mates to support them, the one chance to see a better endgame has simply highlighted how bitter the ‘LFG’ system can become.
There are indeed tons of advantages in all sorts of way you look at the new LFG features, but it still appears to fail on the one thing that is the most important to me. If I join a group and meet a player and get along great with them and have fun, how likely will it be that I can play with that person again in the future without one of us having to start over or pay to move a character?
Why in the world would I want to group with people I have a near zero chance of forming any relationship with at all? I realize that is counter to your example because you are looking at it as separating the game play mechanics from the social activity, to have your guild chat and dungeons too. But even if you look at it from only the game play side, if I get in a group with people who are good at playing, I want to play with those people again. If they are from another server, is there anything I can do to ensure I play with them again? Is there a global friends list? Can I see them online and meet them at a dungeon on different servers and then group up through the meeting stone? And I don’t even care about the possibility of people ninja looting or being assholes, but can I repeat and nourish good experiences, or are they just as ephemeral as the bad through this system?
Here’s my favorite part of the dungeon tool: I’m online when there are a handful of guildies around, but we can’t quite put a full group together. With the dungeon tool we can make a group of 3-4 and let the system fill out the rest. As a result I get to do more runs with guildmates, which means I actually get to play with them instead of just chatting. As a bonus the usual PUG issues are mitigated somewhat because most of the group knows each other.
Because people are smoking their home grown dope. Guilds get tired of being humped by people asking them to run content they’ve already done forever. That argument is used assuming that guilds are always available and always willing, while simultaneously encouraging people to join guilds for the wrong reason.
When a game is getting long in years but still attracting players, and has a huge content plateau at the top, creative features should be applied to make finding groups at the lower levels easy. I’ve watched people begging and begging to go thru low level content. They requests are often met with go level noob, meaning that people that are higher in level don’t feel like re-doing the old content for every person that comes along after.
Sure, the new LFG has its problems, and frankly, I don’t give a damn.
I just quit my guild because I could never get any of those pricks to take me on any of their dungeon runs because I was undergeared. Uh, if the only way to get better gear in order to raid instances (which is a design flaw, IMHO, but a rant for another time) is through instance raiding, oh fellow guildies, then how do I break that vicious chicken and egg cycle without your assistance?
I’ve done more dungeons since the 3.3 patch than probably in the last year, and I’m ecstatic. Screw guilds. Who needs ‘em?