Guild Wars 2

This thought occurs to me often. I would have to answer, I do. I play MMO’s like I’m playing a PC game. I prefer to solo. To me, it’s more challenging. It’s me against the game. I have nothing against grouping but I tend to lead by default, and that gets old. I tend to create a strong character, and know I can handle most of what we face, solo and that can lead to others feeling like dead weight. Sooooo I solo, less hassles. Not to mention I’m not looking for a date, nor do I want to hear everyone else’s problems. If I wanted reality I’d log off. LOL (I guess I don’t play well with others huh … ROFLMAO!)

I’m being honest. What do you think? Do YOU play MMO’s with a Single player game attitude?

Sometimes.. I played GW1 mostly solo, because that was a lot easier. However, I think part of the problem was I never really found a good guild in GW1. In GW2 I have a great guild and I’m much more encouraged to play with them.

Naturally, when I do dungeons and things, I often party up.

I have found myself partying up for exploring the open world too, or going through jumping puzzles. Guild Wars 2 definitely encourages social play more than Guild Wars 1 (or even WoW imo).

So my answer is both yes and no. I enjoy both and Guild Wars 2 offers both

While i might occasionally do something on my own the bulk of my playtime is spent in a group.

Yes, I usually do but do things as a group at times.

The very first MMORPG I played ( DAoC ) required a lot of team work and grouping to be successful. Some of my fondest memories of online gaming was of the time I spent in DAoC and the friendships I made.

The last 10 years has seen MMORPGs purposely make games “solo” friendly. Personally the trend to have everyone do their own thing and only occasionally grouping up, usually very briefly, has soured me on the online gaming. Perhaps it’s a backlash against “forced grouping” that drove this trend. Since it’s all about personal taste I wont argue the pros or cons about grouping vs solo play.

The only reason I’ve stuck with GW2 is because of WvWvW. Some people bemoan the “Zerg” mentality, but I personally enjoy the large scale fights and group interaction I find there.

So, in answer to your question, I don’t play MMOs with a single player mentality. Neither do I fault those that do. It’s your play time. Do what you enjoy!

I often play solo because I simply don’t have the patience to wait for a party member to do stuff.

For example, I loathe dungeons because I can often get grouped up with players who are incredibly slow to react or respond. It gets pretty frustrating.

I mostly play solo, but I always feel the need to seek interaction with other players. So I’m at my happiest doing achievements alone while chatting with people on the guild and on the map chat, occasionally stopping what I’m doing and jumping in to help someone with their dungeon/ map exploration/ event, etc.

Evon Skyfyre.9673:

I play MMO’s like I’m playing a PC game.

Aren’t most mmo’s PC games? Lol. To answer your question, no. I find myself solo a lot, but I prefer to group up when I get the chance, but only if the group is good.

Well the first MMO I played was Runescape, and I played that for several years because I didn’t know any better and my parents don’t like WoW. I never found a good group in RS, it’s mainly solo anyways. When I played WoW for a bit it was mainly just with and for my brother, hanging out a bit, but the lvl difference was there and so we didn’t do much anyways. GW2 is my first GW game, and I like it much more than RS and WoW. But I still haven’t found a good guild, nor have other friends who play GW2, so I’m stuck soloing most of the time. It’s not bad, I do like it, but why play an MMO if I’m just going to solo? That’s what Elder Scrolls is for. So I really like the idea of grouping together and making friends and exploring and questing with people, but it’s hard to find fun casual players.. especially in Anvil Rock it seems. I want to join people, but I don’t want to just group with randoms all the time..-Which I don’t really anyways..
So we’ll see, hopefully I can find some fun casual people to guild with soon. My main is 47, so I’m still a newbie with the lore and game updates and such.. But I’m open to learn with some friends.

I love playing solo sometimes when I feel like just going and punching something. I think the freedom to do both is a good thing. I am glad there exists content specific for groups, like dungeons and guild missions, but I am also glad that there is solo-friendly content like the open world.

