Do We Really Need to be Playing MMOs?

Consulting player-made resources or seeking other players’ advice is an over-tedious hurdle to circumvent when one just wants to play the game and be told straight up what to do or aim towards.

Over yonder at the GW2 reddit, some people are even of the mindset that mesmers offering free portals to jumping puzzles are cheapening the experience for others, who ought to learn how to do it for themselves. Similar expectations often exist for group-based content like dungeons or raids, where “carrying” weaker players is denigrated.

Teamwork and cooperation is a pain, coordination of maps and large player groups an exercise in frustration, and schedule matching for regular meetups a cat-herding despair. Guilds are drama magnets.

Differing expectations and poor communication between players lead to accusations of elitism and toxicity and all-around unpleasant experiences.

It seems like every potential interaction between players has a high chance of going “wrong” for at least one party, if not both.

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Lately, I’ve been playing Warframe as a solo player for at least 95% of the time (minus the time I got carried by indifferent strangers through a tactical alert).

I’ve been making a push to participate just a tad in Path of Exile’s Incursion League, or rather in its Incursion Flashback form. SSF, of course, aka Solo Self Found. (Though I am not above taking a shortcut via using other players’ advice on forum guides.)

On a whim, I decided to pick up Monster Hunter World on Steam, though I’m not actually sure when I have the time to a) clear 25gb on the hard disk in order to install it, b) and how long I will actually play it while juggling a ton of other games. The main deciding factor was me googling “Can I play Monster Hunter World solo?” and reading a number of affirmative replies that this was indeed possible and allowed by its game design.

These days, it seems like players are more likely to attack than help others anyway, which just leads to corresponding attempts by others to -avoid- player interaction like the plague.

The only group-based stuff I read where people do seem to be having positive experiences is when they are playing with a known and pre-established group of a small number of friends or family.

Maybe massively multiplayer is no longer a necessary thing.