After playing WoW some and from past experience with group focused muds, I have absolutely decided groups are not for me.

I hate that, at my own pace, I cannot go though any dungeon or kill any monster on the game that I want (given my character is strong enough) to get the items I want. I just read that WoW: burning crusade will have more focus on 10-15 person instances instead of the couple 40 persons they have now, but to me that is still just far to many.

Sometimes it is fun to have more people with you, I think, but I personally believe it should only make the job you are doing easier, not make or break if you can do it. The most frustrating muds I have ever played are the type that it is flat out impossible to do anything without a group.

I am not sure if I will renew my subscription to WoW. I have been able to do most things soloing so far, but I know I will hit that wall at some point where I cannot get the good items alone.

Anyway that is my slight rant, wondering what you guys thought about groups.

I prefer our envoy system, where you can pick from a set of formations like row, column, diamond, wedge, etc, depending on the focus of your envoy members - protecting casters, deploying archers, etc.

At least it gives people a choice of cooperative venturing - or not...

It depends.

I think you should be able to do a lot of cool, fun stuff on your own.

BUT if you want to get the top eq, run the top quests, or kill the top mobs, then I think you should need a group. I consider the gathering and managing the group a part of the 'journey' towards getting the top items/quest points/etc.

Well, I found that groups occasionally broke up the monotony of WoW, but in the end, what turned me off was the fact that it was an MMO, and group or no group, it was always the same boring quest.

Walk somewhere, hit some number keys, maybe loot a corpse, walk somewhere else, hit more number keys, etc.  I mean, the groups were alright.  I usually only grouped with one or two people, and I rarely grouped again with the same people.  Why?  They were always about ten levels ahead of me in a period of two to three days, I'm just not a good MMO player.