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Verily, Skaw doth proclaim:
I don't see why people want to focus on solo play in an MMO in the first place. Hay gaiz lets pay $50-$60(+$20-30/expansion) +$10-15/mo to play a single player game! I mean, being able to solo is a good thing, but it should not be able to compare to what you can do in a party. Example, in FFXI, I can solo 3k exp/hr(3/10ths of a Merit Point.) If I partied, I can usually pull 15k avg., 20k tops.

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cause, i like the world that was created, i like the storylines etc, and i like to be able to talk or group if i want to. not cause i HAVE to.

i liked EQ2 til about level 20ish and grouping became a must.

i like WoW cause i mostly soloed to 60, but could group when i wanted.

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Over the mountain, in between the ups and downs, I ran into Skaw who doth quote:
I don't see why people want to focus on solo play in an MMO in the first place. Hay gaiz lets pay $50-$60(+$20-30/expansion) +$10-15/mo to play a single player game!

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I love how people keep saying that even though I point out how patently idiotic it is each and every time they do.

Hint: Soloing in an MMO is not anything even remotely comparable to playing a single player game.

Learn how to use channels besides /gsay

Maradon! fucked around with this message on 11-19-2006 at 04:09 PM.

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Check out the big brain on Skaw!
I don't see why people want to focus on solo play in an MMO in the first place. Hay gaiz lets pay $50-$60(+$20-30/expansion) +$10-15/mo to play a single player game! I mean, being able to solo is a good thing, but it should not be able to compare to what you can do in a party. Example, in FFXI, I can solo 3k exp/hr(3/10ths of a Merit Point.) If I partied, I can usually pull 15k avg., 20k tops.

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It's the difference between sitting around either waiting for a group or waiting for the right parties to show up so you can go do something, or actually having something you can go do.

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Trent wrote this then went back to looking for porn:

i liked EQ2 til about level 20ish and grouping became a must.

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Grouping isn't a must past 20, at least not in the current state of the game. Besides a handful of grouping times, I've soloed Gwyn to 60. WoW is infinitely more solo friendly, I've noticed. But EQ2 does have the capability.

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Peanut butter ass Shaq Skaw booooze lime pole over bench lick:
How about providing a more detailed reasoning behind that aside from "It's not the same even though I want to play alone lols."

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If you've forgotten from the times I've done it while playing EQ, then sure!

What makes MMO games "multiplayer" is the endless supply of different individuals with which you can socialize and generally flaunt your character to.

Grouping is only a fairly minor part of socializing in an MMO. In fact, when you join a pickup group you generally don't even talk all that much. You might as well be playing a single player game with bots, especially in EQ where even the average player knew every pull of every PUG-able dungeon by rote because they'd done it sixty times before.

Grouping is one multiplayer activity you can do, along with PVP, crafting, dueling, talking to people, selling shit, and - god forbid - roleplaying, but omitting any one of these activities doesn't suddenly make the game single player. That's like saying people who don't use Skype might as well not even have the internet.

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Mortious's unholy Backstreet Boys obsession manifested in:
Alrighty then.

I still hate SOE for what they did to SWG though. My hate will never end. It must have nourishment.

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Hey, I have no prob with SOE hate, but it seems silly me to bash a game that is honestly not that bad and has a development team that actually seems to give a shit about the game that they're making. EQ2 has had a lot of changes in the past year where the game fucking sucked at launch, and they've made many changes trying to make the game more enjoyable and challenging to play. In essence, they didn't see WoW as a threat at EQ2's launch, EQ2 sunk under WoW's might, they put a new guy in charge of EQ2's development, and said guy has been changing tons of stuff in the game trying to make it a better game than what it originally was.

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I don't see why people want to focus on solo play in an MMO in the first place. Hay gaiz lets pay $50-$60(+$20-30/expansion) +$10-15/mo to play a single player game! I mean, being able to solo is a good thing, but it should not be able to compare to what you can do in a party. Example, in FFXI, I can solo 3k exp/hr(3/10ths of a Merit Point.) If I partied, I can usually pull 15k avg., 20k tops.

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So wait, what game allows you to advance faster solo than with a good group? Even WoW allows you to level up faster in a group than solo by going to instances or by fighting elite mobs. Hell, the equipment that drops in instances is usually vastly superior than what you get via normal solo quests.

