I'm almost entirely solo. I love being part of a huge world and tons of people, I just like to do my own thing and not rely on being in a group.

I am a solo MMO player because friends and guilds are too much commitment. I just literally want to log in, enjoy the game for the casual/beginner appeal and it never ends for me. I just run around, do quests, and enjoy leveling alts in WoW. I don't care for the gear grind or doing endgame. I just enjoy my time leveling and casually crafting.

I work in customer-service and I'm constantly dealing w/ grown adults acting like children. I don't want to login to an mmo and get yelled at for xyz reason. I play solo to chill and relax.

I play MMOs more-or-less on my own, but in classic wow I would occasionally join groups. Bizarrely, I have more anxiety about interacting with strangers in an online environment than I did when I was younger. I'm 27 now, I was 13 then. These days I only join dungeon groups for low-level dungeons as with those, I am more familiar with the content. Whenever I am in a group with people in this game, regardless of the content, I always feel the urge to leave as soon as I can. It's strange.

A very accurate video. I play solo most of the time. It's less hassle, but I am constantly behind where the groups are, in progress. I like to be able to sell things on auction houses to pay for my stuff, and you can't really do that in a single-player game. Doing dungeons, raids, and PvP are where the more toxic interactions happen most of the time. It's annoying to have someone talking trash if you make a mistake. Thumbs up for great videos.

For me, the game just became a chore and raid night turned from something I looked forward to every week to something I dreaded. I started hating people and would rather do anything else. So I quit but a small part of me wishes to recapture the high I felt when raiding with a group of people I enjoy. In the mean time, I enjoy watching youtubers like you and see how the game is and hope others are having fun

My belief is that the ''rise of solo player'' in online games mainly comes from the rise of solo content in multiplayer games. If you can do it alone, you have little reason to go through the work of getting people.

I primarily play solo for multiple reasons. The primary reason is that Ive discovered that over the last 15 years, is that a lot of other people hinder your progression. Pugs are bad, questing with others is a pain because they're slow. We've gotten older and better at min/maxing our time, and I think a lot of us have grown and realised that other players can be an obstacle rather than being helpful.

Here's a few reasons, at least from my experience: 1. World and lore. Sometimes you just want to play something in a specific setting, and an MMO is all there is. Warcraft used to be my favorite fantasy setting for a long time, and I played WOW for years because of that. For the past decade or so it's been Guild Wars (1 and 2) for the same reason. If you want Azeroth, you play WOW. If you want Tyria, you play GW2. 2. Single player games are shorter than the amount of time you can get out of an MMO. You finish it and move on in 60-80 hours or so. They also too often suffer from 'godlike player syndrome' where it's extremely easy to become an unstoppable juggernaut of destruction with even a little bit of though and preparation. Single player games get boring quickly when you can't tell if cheats are on or off because they went overboard on power fantasy, which kills replayability. MMOs generally don't do this; high level content always has some challenge to it. 3. Playing solo is sometimes more fun because games are too solved these days. Metagaming has optimized the fun out of a lot of stuff that used to be enjoyable 10-15 years ago. It's pretty common now to be expected to run meta builds with exact gear comps, or even be asked for kill proof, to clear content that you realistically wouldn't have much trouble with in a pug anyway. It's just not as easy to find some people and give it a shot as it used to be. Just look at the difference between Vanilla WOW and Classic WOW. Basically the same game, totally different experience. Countering that usually requires a good guild, which requires time commitment. Unless you've got a solid multi gaming community, playing the same game for months and years straight can get old and boring. 4. The BIG one, theme park MMO design (which I largely blame on WOW and others trying to copy WOW). People stopped playing because it was fun, and started playing Questlog Checklist Simulator and Treadmill Progression Simulator, because it's addictive way to keep people subbed, which led to runaway gameplay optimization doing X per hour for any given X. MMOs and their players got addicted to optimization and maximizing gains, which then led to widespread boosting and botting. Megaservers, sharding, and layering then went on to crush the cohesive server based communities that used to exist. The most fun I ever had in an MMO, playing it with other players like what the name suggests, was Dark Age of Camelot, a game that predated WOW and lacked many of those elements up until the early 2010s. It was a large world with limited info. Hearing about things from players still meant something. Exploration and realm wide efforts were a thing back then. Individuals and guilds had reputations with substantial weight, and there were genuine experts at certain things in game that were hard to just look up or duplicate. It was a big sandbox and the players made their own storylines. That wasn't the exception like with the Classic WOW Scarab Lord drama, it was just how things went. To see how much that's changed, just look at New World, a game that was supposed to have a lot of the same elements, but was almost completely solved and optimized to death before its official launch. Then there's Classic WOW. Vanilla WOW vs Classic WOW could be a case study in how optimization and automation affects jobs and economics. TLDR: The biggest reason I generally play solo is that the MMO genre has had its natural social aspects optimized, designed, and automated to death, both by players and devs. There's no wonder, adventure, or mystery; no overarching sense of community left. You just play a meta build, execute a meta rotation (or play whack a mole healing), don't stand in the fire, and collect loot (assuming you're playing a class that has builds in the current meta). The MMO genre has evolved over the last 20 years into a fundamentally different type of game.

