Pros & Cons of LFR in World of Warcraft
At the time it was called "Raid Finder." It allowed players to automatically group up with like-minded players for endgame content -- basically a way for people to raid who weren't in a guild or a pre-made raiding group.
Additionally, the difficulty of the raid was tuned way down to make it easier (and, therefore, possible) for more casual players to complete the raid without the necessity of having played together before or even having gained significant experience doing the raid before. If the group still failed to kill a certain boss, they would be gifted with stacks of "determination" that would buff the entire group and help them to defeat a given boss. These stacks could each a maximum of 10, which would equal a huge buff to each player individually such that even the most incompetent groups could kill the boss.
It revolutionized the way World of Warcraft (WoW) was played. For the first time, basically ever, players who were "casual" (read: have responsibilities and/or commitments outside of the game that didn't allow them to be part of regular raid groups) to play end-game content and possibly earn better loot than they could ever get otherwise. It allowed noobs and less-skilled players to enjoy end-game content. It also allowed assholes in to end-game content.
Some hardcore gamers and elitists in the WoW community derided this decision to implement LFR. Many still do to this day. They see it as a betrayal of what raiding is and what it meant to the game, the achievement factor, the prestige factor, the difficulty factor... but most of all the type who felt everyone was getting it too fast and easy, the people who called these new LFR people casuals as an insult, thinking them lazy.
Many players find LFR to be a breakthrough. It opened up the game to whole swaths of the gaming community to finally participate in some of the best content WoW had to offer. It allowed parents, students, workers, soldiers, and others from all walks of life to not have to worry that they couldn't devote hours and hours of time to a single piece of content in a very large game with so many other competing responsibilities. It let people who otherwise wouldn't have been able to raid to have their own, albeit watered-down, version of high-end content. They could finally experience the epic that Warcraft had to offer.
That said... LFR has lately, in my humble opinion, become a mixed-bag. There's a toxicity that has permeated it. And that might be just my aging gamer cred finally showing; I don't enjoy arrogant little shits and racist pricks in the middle of a boss fight. I have little patience for liars, cheaters, AFKers, and whiners in gaming content that I have maybe 1 hour to play in a given week, content that I am salivating over finally getting to experience for myself.
LFR has experienced a huge upswing in useage in Legion due to the introduction of the "warforged" and "titanforged" systems, which allow even low-difficulty content to offer the chance at receiving extremely high-level loot. And with this upswing, the assholes who populate Warcraft of late are able to make their presence felt all the more.
In the olden days, back when I played Vanilla Warcraft, people developed a reputation. If you weren't any good, or if you just pissed people off, you might soon find yourself unable to get invited to any groups for dungeons, let alone raids or other epic content.
Now, you can drop into LFR, curse people out, yell, say a bunch of ignorant crap, throw in some racial slurs, blame everyone for any slight problem but yourself, get great loot, and then drop out immediately.
At the same time, I can get amazing loot, see awesome content, and progress my toon while simultaneously maintaining a full-time career, raising an infant daughter, spending time with my wife, and doing other activities that, back in those olden days I never had to worry about.
Don't let this fool you into thinking WoW is a young kid's game. It isn't. But sometimes you have to make sacrifices in order to progress to the heights in the game. Yet, the current setup seems to have struck a good balance of some sacrifice in time and still accessible to casuals -- like the kind I have become.
I don't blame LFR for causing the toxic culture in WoW. Indeed, quite the opposite. I blame the toxic culture for necessitating LFR. We needed it because too many people were being locked out. And now that those locks are off, we're seeing all kinds of ugliness that used to hide behind closed guild doors where GMs and Officers could knock some skulls. In LFR, no such mechanism exists for punishing assholes -- and rightly so, for it would easily be abused to punish innocent newbs or power-hungry jerks.
Still, the radical changes to the game to accommodate people like myself ("casuals") while simultaneously ensuring that hardcore players remain challenged, have resulted in a system and a gaming culture that makes it difficult for all types of players to get along and play with a sense of community and enjoyment.
I have no answers to this problem. I only have questions.
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