Today, I was driving back from the wife’s family reunion, and I had about 600 miles to think about soloing an MMO. Why? Isn’t the point of an MMO to be online with other people? To interact with, trade with, duel with, quest with other people?
Why then do I see a lot of clamoring for ‘more solo content’? If you look at DDO for a moment, that would seem to be THE quintessential Mutliplayer game. Unless you include those choose your own adventure books, but from what I remember, those were aimed at the ‘kid brother’ crowd – you know the group: the ones who weren’t old enough to play D&D with big brother, but still wanted to feel like they got into the action. I read a couple of those, but they were very simplistic in their approach…but I digress.
DDO – an online game of D&D. One of the first complaints was that there wasn’t enough solo play. We’re now seeing it in LoTRO. The most recent update added like 60 solo quests in a new region. What is the fascination with solo play in a multiplayer world?
Does it related back to “the rush”? Do I have to plow through all the content, solo, so I can ‘win’? I know in AC, I solo a lot, for two primary reasons: 1) I don’t have a lot of time available to me to play, and 2) my allegiance has collapsed to the point where I’m the only active member. Besides that, AC is heavy on the solo side. There’s a few quests that require a group, and there are some hunting places where the benefit of a group is obvious, but the solo-friendliness of AC is obvious to all who play.
But, in a game like DDO, which is the very definition of group play, or LoTRO, in which the STORY even revolves around a group of 9, then 3 and 2…those games shouldn’t be solo friendly, should they? No man is an island, so I can’t (quite) understand why people demand to have solo play in a multiplayer world.
