As a lot of other people have the past week, I've been trying to survive in a land of barbarians. One thing that struck me about the low-level game is how much of it is spent in what is essentially a single-player game.

This week, let's discuss that design decision.

Now, I've said before that a bit of grouping-required content in an MMO doesn't make me weep. True, the "forced grouping" mechanic isn't very friendly for people without a lot of time, but for me, part of the point of online games is to interact with other people in one way or another. Perhaps it's in a bit of friendly PvP action, or working together on a quest. Sometimes I am content, however, to go off and do my own thing or to ignore the outside world while I play with my friends.

In Age of Conan, you start the game in an instance after you wash up on the beach from a shipwreck. This instance provides you with a tutorial and a bit of story to establish your character in the first town. After the short initial instance, you are dumped in the multi-player part, but you have the option to perform some quests "at night", which once again gives you your own personal instance away from other people. On one hand, it was kind of nice since you didn't have to fight for spawns with other people. On the other hand, it was annoying to die if I didn't watch closely enough and pulled more than my poor Bear Shaman could handle at once. By talking to certain people, you can switch back and forth between daytime (multiplayer) and nighttime (single player).

What's really interesting is that I've also been playing The Witcher, a single-player RPG based upon some Polish fantasy stories. It struck me how similar the gameplay experiences were between the two games: I go get some quests, I solve them by killing some things, I go back and get rewards, then I get a level and gain new abilities. The only real difference was that if I died, I respawned in Age of Conan, while I had to reload from my last saved game in The Witcher (usually from an autosave, so it was kind of like respawning at the last location, I guess...). Oh, and one requires a subscription fee. But, without other people, AoC doesn't feel like a unique experience. The infamous Yahtzee agrees, but accuses The Witcher of feeling too much like an MMORPG, though. I felt that Morrowind felt a lot like an MMO without other people. It seems to me that encouraging single-player game play in an online game gives up one of the biggest advantages. And, one of its problems, too, to be fair. But, still, you're still paying a subscription while avoiding the mouth-breathers.

So, now it's your turn to weigh in. What do you think of this mechanic of having single-player specific content in a game? Does it weaken the game overall? Or, is it a convenient way to let people play at their own pace away from the unwashed masses?