There's an article on Massively today, a subject that has been re-hashed and re-hashed. The topic deals with MMORPG's and how they're gradually moving away from forcing players to group and giving them more and more opportunities to solo. The article asks the question – "While this has opened the genre up to lots of new players who normally wouldn't likely have played MMOGs, some might say it's also taken something away."
I'm going to stick my neck out and say – MMO players: suck it up.
There are a dozen or more reasons why giving players the ability to solo will now be the norm from here on out, and no longer an exception to the rule. I'm not going to waste anyone's time listing them all, but here's the few I care to mention.
- The audience has broadened. The article mentions that the ability to solo has 'opened up' the genre to a broader audience. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the audience is now forcing game companies to create soloable content – not the other way around.
- The "original" audience is aging. The people who were hardcore gamers of the first MMO's (Ultima Online, Meridian 59, Anarchy Online, Dark Age of Camelot, EQLive) are now in their 30's and 40's. They have careers, families, and obligations. Gaming is second to them and needs to take up less of their time.
- We're no longer antiquated. Congratulations startups and MMOs in development – you get to share the spot with a shitload more games. It's not just UO or EQ anymore, there are a variety of options. You no longer have to be forced to group.
- People are playing multiple MMOs. And no, Richy Rich, it's not because they're making more money. It's because free-to-play is here to stay. Why would I want to play one game that requires effort and work to find a group before I can sit down and enjoy the game…when I can play another where I can login and instantly have fun (and without necessarily paying). We like instant feedback, our brains are trained to love it. And we like free shit.
- We've designed for it. Everything from leveling treadmills, to end game raiding, to expansion cycles and trivializing old content. If you're going to require people to group at the low level, you're going to have a lot of bored level 20's with no one to group with. You *have* to let them speed through it, or you're not going to have any new users and your population will dwindle away over time. Hence why EQ1 put in mercenaries to solve this problem.
Sure, groups are fun. Sure, they have their place. But if games don't allow you to play the game in a meaningful fashion and enjoy all/most of the content by yourself – you're saying "Hey there industry, I don't care about most of you, and don't want your money or time." Those of you still clinging on to the old days, you'll grow up too! Some day, you'll have a job and a significant other, and children pulling at your leg while you're "LFG Naxxramas, may have to AFK to put baby to bed". 
Tami Baribeau is the Associate Producer for Metaplace, Inc, currently working on Island Life. She is also the Lead Editor of feminist gaming blog The Border House, and the National Facebook Games Examiner for Examiner.com. She can be reached on Twitter or by email.
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My problem is, I like forced grouping. Playing in groups, for me, is always 1000% better than playing solo. I wish someone made a game that still forced/encouraged grouping. I wish they’d left EQ alone and not tried to WoW-ify it, so that I could still play the game that I loved. Without forced/encouraged grouping, I just have no desire to play. I know I’m the minority, I just wish someone would develop for my niche.
I has a job and a significant other, and honest truth is, I would love to feel the urge to commit any of my time to an MMO the way I did with UO (pre-trammel, but I’m not a PVPer) and FFXI (forced grouping, incredible grind, spawn camps, XP loss on death).
Nobody has made a game that has grabbed me that way since. I haven’t played anything since those where I was driven to spend my solo time playing the game regardless of whether or not my friends were logged on. I play now because and when other people are playing.
Maybe I am jaded and one of those ‘get off my lawn!’ rose-glasses-wearing oldtimers but I don’t care what the progression mechanics are so long as something comes out that I actually am independently driven to progress through. :/
I may respond in more detail over at Clockwork, but this line stuck out for me: “We like instant feedback, our brains are trained to love it. And we like free shit.”
There’s gratification and then there’s satisfaction, and rarely are the two found in the same situation.
For example, I love to go fishing. I really love catching fish. However, if every time I put my line in the water I caught a lunker, I’d soon grow bored. Sure, I love catching fish now, but if there were never any real chance at failing at catching fish, I’d soon find myself losing interest. So, while there’s a certain level of gratification in fast fishing, there’s a much deeper level of satisfaction for me when I go for a day or two of no real bites and then land a 10 pound muskie.
Certainly, there’s a market for instant gratification filled games. I generally see this as the ever growing casual games segment of the industry. I can even see adding in more instant gratification aspects to existing games which don’t necessarily provide much of that function now. However, the idea that forced grouping is going away isn’t going to happen.
