I agree that the soloist trend is partly coming from WoW's success and the following casualization of the genre. But it's also a sign of the times in more general terms; today's consumer (i.e. the one big AAA titles aim at) wants to feel special and unique, he wants to feel at the center of things and get the illusion that he's accomplished something because he leveled a toon and got some epic loot.

I personally detest the bizarre storylines of games like AoC, where every single player gets the same single-player game intro telling you that you have some kind of special destiny and so on. It's just absurd - everyone can't be that kind of hero.

Unless of course you are living in a totally fake and static "world", in which no action leaves any trace, in which the same boss gets killed 10 000 000 000 times and the same tedious quests are done 10 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 times, wihout it having any effect whatsoever on the world. That is, unless you are living in the typical modern themepark MMO.

Originally posted by Noobgren

I agree that the soloist trend is partly coming from WoW's success and the following casualization of the genre. But it's also a sign of the times in more general terms; today's consumer (i.e. the one big AAA titles aim at) wants to feel special and unique, he wants to feel at the center of things and get the illusion that he's accomplished something because he leveled a toon and got some epic loot.

I personally detest the bizarre storylines of games like AoC, where every single player gets the same single-player game intro telling you that you have some kind of special destiny and so on. It's just absurd - everyone can't be that kind of hero.

Unless of course you are living in a totally fake and static "world", in which no action leaves any trace, in which the same boss gets killed 10 000 000 000 times and the same tedious quests are done 10 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 times, wihout it having any effect whatsoever on the world. That is, unless you are living in the typical modern themepark MMO.

It's the self-entitlement generation types of games now. Me me me now now now!

I agree the "I am a hero, or everyone is a hero" storylines in MMO's is ridiculous. I can see this in a console rpg...but it has no place in MMORPG's at all... IMO anyways.

Originally posted by Isane

Originally posted by Vodun

I am in agreement with this post. I play these games to be part of something greater than myself and I never understood why there was so much solo content in a Massive Multiplayer Onlne Role Playing game.

If you want a good solo RPG play some good standalone games like Dragon Age II or Witcher II that has great RPG elements for a single player to enjoy.

City of Heroes/Villians offered the best multi player experience for me because the game encourgaed players to play together which is why I play an MMO in the first place.

I am also not a big fan of chat in a game, it takes away the game experience for me. I see where it is necessary for raids but not for regular gaming.

One postive note, if you are lucky enough to have joined a small guild with good people, you can have a great gaming experience in almost any game.

 

Vodun

You don't understand thats why.

A true MMO setting is about having thousands of thinking players in a single world; They should never be forced to do anythi9ng in the world that they do not wish to. It is about longevity and community.

So if you want to hunt solo ; explore and travel do it ; if you want to craft and trade do it ; if you want to govern parts of the world via land grab/ village/City/Capital do it. If you wish to group to face greater challenges do it.

The MMO in reality was always about numbers of players in a world not a definition on the fact you have to play together its about choice.

Enforced gameplay is a job not gameplay.

I remember games where crafting was an acheivement: That is noit the case anymore

I remember games where traveling was dangerous: Not anymore

I remember games where markets existed: Not anymore

It is just all too easy these days; The Developers have killed the Genre with easy mode ; easy win easy everything.

 

But there are a few shining beacons and eventually one Developer will deliver again soon; because people want a real game to play.

 

 

 

 

But MMO developers are not building worlds anymore,we are just getting  backdrops for gameplay.Rift is a perfect example.

Originally posted by Ngeldu5t

But MMO developers are not building worlds anymore,we are just getting  backdrops for gameplay.Rift is a perfect example.

Sure, but look at how it did noticeably better than other weaker releases of the past years.  Gameplay is entertainment.  Gameplay is king.

Some of us like to jump on and play for 4 and a half minutes without screwing over other people.

Solo with optional-grouping is the best option.

Doesn't MMO = Massive Multiplayer Online?

They aren't dead at all. There are many different style's, some do better then other's

Sandbox's are only as fun as their player's

Hey now, I like Rift's world and storyline, I find it way more engaging that most of the generic fantasy backdrops you find in MMORPGs.

But anyways.

Dear solo-ruined-my-game-QQers: go ahead and blame solo players for your MMO woes. Then, once your done, blame those who don't roleplay while playing MMORPGs. Then, when they're out of the picture, blame those who aren't in the same age bracket as yourself. Or have the same amount of free time as yourself. Or financial status as yourself.

But really? If you don't feel a game is social enough? Go try Farmville, I hear it's great. Huge community. Stop expecting games to go back in time to their so-called "golden years" just so you don't have to ball up and actively seek out in-game friends on your own.

To the OP..

And I say ' Welcome to the AGE of the Console Gamer Mentality'.

MMOs aren't for geeks anymore. We managed to get the RPG out of most MMOs too.

Originally posted by Onomas

Its why most mmo's fail this day in age. See dozens of new mmo's coming out every month. F2P, P2P, Item shop, etc.... And a majority of them flop or have a real small player base. WOW may have been a success with the easier play style, but that doesnt mean all mmo's should follow suit. Companies need to take a step back and return to the basics.