For me, honestly, it's just because I like the style of gameplay that WoW, FF14, and other MMOs bring to the table. I like the tab-targetting, the rotations, the talent trees (and their equivalent) and the feeling of building up a character and then repeating the process with a new one. There are very few single player games that are like that, either defaulting to 'spam the X button to do your combo' or 'right click and watch your character play itself'. A single player game with the GCD/tab-targetting style of combat, with the gear treadmill that MMOs provide and classes and the like would be a god send, I just haven't found it yet.

I love to group but I am incredibly shy. I’ve always been this way in every aspect of life. Initiating a conversation is nearly impossible for me. I also hate leading groups because it ironically makes me feel more alone than even doing something solo, I hate the weight of responsibility on my shoulders when playing a game. Ideally I play a healer and someone invites me to the group, that is the setting in which I am most comfortable. I love being a simple but exceptional cog in the machine.

i remember starting playing MMO with my friends, it was best time of my gaming era. Now years later, we all have gone separate ways, we rarely talk to each other, guess i am only one that is still playing video games, and still trying to find that feeling i had when i played with them, but with randoms it is not possible - 'cause of anexity i can't even start talk with group members - only text are "OOM", "sec", "brb", "ok", there is no lough, no jokes. Everyone focus on they "job" dpsing, tanking, healing, noone tries even act in character they are playing, eveyone just try get that dps/hps/tps numbers as high as possible and nothing more. Besides all above, with being older i can't put 3hours of playtime without interruption, most of my gaming sesions are around 20-30 minutes long then i have to do some stuff and after that i can continue - but this blocks me from doing any group content like raids or sometimes dungeons. Most of the time when someone learns that i am playing video games they respond "bah that is childlish", i don't think so, if it gives happines that where is the diffrence between video games and other hobbies people have, i deal with this negativity since my childhood which is depressing at times. Still i hear "when you finally grow up from wasting time on games?". Bah... enough rant for now , everone who even bothered to read all this have a nice day :) .

I'm the type of person that has been subscribing since cata and I'd like to collect everything in the game, and every year I'd look at the holiday achievements like "get 10 people to shoot a beam at you simultaneously" and I'd be like "hmmmmm I don't think that's gonna happen.... maybe next year"

You are right. I’m an introvert, so I don’t always want to spend my time with people. But introversion does not equate to a desire for isolation. Sometimes it’s nice to just be around people even though I don’t need to directly talk to them. I still enjoy doing cooperative multiplayer content but also being able to take breaks from people and do solo content.

I play mmo's solo because it helps with the loneliness. Just seeing people run around and knowing there's an actual human being playing that character helps me cope. I still won't interact because i'm an anxiety riddled mess when it comes to strangers but still, it helps.

A big part for me is the server economy. I enjoy farming and working on my professions in WoW. Finding ways to make gold, regularly check the AH for good deals and having the freedom to just buy something I need always felt appealing to me. Unfortunetely, this aspect was destroyed in later expansions with the ingame tokens or in classic wow by large armies of gold sellers/buyers.