Yep I play solo 99% of the time, more like 100% now that the rest of my guild has quit. First off I don’t really like other people and second I generally play more slowly than most people, I’ll stop to smoke a cig or get another beer pretty frequently, and I don’t like to slow people down.

Evon Skyfyre.9673:

I’m being honest. What do you think? Do YOU play MMO’s with a Single player game attitude?

MMOs? No. This game? Yes. To me the lack of a Holy Trinity ensures this game plays more like an ARPG than a traditional MMORPG.

If I can do something alone, I’ll do it. I tend not to like group-based achievements because I don’t find I can rely on others as often as I should like.

As much as I don’t want to admit it, yes I do.
I actually want to play solo at some parts of the game.
Some of it has to deal with this need to discover stuff on my own.
Also I’m not too sociable on chat when put on the spot light.

When I’ve PUG’ed for dungeons sometimes folks automatically say “get on mumble” then I feel bad when I tell them I don’t have it. It wouldn’t make sense for me to take that time to install it, find their channel, and then play only to leave that group and possibly never play alongside them again.

That’s why I usually play in roles like a healing Guardian or something where I can be in the group, kill the mobs, and they handle the higher thinking.

Most importantly I don’t want to burden people on my gaming schedule. That’s why I play alone. The times I ever group up (dungeons) I’ve found some time to squirrel away to dedicate just on that event and then I move on.

When I’m doing dailies or just faffing about I sometimes stop to take care of something at home. Then I’ll come back and continue until some other emergency needs me. I can’t ask someone to hold on and stop having fun when I have to deal with my pets or something. That isn’t fair to them.

Plus sometimes when I group folks tend to ask about builds (I hardly know what I’m doing with mine) or they like to gripe about drops or an event (which I tend to let it roll off my back and don’t care) so I don’t contribute much to conversations.

I do both — although I find myself playing for longer periods of time when playing with friends. If I’m solo, I tend to log off sooner — at least at this point when I’ve experienced a lot of the game already.

Yes, yes I do. Generally speaking I play by myself, or with my husband.

Trying to communicate what I’m doing to others that don’t know me can be difficult, since I can’t type and play and sometimes its not obvious what my goal is. It tends to slow things down significantly when you have to repeatedly stop to ‘talk’. Not to mention, I have no patience for idiots and kittenholes. It makes me miss GW1, and the guild members I had there so very much.

I mainly solo myself, but here is the thing.

There is playing in a one person RPG game and then there is playing solo in an MMORPG.

I have seen a lot of players running around like they are in a one player game. They run through mobs causing trains not respecting the other players in the game.

You must respect other peoples space be they solo or in a group. If yo do not respect them by not pulling a ton of mobs behind you then don’t expect them to respect you.

I actually don’t think I EVER partied with anyone in Guild Wars 1, but I join a party every once in awhile for dungeons/events/JP’s in Guild Wars 2. I’d say about 90% of the time, I explore, quest, and WvW by myself. What made me decide to start playing mostly by myself was the communication issues. Nearly every time I joined a group for Fractals, there would be that one guy that would not listen at all and not respond to anything I said to him, except to ask pointless questions. He would literally go and aggro every monster in the map and then come back to us to massacre us all. Another example of communication issues would be the different languages I encounter. Literally every time I ran Fractals, I would get into a group that spoke Spanish, and then they would blame me for their failures at Fractals. I couldn’t really tell what they said besides the fact that they said my name and then said bad, and I got kicked. I’m definitely not trying to be racist here, but this happened so many times that if my party speaks another language besides English, I just leave. Don’t judge me too harshly, I’m sure if this happened 50+ times to you, on the third Fractal, you’d be tired of it too. This is pretty much the reason I play solo from now on.