- removal of decay and death penalties

-lack of crafting

-lack of player housing, sure u dont need it, but its good for rp value, show off collections, etc...

- grouping not needed

- a need for things in game is gone when you can have 8 alts crafting what you need

- loot items should never be better than crafted

- player based econ faultering

- cash shops give more content than game updates

- game companies trying to suck in one type of gamer instead of just making a good game.

- too easy in general, not complex. Doesnt make the gamer use strategy, skill, their brain....

 

Just a few things i can think of that have made newer mmo's horrible, for me anyways.

But sadly, this is the current playerbase, most of this came with wow as did the massive amounts of players, who are now the most vocal community, and ruin 99% of new games and leave the smaller companies trying to go back to MMO roots in the receiving end of the shaft, because they cannot handle the challenge, it's NOW, not a week from now these days, gone are the days actually having to work over something.

I used to love coming home from school and setting up for my EQ session about to start, i FELT the immersion when i dove into my bard, i LOVED being in the "other dimension" outside of my real life. Nowadays i don't even get that immersion anymore, because the games are just bang bang to top level to get the best gear and then hang around at the capital cities, auction houses, bazaars and mailboxes.

Gone are also the days when MMO's were made from the heart and here to stay are the days of PROFIT, by any means necessary, be it cash shops, micropayments or copying the most succesfull MMO on the market.

1995 > 2003 was the Golden Age of MMORPG's.

And finally my personal answer to the OPs question:

I don't think it "killed MMOs" per say, but it certainly has taken most of the "MULTIPLAYER" part out of the experience and made players less and less willing to team up for goals as they do not need to. It has also brought alot of bad behaviour into the genre as people don't need to be courteous towards others, since they don't "need" them.

Originally posted by HiGHPLAiNS

November 23rd 2004 introduced -- SOLOISM -- in future MMORPGs, I mean MMOs.

Old school mmorpg's died this year as well.

Yawn ... You know, I can play solo and RP 1000000x more than top 10 guilds on server doing their raids ... It's not that MMO part is going away from MMORPG games, it still there even if ppl play mostly solo. It's RP part that IMO died. When I played Aion I started to play on RP server, it was disgusting that majority of 'comunity' ridiculed everyone who wanted to do some RP ... yea in RP game on RP server ... thats the true picture of ppl playing MMORPG games and reason why these games feel so shallow, not soloing ....

 The  WoW style raids and gear centric end game are what ruined the genre. Soloism has always been there to varying degrees. Soling does not remove from the mmo experience. Crafting and farming mats are solo based but help drive the game economy but with no gear decay and raids it removes the need to have viable crafting which lessens the community.

Originally posted by Malevil

Originally posted by HiGHPLAiNS

November 23rd 2004 introduced -- SOLOISM -- in future MMORPGs, I mean MMOs.

Old school mmorpg's died this year as well.

Yawn ... You know, I can play solo and RP 1000000x more than top 10 guilds on server doing their raids ... It's not that MMO part is going away from MMORPG games, it still there even if ppl play mostly solo. It's RP part that IMO died. When I played Aion I started to play on RP server, it was disgusting that majority of 'comunity' ridiculed everyone who wanted to do some RP ... yea in RP game on RP server ... thats the true picture of ppl playing MMORPG games and reason why these games feel so shallow, not soloing ....

Yeah, it's a little silly to imply WOW isn't strongly an RPG.  Whether you define it by RP (pretty sure more RP happens in WOW than any game on the market) or RPG (WOW has the strongest RPG systems on the market), it's clearly a MMORPG.

Now if you went the other direction and implied it was 'RPG not MMORPG' then there's a bit more truth to that (not that I find this negative; the MMO bits are stripped down in the name of better gameplay.)

I had a cleric in EQ that I used to make some platinum.    He became a tailor, learned how to make bigger backpacks, then went to Everfrost and auctioned that I would pay 25-30 pp for the bear hide that I needed to make a pack.    After I got a bunch I auctioned again for SoW and paid 3-5 pp for it.   I ran all the way to the EC tunnel, then auctioned again to sell large backpacks for 100 pp a piece.    Sold the whole lot, banked it in Freeport, and gated back to EF.    I could spend a very pleasant evening doing this, then maybe buy myself something in the EC tunnel.  The scheme worked for quite a while.

None of this involved grouping.    It did involve having a world where there were plenty of opportunities for people to try stuff out and find a system.    And where you had to put in considerable effort to "turn the crank".   Some risk, some effort.     But here is the "stealth" part.    I interacted with other people a lot.   I got to know newbies in EF who would actually spend extra time hunting bear cubs to get me my pelts.    I had to talk, if briefly, to SoW givers.   Sometimes on the run to EC I could help someone out with a rez.    When I got there I had conversations over buying and selling, and sometimes got future orders.   Sometimes I got to know people a bit, and sometimes more than a bit, go figure.

