Solo - a man who doesn't have the money with him
I solo MMO’s. Not all the time. I’ve raided, quite a bit in fact. I’ve PVPed, when I’ve been dragged kicking and screaming into it and even had fun with PVP on occasion. But when I’m into an MMO I will solo play the majority of my time there.
I was talking to @Daelda on Twitter today about soloing and this We Are Raiders thread on the SWTOR forums and we both agree that it’s a preference for us. We have different reasons, Daelda is a much nicer person than I am and is concerned about holding others back on bad day. Well actually I’ve turned down groups because I was having a grumpy day and didn’t want to inflict that on others. I, on the other hand, despite having someone mouthing off at me to hurry up when I’m reading the quest flavor text. I’d rather solo.
I’ll get annoyed when IPwnJoo the UD rogue keeps spam telling me to help him find Mankriks wife and then proceeds to hit the duel button 40 times just to tick me off. Wouldn’t you rather solo that day? I’ll even get annoyed at my best friend if he can’t get it into his skull that the roots won’t spawn faster if we don’t clear the bushes too and by the way it’s rude to only vacuum up one type of resources. Maybe I should just solo this.
I’ve also sometimes likened solo play to knitting. It’s something pleasant to keep your hands occupied with, farming, crafting, gathering whatever you’re doing while chatting away in Gchat or, in the case of my boyfriend watching Buck Rogers and Star Trek: TNG late at night. I choose to solo for fun, sometimes because of time constraints (multitasking cooking dinner and doing dailies will have me running back and forth from the kitchen to my comp) and some times it’s just nice to enjoy my favourite MMO without the genres primary detraction: It’s players.
Han and Luke trying to form a raid
But standing up and declaring “I like soloing in MMO’s” makes some players see red. “Why would you play an MMO as if it’s a single player game” some ask which is making a wrong assumption. Playing solo does not equate to playing a single player game at all. “You must be some sort of asocial special case!” I’ve heard that one flung in response too and to that I’d point out that all gamers are asocial to one extent or another or you’d be sitting in a café right now making inane small-talk with bleached haired yuppies, patting yourself on the back for being such an outgoing person.
Actually my BF doesn't look like Leia...
There are a lot of great people who play MMOs and I’ve been privileged to meet some of them and I even moved in with the greatest one I’ve encountered. But every one of us have turned down an invitation to group with someone for reasons that could be described as asocial. I’ve heard soloers decried as the reason you can’t find groups to do harder quests in Rift, the game where everyone can group with everyone provided you keep the Private Group option unchecked. “AHA! They say, but players will use this to tag mobs in Rifts and grab all the xp and loot for themselves” (Well until Trion changed that, but anyway) and I’ll point out that in spite of popular belief, Raiders and PVP’ers don’t have the monopoly on jerks or griefers.
Alright lads! I'll tank, she'll heal and you lot DPS.
Now, I can see you’re taking a deep breath to respond but I’ve got one more thing. To all of you that poo-poo the solo play style in MMO’s I say: You need us! What kind of play style do you think provides for the raid food up for sale on the auctions in EQ2 and WoW? (I stick to naming games I’ve done these things in myself. I know there are more examples) or the leg enchants in WoW which requires the slaying and skinning of 500 (yes somewhat exaggerated number) dragons? Do you think a raid of miners where scouring Azeroth Sunday evening gathering mats for belt buckles? All done solo. And you solo too! Just how big a group do you think it takes to farm the Jeeves schematics from the Library Guardians in Stormpeaks? How big was your group farming dailies for Sons of Hodir, Shattered Sun Offensive or Therazane?
Daniel Erickson, lead developer of Star Wars: The Old Republic is keeping an eye on the solo content, I’m happy to say. This is an excerpt from an interview TenTonHammer did with him in October 2008:
One of the things we really had to look at is how people play the game. If you look at studies, you’ll find that even though a person says they’re playing a game a particular way, about 40% of people in MMOs play by themselves. There’s another huge chunk of people that always play in a group, and they always play in the same group. And then you get the final group of people that really fall into all the areas in-between.
The Daedalus Project also has this nifty little graph showing how the content types are divided:
The Daedalus Project was a long-running survey study of MMO players.
Thanks to Daelda for the providing the links on both of these examples and pointing out that solo play is a big chunk of the all round play activity and not merely reserved for a few strange cellar-dwellers.
Now I realize you’re expecting this tirade to end with a giant volcanic nerd-splosion of expletives and demands and so instead I give you the only conclusion and compromise I can accept:
I want it all. I want you and me to have our choice of which way to play our favourite MMO at any given time we log in.
If you want another take on solo play you can visit Mr. Warlocks post over at SWTOR Life, where he gets into the nuts and bots of his preference for loot division between the play styles. Our own Tim McDonald also has an opinion and a wishlist concerning specifically endgame solo content in his article A Solo Player’s Endgame.
