To SE please read.

[Conradus]

For all of you masters of the English language who are trying to spell out what Massively Multiplayer Online means, I've got a revelation for you. No where in those words is there an indication of cooperation. Multiplayer does not equate to teaming up with other players. That's just the direction the MMORPG genre has taken over the past 15 or so years. Think back to original Ultima Online, sure there were benefits to teaming up with others to fight harder content or gank some poor noob. However, you could also go it alone, completely rogue.

I'll give one more example: Imagine someone made a Running Man style MMO game where a thousand players are trying to get to the end of a gauntlet dungeon, gladiator-style, every man for himself. This would certainly fit the criteria of Massively Multiplayer and Online, but there would be no need for a party system for it to fit that criterion.

Indeed, you could make an MMO like that. Might even be interesting. But it wouldn't be Final Fantasy. Because Final Fantasy has always, *always*, from the very first one on the Famicom to the present day, been, competely and solely, about the party. If you're not interested in the party, it's certainly your right. Nobody's going to force you to want to focus on the party. But it means that Final Fantasy isn't for you. Nothing's for everybody, and Final Fantasy is for people who are interested in the party.

[MercurialZero]

Because Final Fantasy has always, *always*, from the very first one on the Famicom to the present day, been, competely and solely, about the party. If you're not interested in the party, it's certainly your right. Nobody's going to force you to want to focus on the party. But it means that Final Fantasy isn't for you.

While Final Fantasy has always been party based, that doesn't have anything to do with my point that multiplayer doesn't equal team-oriented. Bringing up the old console RPGs seems contrary to the point you are making in that all of those games are singleplayer. Are you saying people in this game should be able to control a full party? There are clearly instances in the story of this game where your "party" is filled out by NPCs, I believe the OP is just looking for more of that type of content. The irony being the hostile responses on this thread are a perfect example of why someone might want to play alone every now and then.

[Pharazon]

snipped for posting purposes

I think the point was more about the fact that when you have an already established IP like FF, which has always been about a single player controlled party, then when you move it into the MMO genre you are simply going to replace the single player with multi-player and end up with a multi-player controlled party. Its not some grand jump in logic.

I'm not bashing on the idea of having some single player things to do but I definitely don't want to see the multi-player content at the end game which is based on the idea of multiple heroes banding together to defeat a challenge greater than themselves as individuals turned into single player content just so people can experience it.