For me it’s a much more relaxed experience when playing on your own, being able to go at your own pace and do things in the order of your choosing. But I also like the idea of making/joining a group to finish a common goal, or even just to help out. The best thing is both option are there; play by yourself or with others. At the end of the day, it’s just a game. Play it how, and for the reasons, you want too. I’m taking a MUCH more casual approach this time, and trying not to get too sucked in, just enjoying it.

I used to love interacting with others when I was younger. Now I wanna get as far away from people as possible, so whenever I'm playing a multiplayer game, I do it alone. For us, ESO is probably the best MMO.

Been playing mmos for 20 years. I am a self-proclaimed solo player. Or rather, more like the shy gamer you described, where I would do group content if it came to me but I wouldn't seek it out. I have social anxiety, but im also very independent, so instead of wasting time waiting for people, I just go an do it myself. I played Warlock in WoW, and prided myself on being able to clear group quests meant for 3 to 5 people solo. I like MMOs because its like being in another world with people, but Im not FORCED to be with those people. Thats why I tried FF11 so many times and couldnt get into it, i didnt realize you were forced to party, so Id make it to level 15-18 and be unable to keep going on my own. (Though Ive gotten back into it recently and its much more solo friendly with the Trust system). As to why I play MMOs? I can really say; its existing in a world I want to exist in; its the skill and abilities and the way you access them (there's so much more you can do and accomplish and access in an MMO UI than a single player game's UI; like using en emote one sec the using an obtuse skill immediately the next, and opening the map with a button press, to chatting instantly, its all immediately accessible; whereas in single player games most of those features are locked behind several cumbersome menus if they exist at all) and those lend itself to the MMO feeling more like an actual world im living than just "a game," and it feels more alive. I want to exist here. I'm a dreamer and very imaginative and love reading books and going on adventures and playing an MMO is that sort of wish fulfillment of existing in that fantasy world, as close as I can get.

A big part of why I left WoW is because my online friends went their separate ways. With their leaving, the richness of the experience left with them. After that, it was just a dull grind.

I play solo often... but its mostly because none of my friends play WoW and I get social anxiety when it comes to grouping with people for dungeons. I will say though, that in the first release of classic I was in a guild and we were doing full guild runs of MC/Ony/BWL and that was some of the most fun I've ever had playing WoW. There is something magical about 40-man raiding.

I stopped playing wow a while ago but it's videos like this that keep me subscribed. Great content to watch even if you aren't actively playing

Another factor is the MMO crowd is older, probably has more responsibilities. I work in a management position: when I come home to play WoW, i often can't be bothered trying to get a group together, or dealing with guild dramas. I just don't have the time or patience for that nowadays and get enough of other ppl's crap at work. I log on to Wow for escapism, not for more stress.

I mostly play solo because of my personality. Anything I can do alone I will, but I HATE having to wait on friends to play. I play on my own time. But at the same time I will also do group content a d maybe even come back to that group if they are chill. One thing that nobody likes is joining a group of players to progress and then have to literally learn that content in front of them and if you automatically dontt know how to perform said content everyone else makes you feel incompetent. One of the worst ways to experience this game is with a group of toxic players that can't remember the first time they cleared that content and didn't know as well.

Great video as always. I like how your videos are always about something. Often its a video about something ive thought about myself. 👍

Yeah I think you are right, for many it’s just about getting constant content and the idea of playing with others and others seeing you and the online market to buy and sell etc, which is sad because the MMO genre could and should be so much more…

Great video WillE. An interesting topic for sure.

like in real life, sometimes you just want to go at it alone. imagine if you had to go to the store but were required to have 4 other people with you to go inside, it would get rather bothersome after awhile.

so a mmo i've been recently playing has been Final Fantasy 11, (started playing long after its haydays) and one of the big features it has is trusts. Trusts are NPC party members that allow roles to be filled. While this feature was added to deal with the fact the playerbase was shrinking heavily (due to wow) it also keeps grouping up with other players as an enjoyable option. The problem with wow classic is the amount of anti-social quests with loot quests and flawed systems like mob tagging. While duo leveling is decent, anymore and progress starts to slow down.

I couldn’t agree more with this video! 100%! Great job!

