<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>Up to level 13 now... did some grouping, and it's really pointless to group. I'm not particularly paranoid of BNet retards like many of the ex-MMORPG players are, and I'd say that the average pickup group in WoW is actually decent just due to the virtue the fact that the game is easy. Whereas in a game like EQ any small mistakes can end up wasting everyone's time, in WoW due to the nearly nonexistent death penalty and the fact that enemies are much weaker compare to the player you can get away with a fair amount of incompetency. Besides, you're limited one enemy crowd controled per player (can only poly/sleep/fear/etc one thing) so it's simply not possible to have something like EQ where you got say 5 things and one guy is holding 4 of them down and sometime messes it up. No matter how good you are, you pretty much take care of 2 enemies at once, the one on you and the one you're using your CC skill at, so at worst you get 1 more than expected.
But even after all that, grouping is generally less efficient than soloing unless you're doing a kill X mob quest (because the group's kills counts towards yours so it's obviously faster that way) or a collect ground spawn X quest (assuming that you can't get to the ground spawns easily by yourself, of course). It is very reminiscent of Diablo 2. You can group if you want to, and it's not unenjoyable, but it is no easier than going solo and since there isn't a +30% xp bonus per person in group like Diablo 2, it's generally better to go solo. Oh yeah, and of course there is always training, but that's to be expected in any crowded area.
One of the really annoying things I've found is that due to fast respawn everywhere, everytime you've to run from your area to a safe area (inn, guard post, whatever) you either have to kill everything again, or make a run for it and hope you don't die (though not a big deal if you die anyway). It is simply not possible to avoid clearing the trash that patrols the area between safe area and areas of interest (usually dungeons). There's nothing hard about clearing the junk, it's just annoying.
The lack of resists is starting to be really annoying. Enemies have a whole mess of special abilities (poison chill etc etc) on top of spells that any spellcaster can use (they seem to share the same line as you), but ultimately there's no point, because you can never resist anything since your resist is 0 on everything and resist items are few and far between. It's sort of like being a mage versus melee. You can put on more armor but everything still hits you for max everytime so why bother? You can know what enemy spells do but you'll never resist any of them so what's the point? For example I fight a Shaman type mob, it casts some kind of lightning bolt spell for 60 damage. I know what it does but I have no arcane resistance (or any resistance at all, for that matter) so it smacks me for 60 every time out of my 190 HPs (well, I can dampen magic and reduce it to 50). I know it's going to heal when it gets to about 20% of its health but I can't interrupt casting so all I can do is see its health go back up. Usually, the shaman wins (unsurprisingly), even though I know exactly what it will do, and in the end I just avoid shamans.
I'm guessing the idea of lack of resists is to make PvP meaningful, instead of having like EQ where everyone on the high end is immune to anything you would ever want to cast on a player, but it hurts the PvE because you simply don't have options against spellcasters beyond killing them before they kill you. I think some items that reduce magic type damage (cold/fire/arcane/shadow/holy) wouldn't be a bad idea. There doesn't seem to be much thought to the way random item mods work anyway. I mean I can get 30 ac robe + 3 agility or 30 ac robe + 3 stamina, and to a mage neither of these stats matter very much, so why not have a choice like 30 ac robe + 3 arcane damage reduced so at least you don't get lightning bolted for 60 damage every time with no chance to avoid it when you only have 190 HPs?</div>
But even after all that, grouping is generally less efficient than soloing unless you're doing a kill X mob quest (because the group's kills counts towards yours so it's obviously faster that way) or a collect ground spawn X quest (assuming that you can't get to the ground spawns easily by yourself, of course). It is very reminiscent of Diablo 2. You can group if you want to, and it's not unenjoyable, but it is no easier than going solo and since there isn't a +30% xp bonus per person in group like Diablo 2, it's generally better to go solo. Oh yeah, and of course there is always training, but that's to be expected in any crowded area.
One of the really annoying things I've found is that due to fast respawn everywhere, everytime you've to run from your area to a safe area (inn, guard post, whatever) you either have to kill everything again, or make a run for it and hope you don't die (though not a big deal if you die anyway). It is simply not possible to avoid clearing the trash that patrols the area between safe area and areas of interest (usually dungeons). There's nothing hard about clearing the junk, it's just annoying.
The lack of resists is starting to be really annoying. Enemies have a whole mess of special abilities (poison chill etc etc) on top of spells that any spellcaster can use (they seem to share the same line as you), but ultimately there's no point, because you can never resist anything since your resist is 0 on everything and resist items are few and far between. It's sort of like being a mage versus melee. You can put on more armor but everything still hits you for max everytime so why bother? You can know what enemy spells do but you'll never resist any of them so what's the point? For example I fight a Shaman type mob, it casts some kind of lightning bolt spell for 60 damage. I know what it does but I have no arcane resistance (or any resistance at all, for that matter) so it smacks me for 60 every time out of my 190 HPs (well, I can dampen magic and reduce it to 50). I know it's going to heal when it gets to about 20% of its health but I can't interrupt casting so all I can do is see its health go back up. Usually, the shaman wins (unsurprisingly), even though I know exactly what it will do, and in the end I just avoid shamans.
I'm guessing the idea of lack of resists is to make PvP meaningful, instead of having like EQ where everyone on the high end is immune to anything you would ever want to cast on a player, but it hurts the PvE because you simply don't have options against spellcasters beyond killing them before they kill you. I think some items that reduce magic type damage (cold/fire/arcane/shadow/holy) wouldn't be a bad idea. There doesn't seem to be much thought to the way random item mods work anyway. I mean I can get 30 ac robe + 3 agility or 30 ac robe + 3 stamina, and to a mage neither of these stats matter very much, so why not have a choice like 30 ac robe + 3 arcane damage reduced so at least you don't get lightning bolted for 60 damage every time with no chance to avoid it when you only have 190 HPs?</div>
