The Paradox of MMORPGs | Asmongold Reacts 

As a solo player myself my biggest frustration is when devs make easily soloable content require other players for nonsense gatekeeping mecs like in dungeons and raids where you literally just need the extra bodies to do some dumb shit like stand on a pressure plate to open a door!

I completely agree that the primary appeal of solo play in MMORPGs is the freedom it offers. Developers must understand this and avoid forcing players into group activities that can lead to frustration. Providing meaningful solo content that respects players' autonomy while still offering the option for group activities is key to maintaining a diverse and engaged player base.

I play MMORPG's solo because of the randomness, if you see the world alive and thriving with players roaming around, that world becomes a lot more believable and alive, the factor of randomness, players chatting shit on public, seeing the chatbox move while doing your own thing makes you feel part of that world too despite never or rarely interacting with other players.

There's a reason SWTOR always ranks S tier in solo content, the whole game is basically a singleplayer with people running around you real time...

Best part of playing solo is not having to rely on your teammates to have the IQ required to move out of fire..

I liked how GW2 did solo stuff. A lot of the game is played solo and when you want to do group stuff, it's still pretty easy to do and you just show up. No real need to organize most of it, unless you're doing very hard content. You're basically playing solo with just a ton of people around you.

Been playing mmo's since my 20's, now in my 30's I've been in guilds, roleplay guilds, been a guild officer responsible for training and spreadsheets. Now, I have a career and I play those mmos alone because I don't want another job.

The people who don't know why we play solo are the reason why.

For me, I've almost always solo'd MMOs. I see it as an open world RPG before it became a popular thing. Also, games like The Old Republic, i just wanted to experience the story.

Every time I do the social mmo thing, I am very swiftly rewarded with a reminder of why I play alone; the average MMO player is either an asshole or an idiot; usually both

Playing an MMO solo can have good reasons. Grouping up with others - friends or strangers - always requires a fix commitment of your time etc. and if someone still likes the game itself for various reasons ... playing solo can absolutely be an option for certain people. Some MMOs can be played "solo" extremely well like Guild Wars 2 or The Elder Scrolls Online.

GW2 mastered this long ago. Easily the best MMO at letting you solo while seeing real players everywhere and seamlessly working with them.

Playing an MMO alone is like listening to the Radio. You know you're experiencing a song the same time as some other people, but you might be alone in your car or something. While another group at a party is listening to that same song on the radio. You guys are all enjoying that same song at the same time, just in your own places in your own way. I think that's why I enjoy playing solo in some games. I'm still a part of the community and the game experience, but in a manner I can control and at a pace I set.

I’ve mostly drifted away from mandatory multiplayer games because it just doesn’t suit my lifestyle anymore.. through high school, college, and many years after I would go hard on World of Warcraft or League of Legends. But ever since my kids were born it’s become very challenging to lock into a game for a few hours to raid or even 30+ mins at a time for a dungeon or League match. The game itself usually pushes you away if you are unable to stay locked in for the duration, either you are disappointing and frustrating your teammates or the game actively punishes you for having to afk or both. Because of this I mostly play MMO lites now like Warframe. Usually these games are far more accommodating to play, you can choose to play with a premade or random group which usually is optimal for loot or speed while everything in the game is also soloable in the case of Warframe you have the added perk of most game modes which are instanced allow you to fully pause the game making it incredibly convenient to play or walk away from at a moments notice.

as an mmorpg solo player, Assmongler is spot on about why we play mmo's solo

My wife was a new player to MMOs and played The Old Republic. She felt forced to play with other people and they called her names and she quit shortly after. It's important to let new players play and say you dont have to play with others if you dont want. It could mean the world to a new player.

Some players enjoy the challenge of playing solo. If it's too easy it just gets boring.

As a men with anxiety I liked to play mmos "solo" because I can still communicate with people when I want and also I could just communicate trought emotes like in WoW without talking and still understand what that persone mean, and it kinda helped me to open up more to people so for me ability to play solo in mmo is a good thing, somtimes i just run around world and wave to people sit next to someone who is watching a view ect just simple things which bring me joy and maybe for the others too

I havent spent my entire life playing solo to change that fact on a different world

I was a solo mmorgp'er. I absolutely hated being forced into a party for specific roles.

