And I think that’s fine! I was actually thinking of asking this very thing - are people here for the RPG, mounts, transmogs and would they want to play if there were nobody else here? I’m sure there would be a variety of answers and nuance to them.
I dunno if we’re playing the same game, but I have zero issue finding people in ESO. There’s a tank shortage just like in WoW, so group queues are about just as long. I’m in 4 different guilds and all of them have 200-300+ members with 30+ on pretty much all the time. Even right now in non peak hours my smallest guild (130-ish) has 14 people on.
No.
I think it undermines the most important element of MMORPGs which is grouping.
And I say that as a solo player.
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I’m more of an old school type of MMO player from the late 90s. I don’t mind there being solo content but I think the central purpose of the genre is group play. I have watched over the years as a causal movement has taken a hold of the genre. I don’t mean to say all of them but there are a lot of them that have been pushing a certain type of agenda over the years. They have been pushing to have the genre change to a complete solo type of play online.
As one person once told me, it’s like being at the mall with all the people but not talking to or doing anything with the other people. They just want to be around the other people. They have been pushing to make 100% of the content soloable. Also they often push to make the content mind numbing easy to complete. Easy quests, easy dungeons, easy terrain to transverse. Any sort of resistance has them coming to the game forums in droves to complain. They also want access to end game hard mode gear without putting forth the effort as well. They also want the content short and fast so they can complete it quickly. The companies have catered to them by changing the genre over the years trying to appease both groups…dedicated players and casuals.
I have always felt that if you want a solo experience that there is plenty of offline games to sate your appetite. I feel they have pretty much destroyed what the genre was intended to be in the early 2000s and that we are still sliding. It’s like rolling up to Taco Bell and then getting pissed that they don’t serve hamburgers. I say gtfo and go to a burger restaurant if that is what you want.
I haven’t played ESO since 2017. Is it still like this?
Every quest line has 3-6 quests. Only the last one drops anything. The last one is 4 times harder than any of the others. So you can solo all the quests except the last one. And the last one is often inside an instance, so it is hard to group with strangers for it. It was like this at every level from 1 to 25. I finally quit the game out of frustration. I was spending most of my time trying to find someone to group with.
If this companion is powerful enough, it might solve that problem. Or if there was something like LFG to find people easier, it would also solve it. The game might be playable again.
I don’t know if it was like this, I’ve played since launch and I don’t recall this issue. But if it was an issue and I just don’t remember, it certainly isn’t now. My only real criticism for ESO is how laughably easy questing and overworld content is. You can literally solo everything quest/overworld wise nekked with no gear and not die.
They also scaled and opened the entire world so you can go anywhere right out of the gate with no restrictions. It might have been this scaling that made it easier, but even the bosses in Delves you can solo wearing nothing. And while Delves are instanced, they aren’t group content, its still open overworld content. You go in one and there will be other people in there too.
There is a dungeon finder in ESO now too, added pretty early on, functions the same as WoW.
except there is no burger restaurant only sandwich restaurants.
Yea there is. There are a ton of solo offline games with fantastic stories and better scripted worlds so cater to solo players. I’m playing a couple of them currently on my PS4 that I picked up for dirt cheap.
The original MSQ had a dungeon at the end, but you aren’t required to complete (or even start) those quests anymore. Each starting zone (and newer zones) has an MSQ - you don’t have to finish them either. Those don’t end in a private dungeon, but may involve public delves. These can be tough if you are alone and not max level so a companion would help there, but once you reach max (plus about 30-60 CP) then you are likely fine on your own. If you are having issues you can send out a shout and others in the delve will likely help.
I mainly play ESO during an event because there are more people on. Many are just doing the event content, but they are more likely to be running through public delves or world bosses as well. It’s just much more active during these.
None of them are MMOs though.
There is a difference. I’ve played Divinity, Skyrim, etc and I love them don’t get me wrong. And their stories are a lot better than the average MMO. But they aren’t the same. They don’t play the same, or feel the same.
For me personally, I do enjoy occasionally grouping up for stuff. With my friends, or guild mates I’ve come to know. But I like doing it at my speed, and at my skill level.
I play WoW, or ESO, instead of single player RPGs, because they are different. Even if I am running around questing alone, I don’t feel alone. I feel like I am in a populated world. And I enjoy the occasional contact with other people. Like being out questing, seeing someone struggling and helping them out. Or in ESO doing the dolmens or storms that pop up randomly and people come running to help bring them down together. No grouping required, no voice chat or text, just people coming together to do stuff, then going their own way.
Sometimes I want to grab a couple friends and do a dungeon, or maybe my guild might be asking if anyone wants to do X and I’ll feel up to it that day, or have time at that moment, and will join. Other times I just want to play alone. Or maybe I need the gloves for my set from X dungeon but no one is on to do it, or no one else needs that dungeon, and its just nice to be able to do it myself.
I guess I just don’t understand why people are so vehemently against this kind of playstyle. Why people are so angry and bothered about the idea of people able to play an MMO solo. If the content you like to do, heroic/mythic dungeons and raids can still be done as a group, and you can still play and enjoy it the way you want to as a group, why do people get so upset and angry if other people can enjoy similar content by themselves?
