Sure they cost money and only last an hour, but dammit sometimes my guild goes to bed before I do.

However in the later game not all characters are equal, and some are more survivable than others. Often the team splits, usually by accident, and some classes can not only take it, but revel in it. Recent changes to the difficulty settings let you declare “I am equal to 8 heroes or more” and get full-team spawns when soloing.

On the forum thread a full-hard mission had the team leader tell everyone to break into twos to make the mission go faster, most stories were ‘I went left, they went right, I didn’t know they weren’t behind me until we met up again three rooms later.’ I did that the other day when my Controller (crowd control/ buffs) started a pack then realized nobody else was there – and kept going. Villains do this easier, Masterminds (pet / buffs) and Dominators (crowd control / melee) can take on things as well as a Brute (tank / dps). Heroes tend to be too specialized to do it as easily.