Raid Finder: Pros and Cons

The editors at Ten Ton Hammer have cooked up an editorial dedicated to the pros and cons of one of the features announced for World of Warcraft’s patch 4.3, the cross-realm raid finder, and they don’t seem to be quite convinced that the idea is going to work smoothly. Here’s a sampling:

I have real mixed opinions on this one. For the casual person sure it’s a good thing that they can get in and see the content, great. I talked about several of the good and bad points above, and there are probably many more that slip my mind at this moment.

However, the main issue to me is that all the casuals that use any tool get in to see and play new content will actually want to be able to beat that content, and I worry about that. Without skill, coordination, communication, and teamwork it is almost impossible to beat a raid. A group of highly casual players will be coming in with none of those things. How long before their complaints that it is too hard further dilute raiding difficulty so that they can beat a raid without any measurable amount of skill or coordination? I am not saying that will happen for sure, but if it does it will ruining raiding for everyone else.

On the flip side, none of us really have to use it at all. So if it becomes an exercise in futility and players end up spending 20 hours cycling a 100 players through before they defeat 3 bosses, it really doesn’t matter to the players not in there. If you have a raid group already, the tool being in the game or not in the game really has no effect on you. As you can see I really did try to look at and understand both sides and get it. however I just can’t wrap my head around it being a good idea.

No matter if I chose to use the tool or not, I see it as an exercise in futility and frustration for many players. I would seriously love it not to be, but seeing the number of bad PUGs out there, I have to bet against it.