There is one thing I consistently see World of Warcraft players fighting about on Blizzard’s WoW forums: the LFR (looking for raid) system. Love it or loathe it, the announcement of WoW Cataclysm Classic, the next logical step in the Classic saga, has unearthed questions about the feature, which was introduced as part of the expansion’s Dragon Soul raid.
Added in the original World of Warcraft Cataclysm as part of patch 4.3.0, the LFR system remains one of the MMORPG‘s most divisive – just Google ‘WoW LFR’ or ‘WoW Raid Finder’ and you’ll see what I mean.
While, during an exclusive BlizzCon 2023 interview, World of Warcraft’s executive producer Holly Longdale stated that the team isn’t too worried about Cataclysm’s bad reputation, LFR is one of the most divisive things to come out of the expansion. In a follow-up thread discussing the WoW Community Council chat on Friday, December 8, one member called Majinstorm has put forward a series of questions to the devs about Cataclysm Classic – and senior game producer Josh ‘Aggrend’ Greenfield has replied.
When asked if Cataclysm Classic will see the addition of LFR, Greenfield responds “I think if you had asked the Classic team a year ago how we felt about LFR for Dragon Soul we would have pretty emphatically said ‘No.’
“But… our philosophy has shifted quite a bit after seeing how players approached Wrath. I think we are still keenly interested in hearing player feedback about this, so if you are an LFR enjoyer, let us know. If not, we’d really like to hear that too.”
He clarifies, however, that “It’s almost a certainty that we’d not be able to deliver LFR versions of any of the earlier tiers of raiding before Dragon Soul. That is very simply out of scope for the launch or early patches of Cataclysm Classic.
“Building LFR versions of these raids would be a major undertaking and our team has already committed our time and resources over the next year to other areas of development on the various flavors of WoW Classic. If we do LFR, it will only be for Dragon Soul. We’d still love feedback from on how you feel about that raid though!”
When I spoke to Longdale at BlizzCon, she discussed the responses to a WoW Cataclysm Classic survey that the devs put out in 2022, expressing with excitement that the general consensus “[wasn’t] that bad.” The survey, in turn, spurred on the decision to forge ahead with Cataclysm – something they themselves were a little worried about. So, I advise letting the team know what you think – politely, of course.
If you’re considering diving back into the ever-expanding world of Azeroth, make sure you’ve got all of the best WoW addons downloaded and ready to go. Additionally, we have a list of other free MMORPGs, if you’re looking for something to tide you over until Cataclysm’s launch.
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