The Daily Grind: Would you play a single-player version?

Whether we mean to or not, we get pretty invested in the online worlds we inhabit. It's a natural step to go from a single-player setting that's already gotten our emotional investment to a larger one (as proven by, oh, some game or another), but oddly the reverse happens far less often. We only occasionally see a game that takes the setting of an MMO and uses it as the basis for one person's adventure. This despite the fact that we're usually more attached to our characters than we are in a single-player game, since our avatars in an MMO are defined entirely by us.

Of course, part of this is the narrowing of scope, and part of it is the difficulty of marketing to people that they can take a break from their characters online to play the exact same character offline. But for the times when you don't want to log in and deal with assembling a group or competition for farming or any of the slings and arrows of playing online, it could be a nice diversion. What do you think? Would you like to have a single-player game based off of your MMO of choice, or would you rather that the online games you enjoy not creep into your single-player time?

Reader Comments (21)

If it were a directed single player experience with a solid
beginning, middle, and end I would. WoW could lend itself well to an Elder Scrolls style experience. Large world, big main storyline, and tons of side quests. The writing quality would need to be beefed up and
use voice overs instead of text. But a single player component of MMOs using the same mechanics could work.

I would also like one that uses a 5 man party going through the story with each player being able to make decisions in dialogue and direction of the story based on individual actions.

WoW isn't single player? Could have fooled me... :)

In my opinion, with modern MMOs focusing so much on solo content, they might as well be single player with a chat room slapped on it for sharing Chuck Norris jokes while playing "alone together".

that is called guildwars, just go out in the world with hired npcs to fill your group

In short, yes. I am a solo player at heart anyway - I think EVE Online would make a great solo space game with some edits, which could be played more casually. If it has a console then as well, we could finally cheat to our heart's content and blast everything that moves with a doomsday.

I typically solo or play with my kids in MMOs, but like being in Guilds and chatting with people onlline. In WoW the dungeon finder fixes my apprehension to forming parties.

Would I play a single player version of them? Perhaps some. Games like Dragon Age or Borderlands can be played solo. But co-op is always better.

In general; yes - I miss strong single-playing RPGs (I do not consider FPSs RPGs, so pretty much Dragon Age is the only recent one for me).

I'd certainly at least try single-player versions.

Yeah, I like that idea. A good, solid single player LoTRO RPG wold be cool. If they used the same audio/visual assets to make it, and have systems that tied in with teh online version too, it'd be great. Perhaps in this way we could play the 'proper' characters - Frodo, Sam, Gandalf etc in a single player game.

I couldn't agree more on that one! As much as I play LOTRO, yeah, finally 65!, a single player version would be kinda fun. With a nice coop ability though if I wanted. Speaking of which, why the hell doesn't Dragon-Age have a coop? GRRR!!!

Isn't most of those recently launched MMOs running as single player with co-op?Dragon Age is far much better than many so called MMO fortunately.

Yes, Sometimes I just don't want to be bothered by people and freinds. Also I like having an offline version for when the game is down, that way I can still play it. And that's why I I'd rather not have just internet connected games only.

I play single player games for one reason only: the story. If they create a single player game based off a MMO and the story is good, then I will play it. I will not play it if I have to grind for hours and hours like a MMO though.

Probably not for most of them for me. Which is strange considering I prefer to solo all content until max level, including PvP. I like having other people around, I just don't like interacting with them. Oh snap comment sections like this are perfect for me!

Part of the draw of MMO's to me, even though I play them as a single player, is the ability to play them multiplayer when I feel like it. I can't really think of any MMO's that, if no one else was there, I would still feel like playing. A large part of MMO's is the talking to other people even while you grind on something otherwise boring.

A single player version of Final Fantasy XI!? What sort of blasphemy do you speak of!

FFXII was actually a pretty good single player interpretation of XI.

No.

I would love to play a single player EQ2, and were they to offer it, I would gladly buy it and play it.

Now, that being said, as it stands there's *plenty* of single player content already on EQ2. The developers (thankfully) realized that there's lots of people who are either going to play solo by choice, or because they can't always get a group, so there's lots of quests, quest chains and mobs that can be solo'ed.. On a non-PVP server, one can happily play for quite a long time by themselves. On a PvP server, though, you can forget it because you're going to get rolled every 5 minutes, so it's pointless to even try.

