World of Warcraft Dungeon Finder Problems

Dungeon Finder is one of the latest features in Blizzard's World of Warcraft. It allows players to gather more quickly to get into dungeons. I find that about 80% of the time it puts me in a really good group and we blast away monsters and get epic loot. The rest of the time, I find, it seems that I am put into a group where players fall into one of six categories.

1. The "I rolled in as tank to get in here faster" guy. I can not count the number of times this has happened to me. You know the group. You remember that time your "tank" pulled the first group of trash mobs and for some reason the warlock suddenly died? Then the healer died shortly thereafter followed by the rest of the group? Yes the reason was because of this guy. Good job dude!

2. The "Oh... My... God... You DO NOT have a gearscore under 3k! I am out of here!" guy. This seems to be a recurring theme. New level 80 players going into heroics usually have a gearscore of anywhere between 2500 to 3500 depending on how much time and/or gold they spent getting ready. It is not the final authority on a player's skill. I have been a victim of this on a alternate character even though I know what I am doing, the gearscore told the others a different story. To be fair, this is not necessarily a symptom of Dungeon Finder but an addon called gearscore. However, when combined with the system it creates awkward situations where 4 players are left without a tank and must wait for another. On the flip side of this, I find myself always sizing up the other players to see what the chances of success for the group is. If the tank has a really low gear score I will inspect him to make sure he at least has defense rating. I don't generally leave group as soon as I see low numbers though.

3. The "Wait until everyone else has rolled greed on an item and THEN roll need on something you don't really need" guy. Oh yeah there is a different term for these people. They are called Ninja Looters. Hey you who rolled need on that Bind on Equip caster cloth, I see right through you Mr. Rogue.

4. The "One slight screw up and it was nice to know you" guy. Lets say a pally forgot to turn on his righteous fury. This could cause PROBLEMS! That's why the healer left the group. This applies to any role in the group but it is especially painful when a tank leaves as it takes anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes to get another one. If you lose a DPS for whatever reason who cares all you have to do is restart the queue and you get a new one.

5. The "I'll just follow you guys and pretend to be doing something" guy. Easy to spot if a tank or healer is doing it, but for DPS unless you have a damage meter such as recount, these guys are making fools of everyone in the group. I always use a damage meter so I can call out the 5800 gearscore warlock that is doing 600 dps. Yes you the one in purple.

6. The "complete moron". Need I say any more. Ok I will. This is they hunter who lets his pet path down into about 5 groups of monsters after you say "dude you should dismiss your pet for this". This is the pally tank who doesn't use righteous fury even after you recommend that he should 25 times in party chat. This is the healer who has themselves targeted THE ENTIRE time in the dungeon. Well you get the idea. I can understand trying to learn to play your class and this sort of thing might fly if you are lower than level... 50 lets say, but to be making these kind of mistakes at level 80 is unforgivable. Delete your account.

Any combination of the above and there could be all out flame wars in party chat. Due to the fact that the system pulls players together from different realms, I have seen people log into other realms and create level 1 characters to continue a flame war after the party disbanded. I mean seriously.

There is the new rolling system that will not let my shaman roll on leather or cloth. By the way, my shaman is a healer, so some of the cloth and leather that drops are an upgrade. Well I should say, could have been an upgrade but it was disenchanted before my eyes by the new disenchant feature. Thanks Blizzard, my gearscore could be about 500 points higher by now if not for that.

To sum all this up, its a great new system. I wish they would have put a social ranking system into it that would let others rate the players they play with and attach something like a credit score to the players. Then it would group these players together that have similar "social scores". But I digress.