I have played at least the trial versions if not a few months of most the"popular" mmos out today. My problem isnt with grouping its that alot of group quests take a few hours by the time you get a good group AND finish the quest. COH did a good job from what i could tell (only played for a couple of months) with fast grouping and quick missions.
There are raids in alot of games for those that like to spend more time playing. I do not think its the "grouping" that bothers most people its the huge timesink involved with the whole thing in a lot of games.
Kings and Sons of God Travel on their way from here Calming restless mobs Easing all of their, all of their fear Strange times are here.
Grouping became evil when MMos tried removing the Grind. My foindest memories are of my EQ days getting a group and going to some cool zone and setting up a camp, and having someone pull mobs over and over back to that camp for the group to kill. thats where a lot of the socialization happened for me. I dont see that anymore in mmos. You group now for specific quests or to kill a specific mob ,then everyone goes back to their own seperate thing.
Yep its sad. I used to have a blast in EQ setting up camp and sticking with the same group for hours on end and getting to know them. Now you find a group, get quest done, and bam, every leaves to find another group doing the same quest. This I believe is one of the reasons why I havent found an MMO I can stay with for more than a few months. Bonds and friendships arent made like they used to be.
i personaly love grouping 9 times outa 10, its basicly the whole point of why u pay 10-15 dollars a month is to be on servers full of thousands of players. yes solo should be an option, but not half of the game, soloing should be a slower and lesser part of the game. ffxi was great w/ that but it has basicly no solo time, wich if they had just made places/quests to solo it would be great. eq2/wow/lotro are like 60/40 solo:group wich is pointless. yes soloing is nice but i dont wanna be able to just as easly get to lvl cap alone as in agroup, it takes the point of being w/ thousands of ppl. if u wanna solo, play offline rpgs, theres hundereds of them out there, and plz, the whole "i have like 1or2 hrs a day to play" is BS, get off MMOs then, MMos are ment to be played in large time gaps.
eq1 is a perfect combo of heavy grouping but it is possible to solo, every newer game these days makes them super solo friendly to the point where u can complete most the game alone. i play MMOs to make friends, have great/funny/intresting convos, do group activitys, make a guild, argue(at times) help the new guys, and do mass raids/event together.
Pick-up groups in WoW are what killed it for me. I'll never forget my first PUG, with the group leader telling the paladin, "Heal me, you ******** idiot, it's your ******** job." The paladin responded with something about his build and the leader's mother, and I politely declined to adventure with them any further. My second PUG didn't go much better, and I decided to just go it alone from that point on.
So when I got into EQ2, I avoided grouping like crazy. I did enough research to discover that a monk was a good solo class, and I played my monk solo until level 36, declining every single group invitation I got. Until I wandered into a place I couldn't handle alone, and was invited into a group. I was in a really foul mood, and arguing with a bunch of douchenozzles sounded like fun, so I joined. But it didn't happen - nobody whined, nobody complained, everybody was polite, and the mission was successful.
So I group now, but the WoW experience left a bad taste in my mouth. I've learned that every game's players are different, but there's no way to tell without actually playing the game. So I always make sure a game has plenty of solo content, just in case. It's my backup plan, in case the majority of players turn out to be assholes.
The point that a lot of you miss is that evidently there are more people willing to pay to play a game that they can get by soloing and occationally grouping than there are that want all groups. I am not a fan of forced groupng because there are always too many idiots that i would rather kill than group with. All the people that you are complaining about that want solo content for themselves because life has changed are the ones that are willing to pay to play because a game gives them a place to go that is not work or home life.
Solo content is here to stay so quit whining about the good ol days and find like minded people to group with. WoW evidently got the formula right for what people want so don't expect an incredable amount of deviation from this. Game companys are not going to cater to the niche group that wants the uber MMO all full of every possible skill based, craft, blah blah blah and on with the list of things most people whine about games not having. Do not expect game companys to cater to the few hundred or possibly few thousand of you that want the hardcore game it is not going to happen. Find a game you have fun with and play it stop bitching about what games don't have and learn to enjoy what they do have or go back to playing EQ or whatever game you came from that was so fantastic.
