Shared Topic March 19th-25th: Killing Knowledge

The last couple of years in WoW have changed the game quite a bit. While it is very easy to jump into the "elite" vs "casual" vs "noob" bandwagon type of discussion, what is causing it I think is a more interesting topic.
Do you guys think that the LFR and LFD kill the sense of community, but taking it one step further; does it also kill the passing down of knowledge?
I know I did learn a lot from reading the web, but even now I get tons of information from my guild. If I have a doubt, I ask the question and most of the time someone knows off the top of their head where an enchant is, or what the best glyph is, etc. I don't take that community for granted, but it was built before there was a LFD. We are together because we did have to take the trek to the meeting stone. Now we have a button that 1 person uses and BAM we are all there. We know why that is cool, but many of the new players really don't know what that really means.
So are the new tools for grouping killing the knowledge sharing?

I sit here, with a root beer next to me, my cellphone open to Twitter next to me and I think about this shared topic.  Do I think that LFD and LFR have killed the community and knowledge sharing that is out there?  In a short answer, No.  In a long answer, Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.  (Okay, bad joke that I heard from an old rogue friend of mine.)

When I started playing, back in Vanilla, I sucked ass.  I did.  There is no doubt about that.  I looked up to other people, but they were also not the 'elite'.  They played because it was fun to just poke around the world.  The knowledge that was shared to me at that time was simple things like "To use party chat, type /p" and shit like that.

Then, during Burning Crusade, I started raiding and thus became aware of other things.  Like WoW blogs and Thottbot (remember them??) and Allakhazam (remember THEM?).  I fucking thottbot-ed EVERYTHING.  I moved to other guilds and started playing new characters.  In my new guilds, no one played the spec that I wanted so I had to learn on my own.  (Apparently incorrectly, but that's a story I've already told.)  I didn't have that community of people that knew things.

I found Resto4Life.com and fell in love.  I wanted to have Phaelia's little baby druids and I worshiped everything she said.  When she stopped blogging due to her expanding family, I truly mourned but I looked around for other resto druid blogs.  I found elitistjerks during the beginning of Wrath and followed their advice for a while, but eventually carved out my own 'niche' in healing in my guild.

In Wrath, we were a 25 man raiding guild and I believe only had 2, maybe 3, healers when it started.  Between me and my co-healer, my best friend and our resto shaman, we could answer almost every question.  My best friend had a disc priest, the only thing we didn't have was holy pally and we ended up with one of those by the time ICC came about.

However, I was the one people came to with resto druid questions.  If they had healing questions, they would go to either myself or my best friend.  Even people who weren't in our guild would come to us.  It was really weird!!

I never felt that there was a in game 'community' for me to rely on for my questions.  No one played a resto druid when I was starting out or forming my opinions.  I had to search outside the game to get my community.  And oh boy did I find it.

When I made my own blog, BlogAzeroth welcomed me with open arms.  They supported me and let me feel like I was writing TO someone instead of just throwing my thoughts into the nether.  When I decided to become more active in Twitter, I was also welcomed.  I'm very shy (still) but people still respond to me and I have conversations with people all over.  I feel a PART of something.

I'm in a new guild now, one where (for the first time ever) I am healing with another resto druid on a consistent basis.  This was something I never wanted to do.  However, I'm doing it.  I think we have our own healing and gearing ideas but that's okay.  At this point in my healing career, I'm willing to say "Look, I don't heal like you but I'm a goddamn good healer who can keep my shit alive".

I joined the new guild after LFR and LFD were put in.  I still feel a sense of community with them.  They are great people and we fit well together during raids.  I love running randoms with them to meet our weekly guild challenges because they're silly people and fun!

I don't think that advent of LFR and LFD caused a lack of community.  I think the only way it does that is if people only run them alone.  I know my old guild makes a group to go run LFR on Wednesday nights.  I know that my current guild will get 2-6 people together to go run it randomly through out the week.  I love that if we have 4 guildies together, we can pug a 5th from LFD really easily!

Also, in my new guild, we don't have that 1 button that will summon everyone.  We still have 9 levels until we get that, so probably about the time they take that out of the game!!