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This week’s Shared Topic over at Blog Azeroth was suggested by Dragonray and based on a comment from Logtar of WoW Stuck and is about what we do while gaming. The shared topic runs from March 19-25, so get a’typing!

Do you guys think that the LFR and LFD kill the sense of community, but taking it one step further; does it also kill the passing down of knowledge?

Yes and double-yes!

When I was first leveling, back in the days of Burning Crusade (not quite a Wrathbaby) when you went into a dungeon it was with a group of people who had beaten the odds just to get the party formed. All that mattered was getting through the content, no matter how much hand-holding was needed.

Or how much ‘blind leading the blind’ was in play.

The Olden Days

What knowledge we had was shared, guildies or not, because it was a pain in the butt to have to find a replacement. I even remember trying a dungeon with no tank because there weren’t any around– which worked well until we hit a boss that didn’t like chewing on the hunter’s pet.

Because of that I never got a chance to run a lot of dungeons and those I did I learned the hard way, since most of the folks I was with had never run them before. Only once in a great while did we get someone leveling an alt who kept our corpse runs to a minimum.

By the time the finders popped up I was solidly in the habit of charging into places I’d never been and asking for a quick ‘what do I watch for’ before the boss fights.

RTFM or GTFO

But with the various ‘finders it takes only a few seconds to find a replacement (unless you’re a tank or a healer) so the threshold for ‘catching people up to speed’ is extremely low.

Experienced players have run the same dungeons tens (if not hundreds of times) and they just want to get through as quickly as possible. There is a very good chance that you will never see these people again—why waste your time helping them?

So now I’m leery of PuGs because I tend to get kicked a lot thanks to my not-perfect kitty DPS. (I haven’t had better luck with healing or lazerchickens, and am too scared of tanking to try). I don’t want to try and play a game where at best I’ll be ignored, at worse I’ll be cussed out and booted.

I think this is why Blizz has added in so many in-game resources… the other players aren’t filling that gap anymore. But then again, Blizz has done nothing to make filling that gap rewarding, right now stopping to teach someone else only slows you down.

Anywho.

TL;DR

Yes.

Elsewhere on the Internets

Looks like this hasn’t been a topic of much posting—come on folks live a little! :p The internets ride again!

Dragonray of Azerothian Life has posted here and touches on a lot of similar themes, only from a raider’s perspective. There’s some interesting conversations happening in the comments, so head on over and check it out!

Karegina of The Reluctant Raider posted here and thinks that there is plenty of knowledge sharing going on… it’s just that most of it happens within guilds and outside of the game (blogs, websites, etc.).

Navimie from The Daily Frostwolf posted here here points out that one of the problems is that the ‘finders encourage solo play—which means there’s more of us heading into things without a friend to show us the ropes.

Mabaho of bikesbabesbytes posted here who points out that knowledge sharing might not be as prevalent within the ‘finders, but that within guilds it’s as strong as ever. And even if the ‘finders aren’t as chatty (or as helpful) as they might be, it’s still better than the alternative—which I have to agree with!

Logtar of WoW Stuck posted here and gathered most of their knowledge from outside the game or by trial and error. The raid finder may be faster at gathering groups, but it lacks the stable leadership of handpicked/invited raids– and it’s hard to learn anything in that sort of chaos.