It sort of becomes the work of the devil when people like you force it down other people's throats and berate the people who don't like the same type of gameplay as you do. You won't find many people who don't like to group. You will, however, find many people who hate being forced to group to accomplish anything in the end game. If you can't understand the difference then that's your problem.
i think alot of this ages MMO players are starting out on WoW and for a good reason probly. its like MMO-lite. its simple to get, kinda linear, easy to solo and group, simple basicly in every way. it fed heavly on getting good gear. things like that make ppl douches, and hence the infamous crappy WoW community. when the "big lvl" douches treat the lower lvl new ppl like crap they eventually turned to crap themselves and groups and stuff expected to much outta you. it also had a TON of advertisemnt and ppl went to it because "we have millions of subscrivers, were better then every MMO" wich of course was horse shit. if they had started on EQ or FFXI or linage or any of the other normal games that incorperated more -friendlyer grouping we would have less ppl bitching for all solo and less demand for um would make more games involving grouping, thus making better communitys in games.
The point that a lot of you miss is that evidently there are more people willing to pay to play a game that they can get by soloing and occationally grouping than there are that want all groups. I am not a fan of forced groupng because there are always too many idiots that i would rather kill than group with. All the people that you are complaining about that want solo content for themselves because life has changed are the ones that are willing to pay to play because a game gives them a place to go that is not work or home life. Solo content is here to stay so quit whining about the good ol days and find like minded people to group with. WoW evidently got the formula right for what people want so don't expect an incredable amount of deviation from this. Game companys are not going to cater to the niche group that wants the uber MMO all full of every possible skill based, craft, blah blah blah and on with the list of things most people whine about games not having. Do not expect game companys to cater to the few hundred or possibly few thousand of you that want the hardcore game it is not going to happen. Find a game you have fun with and play it stop bitching about what games don't have and learn to enjoy what they do have or go back to playing EQ or whatever game you came from that was so fantastic.
i think alot of this ages MMO players are starting out on WoW and for a good reason probly. its like MMO-lite. its simple to get, kinda linear, easy to solo and group, simple basicly in every way. it fed heavly on getting good gear. things like that make ppl douches, and hence the infamous crappy WoW community. when the "big lvl" douches treat the lower lvl new ppl like crap they eventually turned to crap themselves and groups and stuff expected to much outta you. it also had a TON of advertisemnt and ppl went to it because "we have millions of subscrivers, were better then every MMO" wich of course was horse shit. if they had started on EQ or FFXI or linage or any of the other normal games that incorperated more -friendlyer grouping we would have less ppl bitching for all solo and less demand for um would make more games involving grouping, thus making better communitys in games.
Haha, that's probably true. In some senses it isn't though. There are assholes everywhere, learn to get around them. I found a very mature guild, and I tend to group with real life friends because it's fun! We kill the boss, we had fun, we die, we had fun. I might just be used to ignoring them, since I did grow up on Darktide... Ha.
true asshats will be asshats and will exist in every game, from Ultima to the end of life as we know it, its the fact that u get a hell of alot more asshats out games like WoW.
Forced grouping is evil, as no one wants to be told they have to play a certain way to access content, which is why raiding is despised by most players. That being said, a game should be designed around grouping and not tiered to be easily soloed.
I solo mostly and did so during the 4 years I played classic EQ from launch. Group content becomes solo content as you advance and therefore remained challenging. Games like WoW and LOTRO etc are just too easy and simple because they are designed to be soloed, until the dreaded endgame raidng fest.
forced does suck, but like EQ, groups were way more of the focus, becuase after all it is a massivly MULTIPLAYER game. every game need s alittle solo, but not to the point were its all u need.
I think the game needs to give you the option to either solo, or group. Some people like soloing, some like grouping, some like both. I like the raid concept in WoW. I never raid, I just don't think it's rewarding and I am not making plans for a game... It does make it more rewarding when some boss needs 40 people to kill him for the people that do though. But just because I don't raid, I don't want to level to 70, then have to play a new character. Let me help out by crafting some leet sword to give my guild, or sell. Right now, I feel like "Cool! I got to 70 eight days after expansion was released. Hmmm... I could grind for epic birdie, I could grind rep... I don't feel like grouping... I think I'll make a new character, I guess..." Basically I want to feel like I can help, without being forced to.