For me, I used to play, like I know most of us did, alottttttt. Being social with others in game was so much easier for me when I had that time. Now life is busy and I can’t play anywhere near as much, having to rely on others when I may only have an hour is very unreliable and I often found myself not being able to actually do anything with that time because, again, unreliability/toxicity of PUGs. I’d rather play with what little time I have where I am the single factor that determines my progression and I can pick it up if/when I want

Even as far back as late TBC, I genuinely found it more fun to play WoW solo in battlegrounds or arena with 1-2 friends. I agree with what you said about Skyrim or other solo games aiming to build a different world than online ones. Although I like to have a small friend group, the interaction and the infinite possibilities and dynamics of live players is much more appealing and IS a different world than a solo game.

I prefer Wow as solo content with group content as an option.

I play solo basically always, because I like to set my own pace and direction. I mainly run around and collect things, like transmogs, crafting recipes and such. Bit of a completionist! One big aspect for me you didn't touch on I think is the economy. I love the trading game, and can often spend many hours each day on farming stuff and gaming the auction house. For no reason, really, other than it's fun to me. Dopamine, I guess. It's also very relaxing running around farming resources after a taxing day at work - just tune out for a few hours and hack some ore!

Awesome look at it mate! Killed it

I'm glad to hear some insight on this, as its a position I've never personally understood. I'd definitely call myself an introvert, but I feel TOO lonely playing MMOs alone. Introvert doesn't always mean antisocial! If anything, I find myself logging on when I DO want to socialize, and I log-off and do something else when I need some "me" time.

They are games I like playing with groups. But as a solo player, I can just meander and do what I want while listening to a podcast or watching something else. Making tangile progress in some way while taking it easy in a game I like.

Brilliant idea to explore, cheers Willie

The first MMO I fell in love with was EverQuest (after playing The Realm Online and Meridian59 at launch and UO a month after launch). That game in the beginning was seemingly hard-coded for "forced socialization". That was actually what they called it. Aside from two classes at the time (necromancer and druid), no one else could accomplish anything without a group. Sounds good, right? Well it does until you realize that class dynamics extend into the social sphere, with clerics being both some of the nicest and scummiest people in the game, in equal measure. Even though I was a high playtime player, I still didn't want to spend hours seeking out or putting together groups, only to be held hostage by ONE class. Over time, I started to gravitate to the games that allowed individual players to make progress without needing anyone else. Sure, I always met and befriended other players but in many of those cases, we bonded over the shared experience of hating the current dynamic. Heck, I met an awesome cleric while quad kiting with my wizard in Eastern Wastes. She was playing her druid to get away from all the group tells she'd get the moment she logged in on her cleric. From that point on, we played every game that released later as a duo (and later a trio with her husband when Star Trek Online launched - he's a HUGE Trekkie). Playing solo was "sticking it to the man" (the man being Brad McQuaid) and after that, I'd play solo until I met (or put together) a good crew to run with. I play solo because even with high playtime, I don't want to waste any of it. And I've had quite enough of sitting around doing nothing trying to put together (or join) groups doing content outside of the "accepted" (read: overcrowded) spots.

This is my experience, I raided more in classic, but after TBC through Cata I just enjoyed playing by myself with the occasional group and pvp. Hermit in a living world is my style

When you described the just wanting to switch off and grind at the end of a work day you basically described me. I love MMO's and love to get online after a long day's work and just mindlessly grind a little bit.... it's relaxing to me. Thank you for your videos. 😎👍

Great video WillE, as always.

Follower dungeons & upcoming Delves are incredible-sounding additions to my solo WoW experience. Lately I've become even more of an MMO hermit; leveling new alts RP-style to at least 50 - usually trying to check out new talent builds & playstyles even within the same spec - then I delete the character and make another. Each one has a specific zone or two they'd like to complete, maybe rep or profession goals. It's made my altoholism far more enjoyable, as each new alt isn't just yet-another-level-grind-to-max, but has a roleplay purpose, with leveling being a side-effect. WoW makes an excellent solo game because it's always receiving new additions and tweaks, meaning it has better replayability than most single-player RPGs. The game world is vast; after more than 15 years I still find new things while taking a closer look at a zone or questline. And if I feel like being sociable or being part of a group, the option's there in the same game. It's pretty great. :)

“In runescape, if someone is fishing right next to you they have the same goals as you” made me think “in tbc classic WoW, if somebody is fishing right next to you, they’re probably a bot” XD

love you Wille

As an introvert…. This game rocks. Love to play solo. Been playing it off and on since the beginning and never liked playing in a group. Always get yelled at for not doing something right. I don’t need that crap.

