My Thoughts On The New LFG

LFG The new Looking for Group feature has been out for a long enough time now for me to lay down my verdict on its usefulness. I haven’t used it enough to get the companion pet but I have run enough Heroics at this point to get lots of new gear on two of my characters. After dozens of runs across both of them I can safely say the new LFG is the greatest addition to this game in a long time.

Keep in mind that I’m almost 100% strictly a 5-man Heroic player in a guild with limited player activity so this tool is perfect for someone like me. It allows me to jump on at almost any time of the day and find something to do. While the queue times for a DPS class seem to be between five and ten minutes in my Battlegroup, on my Healer I’m seeing queue times measured in seconds and not minutes. It’s never been hard to find a group on my server as a Healer but it wasn’t unheard of to have to wait for 30 or more minutes as a DPS class. Now that the new LFG is composing groups out of players from multiple realms that long wait has been eliminated from the game and I couldn’t be happier.

The added twist of a Random Heroic quest is a great replacement for the old and stale Daily Heroic quest available before Patch 3.3. The rewards you get from the Random Heroic, in the form of extra Emblems, is the perfect gearing reward for player’s who have a lot of alts needing upgrades. Now that Heroic bosses drop Emblems of Triumph it’s not inconceivable to have enough Emblems to buy a piece of Tier 9 gear after a few hours of game play. It’s almost too easy.

That brings me to my only criticism of the new LFG system. It’s going to make an absolute mockery of gearing a character. The drive of most WoW players is the search for better swag and while LFG allows you to get that rush faster than ever it will eventually leave you geared out and looking for something to do. That’s great if you have five characters like some people, but for others like me with only one or two, it means you either grind out the same content over and over for little reward or more on to something new. Like raiding… gross.

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One Comment

SlikRX/Balthazario on December 23rd, 2009

I really enjoyed it at the start, but a couple things have happened to dim my view a bit:

1) I am now back to waiting 10-20 minutes to get a riad (I’m DPS)

2) Even though I am not familiar enough with many of them to lead, or give directions, I’m still getting bored of most of them. And if there *are* any interesting parts, they are bypassed/run past to get through quickly.

3) Like you, I really only have time for 5 mans. As far as my gaming goes, “This is it”. (ok, an occasionaly 10 or 25 man, every 3 or 4 weeks) But given the rushed nature that the LFG system has encouraged, it makes my raiding a race instead of an experience in-and-of itself.