BTW, I think they are trying to do that with Frozen Throne. They said solo players (Yay me!) will have the opportunity to help with the fight against (Arthas?).
I like games that have mixed content: some solo, some group, some raid. Ideally, quests are labeled so that you can tell which is which, that way you know what you're getting into.
I also don't have a problem with group quests having generally better rewards than solo quests, and raid better than group. That's fine.
What does bug me, though, is when quests are mis-labeled, or when a quest line goes from one level to another without any warning.
Finally, there should be meaningful solo quests. SOME of the solo quests should have very good rewards. Not too many, mind you, but they should come along now and then.
For me, grouping is generally a pain in the posterior. I don't like waiting around to get a group. I like the satisfaction of accomplishing something by myself. Sure, there are times when I do like grouping, and there are times when I like being in a raid. The vast majority of the time I like soloing.
like some of the other old fans of the genre, I'm a fan of grouping or at least some sort of interaction which is where I was going with the fps content; even if you're not grouping with people you're interacting with people by way of pvp. But there are problems with grouping that do put people off that I don't think need necessarily to be there. I mean lets take WoW you have these number of people at these level ranges:
10 people 30-39 8 people 40-49 14 people 50-59
How many of those want to group? well probably a very small minority meaning you won't be able to make a full group, or you have to opt waiting till you can.
Now remove the level barrier;- you have hundreds of people potentially being able to join a group.
Grouping should
1) Offer something over soloing 2) Have an incentive to group everytime you want to do so. 3) Be quick and easy to form without waiting long periods of time;- for people to travel or to wait for the people/right classes 4) Be for not excessive amounts of contingent time, long instances and people get frustrated/agitated at the end of them, or you have people leaving which causes problems.
In the early MMO's, gameplay consisted of very few quests, and a whole lotta camp grinding. This made grouping the preferred method to hunt, and for the most part, class composition wasn't really a big issue (though it did pop out sometimes)
Today's modern MMO's tend to focus on questing, and questing isn't group friendly. Why? Because its very hard to find anyone doing the same quest. Then some games like WOW go with the raiding model, and once in that case grouping becomes viable, but they take the joke to heck in a hand basket and force players to raid for 2-4 hour at a pop.
Like others have said, if there was an easy way to get into and out of groups, with little downtime then people would enjoy grouping more. But so far no one has come up with a magic formula yet... .
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
like some of the other old fans of the genre, I'm a fan of grouping or at least some sort of interaction which is where I was going with the fps content; even if you're not grouping with people you're interacting with people by way of pvp. But there are problems with grouping that do put people off that I don't think need necessarily to be there. I mean lets take WoW you have these number of people at these level ranges: 10 people 30-39
8 people 40-49
14 people 50-59 How many of those want to group? well probably a very small minority meaning you won't be able to make a full group, or you have to opt waiting till you can. Now remove the level barrier;- you have hundreds of people potentially being able to join a group. Grouping should 1) Offer something over soloing
2) Have an incentive to group everytime you want to do so.
3) Be quick and easy to form without waiting long periods of time;- for people to travel or to wait for the people/right classes
4) Be for not excessive amounts of contingent time, long instances and people get frustrated/agitated at the end of them, or you have people leaving which causes problems.
city of heroes actually nailed those points and being the sort of simple grinder it is no one cares what mission you've been assigned. Everyone will help you out whether they got the quest or not
1) groups earn monster XP
2) ya you hit max cap way faster being in a group its not funny
3) groups can use "teleport friend" to tele other teammates to a mission
4) you dont really have to do the task forces unelss you want the respec or Hami-Os
I don't want to waste my time waiting typically 30 min to an 1 hour to gather a group, then realize our tank's "got homework" or their "mum's calling" them essentially screwing up the group because tanks are hard to find. Or find out the mage is a complete asswipe and think he knows everything there is to know and goes into a bitching phase if something isn't done his / her way, or the priest is super senstive, leaving the group the second something he / she doesn't like is said, which seems so minor and silly you just laugh at yourself. And I'm tired to resorting to begging people to stay in the group so we can get things done, even though I'd love nothing to but to get rid of those annoying pricks and find other people, but its going to take way too long to get other people. It's very tiring, and boring, and don't blame anyone who wants to solo everything because they like the other aspects of MMOs other then grouping.
