I would make forming a group way easier and with less downtime waiting on people to arrive.
1. EQ needs a player search screen where I can tell if a person is in a group or not, what zone they are in, what class they are, and comments on what they are looking for "group, raid, don't bother me, etc".
2. Speed up how fast a person can arrive to group. It could be done in a variety of ways, but the easiest way might be every player gets a port to group skill that can be used once every hour.
3. Upon death, you respawn with your equipment and in a safe spot in the zone. If it's a dungeon, you respawn at the entrance in the zone outside of the dungeon. You also get your port to group skill button re-enabled after a few minutes to safely get back with the group.
4. Give every player a skill to exit a dungeon that they can use once an hour. So when that Warrior wants to leave, the whole group doesn't have to stop their progress and fight back to the entrance.
5. Experience for grouping should be about double or maybe triple that of soloing.
For me, it's all about maximizing what makes the game fun for me and minimizing what isn't fun. Whatever gets me in a group quickly and fighting quickly makes more sense than all these artificial time sinks that are not fun. But with that being said, there are people that actually enjoy finding ports, getting binds, running through multiple zones to get to the group, nakid corpse runs, sending tells to people that may or may not be in a group in order to form a group, and helping group members get back to the entrance who want to leave the group. I personally do not, which is why I usually solo.
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