LFR has been the hot little topic the past couple days, and while the furore has died down, I figured I’d throw my two pennies into the pile, because dammit this is ostensibly a WoW blog so this is a prime topic for me.
LFR can be awful. Half your group AFK’s and auto-attacks. People are either abusive to one-another (the amount of horrific slurs I’ve seen thrown at people is disgusting) or silent, which pretty much defeats the object of a game that’s supposed to have a social element to it. I mean, you’re in a group with up to 24 other people and NOBODY is talking? That’s not healthy.
People feel obligated to run it. Maybe someone’s raid group is extending the lockout from the previous week, meaning they’re skipping x amount of bosses. Raiders who want to maximise their legendary quest item gain will end up having to queue for LFR for a shot at the earlier bosses. Maybe you’re only raiding normal, which is a step above LFR, but there’s equipment slots with items lower than LFR item levels. Raiders who want to fish for interim upgrades will again probably end up queuing for LFR and resenting having to do so.
It’s not even real raiding, if we’re 100% honest. The mechanics are (for the most part) so watered down from even Normal mode that they might as well be non-existent, and that ends up teaching bad habits. “Oh I can stand in this fire in LFR and I’m fine,” people think when they get into a Normal PuG group, then end up wiping the raid and getting kicked when they die repeatedly, or trigger some instawipe mechanic. Someone I have a lot of respect for on Twitter said this a couple days ago:
And frankly I agree. When you’re so used to something not being dangerous, it’s tough to change your mentality when it suddenly becomes a massive threat. Having a fresh head to teach is a lot easier than getting someone to change their bad habits.
HOWEVER
https://twitter.com/MattFossen/status/651811471509164032
For some people, LFR IS their endgame. Perhaps they don’t have a schedule that allows them to join an organised raid team, or the “mentality” of a raider, whatever that might be. Perhaps people just wanna see the bosses once or twice because it rounds off the story in their heads, and they can then concentrate on other things in-game that are more important. It even gives people transmog options; I know a number of people that ran LFR week-in, week-out, because they liked the colour of the gear way more than the colours of other difficulties, and more choice is NEVER a bad thing when it comes to looking good.
It simply gives people another option, another thing to do at max level besides sit around on sparkledragons in capital cities and troll trade.
(seriously you people with Elegon’s mount annoy me so much because I WANT IT SO BADLY)
I’m strongly, strongly against the removal of options for things to do at 100 for any reason, whether it’s toxicity of people (which is not a fault of LFR, but of the arseholes running it), raider obligation (unless you’re chasing world first or like top 50 or whatever, you’re not as hardcore as you think so settle the fuck down), or just plain “I hate it, because it sucks.”
I firmly believe that LFR should have an element of difficulty to it. I think you should have to work for your pretty pretty purples, not just show up and win without trying. People saying “Archimonde is too hard waah LFR is bad get rid of it” make bile rise into my throat. It’s MEANT to be a tough fight; it’s the final fight of the expansion! Were you expecting a Patchwerk fight here or something?
Similarly, I get that you have to cater for the fact that you have 25 random people, some of which may well be deliberate wankers who will AFK the whole fight, so if it’s TOO difficult, bosses will never die. The wipes I’ve experienced in LFR, however, throughout the ENTIRE expansion (and the last one!) were due to people not doing mechanics properly. They’d attack Nazgrim in defensive stance, they’d fall in Elegon’s pit, they stepped under Garalon, they’d ignore turrets and not move from mines on the Iron Maidens or get hit by Thogar’s trains.
Do the fights correctly, and you’ll win them. 99% of the time, you kill the damn adds THEN hit the boss.
“KILL THE ADDS” should be one of the messages you see when you’re on a loading screen.
In other news:
I’m working on getting the Predator title on my hunter, and apparently that means I need to grind rep on her.
Such fun.
Also, when I get paid I’m transferring my Warlock to Sylvanas, to raid with a pretty awesome bunch of people I know from Twitter, so isn’t that cool?
Why not join us?
Panda Steve Types Stuff 