The way you look for an available group in World of Warcraft now is clunky at best, and still relies on people having back-channel discussions outside of the LFG system in order to find other players to run dungeons with them. It essentially relies on people queuing up for dungeons and sitting there until someone speaks up.

Right now on the PTR Blizzard is testing a new system, one that allows you to drop yourself or your group into a Looking for Group/Dungeon/Raid system that will automatically match you up with other people to round out your party. The beauty of the new system is that it’s far more passive, and allows you to essentially make yourself available and the game will find someone to match up with you – you can even drop yourself in alone, choose your role, and the system will find a group for you if you’re by yourself and looking to PUG something.

On the up side, that means that it’ll be even easier for people to find PUGs and for casual players to dip their feet into deeper waters than their guilds may currently be swimming in, but on the down-side the lack of that back-channel discussion may lead to this tool forming groups that instantly fall apart as soon as someone deemed undesirable joins the group, or PUGs that fall apart quickly because of an undesirable deviate or a loot ninja.

Over at WoW.com they have an excellent discussion thread about this, and point out that some of the other enhancements to the system involve the limitation of certain classes to roll on certain items (for example, melee characters can’t roll on spellpower gear) and the ability to disenchant an item straight from the need/greed roll screen if everyone passes on it.

Add to this the fact that the new LFG tool will automatically teleport you to the instance you’re queued up for when your group is assembled and you have what looks to be an exciting addition to the game, and one that will make it even easier to find and assemble a PUG for just about anything. But is it necessarily a good idea? What do you think? Let us know in the comments!