I’m thinking of taking a break sooner than I had hoped when it comes to World of Warcraft. My main game as people might expect is working on receiving drops from LFR and getting Valor Point capped. Unfortunately, LFR has been getting ridiculously frustrating for numerous reasons and is causing me far too many unnecessary headaches to enjoy the game.
First, the queue times in LFR have become exceptionally painful. I’ve been averaging between 20-30 minute queues with an occasional 50-60 minute queue depending on the time. I suspect that most people have managed to gear up and are waiting for the new patch or burnt out and doing other things. But the wait times have become super aggravating.
Next, the quality of players have dropped tremendously. Each run has become too volatile to the point where you can expect to wipe at least once and possibly several times on almost every encounter. And it’s a real mixed bag when it comes to groups. Sometimes, you can find really well geared players who refuse to do anything except AFK. Other times you’ll find numerous trolls and jackasses who intentionally wipe the group. Sometimes it’s just plain ignorance. No matter what the root cause is the situation remains frustrating to the point where it makes you not want to play.
Lack of (good) tanks has started to become a major trend. It’s possible that the above reasons have discouraged good tanks from participating but what hurts the most is the wait time. It used to be the case that tanks would have a rough time getting into LFR but that no longer is true. The loot specialization feature has done a great deal to cull poorly geared tanks from showing up but I think the treatment of tanks simultaneously has discouraged new tanks from giving things a try. Either way, it’s not uncommon to sit right before Lei Shen for 10-15+ minutes just waiting for another tank to arrive.
Inability to find gear that you really need and wasted rerolls. You can be one of those types that can miss out three times every time when it comes to rerolls. Worse yet, you can get a useless piece of gear for a reroll or that a useless piece of gear may screw up the so-called “bad luck” buff that you get. Either way, if you depend on LFR for getting gear, be prepared for a lot of keyboard smashing as there’s a good chance you’ll just receive money for repairs from a non-wipe.
Valor Point capping is a nightmare. I use LFR to Valor Cap and supplement that activity with some dailies. I’ve heard that the weekly Northern Barrens quest actually is far better but pretty much unless you do it on reset night, it’ll take forever grinding all the mobs just to get anywhere. Heroic Scenarios seems to be the way that most players are trying to Valor Cap on top of having a better chance at receiving a decent reward at the end. Still, if you do neither of these for whatever reason and primarily use LFR to Valor Point cap, you’ll hate life. The first toon you Valor Point cap can take a good day because the points receiving from LFR are still quite low. Even with the 50% increase to other toons, it still takes quite a bit of grinding to cap off. I really wish that they kept the Valor Point rewards high like they did at the end of Cataclysm. 250 per run was very nice and allowed for better time management.
Getting Lesser Charms for Mogu Runes. I don’t know if the long queue times are intentional but it feels as though it’s to force people to do other things while waiting. That said, I’ve been getting back into dailies to build up my Lesser Charms. For toons that have no Lesser Charms at all, this activity can feel really daunting because you feel as though you cannot queue up until you have your re-rolls ready. So rather than doing your dailies or activities while in queue, you’ve got to prepare to get into LFR by doing another type of grind then follow up by waiting even longer as you sit in queue for 30+ minutes once you hit your Lesser Charm max. I guess you can look at things to motivate you into doing more dailies on alts for the reputation, gold and Valor Points but sometimes all you really want to do is park your toon in town, flip on a youtube video or something else and just relax while the queue ticks away.
General griefing and trolls. It’s a real mind fuck dealing with the people in LFR. It’s more expected to deal with jackasses than people who care about trying to down a boss. It’s really sad how the game’s design can be improved by a few easy to manage social devices. But after a while, you just end up /ragequiting because there isn’t a point after a while. If perhaps people were actually funny and cool to hang around with in LFR, then a lot of these issues wouldn’t be huge for me. But the non-stop bad mouth, attitude issues and inefficiencies from LFR make it a piss poor experience.
At any rate, I think I need a break from the game. People say that patch 5.4 is around the corner and I do look forward to checking it out. But at the same time, the issues present in LFR will be in one form or another once the new patch is released. Not sure if I’ll want to deal with it for long.