Even more so with EQ2. With a good group in EQ2, levels fly by, whereas solo, they can take a while.

Solo content should still be available though, as it allows people to advance their characters and acquire more equipment and money without spending hours looking for group, especially if they play an unpopular class (for example, shadowknights in EQ2).

Unless you plan out of game for it, you almost always have to wait for groups. Soloability means I can pop in for a bit, get something done, then leave. baddaboom, baddabing. Oh I might not get all the absolute badass mcguffins, but I'm satisfied. That's what I'm paying for: Enjoyment. And more specifically, what I pay for (and raider types don't necessarily pay for) is faster gratification than I get waiting around for something interesting to happen.

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Mr. Parcelan had this to say about John Romero:
Frankly, I think that EQ's (and subsequently Vanguard's) entire theory of "ye must group tew succeed" is entirely flawed. The game cannot succeed without the solo game being the primary thought.
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I don't think it is so much as solo has to be a primary thought; it just has to be there. Even in WoW you need to group to do anything that is really interesting or for some of the larger quests. It isn't like you are going to pop in and run Wailing Caverns or Van Cleef solo. The thing I have seen in WoW and in EQ2 is that the solo content is there to keep you going if you only have an hour or two to spare, or if you rather do something while you wait to group up. How ever the more memorable gaming experiences will always be with a group.

Grouping in any form generally pushes the boundaries of "casual".

Unless you have an extremely, uh, "flexible" life, finding a group and taking it all the way through a group-worthy event is generally an immense pain in the ass. A signifigant part of your leisure time is spent waiting for a group, replacing lost or retarded members, arguing about who should do what and loot what and so on.

You can join a guild, but no guild will be going where you want to go when you want to go there all of the time.

The only answer to these problems is that you need to have something to do OTHER than grouping. More than that, you need to have a LOT of stuff to do other than grouping, because in any game you're going to be without a worthwhile group more often than you're with one whether you like it or not.

Furthermore, from an in-character standpoint, working hard and leveling up a "mighty" character that can do naught but wet itself unless it's surrounded by five other characters is fundimentally unsatisfying and leaves most people wondering just why the hell they bothered to level up in the first place.

This is why the scheme of having the bulk of the game be soloable, while most highly advanced achievements are only available to groups is so successful.

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Skaw had this to say about Duck Tales:
I don't see why people want to focus on solo play in an MMO in the first place. Hay gaiz lets pay $50-$60(+$20-30/expansion) +$10-15/mo to play a single player game! I mean, being able to solo is a good thing, but it should not be able to compare to what you can do in a party. Example, in FFXI, I can solo 3k exp/hr(3/10ths of a Merit Point.) If I partied, I can usually pull 15k avg., 20k tops.

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The ability to solo when your friends aren't around is pretty important. Remember those days when you'd sit in PoK LFG for 3 hours before you could actually start doing anything? A similar thing can happen in WoW where you can't find a group, but you have the option of going off on your own while LFG - That's important.

I ended up getting a second account and leveling up a cleric in EQ so I could start my own groups just for the ability to do something as soon as I logged in.

Taeldian fucked around with this message on 11-20-2006 at 04:15 PM.

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ACES! Another post by Maradon!:
Really, games need to walk a fine line between rewarding casual play and rewarding highly dedicated play.

Grouping in any form generally pushes the boundaries of "casual".

Unless you have an extremely, uh, "flexible" life, finding a group and taking it all the way through a group-worthy event is generally an immense pain in the ass. A signifigant part of your leisure time is spent waiting for a group, replacing lost or retarded members, arguing about who should do what and loot what and so on.

You can join a guild, but no guild will be going where you want to go when you want to go there all of the time.

The only answer to these problems is that you need to have something to do OTHER than grouping. More than that, you need to have a LOT of stuff to do other than grouping, because in any game you're going to be without a worthwhile group more often than you're with one whether you like it or not.

Furthermore, from an in-character standpoint, working hard and leveling up a "mighty" character that can do naught but wet itself unless it's surrounded by five other characters is fundimentally unsatisfying and leaves most people wondering just why the hell they bothered to level up in the first place.

This is why the scheme of having the bulk of the game be soloable, while most highly advanced achievements are only available to groups is so successful.

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Yeah I'm a Maradonite Gamer.