Way back when I got into Mmo gaming playing the original wow vanilla I was always playing solo. But the occasions where I ran into someone totally random I joined up with to help me or help them doing a quest or a tough mob stuff like that, these are the memories that actually stuck with me. It was so new and amazing back in the day.

I don t think the example about creating a group has to do with people being introverts or not, rather the social anxiety that can appear when dealing with a potentially toxic group of people (a couple if encounters is enough to reduce the "desire" to group up)

Gotta say, the "how do I describe Barrens chat without swearing or insults" pause was hilarious. XD

When the dungeon finder came out in wrath it increases my mmo experience a lot by helping me get into social content. Instead of questing alone. Dungeons are an amazing pre raid experience that gives a similar raid experience due to the basic 5 man trinity of 1 tank 1 healer and 3 damage dealers. This keeps dungeons simple and random grouping effective. It’s also less intimidating to talk to 5 people then to the whole city of stormwind and orgrimmar. Vanilla and tbc made it hard to have a social experience when you’re a new player so wrath was perfect for new players or a fast way to level another class.

"Things you can do whilst watching something on your second monitor." - so, I see you're a fellow JoshStrifeHayes aficionado as well. Truly, the only content worthy of filling the empty space on my second monitor.

i've become a solo player over the years. just tiring to find new guilds every couple years because players quit and guilds die. plus, one can get burnt out with raiding schedule. there definitely are pros and cons to this but, i've enjoyed the solo journey.

I play solo because most of players don't know how or they don't want to interact with each other. When joining a dungeon for example, the only thing you will see on party chat is "hi" or "o/", not even a lil joke or something, nothing, they only say something to blame or to be toxic. Sometimes i try to break the ice but most of the times it doesn't work. I know everyone use external voice chats like discord and they are too lazy to type in-game chat, but nowadays most mmos have in-game voice chat and no one use it. I miss the old times when you were eager to see another player or a group of player in the open world and running towards them to ask if they needed help with something or if you could join them, doing content together and eventually becoming friends.

So what I understand from that is that basically we went from treating MMOs as hangout rooms with a nice game attached to it to just a game. I noticed over the years that I stopped looking for new people to talk to in WoW and I started focusing on the gameplay alone. Back in the day, when I coincidentaly had just one monitor, WoW was my "whole world" entertainment wise. I would talk to people there, help people out and just enjoy my time. Later on, with new monitor, pandemic arriving and me rediscovering Twitch by looking for very small creators, I switched my social attention to those small channels and the MMO experience started to feel a bit hollow. I still enjoyed the heck out of Classic Vanilla, but I believe that was mainly due to all the creators that I've found back then. To this day I'm cracking up when I'm reminded of the "Ett kilo mjol" meme, relating to the loot being hand out in BWL, especially when I was a hunter and I didn't need to worry about loot, because it wouldn't boost my character much, but I loved watching others quarel over that stupid stuff. Community aspect made WoW Classic Vanilla special for me. That completely died with TBC. After all those Blizzard related problems, I decided I need something else. The atmosphere surrounding the game in the environment I've been used to switched from a mix of humorous and toxic to almost entirely morose and I didn't want to stay in such environment any longer. I could play WoW solo, but frankly speaking, the game feels boring for me in that regard. Nowadays the game that I play on left monitor, whilst enjoying other media on the right one, is Path of Exile. The community is incredibly friendly, funny, I see more movement on the chat than I have ever seen in WoW Classic... It's a blast let me tell you. If you never gave it a try, make a hardcore character and spend an hour in that game - sometimes you'll get the barrens chat experience and there's nothing you can do about it - it existed long before Barrens anyway - but sometimes you can genuinely talk to others without worry about boosting services or people spamming LFG all the time. And the humour of streamers such as Steelmage is just stellar. I'm doubly happy that I am not invested into Asmongold's content anymore. It's such a relief to not be a part of community that treats him as almost a god-like figure. Basically, I see only positives from moving from MMO to some other genre and different community. I feel like playing MMO solo is only feasible for casual players, because the pace is relatively slow, but for someone competetive it's a no-go.

