Single-Playing WoW and the State of Online Multiplayer

 So, I have a confession.

And it feels weird that it's a confession and not just a statement of fact, because I'm actually not doing anything wrong.

I basically play WoW solo these days. On occasion, my best friend, who has been playing just about as long as I have, will have me grab a character (usually one of my tanks) to run a Mythic Plus dungeon. But for me, my focus these days has really been on doing things on my own. Solo play. Delves are truly my endgame.

And I think I was always inclined to play this way. Back when hitting level 30 was kind of a big deal, I really didn't even try to find groups for dungeons until I was level 30, or even level 40. I remember eventually figuring out how to look for groups in trade chat (this was before the Group Finder was implemented). And yeah, by the time the Group Finder was implemented in I believe 3.3, I got into a habit of running a bunch of dungeons on all of my characters each week. I've also got to say that the experience of running dungeons back then was wild. When my Troll Mage hit level 80 and geared up just high enough to qualify for a heroic dungeon, I came in understanding that, yes, I'd be sort of getting carried, but by that point in the expansion, these dungeons weren't really a challenge for established max-level characters, with most clears taking under ten minutes. But the players in that group, whether because they resented me for being just barely at the gearing minimum or because they were just assholes, decided to spend the dungeon getting me killed, the Hunter misdirecting enemies to my squishy Mage, and eventually just kicking me as they raced through the dungeon while I was running back as a ghost. Yes, it's been like 16 years since that happened, and yes, I'm still mad.

Now, I think perhaps because the WoW playerbase has gotten older, my experience with them in more recent years has been less toxic, the people less angry and aggressive, more mellow and cooperative. But it's still frustrating sometimes. Just a couple weeks ago, I was brought in for a Mythic Plus Windrunner Spire run. It didn't go wonderfully - we certainly didn't beat the timer. And one of the players claimed they didn't have enough gold to repair their gear, so my friend gave him what he claimed he needed, before that player pretty swiftly "disconnected" and didn't log back in. We were forced to finish the dungeon with four of us, and it was pretty clear the guy had been scamming my friend. A bizarre thing to scam a fellow player for, given that a thousand gold at this stage of WoW's lifespan is a pathetically small amount - I think I got 18k off of a weekly quest on one of my characters the other day.

But it left a sour taste in my mouth.

I think the implementation of Delves is a recognition of the fact that sometimes, playing with others isn't so fun. WoW's an MMO, built on the very premise that it's cool to be in a game where there are tons of other players also playing. But especially given the game's longevity, some of us older players have lost patience over time for dealing with other players' crap.

Yes, this post is partially about The Duskbloods. I saw a Blue Sky post by Jacob Geller, famed video game video essayist, saying "Sometimes I feel the potential of multiplayer is more exciting as a game design concept than it is to actually play." And I feel that. I think there's often talk about how being with other players can lead you down unexpected and interesting roads - you can't predict what is going to happen because other players will surprise you.

It is, thus, kind of funny that a really refined multiplayer game, like WoW, works really hard to funnel that experience into something predictable. If you're running a dungeon, everything works best if the players are acting in clearly prescribed ways. If I'm your tank, you want me pulling groups carefully, positioning them so that you're not fighting with me to max your DPS. The best players to play with are the ones whose actions you can predict, and so as a player, I aspire to be very predictable to my fellow players. That's how we win. That's how we overcome our challenges.

Back during Wrath, when my guild (which is basically a ghost town these days, probably in part due to my lack of enthusiasm to organize raids, a role I fell into as our guild's most consistently playing tank after our original guildleader quit WoW) was running Naxxramas (well past the point when it was "the current raid," but back then they didn't have this idea of seasonal catch-ups, so it was still reasonable to try to progress through to earn gear that would get us into Ulduar,) we were fighting Heigan the Unclean, with his infamous "safety dance." The funny thing is that I think that mechanic is actually not terribly hard with a modern computer, but back then, there was enough lag that you really needed to anticipate the slime waves well in advance. We were, I think, doing it on 25-player mode, and about 75% of the way into the fight, all but me (protection paladin,) and a shadow priest and a holy paladin were dead. The three of us performed that safety dance for 35 full minutes, clinching victory.

It was unexpected. It was a legendary moment. It might have been a bit boring for the rest of the group (though they were cheering us on in TeamSpeak). But the design of the game these days wouldn't allow that. If that many DPS were down, there would be an enrage timer that would end the fight.

Multiplayer games promise endless predictability, but multiplayer game design requires that the possibilities become narrow enough that the game retains coherence.

Game companies have been pushing online multiplayer a lot in the past decade or so. We've even seen marketing efforts to promote it as a superior way of gaming (I can't remember if it was EA or Ubisoft or one of these big game companies people generally dislike, but there was a tweet or something that was like "He's a ten, but only plays single-player games," which, frankly, I think was part of a corporate psy-op.

I actually don't really understand how the money of it all works: WoW obviously is incentivized to keep people playing because it's a subscription-based service. But I know a lot of these games are still ones you just buy once, so I don't totally understand why this business model would be so much more lucrative.

Anyway, the fact that WoW is accommodating this style of play I think speaks to a broader desire for a calm and private gaming experience. You could argue that this is WoW trying to be everything to everyone (remember how they implemented basically Pokemon back in Mists of Pandaria, which they've only just stopped adding onto?) but I will say, after almost twenty years in this game, I have sentimental attachments to it and my characters. I imagine one day my WoW characters will, inevitably, be packed away in Stormwind or Orgrimmar or their houses to gather dust forever, but it's nice to be able to keep playing the game I started halfway through college, experiencing its story and its thrills, even as my appetite for playing with friends is satisfied far more effectively by my D&D games.