Why I Don't Play Online Anymore 

It's a real shame that many younger people will simply never have the opportunity to experience the joy of online play in an actually fun environment that isn't geared toward squeezing every possible penny from them.

I really enjoy coop online games with no pvp systems. Played many Deep Rock Galactic games with randoms and never got griefed. Everyone is usually friendly, helping and cheering each other. For Rock and Stone fellow miners!

I'm 31 and all of my friends play nothing but MP games, and they get mad that I'm just not into it anymore. I especially do not like competitive facing games anymore, as I just don't feel like trying that hard. I simply just have a better time playing single player games, getting immersed, and having my time feel more respected, but nobody around me seems to understand it.

"What's it going to be next, patches that you have to pay for?" Can definitely think of some day-one DLC that's felt like that.

These reasons are why I feel that the disappearance of couch co op is one of the greatest tragedies of the industry. I straight up am not going to play multiplayer anything unless the person im playing with is in the same room.

I think FOMO being almost weaponised against the player in a lot of modern multiplayer games makes me burn out on them pretty fast.

I remember a magazine article in the mid '90s describing an online game as a "petri dish of antisocial behavior." "Llama" was a common word for griefers if I recall correctly.

This is why I loved GW1, in that it is basically a single player RPG that you can play with other players if you want, or you can just use a wide range of fairly competent NPC companions to fill your party with to go through the main content, which is all instanced. - Almost all of the content doesn't take hours to get through. - Playing with other players is optional, and therefore you can be more selective with who you want to play with, so players are generally nicer as they know you have other options if they start being assholes. - Max player level is 20, which most players can reach in a few days, so players with less time to play don't fall behind. The levelling process is basically just a tutorial, after which you spend most of the game at max level, just picking up new skills to customise your build with. - Base gear stats max out quickly too, but with a lot of customisation to fine tune things towards a particular build, so you don't have to grind forever to keep up with a gear treadmill. - Character attribute points and even class can be modified on the fly, so someone can adapt their character based on team composition if needed. If you need another healer, someone can just switch to Monk secondary for some extra healing options.

I remember being griefed on a MUD back around 1995 or so. There I was, a low level war wizard minding my own business when this higher level occultist kept walking by with their summon, and it would one-shot me every time. It was just outside of town, so they technically weren't breaking the "no summons in town" rule, and they kept timing it just right so it'd hit me before I could grab my gear and re-enter town. So very annoying.

Helldivers 2 is the closest game I’ve found in recent times where people mostly just want to have fun.

Yup, these echo my sentiments with the exception that I didn't enjoy playing with other people as much as you did in the first place.

My daughter and I used to play Battle Block Theater and Halo in couch coop mode and all we did was grief each other - while laughing hysterically. Context is everything. :D

100% agree. I would also add (specifically about online fps): -i despise wholeheartedly metagaming. Within 2 to 3 weeks after the game release there are HUNDREDS of videos on youtube that immediately make clear that there is a specific weapon/attachment/build that dwarfs all the others and once a part of the player base picks up on that and starts using it, it basically invalidates all other choices. It then becomes either use the meta and win while not having fun because you dislike the meta or play how you want and not have fun because you get stomped. It’s not the developer’s fault most of the time, it’s next to impossible to balance an online game while not restricting gun/build variety, it’s the fault of youtubers/streamers/proplayers. -Engagement based matchmaking: i recently played for a couple of hours the most recent cod while it was on gamepass and noticed that it’s always 1 or 2 matches where you stomp the enemy team (while having the most kills on your team) followed by 4 to 5 matches where 1 or 2 guys on the other team continuously kill you. Basically, they throw you a bone making you feel good at the expense of the enemy players to get you through the next half an hour of getting stomped and do it all over again. I HATE not being able to continue playing with the same people in the lobby, where you could find a balanced lobby where the games were fair and down to the last second, where you could even start a small rivalry with a specific someone on the other team and maybe even become friends afterwards. -live service (it’s self explanatory)

I'm 39. I've played DCUO, WoW , SWOTOR, FF14 and The Secret World. The Secret World was the only one of these games that actually held my interest for an extended period of time which had nothing to do with the actual "game" part of the game. It was the X Files meets X -Men meets HP Lovecraft setting. I learned real quickly that these games are designed to be addictive first and foremost, then tactics are deployed to monetize that addiction. Being a fun and enjoyable experience is not as high of a priority for these games as it should be. With the level of life obligations I have these days, my time is precious and I need my games to end.