Till the day comes that I turn on my TV or laptop and see a one on one World Series or Superbowl, I’m of the belief that enforced team play is here to stay.
An addendum: I’m of the belief that MMO’s can absolutely retain large segments of their game based around grouping while still content that is possible for soloing. However, I doubt that the ratio needs to be anywhere near “all/most of the content”. So long as “enough” content exists for solo advancement of some kind, that should suffice enough to bring in new players.
Of course, then we get into discussions regarding good design or good business.
I've played just about all the MMOs out there right now and I recently rejoined EQ for a look back in time. Yes, EQ1, but not the way people play it now. I joined the Mac server which is stuck at the PoP expansion. It has gone no farther so it still has forced grouping, slow leveling and very few quests.
I found myself loving it. I was so happy to be back in a game that encourages grouping and builds server communities from this very fact. You actually stayed with a group longer than 45 minutes so you could level and you built relationships that way.
Now, I actually resubbed to EQ2 and bought the latest expansion (which I hear is almost all forced grouping) with the hopes that I get to experience that very thing when I get up in level. I had a few of my friends join in so I could actually have a group to play with and even if we just log in for half an hour, there's always something to do in EQ2.
If I want strictly solo content, I'll play a console game.
Think of it this way … how great a place would Metaplace be if everything there was done strictly for solo content? What if you couldn't visit other peoples' worlds or interact with anyone? It'd be pretty boring and you'd probably be screaming for more interaction after awhile. MMOs are supposed to be interactive games, but interactive with other people, imo.
Personally, every day I spend out not catching fish is a day wasted. I'd at least like to catch a small fish, not necessarily the 10 pound muskie.
Good design means diddly squat if you're not making revenue from it.
Oh, there's definitely a difference between a multiplayer space and ability to socialize and forced grouping. Early on w/ Metaplace, we've done plenty of shuffling users into areas with other people so that relationships form and the community grows. However, we realized that a good part of the web is asynchronous and therefore our product has to support asynchroninity. If all spaces require multiple people in them for the experience to be fun – you're fighting a losing battle and having a lot of un-fun going on. Hence why games like Grid Battle have bots with an AI, and why you can play 4-Connect by yourself or with someone else.
You can't rely on players always being available where and when you need them to be. And you don't want your lonely players to feel like they're just that.
I *love* the interactivity of MMOs. I don't love forced interactivity to progress, see the lore, and as the efficient way to level and experience the content.
Totally agree, and you are not alone – but, as a whole, you're in the minority.
My favorite part about EQ was the grind, the groups, the socialization, the forced raiding. I no longer have the desire to waste that much time, and every hour I spend standing around in a raid is a time I could be educating myself by reading a book or getting out in the sunshine and moving around. I feel like time should be spent more wisely than I spent it in high school.
#5 just illustrates that forced grouping fails in a level based game over the long haul. If your end game continually gets further away from the start AND you focus all your best content at the end game, then yes, you have to allow people to speed through content because your game will be exactly how you designed it: top heavy and mudflated. There are ways around that, but for the time being they result in niche games, and the people who invest money into game companies do not want niche, they want wild success.
That's not the discussion, though. The discussion you're apparently wanting to have is “how much revenue”, not whether or not there's any revenue at all.
Even then, I fail to see how “enough” content automatically needs to equate to “all/most of the content”. If I design a solo game that includes X hours of solo content and then design an MMO that includes 10X solo content (but another 10X group content), why is that MMO automatically considered bad design based – not on what is available for a solo player, but on what is not immediately available for a solo player?
The obvious answer would appear to be because players judge their online fun largely by what they're missing out on, not on what they have access to. Competition seems to be a larger part of the equation than many of us would prefer to admit, it would seem.
We keep talking about “forced grouping”, but then we talk about efficient methods of levelling. That's not forced grouping anymore, but rather incetivized grouping. Of course, now we're talking about gratification vs. satisfaction, again.
You pretty much have to group in Darkfall to survive, so, there is somewhere to take refuge (if you can deal with the community).
The quickest way to get me to quit an MMO (or never pick it up in the first place) is to use forced grouping. I might find the world, the lore, the art, the mechanics and the “feel” to be fantastic, but if I can't experience it the way I, the customer, want to, I'll take my business elsewhere. Including to free MMOs or anyone else who understands that people don't want another commitment, they just want a game to play. (Which is why I loathe the subscription model, coincidentally.)