Over on the World of Warcraft forums, there’s a bunch of threads talking about how LFR has ruined raiding. While LFR has its share of problems, I feel that the essence that people believe which is raiding has not been ruined by LFR. There are two aspects I think people refer to when it comes to this notion.
First, “LFR has made raiding easier.” Or rather it has removed the incentive to do normal raiding. I think the issue here is that there really wasn’t much choice before LFR and what Blizzard has done is simply introduced more difficult levels in raiding depending on the type of player you are. LFR really is meant for the person who lacks the time commitment for scheduling raids. While most mechanics are dumbed down enough to allow for people to move through, it provides people enough of a feeling of how raiding works. Also, I feel that it gives people a taste to see whether or not they want to continue into something more challenging. So in that sense, there is an incentive that it can provide for those who enjoy grouping up with others to do more challenging fights.
Another aspect is the “OMG epic loot dropping everywhere!” argument. One of the hidden arguments beneath the sea of forum posts is how people often complained about the old DKP system as well as loot nazis. Here, the main issue is that loot was pretty much unfairly distributed. Even before LFR was introduced, it wasn’t uncommon to hear in trade chat about someone being a loot ninja. In other situations, loot at times would be handed out in a very biased fashion. For instance, maybe someone’s girlfriend (or hopeful girlfriend) received loot over another person, despite that person playing better and raiding longer. So what you really would see is only certain people on a server really being decked out.
The other thing is that people improperly associate epic loot as a status symbol based on rarity and progression. This is one of those nostalgia issues where some kid going through puberty on his server had a few purples and sat all day in front of the bank in Ogrimmar to show off his status. Yes, it’s nice that you got all that loot but in scheme of things, it doesn’t matter. The truth about loot (epic that is) is that it merely serves as a function for doing your role (tank/healing/dps). Without better gear, you simply cannot do a better job. And the issue is circular too since you often will have people complaining about low DPS, low health tanks or healers that do low healing. Gear is a function not a status symbol just because you raid.
In that sense, Blizzard has done a lot to “correct” raiding to create a better sense of balance as opposed to entitlement. People describe LFR loot as “welfare epics” but it’s a horrible misnomer. The thing is that in order for loot to not be considered “necessary” (and hence “entitled” to people) is to make all bosses on an equal level of health and damage output so that you rely entirely on your toon’s skills to do the work. You cannot have a game that relies on gear to handle more challenging opponents without giving it to as many people as possible.
The other thing that Blizzard had corrected is the grouping situation. Raiding is essentially a numbers game along with patience and communication. Thus, you really just need reliable warm bodies for the most part who are willing to listen to do something at a certain point in time. Take the Oondasta fight as an example. You will get invited no matter what because you’re just another able body to do a little extra DPS here and there. Same with the Sha of Anger. There is really zero skill involved in a fight that involves just re-zerging an enemy. But from what I understand 40-mans back in the day more or less were like that. Just doing 1-2 things here and there. But this time LFR removes being forced to wait around for hours trying to gather a group only to have people with inconsistent attendance.
Along with these things I’ve mentioned is the whole guild drama aspect. I think a lot of the guild drama that I’ve seen or heard has been over attendance, doing something at a particular time in a raid and looting. That won’t go away. In fact, that’s just a given. LFR style raiding relaxes a lot of that because you’re not forced to take 10/25 of the same people all the time and can swap people without worry over the loot aspect. I would argue that the smartest guilds are the ones who exclusively recruit for LFR so that they can gain all the benefits without the drama and negatives of normal raiding. I mean, after all, once a subsequent patch and expansion comes out, all that drama and work becomes meaningless anyway.
What about server community? That’s highly debatable. For small population servers, LFR and LFG probably are godsends. People have the right to play on small population servers. So any mechanism to help them out in setting their goals is good. Beyond that, I think it really depends on the server you land on. You might get lucky and play on a friendly server. But the ones I’ve seen mostly are filled with immature trolls so I’m doubtful that LFR has done that much to disrupt those servers.
I think the problem with LFR is not the content nor any of these issues. I think it’s just that 25% of the time, you get a high variance of players, some of which intentionally do LFR to grief others. When that happens, then LFR ends up creating a highly negative experience that people remember. There’s the anonymous aspects of LFR as well where you might feel that you have no connection to others in the raid. But if you really think about it, if you already have a group of friends to play with, why are you doing LFR in the first place?
My problem in general has been the most vocal who like to think of themselves far above others for not raiding nor “putting in the effort.” For myself, I think these people have serious mental disorders or a terrible addiction to the game. The thing is that you really don’t want to have to spend more time doing an activity where you get little pleasure out of but are forced to hit your head multiple times without any point. That’s what raiding is for me. People say that when you’re victorious it’s like a real accomplishment. I really don’t feel like playing a game as a non-professional is something that I can be proud of as a major accomplishment in my life. I feel that the reasons for raiding should be for having fun and hopefully doing it with your friends. To me, it’s always been the replacement for the Friday/Saturday night table top games where you can get together (this time in the virtual world) to beat stress. The way raiding is handled for a lot of people, it’s just far too serious.
So has LFR ruined raiding? Maybe for a certain elite or group that have rose tinted glasses. But for myself, it’s fine.