I personally had to play solo because all my real life friends weren’t gamers. Met with the guild once a week for raids but ultimately grinded alone.

Most people now want to play a Solo RPG without feeling like they have 'missed out' or 'wasted their time' Whenever thats the mindset, it means the game means more to you than being a method of relaxation. Its become a coping mechanism for your life. Something in your life is wrong and instead of identifying and fixing it you're working to make Sword Number go up because that's much easier to handle.

TBH I played Warhamer Online, WoW, FFXIV, Albion Online, Guild Wars 2 mosty alone. Only grouping up for Dungeons and stuff. Ilike when an MMO is good enough to play alone, still makes you feel like you're in a living populated world with all the other players.

Y’all don’t give GW2 enough credit. The weapon combos changing your class entirely was awesome. Instead of sitting there for hours saying “LFG” you just went to the events and did it with the random people that were there. In my opinion it was one of the best mmos, I actually had fun leveling up and it didn’t seem like a chore like WOW.

I'm a diehard soloist. I served my years with endgame raiding guilds. My favorite time during WoW was in WotLK soloing vanilla raids with a warlock. The strategy involved was quite unlike anything else in the game, which is surprising considering it was unintentional content. That said, I've recently started playing Warframe and have been blown away by how fun of an experience it is by any standard -- much less as a free-to-play game. Ironically, the game is able to be played 100% solo but I find it way more enjoyable to play it with other people. No toxicity, no rage, no forced content, just good old jolly cooperation.

These days I mostly play solo, I enjoy doing things in my own way at my own pace. I did the whole grouping all the time, raid schedule BS when I was young and tbh It was just stressful, it wasn't fun. The way I've always explained it when I have invariably been attacked by children who have no capacity to understand that MMORPG's are not inherently "grouped" experiences is to explain the accronym to them. Massively = Large or Expansive Multiplayer = Many other people in the same game, NOT a reference to grouping. Online = Self explanatory Role = Something other than your real self Playing = Interactive, hands on experience Game = FUN, thats right its meant to be entertainment not stress So many folks just do not grasp what the genre even is, and so attack soloer's because it doesn't fit thier idea of how "YOU" should play the game in their opinion as if how you play it at all is any of their business. Also it is a massive assumption to assume just because you solo, means you are introverted. I am sure there are those who are, but like I say for many it is just that we JUST want to do things in our own way at our pace without other people BS and constraints impacting that and that is it. MMO's are inherently "social" by design but they are not, nor do they have to be "grouped", and last time I checked I didn't need to be grouped to be social. ;)

One of the reasons I play a game like Warframe is because it allows me to play completely solo. Yes, when I go to a hub I can see other people, but when it comes to missions, I can enjoy those at my leisure. Plus, solo play allows me to pause.

I'm 33 and I completely agree with Asmon on the reasons why I hate multiplayer. What I think WoW and other MMORPGs lack is simple. You grind, then you show off: I did that myself, here's my top gear, here are my solo bosskil achievements, that was hard solo work and that's my doing alone, no one helped me and now look at yourself, you suck, bitch and you had your buddies helping you on every step and every dungeon. You have to be able to level up alone, there must be a way for you to gear up real good solo and go and beat the shit out of people on the arena. It should be a bit easier to do that in a group and game should give you access to some better dungeons if you're a member of a guild (but not require you to run them in a group, you should be able to enter and clear it solo even though it'll be extremely hard). That's it. Here's the best recipe for MMO that I would play. I love to grind, I hate to rely and coordinate with other people. I don't have time for this shit. That's why I dropped Helldivers 2 for example even though it's a good game. It's possible to play it solo, but it's fucking boring because it's meant to play with friends. I don't have time to schedule with them to play, I have my fucking life going on. I actually found my best type of game that is multiplayer and require lots of solo grind at the same time: Simracing. You got to be fast to win team races and in order to do that you have to drive hundreds of laps solo and then join your team to have endurance races where you swap each other every hour in the pits. Best experience ever. You grind, you improve, you show off and win races with your team together.

