I hated it. I played the game to desocialize not socialize. It might be an MMO but the world and story is enticing enough to play still, even if I want to do it solo. I like the option of you feel the need to but I always felt like I was punished for not being a team player and socializing constantly.

I enjoy the social aspects of MMOs more than any other part of them. Trading with other players, forming groups to tackle particularly difficult quests, and going into dungeons are awesome, but even I think they’re only my favourite because good MMOs have you alone for most of the time.

If I only did dungeons in WoW, I’d sour on them quickly. Same for questing and trading. They’re like a little treat after I finish tasks in an area.

It’s part of the reason why I like the changes to dungeons in forever, as they give reduced xp beyond your first run, meaning outside of the loot you’d do better doing quests and not running the same content on repeat.

On the other end of the spectrum, you get games like hypixel skyblock, where farming has next to no interaction with other players. You’ll literally spend 15 hours grinding on your own farm without seeing anybody else and it’s the most depressing thing ever invented.

Also, don’t worry about your performance in dungeons. So long as we don’t wipe, I have no problems, and neither should you <3

I’ll go against the grain here and say that I hated being forced to be in groups for important content. I have never enjoyed playing with random people and if my actual friends weren’t available or enough of them weren’t available then I was just gated out of stuff that I needed to do. And man, I really, really hated raiding. I only did it to get the higher tier gear, which mean running raids dozens and dozens of times. Raids and forced group content is the main reason I haven’t played an MMO in a long time.

For me, dungeons and raids were THE thing that made me want to play WoW. It’s fun working towards a goal with others and there are so many possible encounter designs you can make that would be basically impossible if the content was meant to be done solo.

That said, two caveats:

• It’s fun to work with people you trust and like, not randos. So while I do appreciate the dungeon finder they added to WoW in WotLK as it really let me experience the dungeons long before I was able to establish myself with a guild, I do see the ways in which design catering to that system has hurt a lot of content. My favorite period of WoW was actually early Cataclysm before they nerfed the launch dungeons. They were difficult in a genuinely engaging way and at least when I played with guildmates, I was pretty happy to spend an hour or two trying and failing at a heroic dungeon. Unfortunately that isn’t true for most players queueing with randos, so they got dumbed down.

• I had a very similar experience to what you described but in FFIV. The leveling experience was pretty heavy on story, which was nice, but for the final part of the story of the base game, you needed to go do basically a big dungeon. Not quite a raid, but more people than the normal dungeons. It was pretty clear that most of the people queueing for this were just there to farm whatever and they were rushing through the place, not even killing enemies, so I just had to run after them to keep up. There were a few mid dungeon cutscenes, but you could skip these individually. While I watched the cutscene, most of the group moved along and they did so so quickly that at some point they would trigger a new cutscene before I had finished the first so that as soon as it was done it played the next one. This didn’t update my position, so even if I wanted to continue the dungeon, after a certain point I just couldn’t. It was such an awful experience it made me quit on the spot.

They were never a thing I wanted to do, but I thought it was great the content existed.

IMO, the friction between players is the point. The dependency on others in the world is what makes it an MMO, otherwise it’s just a bunch of people playing a single player game next to each other.

But that’s also not the current design meta of MMOs. Dependency on other players means that it’s difficult to have a clear definition of a player’s experience with the game will be, which means it’s hard for the designers to make guarantees about player retention to investors. Imagine telling an investor who doesn’t play games that “we don’t know exactly what keeps players playing, but we do know that it’s possible for one player to ruin another player’s experience.” So over the last 15y, player interdependence has been optimized out of MMOs.

I wind up feeling like my lackadaisical approach is probably fucking up someone else’s farming loop…I feel like the person that cares enough to grind a dungeon reward as fast as possible should get right of way over my happy ass

Those players exist, but they’re not important. I do think most players want to go at a chill pace and have an experience they will remember. Running dungeons as fast as possible to farm gear without interacting with any other players creates a very dependable dopamine loop, and a very forgettable experience.

I don’t think it’s fun to be forced to interact with others in an MMO, but I do think it’s fun when your best option is to interact with other players. Ex. make it possible to do something by yourself in 5h of play, or with a group in less than 1h, and people will just prefer interact. I think cave quests in wow are a great example of this. Caves can be lethal to a player questing by themselves, very inconvenient, but if they run into another person questing the same cave, there is safety in numbers. Their survivability goes up exponentially, and they can complete the work faster. It just makes sense.

I think the cave quest has been optimized out of modern/retail wow. Every quest is easily solo-able, everyone can self-heal, everyone can take on 5+ mobs at a time, everyone can just fly in/fly out. My hope is that they’ve learned how unfun this, and WoW Forever will retain that old-style fun where players just have to talk to each other.

