wow Upcoming Change to Group Finder Queues: Feb 1

[Stan 5,021]

Starting February 1, Spanish realms will be assigned to English queues. This decision was made, because of Ashran queues that have been a problem since the launch of Legion. Blizzard is confident that the change will provide the most positive results.

I disagree. because there's going to be a lot of players who will refuse to communicate in English and grouping up people with a language barrier is all but "positive". It's already happening on NA realms. Anyway, here's the official blue post.

Aerythlea (Source)

Since the launch of Legion, we've been keeping an eye on the challenges facing characters on Spanish realms when trying to enter Ashran. Some players have had trouble accessing the zone—due in most part to long queue times—and we've been monitoring the situation to find the best solution. 

After considering our options, we feel that adding Spanish realms to the English queues for group content is the most appropriate fix. Not only should this get players into Ashran faster, it’ll also help with another minor but unpleasant problem—long queue times when using the Dungeon or Raid Finder tools.

So what does this mean for you? After maintenance on February 1, when a character from a Spanish realm queues for PVE (dungeons and raids) or PVP (battlegrounds, including Ashran) content using the Group Finder tool, they might be teamed up with players from both Spanish and English realms. 

We understand that this solution may not appeal to everyone, but after strong consideration, we’re confident it’ll provide the most positive results. 

We’d appreciate your thoughts on the change and welcome your feedback in this thread.

This change applies to EU realms. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments and please keep the discussion civil.

[Andcat 2]

That's cool. Just going to kick them like the Rag players.

 

[Conso 1]

1 hour ago, Andcat said:

That's cool. Just going to kick them like the Rag players.

 

Indeed, sounds like an English check is going to be in order, make our games suck more so they can appease the smaller client base? Whose dopey decision was that? I dont have a degree in business and even I can see thats a bad choice. I'm not saying its going to kill the game or anything extreme like that, just make group finder suck bad, "hey hunter...why are you pulling extra crap?" reply... "no hablo entiende inglés imbéciles"...5 seconds later ... "yoquerotacobell has been removed from the group.""

At least mythic+'s they have to talk to you first, easy to make sure they understand basic english.

I don't PvP so I have no input on that effect.

[Slapchop 0]

No. Undo immediately.

[RustyHelix 0]

43 minutes ago, Conso said:

Indeed, sounds like an English check is going to be in order, make our games suck more so they can appease the smaller client base? Whose dopey decision was that? I dont have a degree in business and even I can see thats a bad choice. I'm not saying its going to kill the game or anything extreme like that, just make group finder suck bad, "hey hunter...why are you pulling extra crap?" reply... "no hablo entiende inglés imbéciles"...5 seconds later ... "yoquerotacobell has been removed from the group.""

At least mythic+'s they have to talk to you first, easy to make sure they understand basic english.

I don't PvP so I have no input on that effect.

"yoquerotacobell has been removed from the group."" LOL, nice.

[Kaelos 74]

Well there is already trouble in communicating with Russians in many games since long time now. Nobody will be surprised I think

[Calysia 220]

Communicate...in random groups? Most talking I've seen in group finder is someone might say hello and that's few and far between.

[Laragon 269]

Back in BC when they launched the Latin America realms my server at the time (Hakkar) saw a BRUTAL population drop. Our 3rd and 5th strongest guilds were entirely Spanish and transferred. It mostly killed the server (we transferred off after a few months because the AH economy crashed). They were good raid guilds, but we could not recruit ANYONE (we were top on the server) from them because of the language barrier.

You're just going to hit this problem all over again. If you need communication, it will fall apart. If you don't like in AH economy or really easy content) it has a chance.

[InfernoRFU 117]

Hotfix February 1st

• Jajajaja increased by 200%

[Lacedemonio 2]

7 hours ago, Conso said:

Indeed, sounds like an English check is going to be in order, make our games suck more so they can appease the smaller client base? Whose dopey decision was that? I dont have a degree in business and even I can see thats a bad choice. I'm not saying its going to kill the game or anything extreme like that, just make group finder suck bad, "hey hunter...why are you pulling extra crap?" reply... "no hablo entiende inglés imbéciles"...5 seconds later ... "yoquerotacobell has been removed from the group.""

At least mythic+'s they have to talk to you first, easy to make sure they understand basic english.

I don't PvP so I have no input on that effect.

Im a Ragnaros player, and what you call "a smaller client base" is thousands of players. Dont discriminate players just because they dont talk your lenguage, learn spanish if you want. And save your racist jokes. the world is bigger than your country.

[DeathsDesign 92]

An easy way to fix this is to implement an automatic translator in the chat coding so that regardless of what language you speak people can understand each other.  My biggest issue is being in a group with someone and can't understand them at all or getting spammed by an announcement addon "so and so has done something and used [spell here] but you can't understand it because you don't speak my language so you're going to see gibberish and a spell name"...  Being a primarily english speaking player I'd rather see "me oops so sorry" if something goes bad in a group than an entire book I can't understand.

[Stan 5,021]

41 minutes ago, Lacedemonio said:

Im a Ragnaros player, and what you call "a smaller client base" is thousands of players. Dont discriminate players just because they dont talk your lenguage, learn spanish if you want. And save your racist jokes. the world is bigger than your country.

Still a pretty small user base if you ask me when compared to the entire English player base. I can't see any logic behind why I as a player should learn Spanish (in this case) when I picked to play on an "English" realm. Don't get me wrong, I have no issues with any players as long as we can communicate and understand each other.

It happens on NA frequently that you join a group that refuses to talk to you in English. I don't even want to imagine the consequences this may have on PvP. I don't think what he said was racist. Just a demonstration of situations that do and will happen often.

