I really hope that playing alone is decent

[Taters]

Even in my experiences in WoW, I've very rarely run across people who were being rude or disruptive. By and large, the average player was either friendly or just plain disinterested, which suits me just fine. I've even seen groups where a high level Horde character would help Alliance newbies on a trek(if they were, say, looking for a rare pet for their hunter in enemy territory) and vice versa.

[Chaos the N'wah]

For my experiences (WoW, Rift, GW 1 + 2, SWTOR, Allods, Firefall), rudeness increased the closer you got to pvp from people who are one of the following: sore losers, gankers (people who don't fight anyone their level or gear tier), or obsessive competitors/loners. PvE still has these kinds of people, but to a lesser degree and is a non-issue if you know and like everyone in your guild...or you're lucky finding PUG groups..

[Alarra]

For anyone interested, Guild Wars 2 is holding a free trial this weekend.

[LGAllastair]

*bumping this thread instead of creating a new one*

Most MMO:s require leveling your character to maxlevel and that is usually done alone. That is not what I am asking in this thread.
I intend to play the game solo. I don't mean all alone, interacting with other players in town square is nice but I want to explore the world by myself.
I want to quest and do missions on my own.

That is fine and they have confirmed there will be many explorable areas you can go on your own. Just don't expect to see all game content, but there will be things to do.

My question is: Will they will force me to play with other players?

No one will force you to do anything, your time, your money, your game.

I guess they will. Best items (except for artifacts?) will probably drop from bosses and my best guess I wont be able to solo all bosses since in fact,
it's a multi player game and I am just being stupid trying to play a multi player game as single player. However I should be able to get all best items anyway, assuming that
I learn how to craft super-mega-powerful potions which makes me super-mega-rich and then I buy all I need from other players.
but maybe it is possible to rush through most areas solo and if the best items is rewards for quests I could sneak in and clear the quest without killing? (thinking thieves guild style)
It is possible to clear Mirrors Edge without killing anyone and there is the achievement "only one bullet" in HL2, some games are just harder to play when you decide to not kill anyone.

If you're not grouping you shouldn't expect to have the best gear, simple like that. If getting the best gear solo in the game was achiavable there would be no insentive for people to join groups, it defeats the purpose in an MMO. Do you really think it is fair that organized players and guilds spend their time and dedication to set up raids and other events, organize skilled people together, practice for hours and hours to defeat the hardest content in the game or to succeed in a PvP scenario. And then someone that doesn't even bother joining a guild gets the best gear in the game just from sitting at the city for a long time? You could get the best gear in the game eventually, when everyone already has it maybe and the next patch with better gear is comming out next week.

I've decided that I will try solo even if it is almost impossible so the main question for me should me...what is best? how do I clear a quest made for a group of people?
Balance should be the key to success. Blocking (not dying), Attacking (killing). It will probably be impossible to play solo as high defense since that implies low damage output, likewise if you try the opposite.
Sneak and detect enemy should be an essential since it gives you the ability to avoid unnecessary fights. Maybe I could conjure creatures to draw away attention from me or if I'm fast enough I could just rush past the enemies.

You might be able to solo some of the group content, just don't expect to solo an entire dungeon, it is pretty much impossible when the fights are balanced around 4 players to simpy go int here alone and kill things, mechanics won't allow it.

[Melete]

I heard one of their people say in a video that drops from instances will not be shared.
So for the people who haven't played an mmo before lets say your going through in your group of 5 players. There's the Dragonknight tanking with a sword and shield. A Templar who is focused on healing mostly, with her restoration staff, and partially on bashing enemies with a mace. A Nightblade who is using his bow most of the time and dual wielding only when a foe gets in his face. Another Nightblade (judging from the stats there's going to be a lot of them) exclusively dual wielding swords. And finally a sorcerer using a destruction staff.
Now lets say they defeat one of the first bosses in a dungeon and two things drop, a restoration staff, and a sword with a cool look and stat bonuses more befitting a Nightblade.
So in World of Warcraft you would roll for these drops, and if you're below the first level cap for content then everyone would have an equal chance. So even though it should be obvious that the restoration staff should go to the Templar if she wants it, any other character could be a complete troll and roll on it, and answer "trolololol ur staphs mine!". Or even more complicated with the sword, the dragonknight might roll on it because it "completes my transmog", the bow using nightblade might argue "I use swords sometimes", and then the sword exclusively using nightblade might say "try saying that as a rogue to a hunter pre-pandaria".
But with this system everyone gets there own drops, there is no sharing, and as long as the drops everyone gets are not broadcast, then there can't be any arguing about it. I can honestly say 99% of all the player disagreements and trolling that makes people avoid random groups in mmos is now taken care of. Truly there are almost no problems with groups outside of shared drops, and the few problems there are can be solved by simply informing the person of something they might not have known before.