I can relate to a lot of the points in this. I used to play a lot of multiplayer first-person shooters and did play World of Warcraft for about a year and a half after it came out. Between being unable to play with pubs unless I turn off all chat because of all the garbage being spewed, how every game is full of cheaters (anti-cheat systems work about as well as DRM, meaning they don't), and that I'm always matchmade against people who do nothing but play that one game all day long, it's just not fun anymore. Not to mention all the predatory monetization. I will still play co-op stuff, but I'm in my 40s and all of my friends have families and other things and never seem to be able to commit to a time and then reliably show up for it. Or if they do, they always have to leave way sooner than they said. It bums me out, but people have their own priorities and it is what it is. I mostly play single player indie games these days and there's enough of those to last me multiple lifetimes.

I used to raid in FFXIV years ago during the Heavensward and Stormblood expansions, then I realized I was sacrificing my free time to play with people I didn't even like to play a game that wasn't worth the time investment in any way, shape or form. Now I just play coop games with friends whenever we want to, I HATE being forced to play and I HATE being told when I have to play. The only MMO I play now is Guild Wars 2 because it allows my bestie and I to play whenever we want and do any content we want as most content can be done in duo, MMOs without single player or small group (2 to 4 players) friendly content won't thrive anymore.

There is something really tempting about being a part of a world where you can meet and interact with strangers, but ultimately real life will always be the best version of that 💁🏻 I really like sandbox games where the player makes their own server with only themselves and their friends as clients.

TLDR it feels like a job rather than fun.

The reasons I don't play MMOs anymore: 1) There is no end point. You end up being a slave to the game. 2) Video game accomplishments are completely hollow. 3) You need to spend a lot of time to make any progress. 4) This repetition leaves me feeling hopeless and empty the more I do it. 5) Despite you telling yourself your online friendships are real, they just aren't. I am a shut in agoraphobic and MMOs are too much of a waste of life even for me.

I totally get this, things have definitely changed in the multiplayer space over the years. I used to have lots of fun in multiplayer PC games in the early 2000s. People weren't as toxic and it was actually pretty easy to find new people to play with. But it was also the time where server browsers were the norm in many games. You could say that every server had a small community around it, and it really wasn't unusual to recognize and know people that play on a given server after a while. Man, I miss that :(. Nowadays things are waaay more random and anonymous due to matchmaking and whatnot. I usually have to mute all in-game chat within ~10 minutes in games like CS2, as the constant complaining and flaming gets anxiety inducing after a while. It's bad.

Yep, I'm only 32 but I have similar reasons. 1. Can't get my friends to play anything with me. The last time we played online was during covid when we had lots of time and even then only got to play Star Wars Squadrons once a week, maybe twice. 2. Playing solo in an online game even like CoD is not that much fun. Everyone is running around their own way, and your team just gets decimated if your group of randos get grouped against like an actual group of 5 people who communicate and have some sort of plan. 3. Sometimes even finding groups or matches is difficult. 4. Skill gap / griefing, call it whatever you want. I'm a working adult, I have a life, I don't have the same commitment and time as a 14 year old kid who has nothing going on in his life other than playing games. It's not fun if you feel like you never even stood a chance, when you don't even know how they saw you and shot you down, when you can't tell if people are cheating or are just that good. I didn't really play MMOs other than SWTOR and thankfully didn't really see a lot of griefing or harassment or anything like that.

I played Lord of the Rings Online when it launched, and I remember back then, how the dungeons were huge time commitment, of an hour or more and having the same problem as you. But I've returned to it through the years, and am back on it as I type this. They cut the dungeon down in smaller pieces. So like the Great Barrows, the first dungeon, was this huge dungeon before, but now it's 3 different dungeon instances. Making them small bite size, so if you lose your tank or healer after the first part, then you won't need to redo it the next time.