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Thank you for this article Kristen
This reflects a lot of what I’ve been expressing on the official forums and proves my point that the MMO market is shifting, in that the casual or solo players are becoming the evangelists and community builders that traditionally was the role of hardcore player.
Blizzard once described their audience as a donut with the hardcore in the center and the larger, fluffier casual crowd in a ring around that. They said, the hardcore is especially important because they are the ones who convince other players to try the game out. These people are the connectors. They know the game inside and out and they sit at the hubs of the largest guilds, eager to recruit others into their world.
And that’s why Blizzard has always pandered to the Hardcore when it comes to endgame. To them its important to have a retention system is in place for the players they felt were key to keeping the game vitalized with fresh players.
This might have worked for them back in 2004 but today more and more casual solo players are taking up that role, it just might be a good idea for future MMO’s to start giving the casual community builders out there an endgame retention mechanic of their own.
I do recall the donut comparison, now that you mention it. And Blizzard is certainly proving with Wrath and the latest raid nerfs that they are looking for a difficulty setting achievable by the less hard-core audience.
Great article! I’m glad that you think I’m nice – lol. My wife and I aso like to slow down and read the “Flavor Text”. We don’t want to be rushed or feel like we are holding people back. In addition, I can play for 40+ hours a week – and after a while, I just get *tired* of other people! Sure, I want to /gchat and maybe stop to help someone now and then, and I try to always be there for my Guild – but sometimes I just want to be ALONE! And sometimes, my wife and I want to make it an in-game “Date-Night”. Why does it have to be “Raid or Die”?
As gaming becomes more mainstream and less, “An ex-con robbed a woman the other day, and we just found out that 15 years ago he played a video game. Games are Evil. News at 11.” – more people with more diverse situations will play MMOs. From kids to soccer moms, to grandparents playing with their grand kids. Games have to evolve. Niche games will still exist to cater to specific audiences. But games like TOR, which are aimed at as many people as possible just can’t be niche games.
“An ex-con robbed a woman the other day, and we just found out that 15 years ago he played a video game. Games are Evil. News at 11.” BWAHAHAHA.
RE: Aldemarran -> Coffee, Audiobook, T8 gathering in EQ2 it was as relaxing as a soak in the tub.
I like solo, small group, AND large group. But speaking of soloing in particular, I have to agree that sometimes there’s little better than floating along, resource node to resource node, while my brain wakes up in the morning or spins down in the evening. I’ve startled friends with “Here, have this stuff for your crafting skills. And here’s all the mats for a full set of crafted gear. Oh btw, I also made 1500gp on the AH selling the rest of what I got…” Sometimes the “endless grind” really is relaxing.
Of course I still tend to believe that it’s a very small percentage of the population that truly enjoys that grind. But just maybe it’s a larger percentage than I thought.
I think a lot of us enjoy mindless activity to wind down or wake up. My wife plays solitaire. I read at night. Not much different than grinding mobs really.
But I also want challenging solo content – especially at end-game. I don’t want to be in a pissy mood but *have* to group because I want that better Blaster. Now I’m in an even worse mood, and others around me are probably not enjoying things as much as they could be. Give me some options – make them worth the reward – make me work for it – but don’t shut me out.
I quite agree. To-date the best solo challenge I’ve found is grinding elites, but that’s not really the same thing. I would love to see something for a true solo progression end game.
I was expecting a picture of Han shooting Greedo with the caption: “Solo – a man who said he doesn’t have the money with him dammit!”
I’ve always considered the solo-game fun, but I also enjoy small groups and raid with good people/friends. Jerks, however, provide negative fun in any form of play. I’m hoping for a nice balance between solo-endgame and raid-endgame, but I won’t be mad if it doesn’t happen.
Good article. I figuratively want to strangle everybody who asks, “Why would you play an MMORPG if you don’t want to group up with 40 other people? Go play a single-player game if you don’t like to raid.”
The irony I see is that a lot of the people who love raiding aren’t necessarily social players. They are, many times, just achievers who will do whatever they need to in order to have the best stuff. If you could get the best stuff soloing, they’d do that, yet so many of them act as though they would boycott anything endgame that doesn’t require massive groups. They’re being disingenuous.
And when people make the claim that massive group content is somehow intrinsically more difficult than small group content, I think they’re probably just deluding themselves. It’s more _time consuming_ because of the player herding issue–that’s it. I think small group content is actually more difficult owing to a less forgiving margin of error.
Raiding, to my mind, is in some ways a real hindrance, actually, to the social nature of MMORPGs, because of the “lost in the crowd” feeling when you’re there and the empty server feeling that results from raids tying up so many people for so long when you’re not there.
We’ve talked a lot about how much more forgiving a 25 man raid in WoW is/was than a 10 man raid. It is so much easier to lean on your peers when you are one of 4-5 healers rather than one half of a duo.
And organizing 25 or (shudder) 40 people for a raid is like pulling out your own teeth with a spoon.
I enjoy raiding… When it’s one option out of several for endgame activities.