>Try to even organize a Hell
>trip when no one knows the bee-line path. I tried, I got told
>they'd rather wait til a qualified leader was around.

It's too bad, really. I've found a lot of cool stuff over the years in the first half or so of Hell that I've either not seen other people bother with, or not seen people bother with or get lately. Regens and are seriously some of the least of it.

You really can get a lot done with a small group, let's say 2-4 people, if it's a pretty well built team and/or all the players are pretty PvE competent -- the kind of people you could take into the Maus with you and wouldn't expect to get you killed. That group isn't going to go on a pit fiend killing spree, but by the end of their trip they can have seen a lot of cool things and have a lot of cool loot. Probably more loot (quality of stuff per person) than the 12 person group will get, since they're not squabbling over as much stuff or stopping to get 93 sets of fulminator gauntlets.

>I think large large
>group areas however, don't pan out like they should due to the
>whole unfortunate human factor.

That's true to a degree, and moreso with the aging of some of the playerbase. It used to be there was a Hell trip going down just about every weekend, either Friday or Saturday night.

I learned from taking Hell trips and tried to do something different with the Silent Tower. There's a lot you can do solo. Yeah, you probably need a group if you want to kill an Archmage, but in most cases, only the leader needs to know the way, and following the leader in and fighting won't necessarily show you the way (exactly) or spoil all the tricks for you. There's also generally less time commitment to get a group there -- if you've done some exploring and want to take a crack at one of the big boys, it's realistic to round up a group and have them at your target in less than an hour in all cases.

That's not a knock on Hell -- I think it's cool that the game has at least one truly epic area like that, a top exploration/PvE challenge for players who seek it -- but I tried to provide some different opportunities.