Everyone in this thread keeps jumping back and forth on the issues. As mention in many threads, this game does not have a level based system. It is skill based (like UO) and thus should not have \"XP\". Skill is determined by what you are doing. If you heal someone, then your healing goes up, if you stab something, your fencing goes up, etc. Thus, grouping is really only good for 3 things : Quest Completion (if done as a group then the group gets the reward), communication (group \"say\" features... health bars for your part members), and looting rights to the corpse of the mobs killed by any member of the group. Whether there is a formal system or not, then it makes no difference to your hunting stategies and really only effects those who \"want\" to group together. If you feel like soloing, then I can imagine your progress in the fighting skills will be slow and expensive (heal potions, etc). If you don\'t care about looting rights and quest completion, then non-formal ad-hoc grouping is always an option. Just ask for a backup and don\'t /invite them.
As for resolution of looting rights to a mob, IMO it should depend mainly on the amount of damage done. First strike should only matter if the damage done by contending parties/individuals is the same or fairly close (within a 10% margin).