Originally posted by toddze
My opinion: If you want to play solo, play a SINGLE player game. If you want to play with other people play a MULTIPLAYER game. Playing solo in a multiplayer game is an oxymoron.
Playing solo in a mulitplayer game is kinda dumb, but thankfully we are talking MMORPG's here and not just multiplayer games.
MMORPG have room for both and many type of playstyle's, one might enjoy grouping allot, one might enjoy solo allot, thankfully MMORPG can give us this.
What many seem not able to understand is that solo players "can" be very social, they don't need a group to be social there are so many activities that can be done with other people without grouping with them, there "can" be crafting where people help each other out either with resources, or simple things like sharing good harvest locations, what about something as simple as just helping other people in chat/ help channel, again very social.
Groupers, the same thing they can be very helpfull with helping other complete some missions/quest/dungeon, they might have certain knowledge about instances/caves/dungeons/boss encounters that can help defeating it.
Personaly I think to many people especially on forums like this have a very narrowminded view on both solo player and groupers.
Over the years I became more and more a solo player, reason is that about 80% of my time I wanted to group it made my experiance not a nice one, people didn't talk in groups and if they did it was often Hi and Bye when they completed their quests, over the years it's always a handfull of people who actually wanted to group for social/exploring/discovering reasons, these day's the majority I encounter is more like "I need a grou cause I need to complete something" or mainly because of the benifiths, the adventure part has lost it's way's with the majority of groups I personaly encountered (keep in mind only talking about my own experiance, so someone else his or her experiance might be different.
While I might have become a more solo player I am still very social, in crafting, in helping with all sorts of things and perhaps this might sound arrogant but many people I help(ed) ingame often ask if they can add me to their friends list because of the great help I gave them, in FE a few even said they should pay me for the help I give to many people.
Overall I wish people could let people play MMORPG they way they want. Unless other people want to pay MY sub-fee I see no reason why others should dictate how I should play.
Another things I don't mind if I don't get that Epic loot because I choose to solo, I don't need the game to catter to only me cause to me there is room for all sorts of gameplay aslong people have fun playing games in this genre. Al I want is to have freedom, meaning I don't want a MMORPG to force me in any way, not force me to solo and not force me to group.