hm.. I would also really like the LFD tool was only server based.With the exception of being able to group with real life friends cross -realm..

currently I have friends on other servers, real life friends that happened to play there with their guilds and it is not easy to transfer all their chars on my servers or mine to them.It would be nice if I can group with them to play but I don't know if I m gonna pay for this..not about the money but because I think this service should be free!WOW already have a subscription for their game, the are going to far with this.
 

How about a Premium LFD Tool that would allow you to set a minimum avg Ilvl to group with or it could be Achievement specific. You tell the LFD tool what cheev to look for and it only puts players with that cheev in your random....

That would be a revenue generator!
 

Blizzard has already changed the LFD.

As of very recently the LFD actively tries to place you with people from your own server where it is possible.
 

Kinda sad I think.. A miracle happens and you manage to find someone nice in the cold world that is cross-realm-dungeon finder and to play with him again you not only have to give him your real name, you need to pay some premium service too.

I'll repeat that.. Blizzard wants us to pay for a premium service if we want to play together with other people?
 

How about a premium LFD tool that lets you choose a pre-made class/role/level from either faction for the specific purpose of running a dungeon of your choice with your friends. The dungeon difficulty will scale with the number of participants, their level and how easily they are clearing the dungeon.

Rewards such as gold/loot/reputation/achievements are all Bind on Account.
 

Kinda sad I think.. A miracle happens and you manage to find someone nice in the cold world that is cross-realm-dungeon finder and to play with him again you not only have to give him your real name, you need to pay some premium service too.

I'll repeat that.. Blizzard wants us to pay for a premium service if we want to play together with other people?

I couldn't agree more... There are people that go out of their way, that build friendlists and networks within a game that is by default SOCIAL and for them to reap those rewards.... you make them pay extra? If nothing else, they should be given a freakin' discount for trying to make a strong community.

Also, what troubles me is that from now on there will be two types of accounts: Premium and Standard. It's ok in a F2P MMO like DDO and Lotro (and honest as well), but doing this in a game with a monthly sub?

Shouldn't your 15$/Euros a month cover a feature that could enhance your community and has the potential to pull people into the game?

It's sad indeed, especially when players were told in the past that no gameplay-changing elements would go into the cash shop.

I think Blizzard just shot themselves in the foot with that one.
 

Eh? This like one step away from making "Guilds" a premium feature, isn't it?

What the next F2P game that comes out, you will have to buy an account upgrade to join guilds.
 

Inviting a friend into a group to queue up with is already server local. Always has been.

This just adds the ability to invite someone from another realm. It saves one of you from having to change servers to be part of the same dungeon group.

It has nothing to do the random player part of the Dungeon Finder, which as someone has mentioned, was also improved to include local random players if possible.
 

Next, they will add cross-realm chat for only $9.99/month!

This merely reaffirms my decision to leave wow. Blizzard is morphing their offering into something I want nothing to do with. Vote with your wallet!
 

Horrible idea. But more, it's an incredible misstep by Blizzard. Usually they are really in touch with the zeitgeist and what they can get away with. Did they take advantage of the downtime and hire off the people who ruined EQ2 by nickel and diming for everything?

We're currently fighting the good fight over cross server queues in Rift. We know we're going to lose, but we'll at least have our say. What's really telling is so many of the cross-server advocates claim there was no problem with community and then engage in very abusive comments about people who did.
 

Either all 10 people above got trolled, or this is actually real?

Man, what are they going to 'add' when they drop to 10m subs?
 

@Bill: It doesn't really matter if your friend is on your server or not. Blizzard already implemented half of the grouping-features with their cross-server-dungeon finder. Their excuse for not implementing the rest of them has always been "Sorry guys, we messed up our server structure, so getting the rest of the features is a bit difficult". And now they are taking a stash of money to clean up their own mistake and are trying to let their customers pay for it.
 