[Yaije]

That was in one of the more recent videos they showed. I will also point out that in your story, the night blades could be the ones tanking/healing while the dragon knight feathers things and the templar goes ginsu chef on everything.

The main thing that's been repeated (at least I think it's been mentioned in a lot of the information) is that the classes are customizable to the point where they aren't locked into a style forever. Master assassin templar going tom clancy on some dudes seems a likely possibility. I'm guessing the 'class skills' each starts with will somehow be available in some form to everyone? or at least some kind of copies of the skills.

[Anaraion]

I'm playing Star Wars: The Old Republic to see how BioWare morphed their single-player series into a themepark MMO.

Sadly SWtOR was not a theme park... in fact it barely had any end game things to do and what it did have was clearly group oriented (raids, arenas, space pvp).

I have much greater hope for ESO.

[All hail!]

It should be, but I'm wary.

[stevar]

When you read the game description you kind of see two different aspects.

A threat to the world, undeads coming ect...
>>this I think is the "solo"game part, the quest you do in your own instance of the game.

3 faction fighting for the Cyrodil throne
>>this is the multi player part.


So I assume they have been very clever, and when you enter a dungeon, it is an instance, if you enter it with a group of 4 the dungeon instance will have more ennemies than if you enter it alone.

To balance the game, I think the "best items" will be indeed hard to get, and will require several players to get it. Either to find the resources for crafting it, or the gold to buy, etc..
Yet, "nearly the best items" could be found in solo quests.

[Skrofler]

Nice guessing, but not quite right.

Cyrodiil is multiplayer PvP. Dungeons and some overland encounters are still multiplayer but strictly PvE - opposing factions can't enter your territory. Only the main quest instances are strictly solo. But dungeons does not scale with your group.
And this is not my guessing. I've been following development.

The best items (best-in-slot) will be spread out among PvE encounters, PvP rewards and crafting. At least this was the official word last summer.

[KryptonianBlood]

Even in my experiences in WoW, I've very rarely run across people who were being rude or disruptive. By and large, the average player was either friendly or just plain disinterested, which suits me just fine. I've even seen groups where a high level Horde character would help Alliance newbies on a trek(if they were, say, looking for a rare pet for their hunter in enemy territory) and vice versa.

I remember my hunter, I just had to get that black lion deep in horde territory. This Orc hunter seen what I was doing, about 5 levels stronger than me, and I had no pet since I was there to tame. He killed me everytime I spawned and wait, when my black lion finally spawned, he killed it just because he knew I had been waiting there for 6 hours to get it. I was I had played on your server. >_<


Back to the topic though, I think a lot of you may have your hopes set a bit high. The big major storyline quests in most MMO's are designed for group play. Most single player content is usually simple fetch quests. Most effort regarding dialogue and such is usually found in dungeons/raid areas, which cannot really be done alone unless your very over-leveled. Traveling to areas outside your own faction, if its anything like other theme-park mmo's, will likley mean dying...A LOT. Actually going into a city outside your faction? Certain death.


I understand they said you can travel anywhere, and technically that is true in WOW for example too, but its just non-stop dying unless your max level or near it. This is a themepark MMO, not a sandbox MMO like Everquest or EVE (both awesome if you like exploring) so I would suggest some of you try out games like WOW and RIFT, both of which offer trial versions, if you want to get an idea of what themepark mmo's are. Seeing as ES:O is the same genre, things theoretically will very likley work similarly.

But who knows, perhaps they have found some solution to allow you to explore other factions without dying, but I cant imagine how they could implement that without making it far to easy to gank other players.