f13.net

SIXTEEN FREAKING HOURS!!

I am rendered nearly speachless.

Wow. Are they giving you a free day for that month?

Let's see that's 7 EST, so with a 16 hour delay I can play at 11PM on a Thursday night. This game is starting to give me more reasons by the week to not sign in.

Meanwhile Pirates is fun.

Seriously...if the thought of being without a video game for 16 whole hours nearly renders you speechless then you really need to get outside, get some fresh air and realize that there is life outside of WoW.

Right, like that CoH sub that hasn't expired yet!

...

What?

Blizzard is just trying to encourage their most dedicated customers to procreate.  Their marketing department studied the great Northeastern power outages of 1965 and 2003, and determined that a 16-hour window was optimal for encouraging even the most hopelessly addicted players to attempt to reproduce.  This is a clever bid to increase revenue.

Oh man, and the worst part is I know couples like this.

Fixed it for ya...

The best thing to do is sit in the corner of your room in a fetal position, rocking back and forth.

Or you can go to the store and restock on ramen noodle packs and Mountain Dew.

Maintenance

Speechless

I know you're upset, but I had nothing better than spelling corrections to add to this thread.

Looks like you have it pretty much covered, I guess there's nothing else to see here ...

(http://www.cartoonstock.com/lowres/ksm0383l.jpg)

If this fixes the recent server issues it is more than worth it.

The login message on the extended downtime has been updated -- now it is saying that only certain servers will be down 16 hours. These are:

Blackrock
Bonechewer
Cenarion Circle
Deathwing
Destromath
Denthecus
Doomhammer
Spinebreaker
Gorgonnash
Kil'Jadeden
Kel'Thuzada
Lightbringer
Nathrezimi
Windrunner
Proudmoore
Shadowsong
Silver Hand
Silvermoon
Tichondrius
Hyjal
Kilrogg
Uther
Terenas
Ner'zhul
Icecrown
Frostwolf
Dragonmaw

Looks like Earthen Ring isn't on that list.

Just sayin.'

I'm guessing that instead of taking the whole game down, they're doing only certain servers at a time. When someone complains about downtime they can say 'Yeah, but 1/2 our servers remained up for you to play on!'

Just guessing though.




I always spell that wrong.

Mine is and thank god for that. Hopefully the occasional 10 minutes it takes to sell backpacks of loot to vendors will go away soon.

Whisperwind is my server and it isn't on there.

...

Woot?

Yah! Wtf! Icecrown isn't on the list.. where's the luv for Icecrown! It needs fixed too! -whine-

I didn't think my server had enough problems to warrant 16 hours of downtime.  The 10 seconds of lag every time I enter Org(always happens when you first open a window or target someone)  really doesn't bother me.

Ohh well, not like I don't have shit I can do in the meantime. This possibly would have bothered me I was still 19.

Interestingly, Nathrezimi is on that list. That server has a LOW population even during peak times (I've started playing a Horde char there, because of that). So I'm guessing they are just taking a handful and doing /whatever/ to them regardless of popularity Maybe next week they'll do the rest.

Best thing they can do is move the AH out of Ironforge on Whisperwind. Most of the problems I see stem from that.

Moving it out would spread the population out, get dumbasses out of the braziers, and reduce travel times and costs (yes, I'm a tightwad).

It is curious Whisperwind isn't on the list, but whatever. I'm not going to complain. Even with the IF lagathons I find the game extremely playable (if not very shoppable).

The problem with moving the auction house is wherever you move it to will then be the nasty lag area. They really need is auction houses in ironforge/storm wind/darnassus for alliance and in each of the big horde cities.

I simply cannot understand why the flaming hell if you want to check the auction house if you are an elf you have to go to another freaking continent. If you make these one per side guess what you are going to get a freaking metric ass ton of folks congregating there. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure lots of folks are going to be wanting to buy and sell shit.


kaid

I guess it's why most people make an alt and park it in front of the AH and just mail stuff back and forth.

Yah I've certainly seen more of that lately.

They did say they were going to put up more auction houses and link them together, so hopefully that'll fix a lot of the problems everyone sees in the faction auction cities. (Apparently no one uses the Horde/Alliance auction house).

I think people would like to use the horde alliance auction house but from what I have heard it is um more than a bit frisky to get in there and do your stuff.