I'm not at all shocked anymore with this announcement. MMOs have taken an interesting turn the last couple years.

More and more you are starting to see DLC style content being put up in various stores, be it pets, mounts, and of course the various 'services' (this one included).

This works fine in F2P and Freemimum models where its more or less expected, but purely P2P MMOs... A lot of people go in expecting they are paying for a full product, and not get nickel and dimed to get that full product while still paying monthly.

Its just corporate greed at this point.
 

When I saw this announcement I actually thought for a moment about re-activating my account as I would be able to catch up with some buddies (both RL ones, and ones made in game) who had either started on another server, or moved for raiding opportunities.

The thought lasted as far as the premium account/extra cash stipulation.

It's a great feature, shame it won't get used as much as it should.
 

Either all 10 people above got trolled, or this is actually real?

Man, what are they going to 'add' when they drop to 10m subs?

If only it was just trolling:

http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/2305-Cross-Realm-Dungeon-Feature-Coming-Soon
 

Blizzard is somewhat crossing a threshold here, in my opinion. For the first time they are charging extra for a service that can have a direct impact on gameplay. All their additional paid services before this were strictly optional, and also one time purchases. Now they are offering the ability to change what you can do in the game, and charge you an additional monthly fee for it.

I really wonder how many people this will actually affect though. How many of us have a lot of friends (that we'd trust with our real identities) that play WoW, but not on the same server? Or enough such friends that you could form dungeons groups with them? As controversial as this service may be, it feels like a somewhat niche service to me. Am I wrong here?
 

@Aracos: You are right, but only because of another mistake from Blizzard. Blizzard basically allows you to divide people into exactly two groups: People you trust with your real name and the rest.

While that is totally in line with the current facebook-"I have 500 friends"-trend, it doesn't mimick the real world situation very good. I count my real name as sensitive data, something that only people I meet in real life should have.

In WoW there is a rather large group of people who are not strangers to me, but I don't trust them enough to let them have my real name. If real id was tied to a global nickname I would use it a lot more and would already have found several aquaintances on other servers via the random dungeon finder.

Sad enough Blizzard not only wants to charge me for playing with those people, they also prevent me from keeping track of them in the first place.
 

@Aracos
"As controversial as this service may be, it feels like a somewhat niche service to me. Am I wrong here?"

How many players pay for server changes to in order to run dungeons with their mates?

This is a revenue source at risk if this feature were free.
 

I encourage Blizzard to continue to add features that will not tempt me back into the game.
 

Offering premium services that I may choose to ignore without affecting my ability to play as an alternative to raising the subscription rate that I must pay to play is all right with me.

The WoW subscription rate hasn't changed since launch, and I'm spectacularly grateful for that.

WoW remains the best entertainment value for my money, bar none.
 

This comment has been removed by the author.
 

Tobold, just yesterday you chastised the community for cognitive dissonance in simultaneously complaining about changes to gameplay and Blizzard's lack of commitment to innovation in general.

Aren't you are doing the same thing right now? You may not like the idea, but calling it a "missed opportunity", you fail to acknowledge that Blizzard is innovating and making changes.

And, as one of your commenters, I think your suggestion that I would want to limit the LFD tool to local server only is ridiculous.

My queue time would likely go from 20 minutes to hours. The whole point of cross server randoms is to increase the pool of solo players to create groups as quickly as possible.

And we already have access to a local-server only LFD tool, it's called your friends list, guild chat & trade chat.

If you bypass that, aren't you destroying the community even more?
 

The best comment was the one above!!! BY Neowolf2

Blizzard keep it up! The more subscribers you loose... the more chance we get of you making the game interesting or, even more preferable, another platfrom will gain and start to encroach on your monopoly.

This also keeps me from re-subscribing.
 

Hrmm, maybe I'm missing something here.

Are they actively trying to make server communities worthless - and actually more difficult to cultivate and maintain?

