I was hoping they'd abandon the party model for this type of content and just base things on each individual's contribution, with buffs affecting everyone in range and everyone sauntering up at any time to participate equally with all others. The idea of limiting that interaction in any way with only 7 or 23 other set individuals for the duration of the event is disappointing to say the least.

When I first heard about Hamlet in 1.xx, I imagined people walking into a non instanced event at any time and able to freely interact with all others there. Even just running through the event spamming buffs and cures to the dozens of players close enough to them at any one moment. Just people walking in mid event and helping and having fun without having to worry about which team they're in as everyone was on the same team working together.

When Yoshi-P said they were frustrated and disappointed with the server coding getting in the way of how they really wanted to do Hamlet (and that that was why it strayed so far from what was originally announced as the plans for the event), I thought it was this same restriction issue that had bothered me and I was looking forward to seeing it remedied in 2.0.

Even if there are 20 parties all working towards a common goal, that's still 20 separate groups. It just isn't what I imagined and hope for. I still hope that they'll leave the party system behind one day, if not in the overall scheme of the game at least for massive events like these are supposed to be. Parties, as they are, only lock people out.

Say you're after a certain monster for a certain drop but it's an NM so only spawns like once a day. If you're in the party that lays claim to it, no one else can get it that day. If your party is a fraction of a second too slow, the other party gets it and you don't get it that day. Whereas, is the emphasis was on contribution and not parties, both groups could work together as one big entity, the individuals contribute their fair share (not the groups as people tend to contribute inequally so the contribution should not be averaged), get their chances at drops depending on how well they as individuals did, and pat each other on the back afterwards for a job well done.

That doesn't have to be restricted to combat group events either. The exact same concept could be applied to group crafting and group gathering.

I really dislike restrictions and have seen more open models work just fine so don't see the need for them at all... This isn't a single player game; multi player content should be with any other players participating in the same content if they wish to team up. If they don't wish to team up then they don't work together with you as a team. It's that simple.