They usually weren't super easy (unless you were lucky or in a good guild) but they generally weren't 2-3 hour horror as people try to make them out to be.
And unless you were a guildless asshole you ALWAYS had some friends or guildies (tanks and healers) to invite. You seem to think people only spammed /2 for groups, which is a wrong assumption. I usually ran them in the evening and the guild was full, friend list too and we were ready to go in on average 30-45 minutes, if someone was missing we grabbed him from the /2 pretty quick. Now if you tried running them at 4 am a group may be difficult to find but that was the game's way of telling you you're not getting enough sleep.