But I think the biggest problem is the way these MMOs are designed where you must have a tank and a healer, the two most vital classes, in the group or you have no group, for most players these two roles aren't as fun as the dps role, I don't know if that's the fault of the designers or because of the players, but tanks and healers are usually always troublesome to find. You can easily wait 30 min to an hour just to find these two classes. (The people that do play the tanking role say they only do it because they're needed, in my experience anyway. I don't think I've run into a single protection spec warrior in WoW for example who said he / she loved it.) It's a real flaw that needs to be fixed.
But I think the biggest problem is the way these MMOs are designed where you must have a tank and a healer, the two most vital classes, in the group or you have no group
This is a separate issue. Whether a game enforces strict class roles and requires the holy trinity in groups is not the same as whether the game encourages or requires grouping.
As Vajuras noted, COH has a good solution with regards to soloing and grouping. One can solo all the way to level cap, but grouping is fast, easy, and provides much more XP over time. I don't think MMOs will go back to enforcing grouping, if for no other reason than economic ones, but I'd really like to see grouping encouraged at the very least. Otherwise, why make an MMO in the first place? Just make a single player game, they're much cheaper to build and maintain.
2) Have an incentive to group everytime you want to do so.
3) Be quick and easy to form without waiting long periods of time;- for people to travel or to wait for the people/right classes
4) Be for not excessive amounts of contingent time, long instances and people get frustrated/agitated at the end of them, or you have people leaving which causes problems.
I play to group, not to solo. If I truly wanted to solo I would find a decent single player game. Single Player games cater to the soloer much more then MMOs. The game needs to be flexible though and have activities to consume myself with while I wait for the group.
Comments
I have played at least the trial versions if not a few months of most the"popular" mmos out today. My problem isnt with grouping its that alot of group quests take a few hours by the time you get a good group AND finish the quest. COH did a good job from what i could tell (only played for a couple of months) with fast grouping and quick missions.
There are raids in alot of games for those that like to spend more time playing. I do not think its the "grouping" that bothers most people its the huge timesink involved with the whole thing in a lot of games.
Kings and Sons of God
Travel on their way from here
Calming restless mobs
Easing all of their, all of their fear
Strange times are here.
Yep its sad. I used to have a blast in EQ setting up camp and sticking with the same group for hours on end and getting to know them. Now you find a group, get quest done, and bam, every leaves to find another group doing the same quest. This I believe is one of the reasons why I havent found an MMO I can stay with for more than a few months. Bonds and friendships arent made like they used to be.
i personaly love grouping 9 times outa 10, its basicly the whole point of why u pay 10-15 dollars a month is to be on servers full of thousands of players. yes solo should be an option, but not half of the game, soloing should be a slower and lesser part of the game. ffxi was great w/ that but it has basicly no solo time, wich if they had just made places/quests to solo it would be great. eq2/wow/lotro are like 60/40 solo:group wich is pointless. yes soloing is nice but i dont wanna be able to just as easly get to lvl cap alone as in agroup, it takes the point of being w/ thousands of ppl. if u wanna solo, play offline rpgs, theres hundereds of them out there, and plz, the whole "i have like 1or2 hrs a day to play" is BS, get off MMOs then, MMos are ment to be played in large time gaps.
eq1 is a perfect combo of heavy grouping but it is possible to solo, every newer game these days makes them super solo friendly to the point where u can complete most the game alone. i play MMOs to make friends, have great/funny/intresting convos, do group activitys, make a guild, argue(at times) help the new guys, and do mass raids/event together.
Pick-up groups in WoW are what killed it for me. I'll never forget my first PUG, with the group leader telling the paladin, "Heal me, you ******** idiot, it's your ******** job." The paladin responded with something about his build and the leader's mother, and I politely declined to adventure with them any further. My second PUG didn't go much better, and I decided to just go it alone from that point on.
So when I got into EQ2, I avoided grouping like crazy. I did enough research to discover that a monk was a good solo class, and I played my monk solo until level 36, declining every single group invitation I got. Until I wandered into a place I couldn't handle alone, and was invited into a group. I was in a really foul mood, and arguing with a bunch of douchenozzles sounded like fun, so I joined. But it didn't happen - nobody whined, nobody complained, everybody was polite, and the mission was successful.