You're 100% on point with this! I had many hundreds of hours in WOW back in the early 2000's. It was a ton of fun, i had good friends that played and some of us actually rented a house together and we would all play from our respective rooms together. But when the group fell apart, and it was down to finding groups online to join, a lot of the fun for me was lost. As age creeps up on me, I'm rapidly finding that time is the biggest restraint to gaming. Especially for MMO style gaming where it take hours and hours of grinding and raiding to get the best gear and progress to the highest levels. It's hard for me to find time to play for 2 hours straight, let alone spend 6 hours on a weekend grinding for one piece of armor. I don't have time to spend an hour or more trying to find the right group for a raid or dungeon. I don't have the reaction time any more to avoid crapping my pants when farting, let alone play COD. I'm not paying a monthly subscription to an online game that i get to play for maybe 5 to 15 hours a month. Just to be griefed by a bunch of 10 year olds who love to spoil everyone's day. I recently tried out WOW classic. Just the demo period. I forgot just how crappy MMO quests are. There is nothing interesting or fun about them. Kill 10 of these and bring me their horns. Go and kill 20 of these and bring me their ears. Run here, push this button, run there grab this thing, go out and grind, grind, grind, grind........ It's basically boredom simulator 2024. I remember it being so much more fun when I was in my 20's and had all my friends playing. I gave up when i was stuck in this bloody n00b area and trying to kill 20 of these deer looking things, but there were 10 other people there. So it took forever waiting for these things to spawn in. Long story short, he's on point. Getting older you just don't have time for crap like that, spending money on pointless stuff, being bored, dealing with grief. There are SO many good games out there to play that don't have the monetary and the time investment of an MMO or any other online game. it's just too bad that so many games are going multiplayer. So many games are going to the paid microtransaction model, live service, BS.

In regards to the griefing you described such as dragging mobs onto players. That actually did come from a number of DikuMUDs, and was also fairly common in a specific one called MajorMUD (was for MajorBBS starting in 94 and still played on some boards). In fact it was more than just dragging one mob and usually it was done because the person was too low level for you to attack but had a limited item you wanted or had invaded an area you were farming (many players are very territorial in the game). So people, myself included used to do this, would drag as many mobs as possible into a specific room until the max number was reached then go one room out, go offline for a couple minutes or hide to prevent them from following. Then wait for the person to get killed by the mobs. Once they were dead, grab all their loot and stash/sell it. It was effective for chasing off people from certain places known for great exp/hr and income. This was also very minor griefing in MUD which some more major griefing in MUD would also follow to certain MMOs such as Eve Online. One such is long term camping and this was used heavily between groups that were at war and by players trying to get very valuable items from another player. Now this wasn't just camping for several minutes or a couple hours. Players would spend days/weeks in MUD camping the room that the target player disconnected in (I have done it many times). For long term camping we'd have multiple people in our alliance taking turns doing this. When this carried over to Eve Online, the camping has been known to go on for months until the other side rage quit the game.

I basically only ever play multiplayer online games with IRL friends, and its games where we don't really have to interact with other players on our team

the first few years of World of Warcraft was so fun, when everyone was playing the game and it was a new experience.

You're not alone, Tim! -- I've always favored single player (and games that END, haha), but there were years where I loved multiplayer. Now, I'm more of a single player player than I ever have been. I really miss the good ol' days of EQ, DAoC, and even WoW when it was all about making friends and grouping was fun and not something to gripe about or gatekeep new players into oblivion -- I remember spending so much time HELPING people so they could do better and have fun, which made it more fun. Leveling up was the result, not the only goal. Now it feels like a chore or that people just go through the motions without socializing (group finders killed this) and everyone is just in a hurry to level up. It's also sometimes like you said - scheduling and now some games make you do x y z before the reset your progress-- I don't want another job. It shouldn't matter if it takes me 6 days or 6 years. :XD

Everything you said here aligns with my own thought process it's so bad you can't fix it. I remember playing Goldeneye with my older brother and his friend it was a blast no mTx, skins, loot boxes, toxicity just you and the game. I'm so glad i grew up when i did so i could enjoy it for what it was.

Your description of Everquest is identical to my time in Final Fantasy 11 (Squares Pre-WoW MMO) apart from one thing, the griefing. Griefing was very rare in FF11 (in my experience) due to two reasons. 1. Like Everquest Soloing was very hard past a certain level so you had no choice but to be co-operative. If you were an ass all the time you would become a well known ass and people would not want to play with you. 2. Unlike Everquest you can't take things off a dead player so there was no benefit to getting some one killed and if you did try to get some one killed you would often get in trouble with the GMs. FF11 was a difficult nightmare and i loved it.

Yup-30-yr gamer and I'm totally done with online-based games. Never been particularly competitive and graphical advancements are nominal compared to the leaps and bounds of the 'aughts. I'm perfectly happy in the Indy and last-decade space for 'new' games (dead mp/non live-service etc). There's so much I haven't played previously, and so much modern static, _now_ is the time to play all those great games of the last decade.

