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Old Republic developer advocates Solo Play in MMOs

Gamespot today posted a synopsis of a lecture given by The Old Republic developer Damion Schubert discussing reason why some players choose to play alone and the need to develop content for this demographic of the MMO Community.

Schubert specified that it is "unacceptable" to make an MMO game today that doesn't have "significant chunk of gameplay" accessible to the solo player. He didn't suggest that everything be accessible to those playing alone, just that there needs to be something for all the different types of solitary gamers.


The article is a great read and gives a bit of insight as to why The Old Republic focuses so much on the story of each individual player.

Comments

  • keroko's avatar
    Jawa Trader
    • Posts: 82
    #2 keroko Posted 9/20/2009 8:06:59 AM
    And reversibly, the problem with enforcing too much group play will result in a lot of the content only being viewed by a small percentage of the players, which is a bad thing many ways as well. I recall a World of Warcraft dev once saying "Only ten percent of our players get to see the new content." and he thought it was a shame that all that content he and his team spend months working went unseen by many.

    In a 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' situation, do you please the minority that will group anyway, or the majority that likes to have a choice?
  • Zenkei's avatar
    • Posts: 0
    #1 Zenkei Posted 9/19/2009 8:01:20 PM
    The only problem with too much solo play is that it doesn't encourage cooperation, which is a key element of an MMO. Without it, the game feels less like a community and more like a single player RPG that other people happen to talk to you in.
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