This week in the Free Zone, Richard Aihoshi looks at single and small group play styles in free to Play MMOs.
Many serious MMOG fans think of the genre as being defined by guilds, raids and other elements that involve bunches of players doing things together. It's true there's no feeling in gaming that truly compares to multiple groups working as one to take down a boss, or to battles with dozens or even hundreds of combatants on each side. However, that's not necessarily the way most users actually play.
A lot of people either prefer the play style sometimes known as massively single-player, or spend more time within it than they might think. I doubt that there's anything approaching a universally accepted definition of this term, so for the purposed of this column, I'll use mine, even though it's something of a misnomer. When I refer to MSOG play, I'm not just talking about soloing, but also small group play similar to what you'd experience in the online mode of a standalone game.
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