Just picture a boxing day clearance sale with orks taurens and elves and you have a picture of the brutality and depravity that occurs trying to get into these places to shop.

kaid

Now THAT is an image!
*pictures a tauren swinging it's purse at a gnome yelling, "no, it's MINE!"*

Anything that may result in elf death gets my official thumbs up.

Heh- ditto. Got to make my first credited PvP elf kill last night- what a great feeling =)

I have never experienced any of the lag that you all seem to take for granted. Of course, I play on a medium pop server on the Horde side. I would venture to guess that it is different for the Alliance, especially near the Hunter trainer (which has got to be 10 deep with fucking Night Elves at all times, judging from the amount I see in contested zones).

Yah, it's like watching Duke lose in basketball. The great feeling is always there.    

The elves on my server are such goddamn pussies though.  My friend the other day had an elf priest that was 3 levels higher than him turn tail and run without even attempting combat.  We've gotten good fights out of dwarves, humans, and gnomes, but the elves just die in rapid order.   Of course, with a group of a shaman/shaman/mage, we're quite a load to handle in small scale skirmishes.

Every time I see an elf hunter I just groan.  I just wish I could speak to offer some sort of sarcastic put down that might enter into their mind just how unorginal and homogenous their entire breed is.  Take out all of the elf hunters on the alliance side and you've got enough to form you own damn faction.

/derail

I was with ya until then....I love Coach Krzuyskrzskrzrweki! I was on the Duke bandwagon in the late 80s (when Quinn Snyder went there- he was a local guy). One of my favorite college games of all time was watching them beat the shit out of UNLV (after getting pwned the year before).

Now Arizona? There is a team worth hating =P (I actually root for them when they aren't playing UW).


Back somewhat on topic-


IIRC, I saw some stats on the ER server that indicated that they outnumbered the entire Horde faction. If you come up with a suitable global insult for NE Hunters, let me know.

"Drizzt sucks" would probably whip most of them into a frenzy.

(http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/SaberScorpion/LordOfTheRings/drizzt.jpg)

Duke is about 15 minutes from my house, but I'm a UNC fan :P  However, the aforementioned trouncing of UNLV was a great moment in basketball, and for a couple of brief shining hours I was as big a Blue Devil as you could find.  Good old Tark the Shark, what a shame he's at dumpy Fresno State, he was such a great villain figure.

Hahahaha.

Nice find.

/em thinks that night elf hunters are more populous than cockroaches, and less useful to the environment.

That's right, you can tell the Alliance anything you like with just an /em prefix. Last night I had another elf spit on me in Booty Bay, so I just typed:

/em is shocked at how small elf penises are.

The elf responded with a bunch of gibberish in (common). I laughed at it.

To be honest it's gotten to where I kick elf hunters from a party at the drop of a hat. They bring nothing I can't get elsewhere, they can be completely dropped without replacement and the group not feel too much pain from it, and they don't understand the words "I SAID WARRIOR PULLS RETARD". It's amazing how different dwarf and elf hunters are on the majority, really.

I'm so sick of saying "NO" when I see the dumbfuck elf hunter run up and mark a guy he's decided to shoot. As if he gets to decide the fucking target, and he gets to be the special boy that doesn't have to focus fire. Not to mention that if I didn't say "NO" they'd usually follow it up by pulling too. Usually if that happens when I'm a paladin I don't heal them, then tell them that I'm not making extra work for myself just because they're special. Then I kick their dead ass out of the group.

Elf rogues are almost as bad, but they actually do something useful when they aren't retards.

Also, the next druid (elf, of course) who expects the (retribution specced) paladin to play main healer gets an insta-kick. Insta. You can be a cat/bear for a little while if you must, but you better be purple by the time someone needs healing.

/end tangent

Sounds like you've met hunters that haven't learned the class. Let them pull. They probably don't know how to lose aggro. It's the least of your problems. When they cannot control pets or running mobs in a crowded area, that's when you'll feel the special hate that is reserved for the most jackass hunters.

Anyhow, you brought it on yourself by playing Alliance. I only envy you not having to hear "roleplaying" trolls.

I always get the warrior to pull if he has a ranged weapon (ie. he's not a complete retard) unless I know the other person pulling. I'd much rather a rogue sapping to pull early on, but you can't always rely on them not to be fucktards (the next time I have to remind a rogue he has distract the 2nd time he fails to sneak up, knees will be broken). It's much easier to have the warrior pull in an emergency pickup because there's less ways for him to stuff it up (never once seen a hunter pull effectively... never. I don't think the players have it in them).

