Quote Originally Posted by AnimaAnimus View Post
Then the solution is to turn UP the difficulty, not lock other players out. Its an MMO, community interaction should be a boon not the bane and if your game is so simple that 1 random person helping you renders it so trivial it ruins the experience, then that just means that the experience needs to change, not the people.
This oversimplifies a few things. Firstly an MMO doesn't have to give up a single player experience entirely. I personally think everything should be approachable from a cooperative standpoint but if a player seeks a solo challenge, that isn't at odds with MMO design. Secondly it's more than a case of just 1 random player showing up, as with newly released quests there can be many more people around. Level disparity also plays a role as no amount of difficulty is going to balance a level 50 fight to a level 80 character. The difference in stats is so great that if the level 80 isn't able to trivialize the fight, then a level 50 might as well not even bother.

The only simple answer I see is just letting people isolate themselves. I'm sure it would only be a minority doing this anyway. There are some other ways around the problem, but they involve change the structure of the game. That's not something I find necessarily unwelcome, but it seems excessive just for this issue.