Nobody should be able to solo the hardest monsters in game ever this is a MMO.
I think that is where you will find arguments.
IMO all of the creatures in the game Presently should be soloable but each of the bigger ones should only be soloable by specific skill sets with the right strategies.
The lack of forced-grouping in UO has kept a lot of people here over games like EQ - where it is not only necessary to group, but to be in one of the top raiding guilds on your server to face the bigger encounters.
But I also believe that there should be a small few encounters in the game that Do require group effort. Not by changing existing content - which only equates to a nerf on something we already have, but by addition of future encounters.
SA is to be a dungeon larger than anything we've seen, so blocking access to specific areas and requiring groups to key-in as we do now with peerless, and face things more powerful than we've ever had would fit perfectly.
Not just the same old stuff with more health higher skills and a new skin, but new encounter concepts, where the right skills are a requirement and you can't just go in zerg-style and overwhelm everything.
A small example..
The Archlich. [Minimum 5 characters to enter]
Drains 10 health from everyone in the room every 15 seconds.
Immune to all weapons.
Takes 25% damage from Healing spells, 50% damage from healing by bandages, and 100% from unarmed hits - BUT can only be damaged by a single spell/bandage after an unarmed hit, then becomes immune to both until it is hit unarmed again. (so both must be used)
Can repulse one character every 20 seconds - sending them across the room, doing 50 physical damage, and slowing their movement/casting for 15 seconds.
Any character Killed by it, causes it to gain 100% of their maximum health instantly, and increases the room-wide health drain by 1 point.
An encounter like this would be competely different from anything we have. Specifically those with healing skills/spells would be most valuable in the fight, and unlike everything we've ever had in the game, throwing numbers of characters at it would actually make the fight Harder.
Best of all, everyone would have to work As A Team to get it done, since every groupmate you let die means you die faster and the lich regenerates faster.
Other lordly encounters would be focused on other skills and aspects of play. It wouldn't be out of the question to make Crafting skills the basis of winning in some of them.
That is more of the sort of fight that I could see requiring numbers. Peerless as they are - well they just aren't that big. Making them unsoloable by adding more health and making them hit harder doesn't make the game more fun in any way, it just makes that particular monster harder to kill.. which done by itself is rather boring.