I play solo mainly because most mmos have systems where you must complete dailies or engage with multiple systems to maintain competitive or be left behind in power/progression. I really dislike been rushed in a game and been forced to play, so I mostly play solo at my own pace.

this whole Wintergrasp thing and Vault of Archavon raid looking for playing thing you mentioned is 100% true, I used to mostly creat my own raid because it was so much easier and faster than looking for raid, as soon as I said LFM the group would almost become full in a minute. I genuinely think most players in MMOs are not social people and want to play solo as much as possible.

I am living together with my bf I met in Vanilla WoW... We both tried Classic again, and I gave up, as I really didn't have the time anymore and feeling that I could not get enough out of the gameplay just as "solo leveling". Also having to be social at work kinda takes out the desire to be social in game for me - previously I would stay away from student social activities and just play WoW. That was my type of social engagement.

@WillE thank you for seeing us solo players. I don't mind grouping up, but I'm able to stay engaged in other ways if I don't want to wait.

Simple answer to an 11 minute video: Everyone wants to play at his own pace without depending on someone else's time or skill.

I have been a solo player for a very long time. I used to do dungeons, raids, LFR and other content that requires a group. I have been in many guilds. All that content left me with a bad taste in my mouth. I prefer just doing things I can do as a solo player. I even stopped doing Discord. I ask other players if they want to group up and I get a No or no answer at all. I had about 10 player that I was so excited to get in the game with them. Then a few quit and some died. Now I am alone. My characters keep me company now. It's Friday night and I just logged off. Out of 114 in the guild, I generally am the only one online no matter what time of the day it is.

Another great example of solo player experience is Swtor. Whole.story is mostly solo, even many Flashpoints which are like Dungeons have a solo mode. Group content is mainly PvP like BGs or Warzones in Swtor and Operations (Raids)

5:50 that correlation between soul-crushing work and mindless gaming is an interesting thought on how capitalism has affected our mental health and our enthusiasm for different hobbies in the little free time we get to ourselves.

You continue to get it Wille, been with you since almost day 1 and videos like this is why. You have a great way of articulating my exact thoughts. Really wish developers would realize this and create more content around us. I like group content that can be solo queued and rewards enough ilvl that I don’t feel massively behind.

I think its more the case that mmos have changed to push people into solo play as needing friends to do anything in the games has been replaced with cross realm pugging and lfg systems.

For me, I solo as a pass time. Sure I wanna do the current content but there's a sort of thrill with soloing older raid bosses that have yet to be cakewalks. Its basically a really cool tanking dummy that tests your ability to damage as well as survive. I recently did Mythic Talos and that was a LOT of fun.

Because I’m a shy introvert and that combination means socializing is tough :’) I enjoy playing a healer in classic though which has thankfully forced me to get out of my comfort zone if I wanna progress so that definitely helps.

Long live solo gamers! If you can't play solo, at all, it means you never wanted to play that game, you just wanted to gang and hang out.

10:25 Passive Validation, you put it perfectly. I know for me putting 100 hours in Skyrim never appealed to me, because as a WoW player it seemed like only I would see my accomplishments in the game, whereas my time in WoW is “validated” by those around me. They see my gear, my mount, etc, and it makes me want to play so I can share these moments with others.

I’m always that friend playing last. Solo is the way 🤙 Enjoy your hobby on your own time and pace.

All those people on my server are just funny little AIs that live in my computer and help me play the game. You can't convince me otherwhise.

For me, making virtual friends is harder than making live friends because there are so many people to meet with on Discord, per example, that I feel overwhelmed.

I literally just like to see other people running around just doing whatever in the game makes me not feel so alone 🙃

I play solo for 3 main reasons. 1 is I have no other friends that are interested in MMORPGs. Another is I like just doing the side quests, exploring and crafting. I like being able to do my own thing. Right now, I'm switching between playing Skyrim and ESO. ESO is a big world with lots that I can just chill out and do on my own. The third reason is I'm very limited on what and how much time I can play. I have a job and 2 kids, so I mostly don't get to play anything until everyone else goes to sleep.