As much as I loved playing WoW -- it was the community that killed it for me. They just were entirely toxic and unfun a lot of time. I entirely agree with your perspective here and it's why I have spent so much more time in gaming in single player immersive experiences.

Shoutout to the FFXI players that spent 5-6 hours shouting for parties in Jeuno, only to have it disband after two kills

Yearly sports games are a great example of toxic game companies taking advantage of their player base. Paying full price for a yearly incremental update. Then they do everything they can to steer you towards playing their microtransaction pay to win modes. The sad part is knowing that the heyday of sports games in the PS2 era will never return. You can't put the genie back in the bottle.

I used to play multiplayer Halo on the XBox with my little gang. Thursday night was game night. There was all the trash talk, and we lived for the mean words, sticks and stones and all that: but serious harassment was pretty rare. On the one occasion it happened my boys were scandalised and hunted the person down. Not sure such lines exist any more; my gang died in the real life wars, and I don't have the cash for all the micro transactions. So it's single player for me too.

I haven't played MMORPGs in well over a decade, Fallout 76 excluded, in part for the reasons Tim gives. *But* I do have hundreds of hours in co-op games like Phasmophobia and Lethal Company - so for anyone in Tim's boat, I'd highly recommend trying to find indie co-op games. The nature of the games also means they *tend* to have less toxic communities.

The part about microtransactions really resonates with me. I am so annoyed by games constantly asking for money for every little thing, it really sucks. I still play online games sometimes, but way less than I used to, mostly because of that. Why can't I just buy a complete game for a single payment and then unlock everything in it by playing the game? Of course, I know it's because of GREED, but it still annoys me.

Right on. I hate being nickle and dimed by an online game; not just the part where you actually pay for content, but also just the gross feeling that the game has been designed from the ground up to steer you into a cash shop. It tarnishes the entire experience. And yeah, as I get older I really have zero time for online toxicity.

I completely understand your point of view, and I share your frustration with the greedy attitude of some companies in the gaming industry. It's disheartening to see beloved franchises shift towards online-only models or abandon offline features in favor of online play. Many of us have lost our favorite games due to these decisions.

Your recap of Everquest gave me the willies. I was always the guy who wasn't able to keep up with the group's level (they were young and I was married with children - I would have to take a day or two off, and they were 5 levels above me!). I spent a lot of time solo in EQ as a result. I played a mage, and a bard at one point because I could solo easier with these classes, but I had to be very strategic. As for griefers: when they would hit the newbie area, we would call out our alts because inevitably, the griefer would have a high level healer hidden behind a tree who was in the friendly faction, so you couldn't touch them (I was on Vallon-Zek, the team PVP server). So we had characters who were on one of the enemy teams who *could* touch them, and we would log out, and login with our alt. The griefer was usually a low level wizard, and his accomplice was a high level healer of some type. Without our posse in action, they would close down the newbie area in Greater Faydark for days on end. What I did enjoy most was hanging out and meeting people in the home area. You don't get that as much in single player games, at least not until AI gets a lot smarter.

Brings back memories of classic WoW, trying to get 20 or 40 man raid. Some of the guilds were like applying a job and working at one. I still play online games, but only if it can be simple 3 or 4 man. Or playing Diablo games where I can solo.

Used to go to internet cafés, where it was common for people there to play LAN multiplayer. There were always a couple of guys that would ruin it for everyone. The usual suspects every time, with mil-spec haircut and tattooed swastikas. Based on that experience, there's a limited blame I put on game design, because I know for a fact that for those people it's the suffering of others that's fun, and they'd only recommend games where the design's enabling that sadistic behavior. There are games that attract that short, intentionally or unintentionally. But recently, Fo76 is doing great in restricting these behaviors by design, and though boss events are done quicker by team play, it's adjusted more for time to kill than team skill. So as long as you, as solo or the team, can output the total damage needed to down the boss within the half-hour window, it's a win condition. The reason I'm mentioning Fo76, is cause I think you'd like it in its current state. It's the only multiplayer game I keep coming back to.

Couch multiplayer is amazing, why the switch beats every other console

VivaLaDirtLeague has a couple of really funny EpicNPCMan sketches on the MMO live. They cover it all: grievers, MMO becoming like work, pay-to-win, endless grinding, etc.