I think Warhammer Online had the best mix. They just had some balance problems, and of course huge technical issues. There were some great elements to the game though. The automatic pickup raids and scenario system were pretty good ideas.

I play mmos and expect to be social, otherwise it’s just an RPG.

I think it is the only way to do it.

Most MMOs don’t go far enough with “forced” group stuff.

I played wow again not long ago after years and you where forced to do group dungeons but talking to each other was never encouraged. Quite the opposite.

I feel like forcing the multiplayer, and especially communication enforces the “multiplayer” part of MMOs, and it’s great. I’d often just play alone till I get bored if it wasn’t for these “forced” interactions with random people.

We got couple new guildies while leveling in classic TBC earlier this year, and some of them still play with us which is nice

Deadmines in WoW

Idk when you played but my buddy and I pretty much duo’d the dungeon starting both at level 11. Took down all the bosses except the VC because of the minion respawn mechanic. Had a lot of fun, level 17 by the time we got wiped.

Last time I played, the requirement was level 17 to enter the dungeon. I just laughed. Same with elite areas that got nerfed that I would solo became regular. The amount of runs I did solo to get the barmans shanker lol, that was like the rogues right of passage.

It wasn’t fun to see that raids could be 5 manned.

Originally it was like, you need the best fire resist gear so we can clear this raid–forget about all the cool gear you got, that’s why I always called dibs on trinkets–proc’ing multiple strikes was fun, I think I did 8-9 once (in other words instead of 1 hit per, lets say second, it was 9). I played a rogue that was a engineer/enchanter (usually engineering goes with mining, but I did it the hard way, buy and sell stuff and farm enchanting mats and sell enchants.

So I would often times rez a priest after a raid wipe with a trinket saving everyone time to run back. It’s 40 people, and everyone has only so much time. We all chatted on teamspeak, it was fun to establish a order of communication.

I would say I had a lot of fun playing it when I did; I don’t think the modern generation will be able to enjoy something like that.

So hopefully that gets you a better idea of what I think MMOs. Don’t get me going on Lineage 2.

Edit: Oh yeah I was tester, so I also got to enjoy the unreported glitches.

If you want a single player MMO, check out Erenshore. It’s still in early access so maybe just wishlist it for now, but all the other “players” are scripted. There’s even trade apparently.

Honestly it depends, if different roles are needed and have to be performed to get through the dungeon then I think it is kind of cool and a fun experience, coordinating and doing your roll and stuff like that. But if it is just a slaugtherfest to be run through then fuck it.

A lot of it hinges on the playerbase and modes of communication though, if you can’t communicate and find each other properly then it is kind of meh tbh, even worse if there are no players or generally just shitty attitudes to newer/unexperienced players.

That’s the type of content I enjoy the most. Lately MMOs have been drowning in solo content and while it doesn’t “hurt” me in any way, it also does not interest me in the slightest, so I end up losing interest.

The few MMOs I played have normal/easy/exploration versions of group content instances, where it’s generally expected to be slower and at the very least do the quest and watch cutscenes. I do those up until I’m comfortable with the layout and mechanics and move on. When I encounter people doing the quests in harder instances I do get mildly annoyed, but depending on what exactly is it I can slow down to give them time to click through the dialogue options. If they state beforehand that they are doing something extra or they want to go for a secret/achievement that’s usually out of the way, I’m almost always down.

Just set your expectations right before dipping into any group content. If the instance is expected to be easy and is even designed specifically for low power players then it’s entirely your prerogative to take it as slow as you want, do the quests, watch the cutscenes, and anyone who is rushing it is the one ruining the experience. If the instance is clearly going to be difficult then don’t pug it, find your own group that wants to learn it or look up the mechs beforehand if you don’t mind that (I know I hate looking up tutorials myself).

Nowadays there are also so many casual chill guilds in MMOs that specifically gather players who play 2h a week, go very slow, help out with all sorts of content and such, try to look for and join one.

The only aspect of group content I dislike is the potential of future lockout due to extremely low engagement. In those cases games must keep some incentives for all sorts of players to continue replaying old content regardless of whether or not they need anything from that specific instance.

In FF14, it tells you if it’s someone’s first time, so for big setpieces, there’s a culture of “let the newbie take the lead and do all the cool stuff.” I’ve seen everyone like stand beside the interactables and pose, too, so they know where they have to go. I absolutely don’t mind waiting for a newbie and letting them get the full experience.

But then, they’ve also gotten better about not making it, like, 20-minute unskippable cutscenes, and weaving it better into the gameplay so the people coming back have less waiting around to do.