Some people can be extremely religious about their group setups. They will not want to group unless the group consists of certain exact classes, and/or that the certain classes having certain specific gear. I had people in two different groups bail on me today because the setup wasn’t what they liked, even though the group in question would have been able to do the instance regardless because it was an easy one. One of them happens to Deep Forge – probably the easiest shard zone in game.

The classes in EQ2 can roughly be broken down into four different types. Tank, damage dealer, healer and utility. The bare minimum for a group would typically consist of one tank, a healer, one damage dealer and any others. This combination will work for most zones in game, although it might not be the most efficient. Compared to certain games such as Lineage 2, EQ2′s group system is rather ad-hoc without stringent requirements on group setup. Having certain classes might make a zone go faster, but without it, it’s still doable.

The question comes when deciding if you should just grab whatever classes are available and go, or wait for the right classes before starting. Unless the zone has specific needs, such as encounters requiring mezzes, and both choosing either option would let me finish the zone, I’m in favor of the former. Isn’t it better to start hunting when you can and make progress, rather than sitting around waiting forever to get the right classes? In today’s Deep Forge example, people bailed because we had two healers and they felt that was inefficient in terms of kill speed, even though it would only result in no more than a ten minutes different in completing in zone.

At the end of the day, the people who left formed their own group, and by the time we completed Deep Forge, they were still looking for the right classes.