Soloing is saving MMOs

paulscott · April 2008

Yes it's true it's saving MMO's.

Grouping is an amazing mechanic that is very lovable. However when you look at what it takes to make a group in a vanilla MMO: you have a very small selection of people about 100 your level on your server at this time, 40 in your area, 10 looking for a group, 4 that are the classes you want, 2 that are able to wait till you can make/get a competent group and go through more than an hours worth of content. It becomes pretty obvious that this is not a mass media type thing.

Now off to how soloing is saving MMOs as we know it. Basically soloing allows for a mass media type thing. With investor worthy things like WoW(evil swearword, lol+nub at anyone that flames it in this posts context) which has a whole bunch of solo content you get more investors demanding/wanting their company to make an MMO (not that you would want to solo to the end game). just mentioning your company is thinking about an MMO is likely enough to make your stock value rise a few cents, and to think that's just mentioning.

now off to the effects of being interesting to investors and having the cash to make a game. well obviously you're going to see a lot more MMOs coming on the market which means a few things: more choice, more chances for slight innovations, more chance for players to vote for what they want(by actually paying), companies anaylzing the MMO creation process speeding up how long they take to make, and eventually a company that decides to make a new AAA group based MMO to get a different target audience and after that one one that actually gets it right + solves a lot of it's problems.

edit:

people seem to not be able to see the links. investors to money to game developers to make MMO. sucessful soloing game to investors seeing money to investors wanting more money to investors(in the previous sentance)

any sucessful MMO massing a large enough amount of money would have been enough. to get enough players to have that you need something that is 'mass media'. to get to the 'mass' stage you kinda need a system that gives people what they want when they want AKA McDonalds.

after this you'll see other companies try to get a piece of the pie AKA Arbies, burgerking, hot'n'now. Each being different and bringing a quite a few more choices to what you want and forcing other companies to respond to what the people want via forcing competition.

rejad · April 2008

You talked about two different things and failed to link them together in any way. Unless you simply meant to say "WoW is doing it so it must be right."

fischsemmel · April 2008

I really tried to understand what you were talking about... honestly, I did.

Czzarre · April 2008

"..... Basically soloing allows for a mass media type thing. With investor worthy things like WoW(evil swearword, lol+nub at anyone that flames it in this posts context) which has a whole bunch of solo content you get more investors demanding/wanting their company to make an MMO (not that you would want to solo to the end game). just mentioning your company is thinking about an MMO is likely enough to make your stock value rise a few cents, and to think that's just mentioning..... "

Im just not following the logic

Torrential

Lodeclaw · April 2008

Another example of how level systems are inferior game mechanics.

Zindaihas · April 2008

I don't really see what all the fuss is about when it comes to the subject of soloing vs grouping. Of all the issues devs have to deal with, this seems to me to be one of the easier ones to solve. I'm not a programmer so there my be something I'm missing, but all you have to do is simply create a world large enough for both solo content and group content. For those times when you can't find anyone to group with, there can be plenty of areas where you can go to do some adventuring on your own. If you can solo every single time without getting bored out of your skull, more power to you. Personally I like a mix of soloing and grouping. If I solo long enough, I end up getting so sick of it that I'll log off instead of continuing if I can't find a good group. And if I've been group for awhile, I eventually get sick of people and want to go off and do something on my own for awhile.

Now there needs to be a trade off for the two situations. Obviously group content means tougher mobs that require teamwork to defeat. Tougher mobs, in turn, should lead to greater rewards. But there's no reason why you shouldn't be able to equip yourself with decent gear from soloing as well.

resonate6 · April 2008

Originally posted by paulscott

Yes it's true it's saving MMO's.
Grouping is an amazing mechanic that is very lovable. However when you look at what it takes to make a group in a vanilla MMO: you have a very small selection of people about 100 your level on your server at this time, 40 in your area, 10 looking for a group, 4 that are the classes you want, 2 that are able to wait till you can make/get a competent group and go through more than an hours worth of content. It becomes pretty obvious that this is not a mass media type thing.
Now off to how soloing is saving MMOs as we know it. Basically soloing allows for a mass media type thing. With investor worthy things like WoW(evil swearword, lol+nub at anyone that flames it in this posts context) which has a whole bunch of solo content you get more investors demanding/wanting their company to make an MMO (not that you would want to solo to the end game). just mentioning your company is thinking about an MMO is likely enough to make your stock value rise a few cents, and to think that's just mentioning.
now off to the effects of being interesting to investors and having the cash to make a game. well obviously you're going to see a lot more MMOs coming on the market which means a few things: more choice, more chances for slight innovations, more chance for players to vote for what they want(by actually paying), companies anaylzing the MMO creation process speeding up how long they take to make, and eventually a company that decides to make a new AAA group based MMO to get a different target audience and after that one one that actually gets it right + solves a lot of it's problems.
edit:
people seem to not be able to see the links. investors to money to game developers to make MMO. sucessful soloing game to investors seeing money to investors wanting more money to investors(in the previous sentance)
any sucessful MMO massing a large enough amount of money would have been enough. to get enough players to have that you need something that is 'mass media'. to get to the 'mass' stage you kinda need a system that gives people what they want when they want AKA McDonalds.
after this you'll see other companies try to get a piece of the pie AKA Arbies, burgerking, hot'n'now. Each being different and bringing a quite a few more choices to what you want and forcing other companies to respond to what the people want via forcing competition.

I like soloing in mmorpg's. I remember a long time ago when I used to play Asheron's Call. The world was so huge that you could go running off and be completely alone and never see another player EVER if you wanted too... but you always knew you could go into a town and meet with tons of other people if you wanted to...

mindmeld · April 2008

any mmorpg game that want to cater to both solo and grouping they will implement it.

i dont really follow that without soloing they game will fail that just plain stupid thats how the poster wants us to belive it anyway.

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