Oh dear. This new idea brings visions of disaster to my mind. I appreciate that dps queues are long, painful and boring, but I really don't think that this is the answer. In fact, to be perfectly honest, I think the dungeon finder in general is a horrible idea. Let me explain why.
Previously, when you were levelling and wanted to instance, there were only 8-10 people (low pop realm, others may be different) in your level bracket online at any given time. This meant that you always saw at least 1 familiar face every time you entered an instance and that if you were an asshol and/or a ninja, word got around damn fast and most of the groups you got would kick you before you got to the instance. If you were particularly fun to be around or good at your job, you would find yourself instance levelling the last few levels, whether you'd planned to or not. This also meant that when you hit level cap, you had a group of people that you liked who had also just hit level cap to do heroics with.
Afterwards, you kept these people on your friends list, and when you were lf tank/healer/dps for the daily heroic, you could usually whisper one them and convince them to run with you for kicks or for old times' sake or whatever. The more people liked you, the more likely they were to say yes to an instance. And the worse your reputation was, the less likely you were to find a group. Being an asshol came with penalties - hard penalties. The community would close its ranks against you.
Then the dungeon finder came along. And people were now "anonymous". There was no more punishment for ninjaing or being an asshol. Oh there was vote-kick. And the community is still active in rare groups - a few times I've run an instance that I've enjoyed and the group has run more instances that we don't even need just because we're having fun together and when we've had to replace someone and landed up with an asshol/ninja, we've closed ranks on them and removed them from the group. But they could just requeue and ninja some more stuff and/or abuse some more people.
And there are penalties associated with kicking people. The more you kick, the longer you have to wait before you can kick. Add to that the impatience of people... If you want to kick someone and refused to continue until you could, more often than not you get kicked when possible instead of the guy you wanted to kick for ninjaing and/or being an asshol. The reason for these penalties? People used vote-kick for griefing. Oh and did I mention? You were only allowed to kick one person per instance. That meant that if you kicked this guy, you ran the pug lotto hard and might wind up with someone even worse that you were now stuck with. Net result: being an asshol and/or a ninja came with no penalties whatsoever, but refusing to run with an asshol/ninja did. The less you wanted to put up with abusive morons, the more you were punished for it.
Then the guild system was introduced, leading to yet another extra set of penalties for kicking someone while in a guild group because of people kicking others because a guildie wants in.
Now my guild is fairly laid back. We're good enough to carry 1 or 2 dps in most heroics and generally we don't mind if the people are nice. We may mock them a little in guild, but we don't kick someone for doing 3k dps (How? Seriously, how is this possible at 85? I mean, are you afk? Not using spells or abilities? Please tell me - even I can manage 10k+ and I'm a dreadful dps) or dying on every boss and trash pull or being permanently lost. If we run across a 3k dps/green tank/green healer who's really, really nice, we've even been known to include them in further runs as well as give them tips and suggestions to improve their dps, tanking or healing as well as links to Elitist Jerks and such.
But we've also been known to kick people who are better than us because they're complete [censored]. And why should we be forced to take an extra penalty because 4 of us group with someone from a top 30 guild who thinks his world rank entitles him to hit need on everything that he can roll on? We don't need him to boost us - we can cope fine by ourselves thank you very much. Similarly, why should we have to put up with a 3k dps rogue who dies on every trash pull and then swears the tank and/or healer blind, calling us "bads" and "morons" and telling us to l2p? And what about the middle-of-the-road guy who's not worse or better than us but launches into a fit of namecalling if the healer drops him when things go awry, or the tank's 2 taunts just weren't enough to grab all the mobs he ran into by accident and he dies?
Another thing that bothers me is, even if you do decide "No thanks, I'd rather build my own group than play pug lotto", most people can't be bothered. The few that can be bothered come at a price... Some tanks and healers charge for the "privilege" of queueing with them. And if you do persevere and build a group, you have to use the dungeon finder anyway to get your daily Valour Points! No more moving to the instance, seeing friends outside the instance entrance and having a chat in /s while you wait for the group to fill or get their acts together and be ready for a summon.
