Anyone who has spent much time running level 80 instances in WoW with the dungeon finder will be familiar with this scenario.
- You join the dungeon finder.
- You wait for an amount of time based on your role (tank/heal/dps) and how many other people are queueing.
- The dungeon finder finds you a group (hurrah!!) and as soon as everyone in the group clicks ok to indicate that they are still interested, you’ll all be ported to your instance.
- But if one person either selects no or (more commonly) the finder times out because one person didn’t notice it and doesn’t click at all.
- return to 1.
So far, so good. The reason a lot of dps fail to click anything on the dungeon finder is that it just takes longer to find them an instance. Mostly this is fine, people can find something to do in the game to keep them occupied while they wait. But if you are all out of things to do, the temptation is to alt-tab out and catch up with twitter, go get a drink, browse forums, and so on. And when that happens, it’s quite likely that people just miss the dungeon finder when it comes up. (Although it is guaranteed to time out a millisecond before you tab back into WoW to check on it.)
It is however quite annoying for the rest of the group who were ready to go and now have to wait another minute or so (depending on who declined and how long they need to wait for a replacement.)
There’s no ideal answer to this one. If you don’t have anything much to do in WoW then staring at the screen for 20 minutes isn’t much fun as an option. As long as the holy trinity is required for instances, dps will also always have to queue longer than tanks and healers.
I do think it would help if there were more ways to spread the notification though. Maybe addons to control where it appears on the screen so that you could more easily bring up a browser window and still spot the notification. I did find one that plays a PING tone when the finder comes up.
Another way would be more minigames or even a browser within the game client. It’s dreadful for immersion, but at least means you can see the dungeon finder while playing bejewelled or flaming some noobs on your bboard of choice. Or maybe more immersively, how about some kind of instance or activity where players can only go while they are in the queue. ie. something to do while you are waiting.
What do you do when you are waiting for the dungeon finder?
Welcome to Spinksville! 
I played a healer. So I blinked…but only sometimes.
I have a dual monitor setup, so I usually websurf, use Tweetdeck or update my glyph spreadsheet on one screen, with WoW open on my 24″. >.>
You can also set up WoW to play sounds when minimized which should allow you to hear the LFD ready sound. You don’t even need any addons for that!
This. You really need a second screen for WoW.
But the again, with 2 screens, the DD participation would probably be even worse…
Yeah, this. Though one time I was queueing for DPS and needed to go to the toilet, and I still had 5mins left to reach the “average queue time”, and what happens? Didn’t quite manage to hit accept when I got back to see the invite… >_<
As strange it may sound, I do quests while waiting for the LFD to kick in. On my tank it’s like the first commenter said, I blink and wait for the dps to show around. But on my spriest I can easily do some lower level quests in Northrend and live the life of a hero.
In the rare occasions I’m not in the game, I can hear the LFD ready sound just like Kadomi stated. But that’s a very rare occasion.
C out
farm, fish, play Ah or like Copra – quest. depends on my mood
I set up so that sounds still play when I’m alt tabbed (it’s in the Sound Options) so even if i’m browsing I still get the DADADUMMM
Wouldn’t it be cool, if you could switch toon while waiting? That would sure get me to queue up more on my dps classes. Especcially the ones with no gathering skills.
I resize my web browser so I can have it open and still see the lfd thing pop up. That’s if I am only on to do instances, other wise I pick flowers, or quest or something.
Another addon I can recommend is Event Notifier.
Works in a similar manner, but also includes things like readychecks.
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/eventnotifier.aspx
The worst thing about the mechanism (it makes me want to strangulate someone) is:
– I queue as my level 65 alt tank.
– I get 3 dps in the queue.
– I wait 15 mins for a healer.
– DPS is AFK, I am back in the queue but behold: without a healer!
So I wait another 15 mins… the scenario repeats itself…
Dude, stop stealing mah healers!
(The healer didn’t decline, why did he vanish? He was probably put in different group… The question is why, if I’m already waiting so long? Yes, I had to wait again for a healer even the second or third time the AFK fiasco happens.)
Yes I can quest in the meantime but getting 1 instance per hour because of AFK dps + taking away healers from AFK groups mechanism it seems almost as slow as in the ye olde days of spamming /who “wanna come heal Slave Pens?”
Enable to the option to play in game sounds even when alt-tabbed. Done.
I also have a dual-monitor set up, so I can surf or tweet, or quest a lowbie toon on my second account. I would also sometimes be asteroid mining in EVE when I was subbed.
Fishing. Usually in Wintergrasp. My favorite thing is to have a Dungeon Finder pop just as a red name is charging towards me – it’s happened twice now, so sweet!
When I sign up as a Tank for a Heroic I don’t need to wait, while signing up as a Tank at lower levels (on my DK) I might have a few minutes to kill.
When I sign up as DPS I’ll either quest, or grind Beasts & farm Leather. I never sit around in town just staring at the chat log. That’s always seemed a waste of time to me. You pay to play, so queue up, then get out and play. I just cannot comprehend those who sit on their arse in Dalaran waiting for their queue to pop and do nothing but complain the whole time. “OMG Waiting sux!” It’s even more mind boggling when they’re a Hybrid class queued as DPS.
IMO, if you sign up as DPS and you’re not a DPS-only class you waive the right to bitch about the queue.
I thoroughly enjoy queuing as dps on a hybrid because I feel I earned it with all the tanking I’ve done this expansion 🙂
As others have said, you can enable sound while windowed, provided you don’t mind the WoW soundtrack. However, for those of us who don’t have dual monitors, you might get very nervous if your machine takes an extra few seconds to re-render the screen when you hear the announcement and reopen your WoW window.
Personally, I think the system could stand to add a few seconds onto the time to accept/decline and add a second warning noise when time is about to expire. Yes, this means an extra 10 seconds for everyone when that last person is actually AFK, but I think that’s a relatively small price in comparison to booting someone from the queue after 30 minutes because they were a second late to return to their screen and/or didn’t hear the initial sound.
Personally, I’d be happy if it would announce it in the chat window or you could make the whole screen flash a few times. (ie. I’d be able to see it around the edge of the browser.)
I prefer not to have the entire WoW soundtrack on because I might be listening to spotify or chatting to someone.
I go pick flowers or cut rock while I’m waiting. It’s the only real time I ever have to farm. If I’m away from the computer then I’ll turn up the volume, really, really loud so when the LFD thing chimes “ready” I can run back and go clicky-clicky!
How many times have you zoned into a dungeon for a dps to drop out, and said “Meh, lets just start”. I know I have several times. I have had the same thing happen as Akasza – been in queue, found group, dps declines, healer mysteriously vanishes (same thing when I’m queuing as a healer – the tank vanishes).
Simple solution – if the tank and healer both accept, that should be when people zone in to the dungeon. Afterall, who needs dps anyways 😛
Oh that reminds me of the other thing which annoys me. When you zone into a random dungeon and the first thing someone says is, “AFK 5 mins.”
It’s like — wait, you were here to click accept for the dungeon but can’t stay just a few more minutes to actually finish it? Or ‘why did you press accept if you knew you had to afk?’
Just play Peggle/Bejeweled in WoW while you wait in the dungeon finder 🙂
http://www3.popcap.com/promos/wow/
I quest, gather, do “stuff”, grind rep, AH, dailies, try on clothes, whatever. Sometimes I forget I’m even queued at all. Hearing the dong can sometimes be quite shocking.
On my tank, I take a breath or two. 🙂 On my shadow priest, I make netherweave bags. LOTS of bags…