OK, how would this play out in a typical current game?    There would be zero human-to-human connection at all.  There would be no profit from working on a tradeskill.   Nobody would stay level 1-10 long enough to be there a couple hours later. No sense of having worked something out, at least for a while, and profiting while helping people get what they want.    And it has nothing to do with grouping.   It has a lot to do with the overall game environment.   The use of shortcuts to remove player interaction (auction houses have been mentioned, but there are others) is huge.   Super fast leveling defeats interaction.    

Oh well.   It's not soloing itself, it's the game world design.   And it is NOT an accident.

Originally posted by bamdorf

I had a cleric in EQ that I used to make some platinum.    He became a tailor, learned how to make bigger backpacks, then went to Everfrost and auctioned that I would pay 25-30 pp for the bear hide that I needed to make a pack.    After I got a bunch I auctioned again for SoW and paid 3-5 pp for it.   I ran all the way to the EC tunnel, then auctioned again to sell large backpacks for 100 pp a piece.    Sold the whole lot, banked it in Freeport, and gated back to EF.    I could spend a very pleasant evening doing this, then maybe buy myself something in the EC tunnel.  The scheme worked for quite a while.

None of this involved grouping.    It did involve having a world where there were plenty of opportunities for people to try stuff out and find a system.    And where you had to put in considerable effort to "turn the crank".   Some risk, some effort.     But here is the "stealth" part.    I interacted with other people a lot.   I got to know newbies in EF who would actually spend extra time hunting bear cubs to get me my pelts.    I had to talk, if briefly, to SoW givers.   Sometimes on the run to EC I could help someone out with a rez.    When I got there I had conversations over buying and selling, and sometimes got future orders.   Sometimes I got to know people a bit, and sometimes more than a bit, go figure.

OK, how would this play out in a typical current game?    There would be zero human-to-human connection at all.  There would be no profit from working on a tradeskill.   Nobody would stay level 1-10 long enough to be there a couple hours later. No sense of having worked something out, at least for a while, and profiting while helping people get what they want.    And it has nothing to do with grouping.   It has a lot to do with the overall game environment.   The use of shortcuts to remove player interaction (auction houses have been mentioned, but there are others) is huge.   Super fast leveling defeats interaction.    

Oh well.   It's not soloing itself, it's the game world design.   And it is NOT an accident.

 

 

 

 

 

Great example!!! I miss that kind of things. Fictional worlds actually gave an illusion of them beign alive by things like that, people did cooperate , and not do 99% of trade by point&click in AH,  looking for people to grup with and not firing up some search engine with point & click automated LFG , were actually travelling and exploring big open worlds and not sitting in cities waiting for telepoet to an instance , and open world beign some claustrophobic  on rails one time experience.

Yeah , make virtual worlds not graphical room where you autosearch people to enter 'mission rooms'.

Well I am not denying noone this kind of fun let them have their own game,, but some alternative kind of game would be nice for me "/

Soloism is completely by choice in MMORPGs today.  They make them so you can go solo or group up if you want to.  Problem is, most people don't want to group up.

My problem is that MMORPGs aren't solo enough.  Yeah, I can go to max level by myself, but there is a ton of good content, and the best content, that I can't do solo.  I have to group up.  That's why I don't play them unless my friends play with me.

Answer to all the problems, scalable content.

You have a valid point here. Sadly the SOLO experince or the so Called Casual gamer has gotten the MMO investors drooling for cash... The Idea is to get as many people playing as possible with as little hassel as possible. Sadly this " I can SOLO evrything myself" has destroyed the comunities of many modern MMOS. I have more player Interaction playing League of legends then I have In Current MMO of today.. And guess what league of legends has 15m subs...its a MOBA but its fun for and Hour or 2... And as you can no longer BUILD something in modern MMOS a game like that or World of TANKS is much more fun for me. 

I also used to play MMOS for the Human Interaction.. that is what made the game FUn for me. Meeting people, chatting and having a good time.. But sadly modern MMOS are not about that... Its about Avrage JOE being able to log in for 2 hours and forking up cash for the Micro shop or the monthly subsription. Im guessing developers feel that avrage Joe would not play the game if he had to spend 8 hours in the game to get anything done... Sadly I think they are right.

The trick though is to make a game that FORCES group play, but you can still get something done in 2 hours... League of legends, modern warfare, spacemarine, world of tanks etc dose this... Easy access, fast action.. Sadly they are not MMOS but I think there is something here that is of Interest. Combine Fast paced action with a downtime of more social stuff and I think you might just have the key of getting the next big HIT MMMO out on the market.

agree zlayer77, its always thick arguments when it comes to solo vs groups. People make arguments that they'd never play a forced grouping game- yet have ironically played these in other games.

Anyway as whether it killed mmos. It's actually a little known fact that back in Everquest classes were actually made to be more efficient in either soloing, or grouping as an activity. People cite Everquest as a 'forced-grouping' game but it actually wasn't- it just was more efficient, or rewarding to do so for certain classes. Druids, Wizards still quad-kited or whatever, necros fear-kited.