You like to play against the grain (fewer allies) and you like to start over a lot (try not builds), but you also have very limited time to play both in the specific times of day you can be play and for how long.

I'm not trying to tell you how you feel or assert what will be fun for you, but it sure does seem like you're sort of setting yourself up for disappointment and still maintain that having your fire elemental count as a groupmate while some mob beats your mage butt isn't the difference between the status quo and a CF that fulfills your expectations given the approach you've described.

As an side, bear in mind that the way it's coded now, you'd only ever get credit for one pseudo-groupmate. If we counted ALL NPCs, you'd get hosed the other way around because even with the XP bonus someone like a conjurer or necromancer would be splitting the it between too large of a group.

And FWIW, we've had two double XP bonuses in the past two months that spanned "lunch time" (CST). I have no idea what timezone you're in, but if it's not close to that then hopefully you've been hitting the late night / early AM bonuses I try to schedule from time to time as well.