The Advantages of Partying
Like pretty much every other Massively Multiplayer game, World of Warcraft rewards social gamers for teaming up to achieve their objectives. This often involves questing or, at higher levels, raids, but can be as simple as randomly hunting for monsters. The benefits may not be as straightforward as they seem, however, due to the fact that XP and treasure gets divided between party members.
First and foremost, it is important to clarify that achieving the following benefits of partying depend on being in a good party. In a good party, members work in tandem to achieve common goals. They capitalize on each other’s strengths, supplement each other’s weaknesses, and share the bounty equally. Everyone has a job and does it. A bad party, on the other hand, is everything that a good party is not. Members of a bad party will fail to communicate or plan, insist on approaching a situation their own way or even alone, and may be greedy when it comes to the division of treasure.
Assuming you’re in a good party, you may find that monsters aren’t giving you as much XP as they were soloing. This is perfectly normal and makes sense, considering killing the same monster with help is much easier. Done correctly, however, you should be receiving more XP in the long run, and here’s why. A good party can be an efficient killing machine, running through monsters at a much greater rate than any individual could achieve. Furthermore, higher level monsters can be eliminated, leading to greater XP gains.
Perhaps one of the greatest benefits to XP, however, is the fact that a party can accomplish quests much more easily than an individual. And, because XP from quest completion is never divided, everyone can enjoy a full share when the work is done.
There is one phantom benefit to partying, as well. Specifically, members of a good party tend to survive much more easily. Individuals can easily be killed if they aggro one too many monsters. However, a group is much more likely to survive otherwise lethal situations intact. Thus, there is no lapse in the adventuring that normally accompanies character death.
There is an entirely different discussion that involves what constitutes a well-balanced party that I won’t go into. Suffice it to say that different combinations of character types will work better or worse for different situations. The real importance lies in how well the party works together, since pretty much any party combination can be viable if done correctly.