Why I Cannot Like MMORPGs

Recently, a co-worker of mine released an article named "Why MMORPGs Will Forever Be My Favourite Game Genre", and although I'm happy for him, I'm here to be the opposition. 

One of the very first games I ever played (and promptly got addicted to) needs no introduction: World of Warcraft. For years, from World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King to World of Warcraft Mists of Pandaria, I played the game daily for hours on end. I became a walking encyclopaedia for some of the information, and wasted many an hour farming for the ever-elusive Sea Turtle (damn you!). World of Warcraft became my primary home; any minute I did not spend playing it felt like a waste. 

Come Mists of Pandaria and the dreaded daily missions, and my interest wavered (something that had begun in the time of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm); I didn't want to log in, do the same thing over and over again, and then be left with nothing to do. This drip-feed of content essentially made World of Warcraft difficult to love because I couldn't spend countless hours in my home; I took to making alts, levelling up (almost) every class to the maximum, and slowly grew bored. On the other side, I felt a form of peace outside of it, like the forced hiatus had lifted a weight off my shoulders.

Still, an itch for MMORPGs (or even MMOs in general) lurked deep inside me; I wanted to have something I could show to the world, a game to sink thousands of hours into. I played The Elder Scrolls Online, got disgustingly overpowered in Trove, and dipped my toes into FINAL FANTASY XIV, but none captured me the way World of Warcraft had — in big part because I couldn't be a gnome, but I digress.

After a while of not playing MMORPGs, I grew distant from them. World of Warcraft never got its charm back after Mists of Pandaria, and I started playing single-player titles.

Unlike World of Warcraft, where I had to deal with the constant flaming of others, racing people to rare elites, or racing people to mines that I was farming for in-game gold (because damn it, I'd be rich SOMEHOW!), single-player experiences offered me a peace of mind. If I wanted to stand in the middle of a wasteland, it didn't matter because no one would be there to kill me and spawn-camp me (no, I wasn't great at PvP). Things didn't get ridiculously expensive because other people with more time and dedication could get the better items, and, ultimately, I could experience things outside of the one singular game. Sitting through single-player title credits felt surreal for a long time because I hadn't seen one for years. Narratives that didn't include a betrayal from the Horde, Gul'dan, or Sylvanas felt immersive and fun; I cared for these characters far more than I did even my gnome that accompanied me throughout countless expansions.

The gameplay varied greatly from title to title, the story changed drastically, and I found new things to love. With each finished game (which often took me from 15–30 hours at the time), I felt accomplished. I didn't rely on teammates (like the impatient healer that pulls several groups in a dungeon and wipes the entire party), and I didn't need people to have fun. The fact that there was a community full of strangers around me became almost desolating, and I found that the emptiness of a single-player world felt fuller than countless trolls filling Azeroth.

MMORPGs take time and commitment that I no longer have to give, and overall, the experience feels emptier due to the wide amount of things to do, and the more people there were, the less accompanied I felt. Toons I walked past became seas of people I didn't care for, and characters I did like lore-wise didn't offer me a lot of connection the way single-player narratives do. MMORPGs feel full on the surface, but when delving deep, I find them to be emptier than any other single-player title I might pick up.