These days I play online multiplayer games exclusively solo, everything from PUBG to VRchat, so I fully understand. A whole lot of it is just that people let out their inner arsehole when they are anonymous. Playing multiplayer Doom and Command & Conquer via a BBS stepped up the level of obnoxious behaviour significantly from anything you'd see even later at one of the large '90s LAN events with complete strangers. The global reach of the internet stepped that up again. Apparently it's just the way a significant portion of the population reacts to anonymity and a lack of repercussions. At least that seems to have somewhat plateaued, although of course the younger generations always seem worse as we get older. No halt to the rising development costs though, leading to the same increased commercialisation as other forms of mass media, more obnoxious forms of monetisation and similar decreases in originality (endless sequels and remakes, less risk taking and experimentation). There's still the indy games, if you're happy to forgo some of the scope and graphical fidelity of the major titles. Also less multiplayer titles there of course. Perhaps AI tools will also decrease the costs and other barriers to entry. Although then again that would likely mirror the impact of online self-publishing on novels, where finding a new author takes considerable effort to try and filter out the enormous amounts of utter trash in order to find something worth reading.

I have never cared about playing video games with other people, only exception is playing with my son on the xbox when he was little, he is now 18 and we both don't care about playing video games with other people. It is too much of a time waster, trying to get a team together and organize. I wanna just pick up a game when I want to and do what I wanna do, when I wanna do it.

UO felt dangerous. I played when Feluca was already out. It didn't bother me. You would just not wear the nicest gear outside of the city. Such a fun game.

you could do a whole separate show on mmo culture, I find this endlessly fascinating

Ding! My first real multiplayer experience was in Tribes 1, and the magic of having a 32 player CtF match on a giant map with semi-defined classes and multiple types of vehicles (plus server-side mods!) has only been matched a couple times in the past 25 years for me by other competitive games. But then I played Dark Age of Camelot for 3 years and got all of my MMO experience before WoW even came out, and I'm eternally grateful for that. Now I only play PvE online games.

I just wanted to thank you for this video, Tim. Your detailed descriptions of these issues with online games really solidified the reasoning behind the fact that I do either single player, couch co op, or private server online games with a small number of friends over Discord (like Torchlight or Project Zomboid, for example). You really hit the nail on the head for why I tend to shy away from MMOs. Keep the good content coming!

Completely agree. Your first bit about coordinating groups and getting everyone to play at the same time rings super clearly with me. I pretty much stopped playing MMOs altogether because I got tired of grouping with randos that will give up within a couple of tries. Naturally, you just group with friends, right? Except now the problem is, what do we do when a group member is missing. Well, if someone who's deemed a "core member" of the group is missing, we just don't run at all. If I'm missing however, I get replaced and lose out on gear for the week. At some point I find out on my own that I've been replaced. Not a great feeling at all. At this point in my life I just don't have time for that. I found I get the same satisfaction from speedrunning single player games instead, even if I'm not some world record player. I get that sense of commitment and feeling of success without any of the crap. I'm playing video games for my own enjoyment the way it should be, instead of wondering if people even want to raid with me at all.

I absolutely adore Everquest and Final Fantasy 11, but I recall entire nights where I would seek and seek and seek for a group and nothing would come up. An entire night wasted with no “play” and no progress simply because the groups were full in the zone I was at. World of Warcraft made it big initially simply because you could actually make semi decent progress without needing a group. It was revolutionary at the time. These days, I would rather not even bother playing with others simply because the random toxicity would be so demoralizing. I just want to be left alone and enjoy what I enjoy by myself. Heh. Human nature ruined online play for me.

"What's next, patches you have to pay for?" Don't give them ideas, Tim!

There was a time that MP was my thing; I wasn't playing SP games anymore, because I loved to meet people around the world, to make real friends just playing those games, and holy mother of christ, how I miss that. It was maybe 20 years ago, or even more, but then I started to play with bots, games started to try and sell me EVERYTHING, some games asked for money to have more inventory space, to visit some portion of the map that was closed to me, unless I paid some fee/bought some DLC, ect. All started to crumble after that, so I don't play that anymore either. Back at that time not even those generic f2p korean MMOs would ask for so much money as the usual paid occidental online game today.

I have only EVER played multiplayer games (MMO or otherwise) exclusively with close friends whom I knew I could trust. A childhood of being bullied taught me that most people are garbage.

I played EVE online from 2008 to 2015 or 16, and I quitted because in that last year it was feeling like a real job more and more and the fun was almost gone. It was also really getting expensive to pay for less and less fun.

