Quote Originally Posted by Supersnow845 View Post
You have to consider what is a core feature of a genre and what isn’t. Glamour isn’t a core feature of an MMO, neither is legacy’s garbage anima system.

You can’t “QOL” your way out of the core features of a game, like what if I sucked at using a gun or was afraid of guns, should I ask to “QOL” guns out of a first person shooter game? No of course not because that’s a core facet of the game
Okay, so, if you want a real answer? When I started playing MMOs there weren't raids, or instanced dungeons, or a lot of the things that are given as staples of the genre these days. The appeal of an MMO (which, by the way, wasn't even what they were called back then) was never about those things, because they didn't exist. The appeal was just (as IceEyes stated very eloquently above me) that you got to roam around a world with a bunch of other people in it.

That's it. That's the appeal. That's the reason for playing.

I'm fine with other people being around. I'm fine with other people raiding. I'm fine with other people having a team of 20 moustached Roegadyn in their underpants doing squats in Limsa. It's all good stuff!

Now, if I can beat up a boss WITH my wife and WITHOUT LeetDude SixTeeNine whispering me to kill myself for wasting 3 minutes and 12 seconds of his valuable raiding time because I fat-fingered my keyboard at the exact wrong moment? That'd be a really nice quality-of-life addition to the game for me and, I'm sure, for a lot of others.

This idea that forced multiplayer combat is somehow this unassailable element of the genre without which the entire game would collapse is just a very old-fashioned genre-specific viewpoint. It never used to be - it was optional, and for bragging rights only.

I think it's an important option to have for people who like that sort of thing, don't get me wrong - but saying that it's "what I signed up for" is way off the mark.