Change and Groups

What is it about Change?

It hasn't even been a week since I joined Malice and now I have been invited to join Lords of Dishonor. (lol, another 'Lords of' guild which seem to be prolific on Gilneas) The invite comes through my connection to 2 BELF hunters named Genzdawn and Dawnzgen. I first met these two hunters on my Alliance main Dhargaul in the Ally guild LOST SLEEP. A while back they decided to roll BELF hunters and level them up, and now here they are running around with me in Dragonblight. This makes me laugh in that I'm so used to playing alone on Zulu that being grouped up is surreal in a good way, I think. This morning the three of us ran around Agmar killing every skinnable beast we could find. In the half hour or so we were doing this I cleared just over 3 full stacks of Borean leather. I used this to craft them the remaining pieces they needed to have a complete Frostscale armor set. This has set me to thinking about something that I have never considered much before.

Grouping....

Normally this isn't something I would do unless it was necessary, like opening the Blade's Edge Daily quests back in the times of BC. Beyond these kinds of groups I've never been a fan of grouping for the purpose of questing. What I have learned when I have done this in the past is that I really don't get anywhere any faster. The amount of XP that I lose from killing mobs does not make up for what ever time I get for things going faster. In all actuality, I've found that my questing actually slows down when I am in a group. So I actually lose more if I am in a group than I gain. Now the other side of this coin is, if I know the people I am with then it is actually a lot more fun because you have people you can talk to during this time. This does make it worthwhile, in most cases. The part of this that worked this morning was that I was able to farm at least twice as much leather as I would have been able to do on my own in the same amount of time. The benefit of this is huge. I'm almost totally replaced in leather what I spent for recipes in Dalaran and that in and of itself is awesome.

Otherwise I really have to look at why I need to group up. Group specific quests and intances are one thing, but outside of friendly banter (which can also be had in guild chat) what is the real benefit of grouping? I know that a lot of people prefer this method just because it saves on GY runs, but that is a poor excuse in my book. If a player is dying all the time then their approach to questing is all wrong. Pacing is the key word when it comes to questing, not aggressive speed. This way you keep up your momentum while ensuring you don't die as often and can keep your health and mana near max all the time. So my mantra is, unless your hanging with friends, don't group if your are in any kind of hurry to level or if you are trying to maximize your xp intake.

Zulu