Do people still group in this game?

(Like many posters on this forum, I see) I recently came back to Guild Wars after not playing for years because of the Trilogy sale on Steam. I was in beta, and played prophecies, but hopped ship to WoW shortly after. I was pretty excited to get back into the game, started a Dervish/Warrior on the Nightfall campaign, and got ready to play.

But then I noticed something. It seems that with the new Heroes, no one wants to group. Unless I'm missing something, of course - no one looking for parties in chat, no-one using the seeking group tool. I'm currently at the second mission (the Digsite one) and it seems that everyone just does it with their heroes. Am I missing something? Does this ever change? Is it like this in the other campaigns?

I know I might be expecting a lot out of a game that isn't as active as it once was due to age, but still.

You are correct, people do not PuG as much as they used to. I think there are two main reasons for this.
1. As each expansion would come out in the past, there would be a lot of people doing various quests and missions at the same time, so the chances that you could form a group were good. Nowadays, although there has been an influx of new/returning players, there is not as much activity in the early stages of the campaigns and it is harder to find people doing the same quests and missions as you, at the same time.
2. In addition to the above, the use of heroes (and henchmen) has made it less important to wait around in a town/outpost to form a group, so many people just grab some heroes and go. After a while, people don't even bother to try to PUG.
..........

One exception to all this is the Zaishen Bounties and Missions. There are often lots of players looking for groups to do them. The catch though, is that most of the groups want to do Hard Mode.

If you prefer to play with humans, the best advice is to find a Guild of like-minded people to join.

Honestly, GW is a rather old game by now. Few people play and those who do are usually the people who've already done everything and are only working on a single objective. It is unlikely you'll find groups these days, except in areas of special attraction (like the day's Zaishen objectives).

Exactly what Quaker said, the earlier missions are very easy thus finding a person in a PuG is useless. Henchies has been redone with better skills that would put a lot of people's healer heroes to shame.

On top of that, PuGing is bad. A lot of people would rather join their guild or friends because there is still some idiotic noobs that carry Fire Storm on their ranger.

"If you wanna succeed, try, try again." Hell no, if you wanna succeed join your friends that you know are good than grab a random person that relies on Flare Spam.

i see groups forming for any highend area or someone VQing atleast once a minute in my alliance. people just play with alliances now.

Simply Said, if you like to play the game with someone... get a good guild, cause how many people do you see not farming 1-3 per outpost...

People PuG in some places. i started a pre char (going duo with another account) and i've seen lots of PuG groups recently, a lot more than last year :O. it's all over in mission outposts though. maybe its a surge of enw players (there have been a lot of new players posting on here).
But yeah guilds and alliances are better. PuGs are fun but then again they're not as reliable and not for high-end PvE

You missed the boat, during the months following each campaign release people will be grouping. Its now about 3-4 yrs and few go through NF, and very few will be on when you are on to actually go through it.

People still group though, if I ever need some mission/quest once in a while, I can shout out and there would be 1-2 people also looking to do the same thing. The main things people group up for now is for the farming areas, and z-mission/bounty.

Lots of people use Heroes simply b/c Hero AI is predictable and Humans well... there are some stupid ones out there. I prefer Heroes b/c it's faster to get into the mission/quest/etc and when done correctly can sometimes be faster then a full Human group.