World Of Warcraft: Patch 3.3 And The Dungeon Finder Tool

Blizzard rolled patch 3.3 to the live servers. This is the patch intended to get the player base through to Cataclysm, and it contains a lot of things that seem to go a long way to accomplishing that goal. Besides the new raiding content, lots of tweaks, and a new Quest-Helper-like quest tracker, what I want to concentrate on today is the new LFG tool. Actually, I’d call it the new LFD tool, as it’s tuned to look for Dungeon groups.

After reloading WoW on Tark’s machine (long story) and replacing her vid card (old one just went Tango Uniform) it was getting late but I wanted to try out the new LFG tool. So I logged on to my 66 Pally and joined a queue. If you have ever tried to get a dungeon group in your 60′s you know that Outland is deserted and it’s nigh impossible to get that done. Within 10 minutes I was running mana tombs with some folks from other servers. We tore it up and at the end, got a little bonus. Maybe I was just lucky, but they were pretty nice folks too.

Let’s rewind a second. When you use the new tool, it first gives you the choice of what roles you can play. You can choose Tank, Healer, Damage, and Leader. They have simplified the instructions to include the expected behavior for the role, so if it were your first dungeon you would know generally what is expected of you. Once you have chosen your role, you have the choice of picking a particular dungeon, or choosing random, and going along on someone else’s choice. If you choose random, and you are level 80, you get bonus gold plus a number (either 2 or 1) of Emblems of Frost, which can evidently be exchanged for any other emblems. You get more on your first random of the day, and less for the remaining number you choose to run. If you aren’t 80 yet, you get an item instead of the Emblem, and some experience. All in all, it’s a nice bonus for allowing someone else to choose, and obviously greases the skids on getting people into your chosen dungeon if you pick one. You can also choose between regular or heroics.

Once your group is complete, you’ll see the system perform a “ready check” and once everyone is in, you are magically transported to the appropriate dungeon. This was a little balky last night, probably because half the population was using the system. While you are in the queue or dungeon, the system puts a little icon on your mini map that you can click and transport yourself back and forth into and out of the dungeon. Pull one of my Lock’s favorite tricks and bring your Inscription back instead of your Shard bag? Teleport back and pick it up, then back to the dungeon with you. Nice.

Upon completion, you are rewarded your bonus items and gold and you can either run out of the instance or use the teleport. Either way you land on the spot where you teleported in from.

Opinion follows:

I’m in love. It’s always been such a pain in the ass to get a group for a heroic. Always looking for a tank or healer, you may waste a half hour just setting up. I’m sure all of us have had the experience of getting ready to go and then someone key has to leave. With the new system, you can just replace them. Someone being a douchebag? You can set up a vote to kick them. Buhbyeee.

Last night at 1AM, I tried it out with my Lock, was immediately into a COS run, we decided to do it timed, and with five minutes left on the timer, I was looting my Bronze Drake and picking up the 2 extra Emblems and almost 30 gold. I can’t picture a scenario where that would happen like that without the new LFG system

This is obviously intended to bring up the item levels of all of the people who desperately need to raise them before they can do Icecrown Citadel raids. For me, it couldn’t have come at a better time. My Lock just hit 80 a few weeks ago, and my guild is mostly a progression guild so I don’t have much opportunity to raid with them in greens and blues. So I’m filling out my purple set and soon I should be able to run just about anywhere.

The bottom line is that I like accessibility. I don’t like bringing up a new character on a new server and being behind the curve without much hope of catching up. I do like the “get-even” periods that these patches provide in advance of the probable gear reset of the next expansion.

I know a lot of people have pounded their heads against a wall for a long time to get some of the rewards that are going to become available to us who are taking a newer fast track. By the same token, you have had use of those items for a long time.. I think it’s good for Blizzard to do these periodic resets. It moves the carrot to a new place and keeps us from chasing it around in circles.

All in all this new system makes it easier to get a group, and for a fan of MULTIplayer games, that makes a lot of sense. I’m really glad to see it and I can’t wait to get home from work tonight to run me some Heroics.

- Genda