I just struggle to understand why people get so angry about other people doing/enjoying things differently than they do, especially when it doesn’t effect them or stop them from enjoying it that way. Not just in games but in everything. I see this everywhere. Why are people so upset that other people do/want/think/enjoy things differently?
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I think this would be fun and the “companions” should be your alts. While a good group of real people is my first choice, this is not always readily available and a well-implemented system like this could help fix the “wait 15 minutes to play” problem.
That said, assuming the companions filled slots at about the same power and skill level as your main, I still predict lots of complaints from people who were maybe more looking to be carried than to have slots filled.
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My suggestion for this has been alts, as a couple of others have mentioned. Load in an alt and let the AI handle their actions. If you do this I think they should get a small amount of Xps as well.
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I’ve never heard of this, but now I WANT IT!
It should be alts, then my wife and I could use our alts to run dungeons, that would be amazing!
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Kind of my thinking too, a small group of buddies or a regular gaming group that someone cannot make that night could still do their favorite content.
you can even romance some of them in SWTOR which is a fun little add in for those that like to rpg their mmo. lol I’ve been enjoying, it would be a neat add in to wow.
Maybe the things you described don’t make everyone feel less alone. So seeing people running around doing their own thing? This is the MMO equivalent to people watching at the mall. I am sure people go to malls for this, but it’s not something I enjoy.
I do my share of solo stuff, but mainly gathering for crafting and daily quests or WQ’s. I probably don’t enjoy Torghast partially because of my dislike for solo content - and if people can do it solo they will rather than try to find a time to team up with friends or guildies. Many of us were playing RPG’s before WoW was released and this was our way to play them with friends and possibly make more friends.
And we aren’t necessarily angry, just disappointed since we realize we won’t be enjoying the game much longer if it continues this way. Just because some of us dislike this change doesn’t make us “angry”.
I will say in ESO I don’t feel as alone for the reasons you state, but I only play during events. In Wow - someone sends out a shout that a rare is up. You run over and they have already pulled it and you’re lucky if you get a hit in. That rarely happens with ESO world events since a solo person pulling it will likely die. 
In addition to the “friends”, its adds characters you actually give a damn about and some pretty cool storylines. Lots of reasons this is good.
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They had a bit more info on this in the twitch stream yesterday.
There will be 2 options to unlock (you can unlock both I think but can only use one at a time).
You can level them up, and set their abilities. They’ll have a priority rotation (they will try to use ability 1, if they can’t (its on cooldown) they use ability 2, and so on. I’ll be interested to see how this works out.
They said they would not function in PVP or in Solo Arenas (they are challenging solo-dungeons). That leaves the assumption that they will function in all other PVE content.
(And there’s some other stuff like how they react to your actions in game, the more noble of the two will get upset with you if you steal/pickpocket/murder etc, and they will have stories associated with them and quests and stuff and you’ll get to know them, its super neat I’m excited for it but I don’t want to gush too much as this is WoW forum not ESO forum lol)
I am honestly not sure how well this will work for the really hard content like veteran trials or dungeons, due to mechanics. But I think for an equivalent to WoW this would function like - say you and a couple friends want to do a heroic dungeon, instead of pugging you can set one of your companions to tank and one to healer and go knock out the dungeon.
Likewise if a group wanted to do a 10 man raid, you’d just need 5 people and your companions.
I’m assuming that companions would ignore mechanics to a degree. Since I don’t think the AI will be there for them to do things like stay out of bad or avoid a one-shot mechanic, or pick up/interact with something (like getting a buff and standing on a rune or something). So either the real players would need to handle all such mechanics, or they’d need different versions of some fights when using companions.
I honestly think this could be great for WoW, at least for normal/heroic dungeons and normal raids, maybe not heroic raids and up or mythic dungeons (maybe low mythics, maybe just M0 or +2, easy ones).
This would allow more casual players to complete quests that require dungeons/raids with just some close friends or a couple guild mates. It could also help the casual crowd to work on gear by letting them get the basic M0 or +2 stuff and then use the valor system to upgrade it.
I really think WoW should consider it. I think as long as it doesn’t allow people to do the really challenging stuff that requires skill and teamwork like +15 mythics or heroic/mythic raiding, then I really don’t see any issue with it. I love playing with just a small group of friends, and being able to do a normal raid with a few friends and our companions would be…amazing. I think a whole lot more people would raid. And I think it would also give people some venue to learn the fights and mechanics and get better as a result and maybe push themselves into the legit high end raiding scene.
It think it might also help with queues, as DPS wont have to wait in hour long queues just to get a quick dungeon in for a drop or some valor.
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Its alled multiboxing. You can also just do it with two laptops and not hardware or software. Just use easy rotations for the most part and you. An play two at once.
I mean… we kinda had this in WoD when you were able to set a follower as a bodyguard and they would accompany you into the world to do quests and what not with you. They even leveled up with xp and gained strength from you increasing their item level. As well as unlocked new abilities from their levels with you. I would’ve loved for them to join us in dungeons, that would’ve been awesome.
I personally would love a system like that added into the game. But they are going to need to give me a garrison/ship/homebase of some kind in Azeroth so I can manage my followers and companions.
Honestly with the amount of crap I’ve done for the horde me not having a keep or at least a galleon boat / airship for myself is a bit ridiculous.
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