Non-group friendly game play

Gallus85

I wanted to get some of your opinions on this, but let me start by saying I'm liking the game.  It has a lot to offer, especially in the story and lore, but....

I feel the game is horrible when it comes to being a cooperative, social, group experience.  It's very "single player" oriented, more so than any other MMO I've played (you can see the list in my signature).

 

The first, and biggest issue in my opinion, is the "phasing" system.  If I complete a quest, it changes the world for me, but not for other players who haven't done the quest.  Questing is by far where most of the game's content is and it's set up in such a way that if I do a quest, then later want to play with my friend who needs to do that quest, I can't even help him or her.  I'm forced out of my friend's "phase" and he's left to fight by himself.  This wouldn't be a huge issue, but all the major quest lines do this.  If I play 1 day and my friend isn't on that day, the next time he logs in, I could have half, or a whole zone where I can't even play with him.  It's pretty absurd.

 

The other issue is that there's no mentoring system.  So even if there is non-phased content I could play with a friend, there's no way for me to scale my higher level character down to his level.  Creating an experience where I just run around and 1 shot all the mobs for him, if I can even play with him at all. 

 

Now, it seems that at "end game", IE when you and all your friends hit VR10, there are a dozen or so dungeons, and an upcoming adventure zone with a raid instance to do.  That sounds great and I hope they add a lot more in the future, but I feel that the group experience from lvl 1 to VR 9 has been nothing short of horrible.

 

What do you guys think about this?