Why do game devs think introverts will magically become extroverts the moment they log into a game?

I always looked at MMOs as games that presented a world for lots of players to enjoy, but that didn't necessarily mean you did things together. Just that it was a big, living world with other people roaming around. I am a solo player. I love MMOs because of the size of the world and they are usually very open world which I love. I think another thing that turns off people from group content is the meta. When you're solo, you don't worry so much about BiS and what I "should" have equipped. The minute you get into raids and group stuff, then you HAVE TO wear this if you're a healer or that if you're DPS. I loved it for a short while then it because tedious and obnoxious.

Coming from someone who played MMO’s with his gf: I can tell you that solo is a much better experience. We realized it’s immensely frustrating to work together like that and be locked in at progression points. Never ‘waiting’ for others ever again when I just want to have some fun.

If MMO dev don't want solo play, make a matchmaking system that put the player in group nearby him each time he logs in. Add group challenges so players don't quit the group immediatly, or just prevent player from quitting the group without having another one to join

People who steal guild banks are stupid "assholes"...and thats are also the guys you wanna never play with it. There are too many "assholes" out there, thats one of the main reason why it is so hard to find a good and nice group.

I love how Guild Wars 2 handles things. Most things are soloable, but grouping is faster and still worth it. What I mean by this is, in FFXIV where grouping isn't required it's actually inefficient. FFXIV either forces you to play with other people, or it encourages you to solo.

I hardly ever play in groups with other people. I enjoy the style of gameplay that MMOs offer so I’m going to play them. At my own leisure. Everyone saying “just go play a single player game” doesn’t really understand that single player games don’t offer the same exact experience of an MMO.

I always think I want to level with friends but then I realize shortly after we begin that we inevitably get separated, and someone always out levels the other. I’ve never actually finished leveling with another friend. We usually meet at the end and do dungeons and raids. Casually inviting a random to a quest to make it easier to tag mobs, or in hardcore to make a potentially dangerous quest safer (most of the time), is more convenient. These things combined, coupled with seeing lots of people around the world, is what makes a mmo to me.

Guild Wars 2 to solved most of the issues mentioned in this video more than 10 years ago. It is a unique MMO experience, but might not be very approachable for themepark MMO regulars who look for a gear treadmill. Otherwise, it is also one of the most accessible MMOs out there.

For me, its the fact that if im playing a game that my friends are not, the guilds i join kick you if you are gone for a day because "you are inactive". Some dont even wait for the day, if you go to sleep, and get on in the morning, youll still be kicked. The time commitment guilds expect from you is just unreasonable, and makes it easier to just go solo.

It's all about single serving friends. Helldivers got it right, 30 mins with a bunch of randoms. I like not being forced into commitment.

The original GW did solo mmo play WAY better than WoW. You could fill your team with AI, gear them, choose their skills, and you could sort of train them to use certain rotations.

Jokes on you, playing Solo is the only option in MapleStory

One of the reasons I love City of Heroes. I can build a character good enough to solo an eight man Task Force (dungeon equivalent). So if I feel like joining a group and more than half turn out to be brain dead I can still finish the thing. Also characters of different levels can team together and the loot is in the form of recipes and salvage that go straight to your inventory (no loot roll offs or drama). The recipes and salvage are random drops and not tied to particular dungeons and can be bought and sold on the auction house. There is no ‘gear’ so your appearance has no impact on your characters performance.

Single guy, here. No kids, no wife, 110 hours a week at work. I prefer solo mmorpg, every day.

I like to play as a simple traveller on the road who helps other players in small ways, like an NPC companion. I don't talk to them, I just follow them and judge from their movement and actions what their quest is, and sometime I send a group invite, just to see their health bar. I basically like playing as an RP strider LOTR character. If my helping them ruins their experience, lowers their XP gain, or confuses them, I leave them alone. But I always feel like they see me helping and think they are trapped with me or think I want more from them like a friend request or guild alliance. New world did this very well, same as albion online sometimes. But I haven't found a game that makes this RP, part-rime fellowship gameplay feel authentic. Star citizen have had some great moments like this. FFxiv world events are the closest you can get to it, but that focuses more kn the objective then real team work/companionship.

