Project Lore

It's been more than a week now since the release of Patch 3.3, and I'll admit something: I've been so busy grinding heroics for badges on my main (finished off my PvP set, woot) that I didn't even think of the wonderful potential that the new LFG system has for lowbies and toons that are still leveling. Then, I got this oh-so-interesting comment on my blog about rolling new characters from reader Uthers:

I recently started a new character and found out something rather interesting. The low level random dungeon rewards are surprisingly useful, for one, and for a two I got the Ragefire Chasms dungeon. On Alliance side. I'm not sure how many level 15 Alliance can honestly say they've gotten through Ragefire Chasm before the random dungeon, but it's almost pathetically easy now. I should imagine the same applies for Horde and the Stockades.

Interesting thought. So I logged into my level 22 blood elf Pixielocks to check out the LFG system on her. And indeed, the first dungeon on the list of the dungeon finder is traditionally Alliance because of the crap Hordies have to go through to get there -- Deadmines. I love the idea of every player getting the chance to see all of the game's content, especially early-on in the game when it can be tough to find a group when players are spread out all over lowbie areas. Instead of spamming the Trade channel, begging to get a run through a dungeon, lowbies instead can queue up and continue about their questing business while LFG does it's cross-realm thing. Once finished, you can go right back to whatever you left of doing. And I'm also a fan of the rewards for doing random classic dungeons -- instead of emblems and gold, characters get experience, a smaller amount of silver and a Satchel of Helpful Goods that scales with level. I am a bit curious about how likely LFG is to put a wide level range into the same dungeon. Razorfen Kraul says it's for level 22-32. Does that mean that my level 22 character could be put in a group with a bunch of level 30s? I suppose it does - and that could be interesting. But another part of me still feels very conflicted, too. Part of the fun of those low level dungeons lies just in getting to them. The proof of that lies within the Project Lore team's Horde alts venturing through raptor hell and meddling with tigers that, despite their hopes, can indeed cross bridges. None of that will matter anymore if you can just port to and back from dungeons in a snap. In fact, you probably could even park your lowbie in Dalaran and just run dungeons constantly to level, if you really wanted. I suppose that 's pretty much the same for heroics, too, but for some reason it strikes a bit harder for the classic dungeons. Perhaps when I actually use the tool on my alts and see how much time I save, I'll appreciate it more. I'm curious how everyone else feels about the system for their non-level-capped toons? Are you appreciative enough of the content that you'll still trudge through dangerous zones to get to that dungeon you want to run, or will you take advantage of bypassing that with LFG?