So I group now, but the WoW experience left a bad taste in my mouth. I've learned that every game's players are different, but there's no way to tell without actually playing the game. So I always make sure a game has plenty of solo content, just in case. It's my backup plan, in case the majority of players turn out to be assholes.
Solo content is here to stay so quit whining about the good ol days and find like minded people to group with. WoW evidently got the formula right for what people want so don't expect an incredable amount of deviation from this. Game companys are not going to cater to the niche group that wants the uber MMO all full of every possible skill based, craft, blah blah blah and on with the list of things most people whine about games not having. Do not expect game companys to cater to the few hundred or possibly few thousand of you that want the hardcore game it is not going to happen. Find a game you have fun with and play it stop bitching about what games don't have and learn to enjoy what they do have or go back to playing EQ or whatever game you came from that was so fantastic.
It sort of becomes the work of the devil when people like you force it down other people's throats and berate the people who don't like the same type of gameplay as you do. You won't find many people who don't like to group. You will, however, find many people who hate being forced to group to accomplish anything in the end game. If you can't understand the difference then that's your problem.
i think alot of this ages MMO players are starting out on WoW and for a good reason probly. its like MMO-lite. its simple to get, kinda linear, easy to solo and group, simple basicly in every way. it fed heavly on getting good gear. things like that make ppl douches, and hence the infamous crappy WoW community. when the "big lvl" douches treat the lower lvl new ppl like crap they eventually turned to crap themselves and groups and stuff expected to much outta you. it also had a TON of advertisemnt and ppl went to it because "we have millions of subscrivers, were better then every MMO" wich of course was horse shit. if they had started on EQ or FFXI or linage or any of the other normal games that incorperated more -friendlyer grouping we would have less ppl bitching for all solo and less demand for um would make more games involving grouping, thus making better communitys in games.
Haha, that's probably true. In some senses it isn't though. There are assholes everywhere, learn to get around them. I found a very mature guild, and I tend to group with real life friends because it's fun! We kill the boss, we had fun, we die, we had fun. I might just be used to ignoring them, since I did grow up on Darktide... Ha.
true asshats will be asshats and will exist in every game, from Ultima to the end of life as we know it, its the fact that u get a hell of alot more asshats out games like WoW.
I like to solo because when you pk 3 people at the same time by yourself it feels like a huge accomplishment.
sir above u just confused the hell outta me lmao
Forced grouping is evil, as no one wants to be told they have to play a certain way to access content, which is why raiding is despised by most players. That being said, a game should be designed around grouping and not tiered to be easily soloed.
I solo mostly and did so during the 4 years I played classic EQ from launch. Group content becomes solo content as you advance and therefore remained challenging. Games like WoW and LOTRO etc are just too easy and simple because they are designed to be soloed, until the dreaded endgame raidng fest.
forced does suck, but like EQ, groups were way more of the focus, becuase after all it is a massivly MULTIPLAYER game. every game need s alittle solo, but not to the point were its all u need.
my ability to form rational thoughts is rather impaired at the moment.
I think the game needs to give you the option to either solo, or group. Some people like soloing, some like grouping, some like both. I like the raid concept in WoW. I never raid, I just don't think it's rewarding and I am not making plans for a game... It does make it more rewarding when some boss needs 40 people to kill him for the people that do though. But just because I don't raid, I don't want to level to 70, then have to play a new character. Let me help out by crafting some leet sword to give my guild, or sell. Right now, I feel like "Cool! I got to 70 eight days after expansion was released. Hmmm... I could grind for epic birdie, I could grind rep... I don't feel like grouping... I think I'll make a new character, I guess..." Basically I want to feel like I can help, without being forced to.
BTW, I think they are trying to do that with Frozen Throne. They said solo players (Yay me!) will have the opportunity to help with the fight against (Arthas?).
I like games that have mixed content: some solo, some group, some raid. Ideally, quests are labeled so that you can tell which is which, that way you know what you're getting into.
I also don't have a problem with group quests having generally better rewards than solo quests, and raid better than group. That's fine.
What does bug me, though, is when quests are mis-labeled, or when a quest line goes from one level to another without any warning.