I actually don't mind too much most of the time, I rarely have flat-out bad pickups and when I do I leave. I just get annoyed that most places I have to do with 3-4 people because I either cbf'd getting randoms or I have to kick a retard or 2. Plus I had a simply horrid group go throgh gnomeregan just before that post. Worst part is that I had gotten the only thing I came there for (Manual Crowd Pummeler (http://www.thottbot.com/index.cgi?i=3958)) early on (I took them the back way, 'cause I didn't trust them not to wipe and quit... which they didn't thanks only to the warlock and his soul gemming of the priest) and it would have been classless to leave them after that. Plus my warrior was the only tank if you don't count the hunter's cat. Which I don't.

Incidently I have to agree with those in another thread that recommended I stick with bandaids, they are definately quite useful.

Actually, the custom /emote function displays as some canned responce to the enemy side, something like "Whatshisname makes a series of stranges gestures."

Heh, I'm surprised how many people didn't know about /em.

I used it the other day when I had to put up with a Horde Rogue killing  a low lvl (I mean really low, like lvl 10 area) Quest NPC over and over.  I couldn't hand in my quest for the new toon I was rolling.

When he appeared and did it again, I emoted "You are a joke."

That made him stop.....well maybe it was the lvl ?? alliance guy that was now waiting for him to appear again after I told him he was there.

Naw, it had to be my witty insult.

Exactly! I aint ashamed to admit I have a DE Hunter BUT I know how to play one. Pets NEVAR are out when going into populated areas, Hunters are ranged support chars, and  marking shouldnt be done untill the critter is pulled and engaged if then.. depends on critter lvl and stuff.
Try not to down a whole race/class because most people who play them are tards k.

Yeah I know. That's why I said I kick at the drop of a hat, instead of not letting them join at all. :P

I was doing the Tides quest in Stranglethorn and I decided to try and do it solo. When I got there, three other guys were trying to do it, and they invited me. I joined thinking it would be quicker. Then I realized these chuckleheads had no breathing potions and were constantly dying trying to get to the bottom. I got to the mob, activated it, literally barely killed it on my own while yelling at them to help me, and told them to come loot it. One of them bitched about me killing the mob while he was dead, which he had already done three times in my 10 minutes there.

I just disbanded and walked away as they shouted at me for not helping. No words, no rage, i let my boots do the talking.

I was in SM a while back w/ my rogue.

The group was rogue/mage/priest/warrior/hunter.

If you've ever been in the Scarlet Monestary you know that most pull are three humanoids.

How we did it was we had the hunter mark one of them.  This would let us all know which one would be the one to be attacked.  Then I would sneak up and sap.  When I sapped (didn't have improved yet) I would come out of stealth and have 2 humanoids beat on me -- not good for a rogue.  Well, the warrior would already be taunting the marked one and the mage polymorphing the remainder.

It made very short work of SM.

Granted, every hunter I've grouped with since hasn't been as useful, but I'm just saying, the potential is there.

Again, yeah, I do know the potential is there. But I now require a hunter to prove himself to me before he can even think of pulling or having an independant thought. A few times I've joined up with a group of 4 friends who lack a tank, and both their hunters (NE - they're all NE) are pretty good (they also showed me the joy of frost traps). Doesn't mean I'll let some random hunter think he can pull though.

I'm also getting to the point where I'm very short on paladins too. It seems that roughly 1/2 of all paladins seem to think they are invincible, or have no idea what being a team member means or their roll in it. Last week I had to tell a paladin to heal himself 3 times because the fool was flashing red and I prefer not to heal fellow paladins unless they need it in a non-self-inflicted kind of way. And I'm always telling paladins to get back.

Rogues are creeping up on the list too. They think stealth + high damage means they are uber or something.

Most other classes are surprisingly good almost all the time. Though that only leaves warriors, priests, mages, and druids (while I bitched about them before, on further reflection it was just 1 or 2 colouring my view).

Really though, if someone wants to be NE Hunter, should they not play what they want simply because it's popular?

Eh, the whole race elitism thing is tired. I've never noticed people playing any given race to be any better or worse on average than any other race.