Yep... that is for sure.

I like this idea, think of it like this.

You're an agent on the trail of a villan of some sort. You have to track them down or even go undercover to find them and catch them before they hatch their nefarious plan.

If as part of your investigation you had the option to go underground as it were and effectively offline then it gives you the freedom from the social obligations that come with mmos.

Additionally, if handled ocrrectly the meta game could track your progress and tie it in with a chosen adversery (player) and give you a hell of a build up to a confrontation that would be superior and more dynamic then you're atypical NPC boss.

This is ofcourse just a single idea for a fairly specialised role but the idea has many potential opportunities to expand a mmo in ways.

I'd really like to see all MMO makers set up their games with a single-player / multiplayer mode. That way, if the MMO thing doesn't work out, we can still play the friggin' game we paid for. With multiplayer, we can play with our friends and guildmates.

And the game company still has a product to sell even if it can't afford to run servers, so win for everyone. Maybe in the future they'd even be able to light up servers, who knows? But the possibility would be there, and they'd have a known player base to help them get funding.

Or maybe they'd simply sell it single/multiplayer at first and use the sales to determine whether they can go MMO with it. Lot of options....

There are already a ton of so-called MMO's that are in fact single-player games with multiplayer features.

This would just be the next logical step, MMO's degrading into truly single player games while the single players games pretend to be MMO's, they'll meet in the middle & leave players of actual massively multiplayer games out in the cold with little or nothing to play except the dinosaur games still on life support, because their pitifully insignificant dollars pale in comparison to the mass appeal of the single player gaming masses.

MMO's, were they too far ahead of their time ? for the masses I think that's a yes.

Only if I liked the lore/gameworld and the single player version had a good story. I'd play a single player EverQuest RPG but not a Vanguard one. I enjoyed Warcrafts 1-3 more than WoW, gameplay-wise and story-wise.

More interesting to me are the MMOs that I wished had been single-player games instead of MMOs - Auto Assault was horrid as a MMO (not much reason for teaming/community, lacked depth, lacked tactical PvP), but the in-car PvE gameplay was fun in short bursts and the lore was decent - and Pirates of the Burning Sea was tons of fun in sea battles, but the land sections, sailing around the ocean map and the economy were all tedious/dull - both of those MMOs would have been better as a single player game (perhaps with the option of online multiplayer battles in the case of PotBS, unlocking ships like you unlock gear in multiplayer FPS games).

| 1 | 2 |

The Daily Grind: Would you play a single-player version?

Reader Comments (21)

Posted: Feb 8th 2010 8:10AM LaughingTarget said

Posted: Feb 8th 2010 8:22AM Jhaer said

Posted: Feb 8th 2010 5:52PM alucard3000 said

Posted: Feb 8th 2010 9:08AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Feb 8th 2010 9:17AM monkeybones said

Posted: Feb 8th 2010 9:20AM Minofan said

Posted: Feb 8th 2010 10:25AM pcgneurotic said

Posted: Feb 8th 2010 12:20PM mrdrum81 said

Posted: Feb 8th 2010 10:30AM Valdur said

Posted: Feb 8th 2010 10:52AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Feb 8th 2010 11:30AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Feb 8th 2010 12:53PM Averice said

Posted: Feb 8th 2010 12:58PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Feb 8th 2010 1:07PM Tizmah said

Posted: Feb 8th 2010 2:00PM pc800 said

Posted: Feb 8th 2010 2:11PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Feb 8th 2010 5:38PM Amblin said

Posted: Feb 8th 2010 6:08PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Feb 8th 2010 8:25PM SkuzBukit said

Posted: Feb 8th 2010 9:35PM Valdamar said

Info

Description

MSRP

Release Date

Genre

Developer

Publisher

Rating

Breaking News

WoW loses another 100,000 subscribers

Featured Stories

The Mog Log: Who mourns for Eorzea?

The Tattered Notebook: Build a better character with EQ2U

The Road to Mordor: Six wonders of the newbie world

The most popular postsin the last 7 days

Engadget

Joystiq

WoW

TUAW

The most popular posts
in the last 7 days