[hDszzT 103]

It's a necessary evil. Some player bases in certain languages on certain regions will just be way too small and that would make queued content next to impossible if they can never really have enough people on at the same time queuing for content.

The thing is, this only applies to random queued content. Normal/Heroic dungeons, and LFR. If you want to do Mythics/M+ or any higher level raiding, if they don't speak your language and you feel that will be a problem for the group, you can choose not to pick them.

In the current random grouped content it's generally accepted that very little communication is ever needed (it's not uncommon to go through entire days of LFD/LFR with no-one saying anything in chat aside from automated speech by addons.) If someone is being disruptive enough to your LFD/LFR group that it actually prevents you from progressing, then the others can agree to vote kick them, and you know what? There are plenty of English-speaking players who are just as disruptive, it's not a Latin American/Spanish problem.

You can get grouped with someone who doesn't speak your language and they screw up the group, just like I've had to deal with countless English-speakers who just wouldn't behave either. You can end up grouped with a group full of 4 Spanish players who don't speak English and they may decide to vote kick you for not speaking Spanish, but there will always be premade groups of 4 friends who can decide to vote kick you out for no good reason, regardless of language. Everyone turns a blind eye when it's an English speaker doing it, though. Confirmation bias, y'know.

3 hours ago, Conso said:

I'm not saying its going to kill the game or anything extreme like that, just make group finder suck bad, "hey hunter...why are you pulling extra crap?" reply... "no hablo entiende inglés imbéciles"...5 seconds later ... "yoquerotacobell has been removed from the group.""

As opposed to "Hey Hunter... why are you pulling extra crap" "Fuck off noob" "XxLégölàsxx has been removed from the group." ?

2 hours ago, Kaelos said:

Well there is already trouble in communicating with Russians in many games since long time now. Nobody will be surprised I think

That's other games, though. You can't compare other games with WoW, they don't have the same content. WoW doesn't currently group Russian players with non-Russian as far as I'm aware, the only time you'll see them is if you either decide to play on Russian realms, or specifically choose to invite them to your premade groups. Or do Russians actually get queued with other languages that aren't English? Regardless, that queued content really doesn't require all that much communication to get through, and the game gives you the tools you need to remove disruptive players from the group.

2 hours ago, Laragon said:

Back in BC when they launched the Latin America realms my server at the time (Hakkar) saw a BRUTAL population drop. Our 3rd and 5th strongest guilds were entirely Spanish and transferred. It mostly killed the server (we transferred off after a few months because the AH economy crashed). They were good raid guilds, but we could not recruit ANYONE (we were top on the server) from them because of the language barrier.

You're just going to hit this problem all over again. If you need communication, it will fall apart. If you don't like in AH economy or really easy content) it has a chance.

How... exactly? You think that Spanish realms being added to the English queues will cause many realms to have a brutal population drop and have their server economy crash? I don't think that's really relevant. The only content that really requires a certain amount of communication is Mythics/M+ and Normal+ Raiding, where you have full control over who you choose to invite to your group, so...

Edited January 25, 2017 by Ammako

[lasolan 0]

Well definitely looks like blizz better have finished the translator  for in game like they said they where doing in wrath or there will be problems people will be getting vote to kick on joining grps just cause there realm name without it.

[Daedrik 4]

Ammako is completely right. I've been running LFG on my Monk for 7 hours today and have typed maybe 4 sentences to other players. I think everyone is blowing this WAY out of proportion. 95% of game content is outside the LFG system. That system is mostly for leveling and maybe doing a dungeon world quest on easy mode. What kinda communication do YOU guys do during a LFG run of Nexus or Blackfathom Depths? Join a guild and run some real content and you'll never have to worry about it again! Lol.

[Ampea 2]

You Americans are hilarious. "BUT THEY DON'T SPEAK ENGLISH, HOW COULD THEY PLAY WITH US!?" I play in Oceania, I accept that a lot of players do not speak English. Everyone accepts this. In Oceanic realms you will always see groups in other languages like Arabic, Mandarin, Vietnamese, etc. because these cultures happen to also exist in the world. There are actual humans who don't speak only English.
Someone who speaks only Spanish would open up group finder, look for a group titled in Spanish, and join them. Just like how you open up group finder, look for a group titled in English, and join them. I do not see what the issue is.

I'd also like to join the side of the argument who are asking why you need complex communication in a LFG activity? In what possible situation could there be a language barrier? If someone is bad, deal with it. It's LFG. What do you expect? Top tier raid guild players? If someone is straight up not performing their role as a DPS, Tank, Healer, then kick them. They have queued as that role, and if they cannot do this role, then you simply remove them from that role. I do not see what the issue is.

On 1/26/2017 at 4:57 PM, Daedrik said:

Join a guild and run some real content and you'll never have to worry about it again!

I'd also like to reinforce this point. If you somehow CANNOT play the game with non-English speakers in your presence, then just... play with English speaking people? Again, I do not see what the issue is.

On 1/26/2017 at 10:21 AM, Ammako said:

You can get grouped with someone who doesn't speak your language and they screw up the group, just like I've had to deal with countless English-speakers who just wouldn't behave either. You can end up grouped with a group full of 4 Spanish players who don't speak English and they may decide to vote kick you for not speaking Spanish, but there will always be premade groups of 4 friends who can decide to vote kick you out for no good reason, regardless of language. Everyone turns a blind eye when it's an English speaker doing it, though. Confirmation bias, y'know.

Ammako speaks the truth. The reality is, if someone is an idiot... they're not going to listen to you. Regardless of language.

Just like how you're not listening to us when we tell you it's going to be alright, even though we're speaking English.