0:12 everyone come to him, like people in wow go finding asmon spawn point.

Honestly playing Solo or with just 1 or 2 friends in a MMO, is the greatest thing ever. You can help each other out, if you want to, or you can just go your own way and compare which ways you have went later down the line. Achieveing something in a MMO solo means something, as you actually need to prepare/learn the content. In most MMOs you can just get carried by your raid/team whatever, you can buy yourself into getting gear and achievements. You can buy stuff from the auction house/market just to progress. This is stuff that a solo player does not do. He makes his own story, experiences his own world and enjoys it for what it is. That is why I would love to see MMOs introducing stuff like the mage tower or the tower from lost ark (forgot the name), or and even more imporantly, solo content. Like the same dungeons tuned to solo players, same rewards/cooldowns so dont have an advantage/disadvantage. Some kind of content concurrent to raids for solo players

Honestly I just like the option to play with friends often , but I prefer playing solo to playing with randoms

The "why play mmo" is an annoying issue in FF14 in terms of MSQ and general activity being locked behind group content when you just want to play the game and not deal with people.

I play RuneScape alone because all my friends left me. Who needs em anyway?

Im a solo player and i like mmo solo because a lot of them have character creation, open world, great story and a heap of dlc content to play and I prefer to be by myself and can play at my leisure.

Picked up GW2 a decade ago. Understand there’s a repetitive end game of sorts where by you basically run from boss to boss on the time schedule, but not requiring grouping to boss run while still rewarding the kill to all participants individually via a RNG chest reward system (no loot rolling) had its positives. Never understood if there was a relationship between damage dealt and rewards received, but it still seemed one of the better systems at the time for solo players.

I think the best way a game can make a game social is through creating "third places". I always look back at Tibia. It was a game that had almost no required social gameplay requirements. And yet there were so many instances of social interaction. In fact, when I was a kid, I never got above lvl 30 because I spent 90% of my time socializing. Tibia had "funnels" if you will. places that players were forced to go to every so often, and it was usually the bank. This forced players to often meet the same people all the time. You also had quests that served this purpose. For example, in the Noob island, you had the Minotaur quest, very common quest, that gave you some of the best items you could get in the Noob island. People gathered there all the time to try to do the quest, because doing it alone (though possible) was really hard.

Mmos for me are games with a world I share with people instead of npcs, I dont necessarily wanna interact with them alot of the times but I just find comfort in the fact I am not alone in a large world

I rarely hear talk about the reason why I play MMO solo. For example, when I started with WoW, I simply wanted to play a game set in the warcraft universe. Not a strategy game where I am a flying camera, but where I can be a single person exploring the world, having adventures. I would have loved if I could do that in a single player game. But as far as I know, no such game existed. I also was eager to play a game set in the star wars universe, and one set in the warhammer universe. I know there ARE single player games set in those worlds, but I was curious about the MMO too. Being able to play with other people was never the appeal to me, it was actually something I considered a negative.

A hundred years ago I ran a toon on a friends account (before that kind of thing would get you banned) and I started from lvl 1 and just did some questing. I'd run across veteran players and when they found out it was my first time playing they'd get pretty excited and help me run the quests. This happened a bunch of times and I had a blast- years later some of the kids at work were taking about wow and I told them this story. They all got quiet before one of them said "oh it's not like that any more..." It's weird how games have changed. Salt mines...

Just started playing swtor and enjoying the solo content and stories a lot. There is a dungeon finder but its called activities where you pair with 3 other people to do flashpoints(dungeons) and the social side of that is "hi" at beginning and "ty" at end, this is the whole interaction. You get social experience from being in guild and you are encouraged to join one for bonuses anyway.

Could not be more spot on about just wanting the freedom of taking a 5 minute break, or work on a build or a layered armor look in peace. I enjoy playing with others, but its probably 75/25. 75% of the time i want to play by myself. And when i'm playing the 25% with people, after awhile i start thinking about how much better it will be when i'm playing by myself. You just get so much more done.