Yes, I solo almost anything. Stuff that can’t be solo’d…I never bother with. It’s just how I play. I join in on zergs and stuff but in that case the other players seem more like NPCs anyway, lol.

solo attitude is killing this game

Dr Ritter.1327:

solo attitude is killing this game

Interesting comment, I’ve heard the reverse a lot too. “Not enough solo content when you hit 80.. etc..” This dialogue has popped up in every mmo I’ve played actually. There is the school of thought, “If you want to play alone play a game like Skyrim..”. Actually what a lot of people want to say but ego stops them, is.. “I don’t know my class, I don’t feel like learning, just kill all the stuff we encounter, and let me grab my shinies so my guild thinks I’m uber”. Ok this is a bit exaggerated, but not entirely.

See when I started playing, you didn’t really have “Healers etc..” this type of mechanic came later. Sooo a player had to learn how to fight, heal, etc.. on their own. Another issue is to do a dungeon etc, and do it properly, you should be on vent, or something similar. Granted this game is not so complex, that exact skill chains need to be performed at the exact right time, coordinating or as I say choreographing the run is important. In other MMO’s I have played, if I played a healer, it was always a female character. Why? If the group wipes, and your healer is male, they give you non stop grief. If you’re healer is female, they say “no problem, you did your best” etc.. Much less flack is given. LOL Players looking for someone to blame is a big turn off to many and it keeps them from grouping. I like the open world way of passive grouping in GW2. Just show up, fight, grab your loot and split. Or run with the pack. You don’t need to be grouped etc.. I like this feature a lot.

I play solo 100% of the time. When I pug for dungeons, nobody talks, so it’s as if they are NPCs.

Fernling.1729:

I play solo 100% of the time. When I pug for dungeons, nobody talks, so it’s as if they are NPCs.

advertise a casual noob run – a lot of talking, explaining and laughing will need to be done
In experienced runs most people know what they’re doing. Did a noob run of cof p3 recently and had a really great time though.

I solo a lot, since I afk a lot and like to go at my own pace. There’s also no one to blame but yourself. The one thing I don’t like to group with randoms is when things go south and it must be someone’s fault. Regardless of who’s fault it is, it just makes the whole experience crappy.

This is also why I prefer large groups too, since failure there tends to result in comedy.

Though I like to do temporary teams if someone needs help doing something. That’s always fun though. Getting people in a group to mindlessly grind a dungeon? No thanks!

I solo…cause Im akwardly shy and have trouble making friends. Id be lying if I said id prefer to group up more.

I don’t really have a strong proclivity towards either option. Sometimes I prefer to go it alone and sometimes I prefer to do group activities with friends. I really don’t like doing any group content with strangers (though I suppose when you’re PUGing it’s the same as going it alone, lol.).

I like playing friends and people I come to accept. I don’t mind having other players around, it’s interesting sometimes, but mostly they’re just ambient. I rather not rely on them.

I’ve met a lot of interesting people in this game and other games like it. However the crushing majority are uninteresting, ignorant, and terrible at the game – at best . At worst they’re the kind of people I wish would simply stop existing entirely.

But hey, just like real life. Count and treasure the good ones you find as precious gems in an endless sea of fecal matter and waste, cause that’s mostly what it is.

Funny how so many people (myself included, for the records) play an online game but prefer to play solo.

Sometimes you have to… like when a Group Event pops up around some base you’re trying to use for trade or whatever. I sometimes worry though when I complete those as a ranger b/c there’s a small chance Anet could be including such outliers in their data set for PvE metrics despite the fact I see other much better classes dying to a single Veteran mob sometimes…

But that’s sometimes a good thing too to be alone for those. It’s easier to control Aggro then and bunch everything up in to one spot instead of having some n00bs fighting the mobs right next to a crucial Objective that’s getting damaged just by fighting them near it. (like when some idiot standing right in front of it aggros an Abom who goes full charge & 1-shots the entire base, LOL)

Yup. I log in everyday with a Solo Attitude. I don’t like people. I don’t have any friends that play this game. I don’t like making friends in games. I Hate talking with people, BUT I love talking to myself.

