MMO Gaming

Now that we’ve covered the new questing system and the social system of LFG let’s get to the biggest part, the true LFG system, the one that does the dungeons and battlegrounds, etc. I know I promised this last week but hey, things didn’t work out that way, so here it is.

The only real problem with what I am about to recommend is that it takes up almost all screen space, and this is only slightly a problem anyway. Essentially this LFG page is about the size of the Auction House screen on your monitor and it has multiple tabs to search through depending on what you are doing.

When you first open it up you are taken to the basic “Add Looking for Group” option menu, not the best name obviously but this is the place that lets you look for groups for things other than what is in your quest log, instances and that sort of thing. This menu has a dropdown of various things to choose from much like the current system where you choose to look for a group for Dungeon, Raid, Zone, etc. It of course excludes quest as this is done via your quest log in my system. Of course, this system also adds PvP options, 3 from what I imagine, PvP Arena, PvP Battleground and PvP World. Also, you may check whether this group is for your “main” (the character you are on) or an alt (any character you aren’t playing as now).

When you make your choice, let’s say dungeon, a list with boxes of the different dungeons in the game pop up (also, it is important to note that you could limit which dungeons show up by plugging in your desired level range or show all (the level range is not automatic so as to allow you to search for groups for alts)) When the dungeon listing pops up you may check off as many dungeons as you want to, whichever you are interested in. Also, at the bottom, there is room to write a brief comment about your looking, perhaps you could stick in what spec you are, or anything else you want to say, if this group is for an alt, you could mention class/level of alt in this spot (assuming this isn’t taken care of elsewhere, as I will explain in a moment). At the bottom of this page is the final button to save this setting as LFG and “post” it to the LFG system.

To backtrack just a moment to my comment mentioning class level of an alt in the comment section there is an improvement to the system that could be made at this point already, but I didn’t state it as something I would stick in immediately as it is more of a “nice” feature than a necessary one. But, what could be done here is to automatically let you select any other toons on the server that you are on (for your current faction of course, so if you are playing on an alliance character you couldn’t look for groups for your horde toon) and in this way the information of class/level could be put in automatically when you post the group to the system, but, as I mentioned, this is a very nice thing to have but really wouldn’t be necessary for the system (this would be automatic though if you are posting for your main).

Back to the main topic though, further tabs in the system. After you have saved your LFG settings you probably will want to still do some work with things, as the main page doesn’t have all the options you could want in it, to help this along you move to the Advanced Options section, or Looking for More section, perhaps. On the whole, in my system, LFM becomes something entirely unnecessary as it’s main idea can be done in the advanced options/group search tab, which I will touch on in the coming paragraphs.

First, advanced options. When you go to this tab you are greeted with your list of saved lfg’s all with the option to expand/minimize them (like the zones you can expand minimize in your quest log, same button/idea). Continuing with the dungeons example and picture that I have above let’s assume you want to set a priority list of desired classes. You can do this with a setup of the names of classes listed from 1 through 9 each with an up or down button next to them, one being highest priority and 9 being least. Clicking the up or down arrow moves that class down or up 1 position. So, in this way, you can set which classes you are most interested in getting (for instance, perhaps you are a hunter looking to do an instance, you will probably need a tank and healer, so perhaps your priority would be something like Warrior, Priest, Druid, etc.). This option would be especially beneficial assuming the “auto join” function is enabled, in this way you are allowing the system to do what you want. There are other options possibly available here, which, at the moment, I seem to have forgotten (oops, I should’ve written it down as it came to me). Anyway, that’s the gist of that tab though.

The next tab up is the real meat of the system the “Index of Groups” page. This is the directory of people searching for groups for the same thing you are, for instance, the dungeons you checked off. A variety of information is included in this section, Class, Level, searching for, comment, etc.

One of the best features of this system comes up when a group is just starting (i.e. it has just formed because someone joined). At this point the group leader is allowed to “flag” the instance they are doing (since multiples may have been checked as possibilities). When the instance is decided on the information for that particular group changes on the LFG page to display the instance that is being done, the group leader’s name, and, the important part, a countdown of how many spots are left to fill (ex. 2 people are in the party the countdown shows 3 spots left). With this there is of course a ton of stuff that can be done, expand this to show who is currently in the group is one such thing that would be a great feature.

That basically covers all I can remember, I know I had originally thought up a lot more stuff, and there is quite a few things that I still remember wanting to put in, but I don’t want to give away all my ideas.

When it comes right down to it I feel this system is a lot better for the game. I will admit that it may in fact be a bit daunting to the newcomer, but overall it is a system that is much more robust. To me the LFG system that was added feels like something I would just put in as some sort of mod, it doesn’t feel like it is truly integrated into the game in the way it should be given the importance of grouping for so many things.

So, any comments on any of the parts/all the parts? I’d love to hear them.

World of Warcraft, Looking for Group, Repairing Gears, Blizzard Entertainment, Patch 2.0, Burning Crusade