I'm a warrior, I've saved people's asses with my instas more than once. Especially my challenging shout/retaliation combo. Get all the mobs on me and get auto hits for 15 secs. Couple that with my beserker whirlwind and if anybody in my group still goes down, I walk.

Meh I just took NE for the dex  and quickness plusses. Id just assume be a human or other hunter but they dont get the good bonuses for hunter NE get.

Night elf is the obvious choice for rogues, they get higher base agi (granted at high levels this means very little), they get a bonus to dodge and stealth which is like 2 free talents for rogues.  I don't see the appeal of night elf hunters though, none of their bonus really help them out at all and dwarves get +5 to guns which is at least mildly helpfull.

Dirty, dirty elf lovers.



Of they should play what they want. When anyone asks me what they should play or what "the group needs", I just tell them to do what they want.  Of course, if they wanted to be an elf and group with me on a consistent basis, I'd tell them to find another race (of course, I'd never be alliance in a million years, so it's a moot point).  Really, racial stats mean crap in this game.  So you can either pick the effeminate, pointy eared, blue, anime inspired poopsters or you can pick a dwarf (they've got a gun bonus).

Just take a mental journey with me here.  You're 15, you like to draw ligers, swords, and cool Doom 3 inspired art in your notebook during freshman english.  You've been on IM since you were 10, so your typing resembles something that most intelligent people would need a ring from a cracker jack box to decode.  You love anime, it's TEH COOLEST.  And you just saw those Lord of the Rings movies; they should really make a some books based on that, or perhaps even a manga! And OMG, the guys that made Diablo 2, just made a game where you can be an ELF online.  But what's cooler than being an elf, being an elf with a gun! And a pet tiger!  RAWRRRR.

All, yes, the NE alliance hunter.  I'm just glad I can't hear them speak.

Just for reference, I really never group with hunters.  Being a shaman/shaman/mage team, all we want are meatshield and maybe another healer.  Plus we don't want people rolling on mail :)

Add in a few extremely disparaging remarks about Drizz't, and this is art.

(http://www.theadversary.com/interesting/napoleon.jpg)

No one will every take you seriously if you have floppy ears.

The dodge bonus comes in quite handy when using a bow  as the critter is usually in your ass after the 4th ot 5th hit and at low levels no hit = good. Ill probably roll up a dwarf later on but Im just poking around learning the game. Hell how many different versions of Dark Dryad did I have in CoH like 5 hehe

Speaking of the 16 hour downtime,

The jones is strong in this one.

Edit: I'm going to make truffles!

Earthen ring was up for a while, but laggy as hell if you did anything that touches an item. Much worse than I've experienced in the past few weeks. And then I tried to skin a boar and got booted back to an unending "downloading character info" screen.

Screw it, I'm going to go to work.

You may laugh at my floppy ears, but you will fear my Angry Sea Cow form!!!

You don't scare me.  I had sea cow on a stick for tea today.

(http://www.linkandpinhobbies.com/Graphics/ms_Steller.JPG)

Point - Signe.

That unfortunate sea cow obviously just wasn't angry enough.

Someday I'll actually kill someone in Angry Sea Cow form ... then ... then you'll understand the horror.

Actually, I think that's my new goal. How embarrasing would it be to be killed by a berserk manatee? Maybe as embarrasing as the time that Troll killed me with a fishing rod?

Signe adds a healthy level of insanity to my day. I appreciate that.

Dont diss that fishing rod man, have you seen the stats (http://www.thottbot.com/index.cgi?i=2950) on that thing!

Haha, ya, I've been using that fishing pole since L27.  Got it off the AH for like 60s, no one ever searches for fishing poles.

I've only ever killed 4 guys with it, but was crazy funny.

The hunter should /always/ be pulling. I don't know what kind of hunters you folks have been dealing with, if they can't pull or control their pets. That's like a priest who can't heal properly.

I don't play that weakass alliance crap, though. Orc hunter all the way.

Hunters are dps and pets are chew toys in instances. Considering the problems warriors tend to have with rage generation and the problems healing aggro cause, they need to learn some self-discipline in instances unless they want to consistantly be a greasespot on the dungeon floor.

I grew tired of fighitng morons for aggro in my mid-20s. If you insist on being an idiot about it, you'll get what you deserve: repair costs. XP groups are one thing, most classes are tough enough to take some hits. In instances there's not nearly so much room for this sort of foolishness.