Personally It’s just me. Literally. Just. Me. Not that other person(s). I have extremely poor social skills…which why I failed my Skills for Living Class in Jr. High and I have a Very, Very, Bad attitude against the world. So…ya I’m destined to live a very short life. I’m just fine and Dandy with that.

Evon Skyfyre.9673:

What do you think? Do YOU play MMO’s with a Single player game attitude?

i think it depends on the situation.

personal story = single player attitude
group events = multi player co op
sPvP = team fortress 2 fun
guild missions = multi player co op
WvW = multi player co op pvp / battlefield 3

“Group Event” just means it will sometime take longer than a normal event.

“I make a pretty good team!”

Evon Skyfyre.9673:

Do YOU play MMO’s with a Single player game attitude?

Most definitely yes to this!

I come from a single-player background, and GW2 is the first MMO I have stuck with for more than a week or two. The main reason being is that I can solo the vast majority of the content the way I want to play it, when I want to play it.

The only time I actively group is for dungeons. I avoid most other grouping requests, particularly the random ‘ninja’ ones. In fact, I find those very rude and if someone requests more than once, I block them. If some one in map request help with something, then I will usually respond with help and might group.

I am in a casual guild and occasionally will do some content with them. Most of the time they off doing something I either don’t like to do like wvw, or don’t want to do at that time, or leveling alts and the like.

I enjoy the bi-product of an MMO. That is, I don’t neccessarily want to group or do stuff with other people but I get bored playing offline games.

The chat in LA makes me lol sometimes and I like WvW because I can jump on my thief and run solo or get on my guard and follow the zerg.

Would you call it a lean towards indirect grouping?

I play solo pretty much all the time. I don’t have any friends irl who play GW2 (or PC games for that matter as they’re all on console) except my partner, but we play on the same account as we only have one PC so we can’t play at the same time.

I like playing solo, but I would love to play more socially. I have joined guilds, but I may not have found the right one yet.

Part of what prevents me looking for people to group with is an in-built fear of not being able to pull my weight. I dislike people feeling the “need” to carry me through content, and I really hate being a burden or someone’s responsibility as I don’t want to spoil their fun.

I’m relatively new to gaming in all (about a year ago was when I really started getting into it). I’ve got a great group of friends who I play PS3 with, who I got to know via forums very well before we ever played, so I knew that the occasional area where they might need to carry me or watch my back or yell instructions would be ok by them, and they also knew that just because I couldn’t always pull off what they told me to do didn’t mean I wasn’t trying.

Sometimes I feel that in a PUG if the leader of the party tells you to do something and you don’t manage it or you get confused, they don’t always realise that you are trying – sometimes they think you just ignore them and they get frustrated. Which is entirely understandable. But until I feel I have enough of a relationship established with someone that they know I am always trying to pull my weight and am willing to learn, I am wary of joining groups.

Since I left WoW, Ive been alone in my MMO adventures. All my RL friends and gaming friends stayed in WoW or stopped playing games all together. It is difficult to get them to follow me. They have tried, got to max level and promptly went back to WoW.

So I play solo not entirely by choice but because all my gaming buds and RL buds have no interest in GW2. Also, I do not like large guilds(50+). I don’t want to be a number. I want to be part of a close knit family of 20 or 25 people. Why cant I find that? A small guild, consisting of 15-30 people that are active…meaning at any given time, 60-70% of them are online playing. I haven’t found that, so I don’t join guilds. I also stay away from guilds because I dont want to be tempted to schedule my life around guild missions. That was one of the reasons I left WoW. I know its not mandatory to participate in missions and all, but Im one of those people that if you put a dessert in front of me, I will need to eat it. Not to mention, I like to go off and do my own thing, my own direction. Sometimes a party slows me down.

