Every argument about "But they'll take XP away from the group!" is flawed.
Case 1) Group wants a tank. Troll SK applies. Group lies to troll ("NO WE JUST FOUND A HFL WAR SORRY") or tells the 'truth'("You aren't worth it. We lose enough XP when we die, thanks a-hole") and proceeds to stay the course.
First of all, why are you in a group if all you care about is min/maxing XP? I get that for some people, the game is about the outcome-based grind to 60 and nothing else. If you are really this person, you know that grouping is slower than playing a twinked solo class or buying a powerlevel. You have no ground to refuse someone a group just because of some perceived throttling of the XP flow.
Your behinds are just sitting there fear/aggro kiting light blues while you look for a tank. You're not fooling anyone. Or maybe you're half AFK, half spamming /ooc that you're looking for a warrior tank. How would it be "losing" XP to start gaining it, with an actual tank actually tanking? Stop being so boring.
Gaming is a social activity. I know this goes against the stereotype of poopsocking virgins in mom's basement, but all games with more than one player mean you're building bonds of trust by agreeing to a ruleset, building a vast social network, and becoming actual friends. Nowhere was a better environment for this than classic EverQuest. You needed friends to get anything done, and there was going to be downtime at low levels. If you ended up meeting up with the same people over and over in the under-level-10 dungeons, then stuck together through your 30s (the big test), your friendship was unstoppable and enduring. These became the people you'd follow to other MMOs because they were such good players who just "get it", something we don't see in the WoW generation.
The real game of EverQuest is what's going on in between fights. That's the part we most fondly remember. Sure you might remember a wipe or two, or an epic win when your skeleton pet proc'd ykesha when only the necro was left alive and killed the Emperor, but mostly the game was about sitting around getting to know each other and traveling to far off places together in search of fscking
adventure that nothing else has ever compared to, or else we wouldn't be back on Project 1999 wondering just what's on the other side of that next hill.
So the game isn't about finding the fastest or most efficient way to get to 60, and it is in fact a huge social activity facilitated by being forced to spend time together and occasionally spend time sitting around with nothing to do but play /gems or talk while you wait for rez sickness to fade. (
look at us, talking in a forum right now, having a conversation!)
Saying "I don't want a hybrid in group" is like saying
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because you find the prospect of having to talk to another human being with similar interests so insulting that you should really go play a console RPG to avoid the possibility. Stop focusing on what you'll "lose", and think about your
GAINZ