It's the anxiety of chatting online with strangers and not being good at English

it was exactly so i started with wow several of my buddies played it they got me to test it this was in WOD. I saw that this game was something for me and I started to love the game. but the friends who made me start playing it I have barely played with and most of them stopped playing the game several years ago. and here I am still playing WoW and I still love it. and I mostly play solo for several years but some new real life friends that I got to test wow and they started playing so now I do not play as much solo anymore. but I still enjoy playing solo sometimes especially when I do quests in the open world:)

I used to play WoW alone 95% of the time because of how toxic the community can be. And self reliance is a rewarding feeling. My best community experience was on a super low populated (but still active) private server were we really had a kind of supportive atmosphere because when you are barely enough to raid or do dungeons, everyone knows everyone else, everybody matters and even people in quest greens will get a spot. That was pretty cool.

Honestly I quest alone all the time because i love reading/doing the quests.

I suspect my story is pretty common. Stumbled onto WoW during a pretty dark and boring time, found it had many elements I liked. About six months in I connected with a group of people and started logging in because they were interesting, funny and fun to play with. We hit our peak in Wrath, stumbled around a bit in Cata and Mists, but then everyone started to have families and important jobs and just didn't have the time anymore. I still play WoW, with long breaks every few months, but I love the game and keep hoping I mind find that group again.

I eventually became a solo player over time because of many reasons. Guild drama or guild dying left me starting to rely on myself for crafting, seeing too many people treat the game as Serious Business and expecting others to pretty much make the game their life like they are started me trying more content on my own rather than deal with the bs. I found I like the challenge of doing things on my own and being able to focus on things like collecting mounts/pets/transmogs. I like being able to just hop on whenever and it doesn't matter who's on or not, and I can just do whatever appeals at the moment. I still chat from time to time, or help someone out when I'm in the area, but that's about it for my socializing when not at work.

I dont understand why people insist on assuming the MM in MMO means you should be required to be in physical groups with people. you can have a MMO without forced grouping. I played WoW in 2006 and the way I played then and the way I play now has never changed. I was solo playing in vanilla, the same way I was solo playing in BFA before I unsubbed. The Massively Multiplayer portion simply means a large world where other people are doing activities side by side to you, nowhere does it say requires being in groups, unless you say FFXI, which eventually eased off that over the years. the ironic part is people say WoW required grouping while the game systems penalized you for being in a group constantly, either by not being able to complete certain quests while in a raid group, reducing the xp gained from mobs or requiring you to kill more mobs to complete quests because drops were linked to only one person.

When I was in my mid teens during the WOTLK years, I organized RBGs with guildies, raids by myself and was the main tank. My highest achievement was organizing and main tanking ICC 10 hc. Now I can't remember when was the last time I raided anything, probably a decade ago. It's all RDF and RBGs, if I'm not leveling an alt or just chatting with guildies, with people in/infront of cities or at Goldshire.

I find the main reasons I don't want to group in MMOs are: - I don't want to get taken advantage of, like people grouping with me on a piece of content and bouncing once they get their thing is a really bad feeling and it happens a lot in these kinds of games - I feel like I'm not going to measure up to the standards of whoever I'm grouping with, and I don't want to waste peoples' time - I feel like I'm being a huge bother, I don't want to bother people with my problems if they're doing their own thing - People just aren't interested in doing what I'm trying to do at that particular moment, so they don't respond to my requests, which kinda ties into the previous point The first two points especially I feel are the kinds of things that have led developers over the years to develop more solo content and matchmaking tools and such. Like, people blame Wrath and Cata for introducing dungeon finder and LFR and those things killing the community, ignoring all the ways the community could be shitty and/or neglectful of one another that drove people to request these features in the first place. If you're not paying shit forward, if you're excluding others from content they're otherwise prepared for because of some arbitrary standard you've set on top of everything else, maybe you need to consider whether you're part of the problem.

FFXIV just announced that they are expanding their "Trust system", which is using NPC characters as party members in dungeons. Currently, it's only available to the recent expansion, but they announced that it's going to be expanded to the base game and other expansions.

I was a guild/group player then in time the last one standing, for some reason I do play solo now and avoid group content yet 100% agree I like seeing other people playing the world. I guess I'm just unsociable in games, and that's a shame I think. Good video enjoyed the content.

