Why do people want solo play in an MMORPG?

[ZakarnRosewood]

Its not the playing in a party or a group I dont like. Its the mentality of most of the people in a random group and the waiting literally for hours for a party just to progress your character, (these can change if you join a LS/FC and get to know people). Like others have mentioned, Some of us have kids (I have 4), household duties to do, might have interruptions, and these things are "intolerable" in party play so its nice to be able to pop in when you have some downtime, Progress your character a little so you don't lag woefully behind, be able to duck out to deal with certain things, then spend your day off going hardcore with the rest of the LS.

I honestly must apologize that for myself, and those like me, I do want to be able to play solo for SOME things. I want the option to be able to pop on with rested exp, pound out a few levequests, gain a level then log off, knowing that I can just go do it. But I also want group things that we need to do to progress. There needs to be a balance. Video Games made it big because of the people who grew up in the 80's and 90's. 30 years later, many of us still enjoy games but lack the situations that allow us to sit there for hours on end every day.

My biggest beef with party play that i've experienced is for the most part other players would rather berate you then assist you. If you want to make more people desire the party aspect of a game you need to make it more appealing, but that onus is on the individual themselves. For every 10 nice players you run into there's still that one asshat talking shit that turns people off. Unfortunately there is no way to control that effectively, yet....

The tone of the OP says to me that people like me are not welcome. "Just go play offline and leave the MMO to the elite. We need a challenge and want to play with huge groups but only if you know what you are doing. We wont have these things if you insist on whining for the ability to play solo, even to a point. Solo players ruined this genre." This may be over exaggerating the actual OP but the sentiment is one i see expressed a lot when this topic is brought up.

[Starlord]

The tone of the OP says to me that people like me are not welcome. "Just go play offline and leave the MMO to the elite. We need a challenge and want to play with huge groups but only if you know what you are doing. We wont have these things if you insist on whining for the ability to play solo, even to a point. Solo players ruined this genre." This may be over exaggerating the actual OP but the sentiment is one i see expressed a lot when this topic is brought up.

No, I would like to have a balance of group and solo play. ( even I want to solo from time to time). I just don't want the same thing happening, where in 1.0 all I ever did majority of the time was solo ( till Primals and Dungeons came along) but even that doing that 50 times over got really old really fast. The content was hella fun, but repeating the same things throughout the year did get boring. ( and I actually did stop for 2 weeks at 1 point because of the repetitiveness.)

[ZakarnRosewood]

No, I would like to have a balance of group and solo play. ( even I want to solo from time to time). I just don't want the same thing happening, where in 1.0 all I ever did majority of the time was solo ( till Primals and Dungeons came along) but even that doing that 50 times over got really old really fast. The content was hella fun, but repeating the same things throughout the year did get boring. ( and I actually did stop for 2 weeks at 1 point because of the repetitiveness.)

I really think people should stop referring to 1.0 as a meter stick. It was a flop from the start, SE acknowledged that and even restructured their teams then rebuilt the game. The leveling curve was ridiculous in 1.0, so was some of the lame dialogue, and poor quest objectives. But they still managed to take that broken POS and make it playable by the end. I said it in another post but they did all this while rebuilding, they really could/should have just closed it down to focus on the rebuild instead of wasting resources on a version of the game that will be completely scrapped.

I too want a balance, and i think we will get it. In most RPG's quests, for the most part, guide you though the mechanics of a game as much as they guide you through the story. Take "Ni No Kuni" the quests and such gradually (maybe a little slow) walk you through all the features of playing. I can imagine ARR doing something like this. Taking us solo up to a point, showing us then how to change jobs, how to cross skill, guide us to a dungeon, explain how to gather groups, a quest to show us how FATE works, etc and so on until we are near end game where most quests require a group or at least a light party to complete.

Not all quests have to be solo quests, correct? That one thought right there should ease the worries of many who are opposed to the quests...