Warriors bloom late.  My prime is a 39th Troll Warrior on Spinebreaker.  I found in the teens and through the 20's that holding Aggro was a pain and the ass.  Hell, the whole class plays different than any other tank class I have played.  Now I can control aggro and the only class I have any issues in pulling aggro from (when and if I need too... ) is the shaman.  Of course, if I am going to let another class absorb some of the damage it will be the shaman, even if they are the primary healer in addition.  Of course, I group with 4-7 individuals on a constant basis, so we have become a good fighting unit, mainly from the PvP.  As of now, I have zero complaints with the PvP system that Blizzard has in place, though it is lacking a motivation outside of questing in contested areas.

Not necessarily.  I play a priest in a regular group of 5 with a hunter and shaman as our tanks.  Hunter pets have AC somewhere between mail and leather, and can decently hold an add as long as I pay attention to its health.  A hunter pet holding aggro is still better than me getting aggro!

My pet is boosted in it's hp and AC.

It regularly out taunts the tanks, and tanks better then most tanks.

I can heal it, and it can hold adds if we get jumped by any.

Think of hunters as a tank creature with a pet archer/healer that can pretty much take care of itself. Oh and it can boost the range power of anything attacking the target. Oh and the archer/healer "pet" can melee pretty good too. Still dont want one in your group?

A lot of hunters are used to near-invincible solo play and don't want to learn how to be good group members.  Think Everquest necromancers.  A well-played grouping necromancer was an amazing asset to the group.  However, most pick up necros you got thought "grouping" meant "I solo stuff next to you guys" at best and "I DoT mezzed mobs at will" at worst.

Almost anyone can out-taunt a warrior, that is what makes the warrior class worth playing and group play something more than a trivial exercize in "everyone go full burn every pull."  Aggro control is a group effort.  One tard can mess up the whole thing.

Like I said, I don't know what kind of hunters you've had to deal with. Well, apparently dumb, inexperienced ones.

Basically, aggro-wise, the hunter is a buffer for the healer. If the warrior loses aggro, it should go to the hunter, not the healer. The pet should hold and give up aggro as needed with snarl/cower, or in bad situations also utilizing the hunter's aggro management powers. Hunters excel at controlling where they sit on the aggro list, and I don't even have my full powerset at level 25.

Most hunters also go for +agi items to boost their damage, which is great for solo and pvp, but garbage for groups, because they draw a lot more aggro, but are pushovers. I've gone for +sta gear and have almost double the hit points for my level (just under 1000hp at lvl 25, unbuffed, my +6 sta buff from food puts me up over a thousand). I can't tank, but I can hold aggro for a couple minutes if needed, long enough to get the tank healed, the healer to get away, or whatever. And more importantly, I can then give that aggro back again and get out of melee.

A note on pets: shopping around for a good one is worth the time. Not all pets are created equal, and some are damned nice (100 to all resists, for instance).

We intentionally included a hunter as part of our planned pvp group makeup for mark, group speed buff, and tracking.  I don't think a well-played hunter by any means gimps a group in pve...and it's #$%ing pve anyways.

I've found a two warrior duo to be helpful for smaller quests that are bigger than a solo in the absence of a healer. I could see a similar setup working with a hunter. Ideally you switch pulls and change up who holds aggro so the other heals with less downtime. It worked very well with a warrior and I killing elementals in Arathi.

Give the man a cookie.

Seriously, this is what I'm talking about. Very few hunters I meet understand how to play with the group. It's almost as bad as paladins, but the non-retarded ones soon learn caution because paladins aren't the unstoppable juggernaughts the retards on the WoW boards seem to think they are. It's exactly like Necros in EQ, pet classes and other good soloers tend to be crap in groups because some people are too stupid to switch roles. And a soloist in your group means they do more harm than good outside of easy missions.

Funnily enough warlocks don't seem to suffer so much from this, but I think it has more to do with the fact that it can be hard to pull aggro from a decent tank by accident as a DoT class.

You take a hunter pet into a place like Maraudon and it's going to buy a farm in less than a minute. They can be useful to offtank an overpull or some other sort of furball, but they'll usually die and rather quickly. They can give you enough time to save a primary healer, but relying on them to actually tank is a pipedream.