You are forgetting games before "MMOs", MUDs and such. I started playing a real-time online multiplayer game with 100+ concurrent players in the internet since 1994. Before that it was rarely real time, the ones in BBSes were mostly "do your moves once a day"-type.

I play solo because I am a night manager at a store don't really have time for a guild and play with friends, due to the schedule working at night.

It's really a getting older thing to me. More education, experience, work has expanded my interests a lot and made me not being that interested in challanges or comparing me with others. I also lost my ego on being the most intelligent and skilled dude in the world... so yeah I became a lot more relaxed and also more sophisticated. I prefer playing games while watching/listening on 2nd screen to things that require some attention. That plus some drinks now and then make it more comfortable to play games I already know and that alow me not focusing 100%. MMORPGs are that if you don't are into replaying single player games over and over again. And newer ones with more solo content, even dungeons etc are just perfect. Learning in my own pace, afking whenever I want or something big happens on 2nd screen.. Yes! And it feels not like wasted time at all. Especially not when you can still trade with the player market etc. Sometimes some good storyparts that are good enough to fully focus on it and yeah - awesome.

Sometimes being alone together is just fun, I remember grouping with a guy early on in classic, and we leveled together grouped for a good 10 levels, not a word said, we added each other on bnet, and now we do talk on discord every once in a while, despite neither playing the game anymore.

Been a solo player since wow's launch. it's just nice doing my own thing, but also knowing I'm not alone the world.

Group Iron man is basically entirely solo but its fun to have the few interactions with another player

Speaking to not wanting to start a group: I do a lot of team leading IRL and when I play games, I really don't want to be the Leader or decision-maker. Just chill and heal that 5/10man.

I usually tend to avoid group content, like dungeons, because people usually have some expectation that you know what you're doing and how to progress and when you fail to do so, they're not the most friendly about it. It also doesn't help that most mechanics in dungeons are not easily perceived by someone new to the content and expecting you to read some guide is inconceivable.

I just like to play casually whenever I feel like or whenever I have time. It's so much work and pressure to coordinate with other players to be here at a certain time, do a spec not based on what you like but what people need you to play. I prefer to hop on and hop off casually, talk to the people in my friend list or my guild if I feel like it

I grouped much back in the old days of WoW. I was always in guilds and raids from Classic to the start of Cataclysm. Since then I discard myself much from the community with very few exceptions. It doesn't give me anything anymore. And since I mostly play classes than can solo much content it's an important part of my playstyle. Since Wrath of the Lich King I alwys try dungeons and raids solo. I will always remember how I killed Varian Wrynn and Tyrande Whisperwind solo or some Mythic-Dungeon-Bosses in Pandaria. It's my main goal to become good at this. Not always easy because I have no raid for good gear, but it works for me.

I mostly play solo because everyone who wants to play as a group or team now demands voice chat. I still remember when we could play team based games and communicate over typing or messages instead of having to be on voice chat. Most of the time I'm listening to background videos or a movie or something and don't want to be on voice chat but still wouldn't mind playing with people. I'll get on voice chat for a hard dungeon or a raid or something but just for regular content? nah

MMO's are my main game type and I have to say in the mid 2000's I was all about the MMO aspect but these days I really only like Solo play because I just don't have the time for commitments like high-end raids and dungeons because of scheduling etc... in my adult life.

All of my friends (Except 1 IRL buddy but he switched factions years ago) have quit the game. I got tired of guilds due to how unlucky i was with finding the right one, each one i was in had some form of extremes that i detest such as oversharing everything you do IRL or Ingame in Gchat or people preaching their political ideas and agendas every chance they get.

I'm having such a fun time playing a WotLk server at .5 xp and mostly solo. I like that I see other players and occasionally if someone is doing a kill x mob quest I'll join in. Honestly though I just like being able to zone out and sometimes just go do something else if I need to without disappointing people in my party. And I mean there's really nothing else out there that has the combat and organic adventure sim feeling that MMOs and especially wow has. I do miss my friends though and would love to play with them if they ever came back.

Yep, you are right on multiple counts. A lot of what you mentioned, for me. Solo games feel barren so I just never get into them for very long.

Great video