I skimmed the nearly 50 pages on this thread and couldn't find a single instance of someone calling for cross-server lfg AND nerfs to current content. Most people like a little difficulty. As I've stated before, the difficult part of group content should NOT be assembling the group. I fail to see where cross-server lfg prevents you from forming groups the way you're doing it now. In wow I usually post that I'm going to be chaining randoms and ask if anyone wants to come, and I see quite a few others doing this as well. If they do, great. If not, at least I don't have to sit there and spam chat for hours trying to find a group. I really can't help but feel that the reason most (note: not ALL) people are against cross-server is their desire to create an artificial barrier to group content. It's kind of ironic to use the community argument to exclude people from seeing content and getting gear.

I think the idea of giving players to option to decide whether to group cross-server or single-server could potentially fix all the issues. It allows players on well-populated servers to form groups easier with people from their own server while allowing people on lower populated servers to group with people over all servers. The biggest issue with that is the division of roles over low-populated servers. I could see tanks, and to a lesser extent healers, sticking to their own, low-pop server because their queues would be short anyway. That said I think it's a good starting point. If it works, great, it should keep everyone relatively happy. If not then I think it comes down to 2 options. 1. Complete cross-server lfg with an emphasis on placing players from the same server together. 2. Server merges (which open up a whole new set of issues).

I really don't see what's so bad about giving players a choice. If you don't want to use cross-server lfg then don't use it. This really isn't a hard concept. No one's asking for a system like wow where you get a goody bag or tokens for using the lfg system. We just want to be able to run content without having to wait 1 hour+ just to get started. The most difficult part of group content should not be finding a group, it should be the content.

Except this was 9pm est on an east coast server. If I had been trying to log on at say midnight I'd see your point, but trying to find 3 other people to group with when there's only 6 others to choose from the odds of finding a group of appropriate composition and level are incredibly low.

Those who are against cross-server, or a lfg tool in general, clearly have not tried forming groups when there are 7 people TOTAL on the fleet. Aside from a 49 and 50, no one was within 5 levels of another player. I couldn't spam chat even if I wanted to (well I suppose I could but I think you get my point). This whole argument about cross-server lfg killing communities is about as well reasoned as "the sky is falling". The idea that players somehow police themselves and that if a player behaves poorly there are repercussions is more or less a myth. As someone pointed out, if you're running a FP now and someone is either a jerk or really bad and just wanting to be carried, there's almost nothing you can do during the run. If you kick them out of the group you either have to go back and spam chat looking for someone to run a half-finished run or trying to finish it shorthanded. Sure, when you get back you can complain to everyone in the fleet, and maybe some people will listen to/care about what you have to say, but that person IS going to find more groups.

I really don't see how people can argue against cross-realm lfg and at the same time argue for cross-realm pvp. If the argument is that it takes too long to queue for pvp, where it will pretty much throw the first 16 players it finds together, consider finding groups for FP's where you need a specific party composition. It really just seems like people are trying to keep their "special snowflake" status and dressing it up as concern for the community, which on top of being silly is also counterproductive to these conversations. I just don't think I'll ever be at a point where I find myself more entertained by spamming chat looking for a group for 30-60 minutes, when I could be questing and letting the game find my group for me and most likely in less time. I wonder what the reaction would be if they set aside certain servers that wouldn't be a part of cross server lfg. The idea being that if you don't want to have it, there's a server you can go to get away from it. It's not so much different from pvp vs pve or rp vs non-rp servers. It's probably not something that would ever happen, but they could offer transfers to the server style of your choice (although I have a feeling, despite the thousands of threads asking for server transfers and merging that suddenly people will be up in arms about changing servers).

The whole "rare colors should be rare" argument is kinda silly once you take into account that everyone is going to have a very different opinion on what colors should be rare. I personally love dual-wielding a green and blue lightsaber, which can be done pretty much the second you hit level 10. Then there's my gf who really wants a purple lightsaber, which is (as far as I know) not something that can be done as soon as you hit level 10. My point is that color is an ENTIRELY aesthetic choice, so why not treat it like one? I don't think dropping the stats from current crystals would be the easiest way to go about changing it. It's an interesting idea, but I think the best idea being tossed around is to just make all the colors cover all stats so if you want a crystal with endurance you can get it in any color. Another idea I had would be maybe a vendor who could change the color of the crystal while keeping the stats. I think that could appease the most people, because high-stat crystals would still remain difficult to obtain but everyone would be able to have the color they want.

^This. It should at least try to group people from the same server together. Personally, I think this aspect should come later, as server populations start to rise. If people on low-pop servers have to worry about tanks and healers being constantly snatched away from them because people from the tank's/healer's server decided to queue then it really doesn't end up helping those low population servers much, if at all. So yes, in theory, I'd like same-server grouping to be the eventual goal, just not right away.

I really don't see how this feature would ruin the community. The idea is that if someone behaves poorly in a group run that you can warn others, and eventually cause them to either change their ways or be unable to group. This system simply does not work. Sure, if someone is a jerk when they group with me I might not ever play with them again, but odds are other people are going to group with that person no matter what I say (and I don't see why other people should automatically take my side to begin with). I like the idea of a LFG tool for 2 main reasons. 1. Forming groups as they are now, time required is a wildly inconsistent variable. If I only have 2 hours to play, it's hard to say if that's enough time to run a FP, particularly at mid-levels where there are fewer players looking for the same FP's. A LFG tool would allow me (hopefully) to see approximately how long is needed to form a group. Perhaps even more importantly, if I have to leave the queue due to time, it's much less of a hardship on the people I'm in the queue with than if I were to have a group of 2 others and have to bail on them before we got a 4th. 2. I like the cooperation of playing with other people, and the idea of taking down opponents I wouldn't be able to otherwise. That said, I'm not looking to make friends in this (or any other) game. I'm not the kind of person who will log into a game just to socialize. Being able to get a group of random people together to accomplish 1 clear objective, then disbanding and likely never seeing those people again works great for me. tl;dr A LFG tool would be great for people with limited time or who just don't want to get extracurricular with the social aspect. I would prefer a system that tries to match players with others from their server first, but I think a LFG tool is much needed.