It seems now, the only reason to pick a specific server is for a specific guild. The only reason to pick a specific guild is for raiding (or competitive PvP, if you're into that).

Nearly every other activity in the game is designed to be soloable, or done in groups independant of your guild/server.

Don't get me wrong, I would like the ability to play with friends/relatives that aren't on the same server as me. But how am I supposed to meet new friends when I'm always grouping with the same people? It's not like a guild where people can apply to your clique. You're either in, or you're out.
 

And, as one of your commenters, I think your suggestion that I would want to limit the LFD tool to local server only is ridiculous.

Me, personally, I would find limiting LFD to local server ridiculous too. But you and me are in the minority here, just look at all the other comments.
 

1) People are missing a motivation. Perhaps because I am no longer raiding for many of the Tobold reasons, I think WoW subscriptions are declining. Realm consolidations are bad in general and bad PR. So I think it benefits Blizzard to be able to deal with shrinking servers.

2) I don't like RealID, not only because I don't want to give out my real name & id, but also because realid breaks with anonymous bank alts posting on the AH. It always struck me as bad design; If I used my email to create one BliZID that I used everywhere that would be so much better. I could see that TOBOLD on realm1 and TROLLERBABE from realm2 on the forums are the same without knowing anyone's name or id.

3) The remote AH is actually the first premium service that gives you an in game advantage. This just gives you an out-of-game benefit; playing with people you want.

4) While I see how the one-world of EVE has some disadvantages as well, I like the idea of a single world so anything that breaks down what seems to me like an artificial barrier, realms, is a good thing.
 

I'm currently unsubscribed, so hopefully I don't come off as a fanboy here...

As I understand it, my subscription fee goes to gameplay only. All these additional services are not affecting gameplay, in my opinion. Not even the remote auction house. So some gold farmers might be able to get their gold a little faster...doesn't affect my gameplay. So some people might be able to group with people across other realms...doesn't affect my gameplay. Maybe it will have an affect on dungeon queue times, but really, for every tank and healer from another server, won't there also be that many more dps...so I don't see this affecting my gameplay either.

I don't pay for any additional services, I also haven't purchased anything from the store...though I am tempted by the Japan charity. Point being, the lack of additional services for me haven't changed the game.
 

They didn't mention if WoW will continue to be a subscription based game or if they'll change to F2P.

I wouldn't be surprised if they would change to F2P at this point. Maybe the premium account will be the 13 euro/month account which gives you access to raids and some other selected premium features like this.
 

What neowulf2 and GG said.

If Blizzard keeps 'improving' the game like this I'll never get to re-sub ;-)

Stabs hasn't commented on this thread. See his blog (http://stabbedup.blogspot.com/2011/05/wow-tanks-and-healers-ride-free.html) for one way this could affect your gameplay even if you don't use the service.
 

On Stab's post: Laughable. DPS paying for a service so they can then try to pester tanks from OTHER servers into giving them their RealID and then also tank for them? A miniscule niche at best.
 

I should make it clear that this feature isn't going to make me any less likely to return to WoW. It's just an irrelevant feature I'd ignore.
 

We're currently fighting the good fight over cross server queues in Rift. We know we're going to lose, but we'll at least have our say. What's really telling is so many of the cross-server advocates claim there was no problem with community and then engage in very abusive comments about people who did.

Rift is shooting itself in the foot by not having cross-shard LFG. It's an absolute travesty right now, with a completely useless LFG that mind as well not even be there. The community argument is completely bunk. It's not like there aren't assholes on every shard anyway.
 

@Sine

Agreed.

I don't understand the attitude of "If I can't play with someone on my server, I don't want to play at all!"
 

Any game has limitations which can be irritating at times, but which cannot be eliminated without adverse consequences. One example is travel: it would be convenient sometimes to be able to instantly teleport anywhere at any time, but it would influence the game in some ways that are undesireable. The same applies to cross-server LFG. Designers must always strike a balance.