Single Player MMOs

Posted by Stropp on February 1, 2008

Yesterday, Tobold asked the question, So would you buy single-player WoW?

It’s an interesting question, especially for someone like myself who tends to focus on single player activities. That doesn’t mean that I don’t group up, or dislike grouping. Some of the most fun I’ve had in the game has been in groups, instances, and raids. For that matter, some of the worst moments I’ve had in MMOs have been in groups, instances, and raids.

Still, I enjoy grouping up when I am in the mood for it.

But a single player World of Warcraft?

I’m not entirely sure it would be fun.

For one thing, the entire design of the game, from quests to grinding is designed to take place in a huge populated, alive world. That’s one of the things that makes a MMO different from a single player game.

The first game I bought for my XBox 360 was Oblivion. I’d played some Morrowind previously, so I knew what to expect, and I was not disappointed. Oblivion was a big huge beautifully thought out world. It was full of NPCs that walked around, shut their doors at night, and had chats with each other. They even reacted to your presence. It was a living world.

There were quests everywhere. Quests out the wahzoo, and I did heaps of them. When I got a bit bored, I practiced my alchemy, or I got to raising my skill with a bow by conjuring skeletons and plinking at them. It was a very full game. It was an excellent game.

But Oblivion felt empty.

There was no one begging for gold, following me around until I put them on ignore. No one spamming the general channel trying to sell something for twice it’s value, or asking for a port to wherever. No guild chat with the guildies giving each other a hard time. No Chuck Norris Barrens chat.

I remember thinking how much better this game would have been as a MMORPG, and after a while I got bored and stopped playing. I did have my usual altitis and created a number of different archetypes, but the game just felt empty.

Perhaps I’ve just spent too much time in massive online games. I didn’t have this problem before I logged in to Asheron’s Call for the first time. I think that I’m used to the human activity around me when I’m selling of trash loot, or in the Auction House. It’s just cool to be flying over the landscape and see another player hurrying towards a destination below me.

I now wonder if perhaps MMOs have ruined me for single player games. I did truly enjoy Mass Effect, so maybe that’s not entirely correct. A superb single player RPG might capture my attention and keep it. But I think it would have to be superb, I’ve tried to play a couple of single player RPGs over the last year or two and just haven’t got into them.

As for Tobolds question. Would I buy World of Warcraft as a single player game? Nope. I wouldn’t buy it. I think it would just be a big empty World of Warcraft without the human factor.

What do you think?

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