Yes I prefer solo. I like the online multiplayer MMO aspects of GW2. But I prefer solo. Maybe if I could find that small, tight knit guild..I’d guild up.
(I am/was in one, but its dead).

Yes. I love the game mechanics. I could care less about teaming or guilds.

I find myself doing things solo when I can (exploration and achievement hunting mainly and sometimes solo roaming in wvw) but I do like how this game has elements of both. Doing dungeons with PUGs can be a pain but they are really fun with friends or guild members and that synergy you have when group roaming is great in WvW.

I solo or team up with my husband. I don’t mind joining up with others though.
One of the reasons I have not done any of the dungeons, because it seems to me that a lot of teams want you to fill a specific role, and as a perma-noob I am unable to fill that role effectively, and I’d rather just avoid the area as opposed to getting yelled at.

The only time I’ll group up is with dungeons or Guild Missions because I pretty much HAVE to resort to players. Otherwise WvW, alone. PvP, alone, 90% of PvE, alone. Just the way I like it lol

Dommmmmmmmmm.6984:

The only time I’ll group up is with dungeons or Guild Missions because I pretty much HAVE to resort to players. Otherwise WvW, alone. PvP, alone, 90% of PvE, alone. Just the way I like it lol

Dommmmmm.6984: sex, alone

Just Kidding !!!

But it was too good to pass up. Forgive me.

;-)

I don’t or at least I would not. I am kinda forced right now. The majority plays MMOs theses days as singleplayer rpgs with an interactive gameguide aka mapchat. It is sad.

Def a soloer … once upon a time, in Pirates of the Caribbean online (yeah, I know) and then in GW, there was a small, tight-knit group of friends I played with, but years pass, lives drift in different directions, etc.

I think the difference between something along the lines of Skyrim as opposed to GW2 is other people being around, whether you opt to interact with them or not. I’ve no qualms with helping out if someone needs a skill point, vista, a rez, or anything like that. And, at times, some of the group events can be more interesting/exciting if there are more players around getting involved.

But I don’t have to engage in that if I don’t feel the desire to. I can just wander off on my merry way and go do whatever it is I feel like doing. Have no guildies, friend list is empty, and when I log on at night, not looking to truly change that. If I happened to run into people that were like those I gamed with once upon a time, that could certainly affect my solo-pursuits, but as it stands now, I just enjoy doing my own thing.

So, reading through the posts I see a lot of ‘I like playing solo, but I like to group up as a change of pace,’ which I can go with. I’ll shamelessly throw out there, if you’re bored, feel free to wsper me. I’m relatively social, even though I generally play alone too (as previous post stated). I understand being shy, I won’t bite (unless you ask nicely).

The id’s over
<——- there.

chuckle

Evon Skyfyre.9673:

This thought occurs to me often. I would have to answer, I do. I play MMO’s like I’m playing a PC game. I prefer to solo. To me, it’s more challenging. It’s me against the game. I have nothing against grouping but I tend to lead by default, and that gets old. I tend to create a strong character, and know I can handle most of what we face, solo and that can lead to others feeling like dead weight. Sooooo I solo, less hassles. Not to mention I’m not looking for a date, nor do I want to hear everyone else’s problems. If I wanted reality I’d log off. LOL (I guess I don’t play well with others huh … ROFLMAO!)

I’m being honest. What do you think? Do YOU play MMO’s with a Single player game attitude?

Yes, and that’s only because there is no reason to group up. Unless GW2 adopts rift public group system, I won’t bother joining any group other than guild events and dungeons.

Seriously, I loved Rift’s “Join Public Group” option, such a time saver.

Thought occurs.. “I would never join any club that would have me as a member..” Groucho Marx LOL It fits me ya know lol

I tend to play single player games in a multiplayer fashion. Sure, I get yelled at a lot because most of the other people just want to play the game by themselves and do not like me being there, but I just can not stand playing single player games by myself.