The Sad State of the Random Dungeon Finder

Posted by Stina on Dec 30, 2012 in World of Warcraft

Just for the fun of it I made a new character in World of Warcraft with my Dad and fiancé . With heirloom gear and the ability to complete the human zones in our sleep we quickly leveled to 15 so we could queue in the random dungeon finder. With myself as a Restoration Druid, John as a Brewmaster Monk, and my Dad as a Windwalker Monk, or queue times were instant. However the dungeon finder and World of Warcraft has fallen into a sad state. We queued for three dungeons, and each time gold farmers were grouped with us.

Maybe this isn’t new to you, but it was certainly new to me. It’s no secret that gold farmers have run rampant in World of Warcraft for years, but now they are actively queueing up in dungeons wearing nothing but the basic gear that the character was created with and doing nothing but running into groups of enemies and dying.

The first dungeon we entered was Deadmines. We didn’t think much was amiss when the warlock that had been matched with us would not swap his voidwalker out and replace it with the imp. We passed it off as a language barrier or perhaps it was a young kid playing, and we continued through the dungeon thinking not much of it. It wasn’t until we reached Helix Gearbreaker that we took notice of the fact that the two other people just stood there and watched us kill the boss. I inspected them and noticed that they were wearing only the gear on that the character was created with. Upon realizing  what was happening, we tried to vote to kick them and the message popped up stating we couldn’t kick them for another 13 minutes. We reported them for “cheating” (the report option that was the most close to the issue) and started waiting for the time to tick by. The non warlock gold farmer that had been grouped with us (a hunter) disconnected, and after standing still for two minutes we were able to boot him, the warlock left shortly after. We were able to complete the dungeon with the two new people who entered the dungeon and we finished Deadmines without issue.

 We re-queued and entered Ragefire Chasm, the exact same warlock and hunter gold farmers were grouped with us. We tried to boot them, but once again we would have had to wait until enough time had passed to allow us to vote to kick. We reported them again, and then the three of us left the party. I was frustrated.

We queued again and got sent to Wailing Caverns. Another two gold farmers. We went ahead without them and started clearing the dungeon with just the three of us. The two gold farmers did a constant loop of dying near the start of the instance. When we were able to kick the gold farmers we did, and then once again we actually got real people in the dungeon with us. We then finished the dungeon.

Afterwards, I promptly hit log out. The dungeon finder was my favourite improvement in World of Warcraft, I once leveled almost entirely using it, but now it’s clearly ruined. What’s the point if you always get grouped with bots running the dungeon doing nothing but dying?

On top of that, my “medium” population server seems emptier then ever, and the last thing Blizzard is getting from me is more money so that I can transfer to a server where people are actually playing. Their attempt of fixing dying servers by letting low population areas blend in with other servers means you never see a rare spawn, and farming for ore in Elwynn Forest was next to impossible. However I suspect in the higher level areas it is a welcomed change to have more people around.

So, my question for you is, do you think Blizzard will fix the gold farming problem? 

I don’t think they ever will, either because it is not possible for Blizzard to fix, which is sad, because it shows they don’t have full control over their game; or because there is not a big enough benefit to them if they were able to manage to get rid of the gold sellers/farmers.

It will be no surprise to you when I state the following, I will not be purchasing Mists of Pandaria.