There’s a reason why I keep on played Daggerfall, Skyrim, Fallout NV, Tekken 5, BO2 Campaign/Zombies, and etc. and not ESO, GTAO, RDRO, or Fallout76. People inherently suck online and corporations love to sell you stuff that should be in the base game… especially for a $60 game.

Well said Tim. You've added more reasons for me not to play online. For me it was simply because the process to level up was waaay too long that I got burnout. It makes me question why I even bothered to play online in the first place. Offline RPGs are more fun and took reasonable time to level up so why bother playing online? And that was about 20 years ago so I couldn't imagine how it's right now.

That story of the guy getting spirit of the wolf so he could keep speed was so funny. and trying to get him caught on the jank. I remember playing as a night elf in WoW and did /dance for gold xD

I’m entirely with you here. I’ll play multiplayer games with friends or my kids only now. Couch co-op games remain fantastically fun.

I played a lot of MUDs back in the day too! I even helped run a few, and made my own areas for them, including a little bit of experimenting with my own class but I never quite finished it.

Hi Tim! I mentioned this in your elementalist video, but if the itch to get into a multiplayer game ever becomes too intense, consider Guild Wars (the original) and its more traditional MMO sequel, Guild Wars 2. GW1 has some of the problems you mentioned about missions and time limits, but as a massively-multiplayer coop game, it's designed more like a structured N&D campaign but with optional explorable areas. It's an absolute classic, one of a kind game that nobody has been able to replicate (besides its tabletop inspiration, Magic the Gathering). Guild Wars 2 you can pretty much solo if you want to, and the developers built the game to create an as-inclusive, friendly environment as possible. There are unfortunately microtransactions, but they're all cosmetic. Apart from making the game a bit of a light show, it doesn't get in the way of the enjoyment. That said though, if you've really tapped out, that's totally understandable. If you've ever watched the "it's rude to suck at Warcraft" video by Folding Ideas, you'll know that even with all the safety nets and moderation, online multiplayer is practically impossible to make "nice" when there's an objective with a win/lose state. Actually, if you have thoughts on that subject I'm sure we'd be interested in hearing them, considering your Wildstar experience. Anyway, have a great day Tim / Tim's subscribers :)

So to sum up: Hell is other people.

Try ESO if you ever feel like playing an MMO again. Just grab a single friend at the most and enjoy. You can solo 99% of the content.

My favorite online game community is Earth Defense Force. It's a wave based third person shooter with 4 player online coop, and you can start a room and just start playing the single player. Then people will join you and start spamming the singing or other funny voice lines, but they'll try to cooperate and win. It's a game where everyone is just trying to have fun and chill out, which i've never seen anywhere else. And the game gives potential griefers ample opportunity, people just don't do it that i'm aware of.

From my personal experience, star wars the old republic has been great. I have 700+ hours and haven't been griefed once or even encountered someone rude. The social scene isn't the best early on but once you find a guild everyone is very welcoming, helpful, and willing to run content with people even if the reward isn't that great for them. Great community, but the game is slowly dying.

At least some MMOs give you free access f2p; but they have to charge to make some revenue to pay employees and server costs; but some get too greedy and then that ruins it for the players. I sort of paid lightly for Tanki Online MMO; but they have those deals for special new items and buyers get the good equipment and wreck the f2p players, heh.

Slime World!!!! I never played the Lynx version, but my best friend and i played SO MUCH of the Genesis port and had a blast playing the Combat mode. I haven't thought about a megabomb in decades!!!

100% agree, I just can't play MMOs for all the reasons you listed, game mechanics, cost, harassment, griefing, etc. I did play Stardew Valley multiplayer with friends, but that's more like a couch co-op than an MMO.

Our stance on multiplayer matches 1:1 - down to the period of time we quit in, and what kind we play now. I LOVE couch co-op with my girlfriend, or something like Stardew with her. I’ll play things like Diablo 4 or Space Marine 2, but only because my best buddy is in the UK and I’m not, so it’s a way to get some friend-time in once a week.

I stopped playing MMOs around 2006 because I realized I was paying money to essentially work on an assembly line. I loved the exploration and lore of some MMOs but everyone eventually (or from the start) only cares about their numbers and how efficient these numbers can be. That's not fun to me. I don't want to spend 3-6 hours in this particular location farming the same mobs because its the most efficient spot to grind. I want to see whats over that other hill, or go into that cave and explore. Not be told "Nothing is worthwhile there." I play games for the experiences, not for virtual clout.