Finally, there should be meaningful solo quests. SOME of the solo quests should have very good rewards. Not too many, mind you, but they should come along now and then.
For me, grouping is generally a pain in the posterior. I don't like waiting around to get a group. I like the satisfaction of accomplishing something by myself. Sure, there are times when I do like grouping, and there are times when I like being in a raid. The vast majority of the time I like soloing.
like some of the other old fans of the genre, I'm a fan of grouping or at least some sort of interaction which is where I was going with the fps content; even if you're not grouping with people you're interacting with people by way of pvp. But there are problems with grouping that do put people off that I don't think need necessarily to be there. I mean lets take WoW you have these number of people at these level ranges:
10 people 30-39
8 people 40-49
14 people 50-59
How many of those want to group? well probably a very small minority meaning you won't be able to make a full group, or you have to opt waiting till you can.
Now remove the level barrier;- you have hundreds of people potentially being able to join a group.
Grouping should
1) Offer something over soloing
2) Have an incentive to group everytime you want to do so.
3) Be quick and easy to form without waiting long periods of time;- for people to travel or to wait for the people/right classes
4) Be for not excessive amounts of contingent time, long instances and people get frustrated/agitated at the end of them, or you have people leaving which causes problems.
In the early MMO's, gameplay consisted of very few quests, and a whole lotta camp grinding. This made grouping the preferred method to hunt, and for the most part, class composition wasn't really a big issue (though it did pop out sometimes)
Today's modern MMO's tend to focus on questing, and questing isn't group friendly. Why? Because its very hard to find anyone doing the same quest. Then some games like WOW go with the raiding model, and once in that case grouping becomes viable, but they take the joke to heck in a hand basket and force players to raid for 2-4 hour at a pop.
Like others have said, if there was an easy way to get into and out of groups, with little downtime then people would enjoy grouping more. But so far no one has come up with a magic formula yet... .
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
city of heroes actually nailed those points and being the sort of simple grinder it is no one cares what mission you've been assigned. Everyone will help you out whether they got the quest or not
1) groups earn monster XP
2) ya you hit max cap way faster being in a group its not funny
3) groups can use "teleport friend" to tele other teammates to a mission
4) you dont really have to do the task forces unelss you want the respec or Hami-Os
I don't want to waste my time waiting typically 30 min to an 1 hour to gather a group, then realize our tank's "got homework" or their "mum's calling" them essentially screwing up the group because tanks are hard to find. Or find out the mage is a complete asswipe and think he knows everything there is to know and goes into a bitching phase if something isn't done his / her way, or the priest is super senstive, leaving the group the second something he / she doesn't like is said, which seems so minor and silly you just laugh at yourself. And I'm tired to resorting to begging people to stay in the group so we can get things done, even though I'd love nothing to but to get rid of those annoying pricks and find other people, but its going to take way too long to get other people. It's very tiring, and boring, and don't blame anyone who wants to solo everything because they like the other aspects of MMOs other then grouping.
But I think the biggest problem is the way these MMOs are designed where you must have a tank and a healer, the two most vital classes, in the group or you have no group, for most players these two roles aren't as fun as the dps role, I don't know if that's the fault of the designers or because of the players, but tanks and healers are usually always troublesome to find. You can easily wait 30 min to an hour just to find these two classes. (The people that do play the tanking role say they only do it because they're needed, in my experience anyway. I don't think I've run into a single protection spec warrior in WoW for example who said he / she loved it.) It's a real flaw that needs to be fixed.
This is a separate issue. Whether a game enforces strict class roles and requires the holy trinity in groups is not the same as whether the game encourages or requires grouping.
As Vajuras noted, COH has a good solution with regards to soloing and grouping. One can solo all the way to level cap, but grouping is fast, easy, and provides much more XP over time. I don't think MMOs will go back to enforcing grouping, if for no other reason than economic ones, but I'd really like to see grouping encouraged at the very least. Otherwise, why make an MMO in the first place? Just make a single player game, they're much cheaper to build and maintain.
Quoted. For. Truth.
If a game provides the above, I'm all for it.
I play to group, not to solo. If I truly wanted to solo I would find a decent single player game. Single Player games cater to the soloer much more then MMOs. The game needs to be flexible though and have activities to consume myself with while I wait for the group.