I agree with your sentiment, Yaeger, even though your post seems to be inspired in part by my post about druids and shamen. I'd like to point out that I have two characters (a cleric and a paladin) specifically for grouping. I don't know why, but everyone seems to think that all anyone does in this game is play a single character at a time: you have your main, which you level up exclusively, and then you use it to fund your alts, and so on (solo or not). Sounds boring as fuck to me. I like to have a pool of characters to choose from depending on what I feel like doing at the moment. So I might be playing my shaman solo the most, but that doesn't mean I don't hop on my cleric or paladin a good deal to group.
That being said, with the caveat that so far I've only really grouped in Crushbone and a little in Butcherblock, I've found soloing to be much faster exp. Here's what happens in a group:
Spend 5-15 minutes actually getting a full or almost-full group, or notice that Crushbone is full and log on to another character (sometimes you get a group immediately, but Crushbone gets absolutely packed at peak hours and I prefer to avoid that clusterfuck).
Get slow EXP.
Deal with people randomly leaving your group, going AFK for no apparent reason, playing badly.
Deal with trains and mob stealing.
Get considerably less money; wonder how you're going to buy your spells/gear/whatnot.
Maybe it's better at higher levels, but soloing has been in general a faster and more gratifying experience. I still like to group, but I spend most of my time soloing. I do agree that it's silly how people think they MUST TWINK THEIR CHARACTERS if they're going to play in a group. Twinking is gravy, it's not what you need to do whatsoever, with the possible exception of warriors since they have such a hard time holding aggro early on without good weapons.
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