My favorite part of EverQuest was doing business. When I gave my account to a friend he started with a thriving armorer business. My favorite character was a bard that mostly did corpse retrieval, and running auto follow trains between cities. Made good money on donations and corpse retrieval was thrilling. Always going into zones I didn't belong in. I also loved just sitting on the beach in South Ro fishing. One of my greatest accomplishments was figuring out how to catch fish while on the boat between zones. A good MMO is not all about dungeon raids. Before EQ I used to host ladder games for R6 Rogue Spear on my blazing 128k DSL line. Good times.

You touched upon exactly the same reasons I've got for not being too enthused with online games in the last decade or so. Grouping has always been a nightmare for obvious reasons, but eventually it just felt like far too much work to be worth it, even with a group you enjoy. Outside of group scenarios it's absolutely the toxicity of the general multiplayer playerbase for me, particularly as many of the most popular and appealing multiplayer games have begun to operate on a freemium model. These days there's a very likely chance that you're playing with/against actual children or teenagers that will invest far too much energy into being petty and disruptive, although not to say that this was never the case beforehand - I'm convinced a lot of the more strange cases of online harassment, notably revolving around harassment of women, have been primarily instigated by teenagers with too much misogyny and desperation in their mind. Also you're too right about the DLC models some of these games use, I still remember being stunned by how people had to buy new DVDs for each WoW expansion at such a large cumulative cost.

Ah, Evercrack and UO. So many painful memories of jogs back to my body to retrieve my things, assuming they hadn't all been yoinked before I got there.

Agree with all your points. I'd add that I don't want to devote all my free time to one game, e.g. an MMO. There are too many awesome single player games coming out that I want to play, plus old classics that I want to revisit.

Hey Tim, I haven't seriously played an MMO since Warhammer Online (I started with UO). Anyway, here are some hot seat games I suggest checking out: 1. Crawl 2. Streets of Rogue 3. Gang Beasts 4. For The King 5. Dungeon of the Endless 6. Legend of Dungeon 7. Death Road To Canada

I used to Roleplay in mmorpgs and i sometimes crave for that experience again but due to griefing and bad actors is hard to engage with people in that way anymore

I don't have that much experience playing online. The overhead of it rarely seemed worth it for me, but I totally agree. Dealing with others people is very often exhausting and time consuming. Which isn't often very fun.

Just recently started playing EQ again after more than 20 years away. Only on a private server and after a slow start getting used to how EQ plays in the first couple days it has been great. Najena has no rent (goes away after logging out) keys. So far have not been griefed or bothererd at all. I know that is not the same for live servers. I played many MMOs but I started to miss the need to group of an EQ and the respawning dungeon camps. A lot of modern MMOs went very heavy on solo play. I have played private servers for old MMOs before and many times the population being to low becomes the problem. Has not been a problem so far on EQ this one seems pretty healthy.

I completely agree. My last online game I consistently played was Overwatch which got super toxic at high levels. Single player games also allow me to pause or play in small chunks to work around my adult life. I miss online gaming tho. I would love a game that presented a fun experience without micro transactions or a competitive environment but I doubt I’ll ever see that.

I've stopped playing online games for the same reasons. When I was playing online games in the 90's and 2000's it didn't bother me, but now that I'm old I just don't want to deal with it.

What always upsets me far more than griefing is "faction jumping". I'm pretty sure there's a term for that, but I can't remember. Basically, someone logs in with a character in faction A, scouts around their territory, or even captures some stuff for faction A, then relogs with a character in faction B and steamrolls A with his teammates. And all the variations of the above. Elder Scrolls Online was a complete cesspit of that (a nice MMO otherwise).

I feel this. Every now and then I find a game that draws me in, but even then I tend to keep to myself as much as I can.

This pulled me away from primarily multiplayer or high-breadth content games and into more run-based and 1v1/similar-scaled multiplayer. About all I need a group to play with anymore is maybe Mario Party-style games, Smash, and to some extent, Killer Queen. It's best to have those be like, open league nights and hope they scale naturally with participation.

The second job thing really rings true for me Like, there are a couple games that I play which have things like daily and weekly challenges, but the moment they make me feel like I have to do every single one I stop The wordle is the only exception to this and even then that's my limit and it doesn't need me to be at my computer, launch a game, get pre-requisite items or quests completed, etc You just open it, do it, and it's done The moment it gives me any extra friction I'm dropping it

i know that tim never talks about games he plays now, but i think we can all hope that he enjoyed baldurs gate 3. the greatest rpg we've seen in years!

