We recently sought a new direction for our grouping system that really did not work very well, not through poor coding but because a browser game and our style of game is not really suited to grouping. It was decided that we would then come up with a new system that would replace grouping and after a few hours of brain straining thought it was decided that we would call it “Fellowships”.
A fellowship can consist of up to 6 players, each player goes off and does their own thing and fights monsters, for each person online in your fellowship while you fight you will receive a 5% xp bonus called the Fellowship bonus which will show up in orange text on the fight window when you see your actual xp.
Fellowship membership is allegiance based, if the leader of a fellowship is neutral anyone can join that fellowship no matter the allegiance. If the leader of the fellowship is in an allegiance then only people in that same allegiance or neutral can be a part of this fellowship.
This means that with a full fellowship of 6 people you would receive a 30% bonus, also as a way to make the system tougher so that fellowships are not just free experience for all involved the monster stats are increased by 20% for each person active in your fellowship. This means that with a full fellowship the stats on the monster you are fighting will be over double what they usually are and should provide more of a challenge.
I see this system as an excellent addition to the game and a much better system over the old one we had in place.