Warlords of Draenor: Blizzard's Group Finder will allow leaders to filter applicants
Blizzard Community Manager Lore has been all over the forums talking about how Blizzard will build their cross-realm group finder. The latest update for the would-be cross-realm raider, world boss killer or PvPer is as follows:
But with OQ you can put restrictions, view how well they've done before, and how well they're liked with the public. Openraid had a reputation how well people liked your raids and gave you upvotes. Is there any way they will add something like that to help people avoid groups lead by bad players, mean leaders or elitist jerks?
We do want to provide some options for group leaders to put some restrictions for who can and can't request to join their group. We don't want to do it in a way that encourages people to be too heavy-handed, but we also want to make the system easy and intuitive to use, and feel it's better for everyone if the system lets leaders be upfront about who they're willing to bring along.
Basically, we want to avoid a situation where you can be invited to a group and then immediately be kicked when the leader inspects your gear and finds you're 10 item levels lower than he or she is looking for (and then have to repeat that process until you eventually either find a group that will bring you or give up entirely). We'd rather do our best to make sure you only see groups that you've actually got a shot at running with :)
This is great news, in my book. While I can anticipate some concerns that this might encourage elitism or similar, it's actually going the opposite direction. Lore's concern for situations where teams filter on invite is very valid, as if a system is not included people will find some way to exclude those they don't want.
It's perfectly fair for teams to want to bring players of a similar gear level to their own, and a cursory glance at oQueue will reveal that while some teams will want higher level gear, rating or achievements, there are plenty of groups that don't. It seems highly likely that users of the Blizzard group finder will experience the same variety.
One other thing I'd love to see copied across from oQueue to the Blizzard group finder is the possibility for group leaders to earn some kind of rating. Not awarded by their party, necessarily, as that's open to abuse, but oQueue self-awards leaders ranks for leading. One thing an LFM group-finder such as this needs is leaders, and this is a way to reward them for their additional effort.