The mix of both is what makes a MMO great. Doing a guild dungeon/ raid together is nice, but I also wanna do stuff without others in between. What if theres just not enough of your guildmates around? Play with randoms which almost always is a bad experience? Just log off because theres noone there right now and try later?

Guild Wars 2 solves this issue in every map has a chain of quests that happen on a timeer 24,7 as a solo you will stumble onto this chain called a mera over time more playeds will be funneled to the meta as you travel across the map climaxing into a final boss fight where you can expect (for the more popular metas) 50 players working to kill a big ass boss

I, like a lot of you, am a solo WoW player, I really enjoy PvP and farming. Pvp for the competitive nature of it, I love healing in bg's. Farming because I can zone out, listen to a podcast, and benefit from it. Grinding in a 1 player game feels anti-climactic compared to getting a new mount or a badass new weapon that everyone can see and say "oh damn that guy has that one sword!"

Ultima Online, the game credited with the creation of the genre was completely soloable, the concept wasn't novel to WoW. Granted, UO was a sandbox with no real storyline or quests. WoW just perfected the Everquest experience.

The msq roulette in ffxiv used to be unironically social because you were stuck in there so long and forced to sit through so many cutscenes, people would actually talk to each other pretty regularly.

I used to play Ragnarok Online and they had Guild Wars called War of Imperium. In the guild war, you had to take over castles guarded by opposing guilds by breaking the Imperium at the end of a gauntlet of rooms. There was ONE GUY in the server known for getting through the defenses and sniping the Imperium, taking over the castle. The guy was a legend. So yes, I really agree on the point of 'loners' in MMOs

In the USA, people spend roughly a half hour to forty-five minutes a day socializing (not counting work-related interactions or social media). I think a lot of it has to do with jobs that involve a lot of negative social interactions as well as social media which can have a lot of negative social effects such that people tend to want to unplug from social until their social battery is reset. Thus, if an MMO requires you to spend several hours in a social situation it's going to be popular with people who maybe have no other social interaction other than the game but not necessarily the average population. Even countries that have a much higher degree of socializing, that time is still less than an hour and a half, usually less than what a lot of MMO endgame content requires. This isn't even taking into account that some people's game time might be broken up into multiple sessions even in the same day due to other responsibilities. This is why in WoW it's more common today for the average person to group for one or two quests rather than group up for a dungeon or raid. In vanilla WoW the endgame didn't feel like something you had to do, at least not right away because there wasn't a timer counting down to the next expansion, so you felt more compelled to put the effort in to do it. I had just started raiding in vanilla when TBC came out and it evaporated any incentive I had to play endgame content because now there was a timer to get geared to do endgame content before the next expansion came out and if I knew I couldn't beat that timer than I shouldn't even bother and do other stuff instead.

I play ESO solo for the good brain chemicals. Sure, I play in groups, too. But when I complete a 4 player dungeon alone, the endorphins are mine, all mine! Not diluted by having more people in the group to share the happiness brain juices, but distilled into perfection when I alone did the work of a tank, healer and 2 dd's simultaneously.

I've played a lot of ironman OSRS. It's only solo in terms of difficulty of achievement. I can't buy or trade of course, so I'm collecting all my own resources and hunting for my own items, but I'm never forced to be alone. If I'm skilling, I'm doing it with other people. Same with minigames, raids, anything. Unless you're buying carries in raids, it's still an ironman experience since an 8 man team vs raiding solo gives 8x the drops, but only a 1/8 chance of me getting the item. Single player and solo self found don't have to be the same thing :) Unless it's enforced like in PoE.

As a person with 2 jobs, I love Random Dungeon Queue. They're not hard and you don't need the best gear. If you pick tank or healer you get in a group in seconds. There's been times were I click "join" and instantly get a group. Unfortunately, if you pick DPS it could take like 15 minutes lol.