Keeping aggro for warriors under 30 is a nightmare. It does get better post-40, but only just. If your group doesn't work with you they'll be constantly pulling aggro--and you'll be out of rage in seconds trying to get it back. Being a 6000AC, 4000hps spectator is a frustration I can do without (though one I'm familiar with).

Which brings us to the point made by the solo mentality. This is spot on. It's why you don't let hunters pull. It's why you don't let druids pull. It's why you don't let mages pull. Rogues can be good at sap pulling, but it's not always the best way (especially if you lack any other form of crowd control, i.e. mages). The game is so easy normally, that most people aren't learning how to group before lvl50. This wasn't so much of a problem in EQ. It IS a problem in WoW. Instances start getting really mean with Uldaman. Its get rapidly more difficult from there.

Lastly, I play a warlock on the side. I find the comment about them learning not to pull aggro constantly rather interesting. When you get your voidwalker, you learn really fast not to pull aggro from him--the hard way. The 'walker is a bit easier to work with than a warrior, but the same behavior stands you good stead in instance groups.

Aggro management is a challenge in this game. As a druid, it is my main struggle in doing instances, gettting aggro from healing. I know the old routine about using lesser heals, just keeping people alive not topped off, etc., but it is still a challenge, especially on instance end bosses. Once I get aggro I just turtle up in bear mode and stop attacking, but it's very hard for anyone else to get aggro off me. I usually die first :(

Alot of these problems stem back to the "Awesome" changes made to warriors. In beta a good warrior could hold aggro on half a dozen mobs at the same time. His biggest fear was the healer being unable to keep up with the damage he was taking.

As for grouping with "solo" classes and such. My typical group for instances over the last few weeks has been:

Me (Paladin)
Mage
Rogue
Druid
Another Pally

Here's how things go usually:

Rogue saps one mob. Mage sheeps another. The rest of us kill the casters first and work our way up to the melee mobs. We have gone through all high level instances that we've encountered (Zul'farrak, Mauradon, Sunken Temple, etc) this way and very rarely have a party wipe. (in fact, we only wipe if we get a random patrol on us or we have a breakdown in party communication at a critical moment. Maybe 1 or 2 wipes per instance).

Exactly. Aggro management is not a "challenge" in this game. It's broken.

Back to the maintenance:

Server is laggiest it's been in a few weeks.  Wonder what they did to it.

Edit: Server crash.

Wow. I'll bet they wish they hadn't lost the b.net guys.

Then could it be said that this could well be a growing problem as MMO's move away from forced grouping?  It seems that with games these days allowing solo play to take you up to the top levels almost as quickly as grouping that I'd be surprised if even half the population of CoH or WoW understand the best ways to play their characters in groups since they've never had to learn the skills.

Maybe this will eventually evolve into a good thing. At least mentally, it's moving players away from the whole tank/mage/healer crap. Now all we need is a change in mechanics.

No its not. A tank shouldn't be able to hold 6 mobs. If they could the game would be far to easy. The only problem right now is stupid fucking players doing as much damage to one mob as possible as quickly as possible. Then being shocked when the tank can't hold.

I'm just saying...If they're going to make another EQ clone, how about not fucking with the one thing that made EQ worth a damn?

I've no problem with Blizzard trying something "new and exciting", but if that was really what they wanted, these kind of things would have been changed from the ground up. As it is though, it's EQ 1.5. Hacking on "new and exciting" changes just fucks it up.

I'm very confused. Are you suggesting they just give a tank an insta hold button that can't be broken. How the fuck is that fun? If tanks could hold agro perfectly in this game there would be no fucking challenge. As it is even the higher lvl instances are a little too 'safe' for me. With any decent group there is almost no possibility of a wipe. You still need tankers, nukers and healers. They havn't changed that. Its pretty much impossible to do any instance without at least one warrior or pally. And 2 is almost always perferable.

Not an issue IMO.  The people that I know that got to the highest levels purely by solo continue to solo no matter what.  They have no desire to group so groups aren't affected at all.  Thus, they solo exclusively.

I suppose there are a few that would all of a sudden start dabbling in group play, but my guess is that is for group PvP, which is an altogether different animal than group PvE.

In my experience, there are those that like to solo and those that like to group.  If given the option (by game mechanics,) they will segregate themselves accordingly.  I've seen this happening quite a bit in WoW.