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| Lord Bob would prefer if I go back to soloing stuff, since he's pretty sure that I can't solo him. |
EQ2's Dirge class plays pretty much exactly like a typical DPS, but it's actually a buff-based class. My personal DPS would not be great even if I was as experienced and well-geared as my PUG peers, but I offer substantial buffs to the team just for being present. How significant? It's not uncommon to see groups that ALREADY HAVE A TANK AND HEALER advertise that they're LF1M Dirge. I've posted that I'm LFG for a specific instance and been immediately invited to a group.
As a matter of game design, this is probably not a good thing, and I'm sure it would irritate me to no end if I were playing any other class. As the recipient of the free instance invites, I'm glad that more people haven't figured out how all you're really giving up is your spot on the damage parse in exchange for non-existent "queue" times (not that EQ2 has a dungeon group finder queue, but even WoW's queue doesn't do much better than having groups advertise that they're LF1M: you).
More to the point, I'm pugging instances and enjoying it. I've done five PUG's of level 90 content in the last two weeks, four of which were successful and the last of which broke up at the last boss primarily because a bugged door caused a member of the group to be stuck outside the instance. A few years back, I would have told you that solo content was an absolute requirement for me to play a game, but dungeon finders and public rift groups and instant Dirge queues are telling me differently. I don't dislike groups, I just dislike spending time that I would like to spend playing the game on LOOKING for groups.