The truth: New World chests run were actually fun... the first 10 times. The other 250 I did were in fact not fun at all... and if the game didn't have auto run I would have quit sooner

MMORPGs were my first games. I loved making my characters, using skills under numbers, finding combos I like, doing quests and leveling up. I like the format of those games. What I didn't like was the MMO part. Other people seeing what I was doing, waiting for rarer monsters to respawn just to wait more, because it was someone else getting that last hit to finish the quest and the worst of all, getting forced into pvp regions and getting killed in an instant when I was just minding my business. Once I found a game that other players were visible only in the cities and the wilds were all for you and your team, which could be other players or hired npcs. That was perfect, but I don't remember the name anymore.

I loved playing Everquest during a period when many of us had been laid off during the mid-late 90's, but EQ required grouping up to do well (unless you played a Necro). I spent a LOT of time training new players to work with the guild and how to raid. I got my RL friends to play and since I had the fastest internet connection at that time, friends would bring their computers to my place and we'd all play EQ together through the weekend. But then... the Unemployment checks ran out and we got new jobs, some moving away from Austin, and some started building RL families with kids. Having played so many hours of EQ, we had higher expectations from MMORPGs and from other players we grouped with. My friends and I blew through Star Wars Galaxies, Anarchy Online, Everquest 2, City of Heroes and dabbled with games like WoW (but most of us didn't like WoW). A game expecting us to Raid for 6+ hours was 'ok' when we were unemployed or still in college, but as we got older and had more responsibilities... our time became MUCH more valuable than that of a pompous 20-something game developer who couldn't fix basic bugs in their new MMORPG. So, this guy's video is spot on for those of us who used to be the avid MMORPG gamers who prefer to play solo games that have the ability to PAUSE and SAVE.

MMO's are typically open world sandbox games in which other players just happen to run around. The sandbox part means that you can, and should do whatever you feel like, be it solo content or multiplayer content. Some people simply play it just for the sense of adventure, for the questing and exploration's sake, they don't really care about the hardcore content that requires no lifing.

I always hated grouping in games yet when Everquest and it's first expansion came out, I was obsessed with it. I joined a clan because I was young and silly... but I had a blast going to different regions and buffing people for a small bit of coin here and there. Me and a friend started at the same time and I got to level 25 by the time he maxed out. I could never get into WoW and even trying elder scrolls online later but I could never spend the time necessary because I was older and had things to do... but I was always jealous because MMOs always had such cool skill trees and experiences.

For me who tried mmos, often times i like to be around people but not be forced to interact with them. Kind of like warframe, i can play missions however i want, solo, friends only, public, you get the idea. And when i go and visit my clan dojo or relais, i can see other people so the game doesnt feel dead.

Fun personal fact: I have been soloing solo possible bosses in MMOs from the beginning. Not because I was good at them, but because it was possible. It would take me 2 hours on average. Occasionally people would join me randomly now and again (like 2 people mostly).

MMOs are just literally perfect for me. I like doing most things solo like questing and grinding stats/levels but I also love raiding with people. If I don’t have to do something multiplayer, I usually rather wouldn’t. Just cause if I’m solo I can hop in and get started. Not wait in a lobby

I 1000% agree on the "locked in" aspect. I don't play MMO's anymore cuz I feel that I have to be on everyday or at least several times a week if I want to be on top of things, that's the main reason why I stopped playing Lost Ark. I'm 33 and work full time, go to the gym, hang with friends, etc. I don't have the time to be on all the time like I used to. So sad, lmao.

I have two modes for MMOs. Playing with the usual 2 friends, and playing solo, only teaming up occasionally with a stranger I met at a convenient moment (PVP shenanigans, elite quest, etc) both have a very different feel to it and I greatly enjoy both.

One thing I really loved about FFXI was that it was mainly designed for party play, but my first job to level 75 (which was the cap at the time) happened to be Red Mage. As it turned out, Red Mage with a Ninja subjob, was the best soloing combo in the game, and if you were skilled enough to the point you had mastered the job, you could solo fights that were designed for 6 people, or even more. I very much loved the big fights that took 18 people, but I also had the option to solo really difficult fights as well. It was great! It also meant if I was going after an expensive drop, I didn't have to sell the really rare item to split it with the other participants. Hell no! I wanted the drop to use it, and if I didn't want, or need to use it, I could reap all of the profits myself.