With the coming of Cataclysm, dps queues jumped from 10-15 minutes at peak times and 20-30 minutes at slow times to a whopping 45 minutes at peak times, approaching 2 hours at slow times. Part of the reason is that people who had no business tanking or healing finally realised this and switched to dps, and part of it is because guild groups became so important for guild experience that very few tanks pug, preferring instead to run with guild groups. The addition of the differing experience levels for different amounts of guildies lessened the pool of groups of 4, most guild groups prefer to run in groups of 5 now. We will usually wait until we are able to get a group of 5 before running an instance.
Now, after making a guild the most important part of your WoW life, tanks and healers are being encouraged to ditch guild groups and pug solo. People who switched to dps after realising that they had no business tanking or healing are being encouraged to go back and inflict themselves on people once more.
Yes, there are advantages to the dungeon finder. It's nice being able to run an instance more than once, especially if you're looking for an item from there (stupid Stonecore heal trinket 2 damn months it took to drop *^!^@&*^!#). Not having to travel to an instance is great. Not that travelling to an instance anywhere now is very far - a lot of the treks to instances in Wrath were much longer than anything in Cataclysm. For crying out loud, the raids are the furthest to fly to... Being able to run "the daily" with everyone in your guild is fantastic.
But these upsides are weighed down by the negatives.
I don't kick for frivolous reasons, but some people do, so I am punished for it by having to wait to kick people or having to leave and take the deserter debuff. I don't leave for no reason, but some people do and so I have to take a 30 minute debuff if I just can't be arsed to be sworn at by the tank for dropping him when he pulls and dies before I've even zoned for another 15 minutes so I can leave without being punished. If I'm failing horrendously, unable to keep aggro on my tank alt, unable to keep up with damage on a new healing toon or pushing sub-par dps on a dps toon, I leave voluntarily, saying that I'm not contributing as I should be and that I'm sorry for wasting people's time, but other people don't and hence I have to take a penalty to remove them. I don't ninja and I'm always polite and friendly until someone gives me a reason not to be, but others aren't and hence I have to take more penalties to remove them.
In conclusion, give me back the old system. Give me back the trip to the instance. Give me back the 10-30 minutes it takes to build a dungeon group. Take away from me the ability to run an instance twice in one day. Take away the ability for me to run the daily with multiple guildies. I want my Daily Heroic quest back. I want the community back. I want the people who abuse others for no damn reason other than they have to put up with it or suffer for it to be ostracised and learn to better their ways. I want a bad guild reputation to really affect people hard, so that being reported for ninjaing an item or being abusive meant a gkick 9 out of 10 times.
Perhaps there's a way to have the best of both worlds. Perhaps put an A and B lockout on each instance, so that you can run it twice in a day if you want. And when re-implementing the daily quest, make it change every 2 hours. You can still only do the quest once a day, but you can also run "the daily" with all your guildies.
As for the Call to Arms... If it still remains a necessity, add 2 Call to Arms daily quests for tanks and healers. "Complete any heroic instance with 4 people who are not in your guild." and "Complete any heroic instance with 20 people who are not in your guild.". Track guild rep for this (Guild rep hangs around for a few days after you gquit, so that can be tracked as well for unguilded people to prevent exploitation). The rewards don't have to be huge, some gems/enchanting mats with a chance at one of 3 or 4 BoA pets (maybe one only available from the bag?) for the first one and a chance at one of 3 or 4 BoA mounts (same again) or any BoE epic (including raid drops) from the second one. This means that everyday most tank and heal toons will be running at least 1 instance with no guildies, and up to 20 with at least 1 person who is not in their guild.
I don't think it would be necessary though. I never had trouble getting groups together for heroics, even as a dps on a low population realm. Sure I was a noob, but I guess people liked having me along because I was scrupulous about keeping the healer soulstoned, dropped a soulwell before every boss and was generally polite and friendly to everyone I met. Hell, I even managed to scrape together a run of a heroic that wasn't the daily the night before 3.2 and the Emblem upgrade on my freshly dinged priest.
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