I'm pretty sure I've not actually seen anyone post (in this thread, any of its predecessors or any of the dozens of other LFD threads) stating specifically that they dont' want a guild. I've seen it said that guilds don't work to solve the problem of grouping consistently or that they dont' want to be forced to join a guild that may or may not suit their playstyle. But I've never seen anyone say flat out 'I want a cross server LFD because I don't want to join a guild' that I can recall.

Going to repeat myself because it seems you're intent on being obtuse. The ignore function is the only method to ensure you don't group with people you don't like. That applies to both single and cross server LFD tools. Server blacklists and servers policing themselves are largely myth and entirely anecdotal. You want so desperately to think that your opinion isn't irrelevant in the grand scheme of things on your server. No one cares that you think Bob the GS is a ninja. Just ignore him and move on.

Where do you come up with this crap? I'm sure you've have a ton more people willing to give you the benefit of the doubt in a discussion like this if you actually tried to substantiate anything you said with something other than 'because I said so'.

So the entirety of your argument is anecdote. Gotcha. Here's the thing, for every single instance that you can come up with where servers policing themselves was a complete success, I can come up with twenty where the offending party suffered absolutely no consequences whatsoever for their 'bad behavior'. The only tool that is actually proven to help in keeping you from grouping with people you don't like is the /ignore function. Anything other than that is largely an exercise in myth building.

You're delusional if you don't think a fully functional, cross server LFD will, at some point, be implemented. Delusional.

Let it not be said that you aren't consistent. It already is a 'micro-managed free for all'. That's been my entire point the whole time. People can do what you've been describing as your most vivid waking nightmare right now. Do I need to get a bigger hammer?

Maybe you just missed my point entirely. All that's completely irrelevant to what I'm trying to say. Punish you how? I can respec 4 or 5 times a night if I so choose. The money spent to respec isn't an issue. What I mean by hard cap is a cap you can't buy your way through. A hard limit on the amount of times you can respec during a given time period (e.g. once per week/month) is the only way to ensure the outcome that you're thinking of.

How is the costs resetting relevant though? Just seems like a non sequitur.

How exactly does that help your point?

That's commonly referred to as a soft enrage. Its still an enrage mechanic. The point is to compound tedium? I'll reiterate, nothing you stated as being solely attributable to dual spec is missing from the game in its current form. I can respec at will to counter any boss in the game. You've concluded that, because its a giant pain to do, that the devs must want you to not do it. I've concluded that since its a giant pain to do, that they must be working on ways to mitigate that pain. Because, if it were their intent to not have you respecing between bosses, a hard cap on the number of respecs per week/month/etc. would accomplish that much better. How does that differ from any other raid game currently on the market? Specifically, how does it differ from WoW or Rift?

That's been done. I'm fully on board with a toggle that allows you to limit your available pool to your server only. I've presented tons of feedback and made more than a few suggestions about how to improve on WoW's cross server design. The problem with these threads is that as soon as I hit the post button on my well thought out, 1500 word essay, some knucklehead pops in just long enough to say 'lulz, LFD kills community, lulz' and thus ensues more general idiocy. So you've got a petition drafted and ready to send to the developers detailing how its your opinion that people should be forced to group the entire way through the leveling experience right? No? Thats the only way you can make that argument work and not be a logically inconsistent mess. LFD allows you to play with other people. It doesn't allow you to magically solo everything.

MMO's have time sinks. When those time sinks are tedious and serve no appreciable purpose, people will quit playing. Making time sinks enjoyable (or at least bearable) is what good MMO's do well. Running back to fleet to respec and swap out your UI (again) isnt' the good kind of time sink. All bosses come equipped with an enrage timer of some sort. That's the only thing that stops the group from stacking healers. This is where you took a turn for the goofball. You can't assure anyone of anything with regards to design intent unless you're a BW employee. You've just accurately described the raid game as it exists now. The fact that you can respec at all means that people can swap specs as they see fit to best beat an encounter. Adding dual spec means that I don't have to go back to fleet and redo my UI first. That's it.

This is another way of saying 'you gotta take my word for it, bro'. Its obviously not common knowledge or there wouldn't be any discussion about it.

It pretty much came to an end with the release of vanilla WoW. Instanced and easily soloable content ensured that your guild was the beginning and end of any meaningful community beyond its boundaries. I know you guys have these grandiose (and almost entirely delusional) memories of the good old days, but they really weren't all that good.

I think what happens is that they get to a point when every argument they've made has been countered and they fall back on 'the devs posted X, you're wrong/I'm right!!'. Completely failing to address any of the issues that have been brought up, just 'see, I'm right because some dev said so!'. Just a really shortsighted argument because, 1) devs do change their minds about things - in fact they do it all the time - and, 2) in order to be consistent, they'd have to embrace the opposite when the devs do change their mind.

To answer the rhetorical question: you should care. Game developers can and do get things wrong quite often. When they come to the conclusion that they were wrong (and they will sooner or later), they'll add cross server LFD without even a backward glance.

Pretty much this. The idea that LFD, in and of itself, kills community is so laughable because it posits only one route through one part of the entire game as the only method for being social and building said community.

Shouldn't this be in the PVP forum?

This, right here, is why people have a really hard time taking these kinds of complaints seriously. Anti-LFD folks have this propensity to see all of societies ills through the, bursting-at-the-seams microcosm of cross server LFD tools. LFD is as much responsible for 'fast food culture' as it is the global financial downturn.

Arguing from repetition is pretty annoying. If you can't beat 'em, just keep shouting 'LALALALFDSUCKSLALALA' til they lose the will to respond.

All specs are viable for leveling. This point basically turns into a semantics argument that people like to sideline the dual spec threads with. Healers/tanks are viable specs for leveling, but some people just prefer to solo quest as one spec and group as another. The issue gets turned into a 'need' vs. 'want' argument which, being kind, misses the point. If it helps, just mentally rewrite every post that says 'I need dual spec' or 'I can't level without dual spec' or similar to 'I want dual spec'/'I'd prefer dual spec for leveling'. It just cuts down on the signal/noise ratio.

Looks like its been wiped (or my search-fu is weak and/or lazy) so I can't substantiate it. It was made on a well known, unofficial forum where game devs occasionally post.

Its been said before, but one of the Rift devs (that also worked on EQ2) stated publicly that list style group finders don't work. Apparently, they sunk a ton of time and resources into a system that the players wouldn't use. He said, basically, that people want to group in his experience, but they don't want to be the guy starting the group and that anything other than an auto-grouping function probably would be a waste of resources. The same thing can be said for WoW's experiments in group finder tools. They had a similar group finder and when given the choice between that and the trade channel, players chose trade chat. WoW's system evolved to what it did because that's what players would use. Distinctions like 'not good for the community' and so forth are so subjective as to be completely meaningless when trying to balance against the rest of the equation. I personally don't see the issue with auto-grouping and porting tools in this game (or any other for that matter). The instances are all in the same place, running there for the thousandth time doesn't increase immersion.

You weren't referring to gambling addiction?

OP, there's a decent thread here with some suggestions for ways to remove the RNG from RE. Pretty sure his answer would be no. Compulsion rarely equals fun.