You said it right at the start. MMORPG is about playing in a world that other players exist in, not necessarily about always playing with others. And yes I do like having an avenue for solo gear progression. I don't see why it would be a problem to have that if it's more stagnated loot than doing dungeons/raids. Also, another important thing is the social experience. I feel like there's hardly any social experience in modern WoW, whereas in old WoW there was a good social element because everyone was out and about in the world, bumping into each other on their journeys. This was lost for a lot of reasons. Flying mounts, the direction of quest content to be quick simple checklists, expansions separating people. It would be good if they introduced new features to encourage the socializing environment (without shoving people into the same group). For instance, player housing. I also think modern WoW should adapt the system in ascension wow where you can do prestige leveling and leveling challenge modes for very unique rewards.

I remember what got me to play WoW back in 2004. I had a friend who played it and they got my brothers to play. At some point, they showed me a video from RU-vid that a News Channel has made. They talked about how addictive the game is and showed what one of those addicts was like. They held up a lighter to his shirt and the kid blew the fire out saying "Sorry my shirt has +60 fire resist". I feel like those moments are less common for modern MMOs.

30:45 If you've ever had the experience of being in an extremely tight-knit raiding team that were all nailing their roles that night, you know exactly what he's on about. It feels fucking incredible to be part of that group of people absolutely demolishing an entire raid in a few dozen minutes like it's a walk in the park!

For those wondering in the comments below what someone means when they talk about GW1 or GW2, they are referring to Guild Wars 1 and 2. To be fair, Guild Wars 1 is partially an MMO because the majority of the game can be played without others if need be, but there are certain things that require at least one extra person to do certain quests. They even set up certain group missions where you would need a second group to have NPC play the second group just in case there are not enough people in for that mission.

The content you find online is about the most hardcore most efficient possible way and the best gear to defeat dungeons and for some reason that becomes the standard of how everyone needs to play through that dungeon. So when groups happen everybody complains when nobody's attempting to do the same exact thing in the same way because it's just about the speed.

20:00 mfing Three Mage Gate in ffxi. Either you know a black mage, white mage, and red mage, you have someone tractor you through the gate, you have someone with the Portal charm, or you have to do a ridiculously long side quest line that is time gated. o.o (or you skip the mission and do it after 5-1 by trading in daggers from the market board).

I feel like this also depends on the MMO you play, some are more alright for soloing but, if an MMO is community driven I feel like that teamplay will come naturally. Kind of how like FF14 can be, I played it solo until a certain level because I felt low level but then I teamed up with a kind group of people and felt comfortable playing with others. Ideally it's kind of like Idyl mentioned, you can solo content but "its not optimal", I think having parties, partying with people, etc should have advantages and solo players know they are at a disadvantage but, it's still completely fine and doable.

Exactly, I don't want to have to think about other people, like what they're doing, what build they're using. I don't like having to lock into a certain time period with these people, being unable to take breaks, needing to stand around making groups or looking for players. However, when I do have friends on the game, I want to be able to play with them and show off my stuff from solo grinding to them.

I remember being in a guild where every once and a while we'd have someone new get mad that no one wanted to group with them, so they'd leave - saw this happen a lot.

Journey and burnout paradise had great multiplayer experiences. Seamless transition from solo to multiplayer and back again without making the player feel like they were catering to others or ripping them from the main character

I’m gonna be an OSRS Andy here but here goes. Most multiplayer aspects outside PKing are either mass bossing or raids. Which can all also be done solo when you are maxed. Bossing as a team with a few clan mates is just that: spur of the moment fun or helping each other to learn the mechanics. There’s only one thing where you’re really encouraged to multi, and that Barbarian Assault, which is aids. You can still do it with randoms but trust me you want to do it with a clan. Or there are services you can pay for with GP that will carry you.

