Solo players "plaguing" the genre?

I consider myself a solo player and much more so in a game like WOW. In AC2 the group content was easier to access, took less time to complete and less strategy. Mostly it was force of numbers. WOW is the exact opposite and while I can appreciate the complexity and challenge, it means that if I dont have 4-5 hours to find a group, get organized and execute, I am FORCED to solo. Other than the weekend, I rarely have a solid 5 hours to play. I might be logged on for 5 hours but I'm not constantly at the keyboard. RL does require attention and the demands of grouping and raiding in WOW continues to escalate beyond the time that I can contribute to just a game.

So what do I do now that I can't or choose not to make the time to raid a level 60?? I roll toons until the point where grouping is really necessary to get decent armor and get the comps you need for crafting and then I bail on the toon and start gain. Sure, I could solo another toon to level 60 but then what? I will be faced with the inevitable "OMG, I just can't ge in BWL for 6 freakin hours" when I've worked all day and have a family at home. Nor do I want to then spend hours farming for potions and gear to be in the very same raids that I'm sick to death of already on my original 60.

After 2 years of WOW I don't know how much longer I'll last. I'm basically just waiting for something else to come along and replace it for me. EQ2 wasn't it, and niether was GW or EVE. I have little hope for Turbine doing right by LOTRs so I have no idea where I'm going to get my gaming fix in the future.

I know that I enjoy soloing but I NEVER - EVER solo'd this much in AC1 or AC2. I really think that they've raised the bar so high on group content that they are unwittingly forcing more players into the solo content realm which isn't good direction for MMOs. But what are players to do? We do have lives beyond these games.

I think a better and more accurate poll would be for every person to rate their top 3 preferences. Saying that you prefer solo content, does not mean you hate raid content.

Good point, but this poll is showing what players prefer.

I spent 90% of my time in warcraft raiding, but I wouldn't have chosen raiding as an option in the poll. The best times I had were picking random spots out in the middle of nowhere and exploring. It was fun to find someone else doing the same thing, and banding together to see what else we could find.

I agree. Somewhere along the way Solo and Casual become dirty words in the MMORPGs. I really dont get it. These are fantasy r-o-l-e-p-l-a-y-i--n-g games. Why is anyone looking for players to conform to anything!?! I've said it before and will say it again. If I can't have "my" needs and playing-style met in a fantasy game, what the heck is the point? When I want to do as I'm told, I show up at work.

I don't know that "casual" is a dirty word. I've been in a casual raiding guild since raiding was around, and only in a "hardcore" guild when I was Chaotic Evil in NWN when I was 12. :)

I think the "problem" have is one you highlight. It's sorta hard to roleplay when you're solo. Or, to put it another way...it's a m-a-s-s-i-v-e-l-y m-u-l-t-i-p-l-a-y-e-r game. Why would you pay a subscription fee if you're going to play alone with NPCs? There's tons of those games out there already...and they're good, too!

Or, to put it another way...it's a m-a-s-s-i-v-e-l-y m-u-l-t-i-p-l-a-y-e-r game.

This is the kind of assinine argument I expect to see on the WoW Raids & Dungeons forum.

I'm not sure when "MMORPG" began to stand for "raiding zergfests", but although I've never set foot inside of Molten Core, I interact with thousands of players every single time I log in. Whether it's at the AH, buying enchants or lockpicking services, playing in a BG, joining a UD Strat PuG, or going with the guild to learn ZG, I'm doing things that can't exist in single-player games.

This notion that a game has to have 20/40/80-man zergfests in order to qualify as an MMO is stupid. Is WoW not an MMO before level 60? After all, there aren't any raids from 1-59.

This is the kind of babbling response I expect to get from people more interested in flaming than conversation.

Nowhere in my post do I say anything about a need for raiding. I do point out how one can both be a casual player and still raid (like myself), but that's to defend "casual" as a good thing, not to say one needs to raid all the time.

And playing in a BG, doing a PUG, or going with a guild to ZG isn't solo play, so those hardly fall under my question. If all a person did was go out, solo for a while, come back, and sell that stuff -- that all can be done in single player RPGs. If all you're doing is interacting with NPCs, I don't know why you're paying a subscription fee to play a game when much better solo RPGs exist.

The point is that it's perfectly possible to interact with a community without grouping with a single other person, and still not be just interacting with NPCs. There is more to an MMO than just killing things. Access to an economy alone sets an MMO apart from a solo RPG.

WoW may not be the best example since their crafting system is so gimped, but that doesn't change the fact that grouping with other players is not a prerequisite for interacting with the community. WoW is successful specifically because it does not disallow solo play and advancement the way games like EQ generally do.

Perhaps I should have said "Just like massively multiplayer != raiding, solo play != single player game with a fee".

I apologize if I came off as hostile, it gets tiring reading the rantings from the spoiled minority on the WoW forums whose only interest is maintaining their perceived elite status by having content and progression kept artificially inaccessible to the vast majority. "It's a m-a-s-s-i-v-e-l-y m-u-l-t-i-p-l-a-y-e-r game, stupid, go play Xbox" is a favorite of theirs.

I play solo mostly out of necessity because of the time I usually have to play, around lunch and dinner time. Why you might ask? Well, I'm one of those "elder" players. "Elder" not in experience but age. As a 56 y/o self employed male I don't have the time to play at home so I do it when I can. I just dropped out of a guild since there were no guild mates online when I was and they were , mostly, much higher level than I and we had little in common as far as in-game goals were concerned. So I've soloed to level 48 and will most likely ding 60 the same way unless I can find a like minded group to associate my character. On the positive side it is convient to just log on make so gold and get off.

I hate when people tell me that if I want to solo, go play diablo or some other linear rpg. I like mmorpgs for the depth, and I like playing alone most of the time. I don't have time to play with big guilds, so I'm alienated. I'll never have the time and singleplayer games don't and won't ever give me what a mmorpg will. I like helping a player and there when I log in, or interacting in ways that the article writer suggested, but when it comes to combat I like to solo. I still try to do raid content alone or duo. I refuse to group and I have had to use exploits in WoW to get what I wanted by myself without any help. I finally got bored when they started catching people though, so now I just play on a WoW emulator that has all the new content, even Burning Crusade content(somehow) and the people who set these servers up for the emulator, are trying to make it solo friendly. So screw the official game. Diablo is old and all those rpgs are boring and the end game happens so soon. I love mmos, but I hate grouping. It's just not worth my time and I don't have much time to play but because I have a life, I should not be excluded from certain portions of the game that require a ton of people to raid, and a lot of free time. I don't have either.