Many people didn’t like the first Destiny game by Bungie. But one of the reasons I thought it was really good by the time the taken king expansion came out was that you could hit max level without a group. You wouldn’t be able to do the raid but you could solo some end game activities like the nightfall and hit max level. Also other than the raid exotics you could get every exotic as a solo player. I thought that this was cool.

I am in lock-step with you on everything you said. I think it comes from us getting older and wiser. I just can't do online games anymore.

I remember discovering runescape in the early 2000s... dreaming about playing it while sitting in my 6th grade class. the good ol days

I miss the old days of MMOs. Sure there was a lot of griefing, but the sheer amount of fun we were able to have in spite of that, before developers started policing everything, we were so free to just simply enjoy the wierd quirks of everything. Now everything is a bug, now there's a patch every month. Can't just vibe anymore, everything is in a state of repair and constant course correction. I miss the messiness.

Yeah, Star Wars: The Old Republic is the only exception for me, and it is only because you can play it like single player game - each class has storyline and companion so you can skip multiplayer part entirely.

I have to laugh when you talk about Everquest since I played Final Fantasy XI for years and years and it was very much modeled after EQ, so I can relate. I pulled the rip cord on playing games online probably close to a decade ago. How other people acted online just killed it for me.

The first time I was content gated by being REQUIRED to partner with someone for a quest I simply resigned myself to not being able to do that content. I am glad to find out that everquest required partners. At the time I simply could not afford a computer. I worked my way through college and I thought I was missing out. Turns out I dodged a bullet unknowingly. Huh.... Modern games with PVP and PVE have to heavily weigh toward PVE for me to even consider them. Except for RTS games. Odd I know. I have played Dune, C&C, SC1 through Broodwar and SCII currently. I just cannot be dependent upon others for my gaming experience. I can and DO replay the Broodwar campaign and SCII campaign as well as C&C, Dune2k, Red Alert etc etc etc. I have played nearly every iteration of D&D game extant since Pool Of Radiance on the C64. All the Wastelands, Fallouts... GOD I love games. Just not other people so much. :) Peaceful Skies

The only video games I'll play multiplayer these days are couch games like Jackbox or Plate Up. There were many, many years that I played MMOs. I loved it, I have no regrets about spending a large amount of my time on them. But these days, I just want to be able to do whatever I want whenever I want in my free time. If video games are scheduled, they're no longer fun for me.

As a 20 year old literally everything in this is true, it happens with board games too now with the rapid commercialization of expansion packs. Luckily, the indie scene has been seizing the opportunity

I do recommend Brighter Shores when it comes out in November. Made by original creators of RuneScape. Supposed to be a chill experience MMO. Has no micro transactions, only an optional sub fee. Been in development for 10 years now.

I miss MUDs. I played them off and on for about 20-25 years. Nothing will beat the golden age of MUDs. I agree with basically all of your points. Modern MMOs are exceptionally unfun. Modern competitive games are toxic and unfun. The only gem left are co-op PVE games that you can play with your friends.

I still play online but only with a group of real life friends and only games with closed lobbies: Lethal Company, Abiotic Factor and Terraria. In Everquest I used to play a monk and jump off the battlements of Qeynos in front of people and Feign Death. Then I'd scream to the zone about how I'd fallen and broken both my legs.

I did play in the early 2000's and I did enjoy it and got no more dopamine playing them. I just play single player games finish the story and movie on, honestly, I just want a peaceful life.

I played Everquest early on and got most of my kicks playing a Troll Shaman in the swamps helping new players. I'd run up to that one human city with the sewers and RP with the humies. I never felt confident enough to group because I thought I would screw up. When the Lizardman expansion came out I got out of my comfort zone, joined groups attacking the giant camp, played like a machine, gave away my stuff and never looked back. Well, I DID try Everquest again a few years ago but man, how did we play with those controls???? Also, the realisation that the Spice Girls, a beloved cultural phenomenon, pre-dates Everquest does not add up in my head. The Spice Girls are ever fresh.

I’ve found recently I really enjoy invading in souls games. I can be cheeky and antagonistic and there’s not really any consequences if I kill another player short of maybe they lose some XP. It neatly sidesteps a lot of the issues with people being toxic in chat or things like that and I really like the dynamic of asymmetrical PvPvE combat.