Thursday, December 10, 2009

Reflections on the new LFG system

I spent yesterday in a queue, and I'm not complaining. I tested out the new LFG system on the PTR a month or so ago, when the old GM couldn't stop singing it's praises, and I had to admit it was great all around. I instantly plotted my goal to finish off 1000 Stone Keeper Shards and then get the subsequent achievements for the new system.

I logged in, queued up, and got H:Halls of Reflection. Then H:Pit of Sauron. Then H:Halls of Stone. Then H:Drak'tharon Keep. At that point, Wintergrasp had started, so I went over to deal with that, but we lost since the graveyard spirit rezzers were a bit biased and refused to rez us, resulting in everyone in the workshop graveyards having to run to the Horde emcampment. So while WG was down, I did a random normal instance, and got Halls of Reflection. I had no intention of just doing a slew of normal instances, so I did the PvP daily (25 arena points = awesome), and even jumped into a 10 man Eye of Eternity to do the weekly raid. Once Horde won the Wintergrasp again, I ran H:Halls of Lightning, then another H:Halls of Stone, followed by another H:Halls of Reflection (methinks computer random is at work here), and then finally a H:Culling of Stratholm, where I completed my 1000 Stone Keeper Shards.

I had good fortune with the puggers as well - except in the Halls of Lightning, where the main tank was chatting more than he was pulling, then told me off for pulling for him. Chatter was rare, but if it was, it was mainly concerned with topics clearly covered in the patch notes, and I grew increasingly more impatient with people who were surprised that the 5mans were dropping Emblems of Triumph.

Dealing with other servers loot rules was an unforeseen surprise - afterall, how often do you think about other server's codes of conduct? We started labeling servers for how they roll on Frozen Orbs - the PvP servers nearly always Need, the PvE servers nearly always Greed, and the RP servers are a toss-up. It took me awhile to get used to the new Disenchanting system as well, only because if no enchanter was in the group, everyone just started Greeding the BoP blues and epics. This makes sense of course, I just wasn't ready for the sudden lack of "no enchanter in group? guess we can just roll for vendor."

I only grouped up once with someone from a Big Name Guild, and that was a ret pally from CUTIES ONLY in my first Halls of Stone. I enjoyed it - he was silent, but did all the work on the Brann event, and all I had to do was drop traps.

Now that I am one day in, I don't think I have any reservations about the new system. I haven't had the chance to use the "Vote to Kick" option yet, and I hope I don't have to, nor have we really carried any new-80 in blues and greens either. I'm 22 of the 50 away from a new chuckle-worthy title. What I am rather pleased about is that once the novelty of the system wears off, and all the titles are gained and badges farmed, it won't be nearly as painful to pick it back up again.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

We noticed "instance favoritism" in LFG. My wife and I got H:Gundrak three times and H:UP twice out of the seven times we entered LFG yesterday, and we were joining separately. My guess is, Blizzard was shunting us to instances based on our servers. I was grouped with a lot of people from the same few servers; either half of Durotan, Arthas, and Medivh were pugging, or Blizzard was arranging us by servers.

Tomas Rofkahr said...

It's funny - I've had pretty good luck with the LFG system so far. Good groups - no loot drama - 99% success rate. I almost don't count the one failure (H HoR) because the tank just refused to adapt.

I've actually been using CC again. I feel for tanks though. They're so used to wrapping up all the bad guys and letting people AoE them down that I think some of them feel like they're failing if you need to whip out a trap.

Anonymous said...

I sadly haven't been able to try out all the shiny tools yet.

From what you've been saying it's possible to run a Heroic more than once a day? That's scary and cool at the same time.