Back when I did play... yes, I much preferred to play solo. When they raised the level caps, I too went back to do group dungeons and raid dungeons on my own. But ultimately the game did the bare minimum to allow solo play. Doing those raids solo required me to group with an AFK friend just to be able to enter the dungeon, you couldn't even enter without converting a group to a raid. Those super cool solo epic quests I loved so much? They were discontinued in the first expansion. They never added solo challenges and solo modes for dungeons. It's nice that they're adding solo modes now, but it might be too little too late. It is for me, there's no way I would touch an MMO ever again.

I still remember my first time running a dungeon in wow, meet a player on his alt who gave me pointers on how to tank, after the dungeon he got on his main an ran a dungeon with me an fully teached me how to tank from talents to positioning fully showed me the ropes. I still remember his in-game name, Brick. When i joined a guild and the position to help new guild members gear up and luren mechanics, i volunteered for it and enjoyed doing it. Good times..

Seems like people are playing different styles of games now generally. Feels like team/FFA FPS games took over a while back. Games are just like movies, magic & swords move in cycles and will get popular again in +/- 10yrs

Playing an MMO solo is like going to a coffee shop and enjoying a cup of coffee while you check your email. sometimes it's just nice to have people around, no matter what you are doing, even if it's just you. there's tons of research out there that shows that people will react differently in situations where there are other people nearby (or perceived to be nearby or involved). So it's not surprising that plenty of people that like playing solo play solo with other players around.

17:36 I'm so glad you just compared it to a drug addiction. That's exactly how it felt for me several years ago when I practically had a daily schedule of eat, sleep, game World of Warcraft, repeat. It got to the point that I skipped school several days to play the game, rejected offers to hang out or do things with friends and family, and only ever was seen leaving my room whenever I had to use the bathroom. It was ruining my social life and social skills, and took an argument with a girl from WoW (I know for a fact she was a girl, she visited me irl as we hit it off) getting heated over nothing for me to finally decide to sell or give away everything I owned in the game, including all the gold I had painstakingly saved up, and leaving my characters basically naked to finally be able to quit the game.

I love GW2 dynamic events. Its a great way for solo players to play but still interact with others(often solos).

I play MMOs solo. But that’s cuz I can’t connect to someone who isn’t in the room with me. I’ve had a lot of great conversations with people but I’ve never made a friend online cuz I can never feel the friendship through a screen. But I still like seeing the world being alive. I like easedropping in people’s conversations and people watching. I like the occasional socialness with a quest or dungeon or whatever. And like Asmond said, I like showing off accomplishments and see accomplishments through mounts, items, etc. I don’t see why this would be a discussion since MMOs generally are made to be played a hundred different ways. But I think the only problem comes in when one specific factor of the game is focused on too much. But that could be anything. You can have a tour graphics be amazing but no one is gona play if it’s not fun to play. And vice versa, it can be fun but if it’s just cubes then it will get old fast. So if an MMO is focusing too much or too little on solo play then yes I can see that being an issue. But it isn’t an issue of solo play. It’s an issue of prioritization. There needs to be a balance in all aspects

I loved the ease of use of the group finder in wow. But it did ultimately create either non-social or hostile communication with the group members. Few people in the game are kind and supportive to inexperienced or new people.

Zach hit the nail on the head. I play wow classic solo, i played wow retail 90% solo, i have the OPTION to play with others if i want to, but because its online and thier are other people around me, i dont feel lonely but im not forced to play with others. I always play MMO's solo purely because i enjoy the challenge of doing it on my own... for example right now im on classic cata farming adamantite from the isle of quel, which im going to send to m y main so i can level my alchemy so i can farm the sands vial.... there is something i find very peacful iun playing a well populated game on my own, and when zach said its so players dont feel lonely... he nailed it.

Back in EQ I actually leveled faster charm kiting solo than in groups. I switched over to grouping once I unlocked the tier 2 planes and the money you could make in the auction house from the group farming spots was insane.

I started playing video games when Wizardry first came out in 1981. I've probably played every major game that's ever been released. The strange thing is, unless it's a game like Call of Duty I prefer to play solo. Ever Quest, WOW, ESO, Final Fantasy, Black Desert, Rift, EVE, Lord of the Rings, etc. Sure I join guilds, but only to do end-game dungeons, but for day to day play always solo.