sir_lambsalot6272: I've been playing MMOs ever since I was 10, RuneScape in the 90s baybeeee~, and I agree entirely that this game has practically zero pressure to socialize... Though because of that, the interactions I DO have are SO much better and genuine than when people must endure my presence because they need a Qheal or whatever.

The very lack of pressure has caused me to find so much more meaningful interactions with people than every other time I've played an MMO, and I love GW2 for that

PainkRd: Being solo friendly is certainly a good thing, i played a game that is so solo unfriendly, you pretty much have to be in guild to play a lot of content, and that people could threaten to kick you out of the guild if you not doing what they force you to do, you basically become slave to get to a "group" content.

Vizslav: I don't think it's an "antisocial" or "solo" MMO. It's really just a real MMO that has basically bypassed all the crappy what people consider "social" aspects of other MMOs. You are doing the same things as other MMOs but you're not wasting your time looking for a group that only takes healers or tanks for example like in other MMOs. Spending an hour trying to find 10 people to complete a boss isn't being social or fun. It's a bad mechanic that wastes time, creates toxicity and is completely useless. These "social" aspects of MMOs only exist because early MMOs were heavily limited by technology and then became the standard because the early MMOs set that tone. So no, I don't think GW2 is antisocial. You are doing all the same things as in other MMOs but you're just skipping the annoying and cumbersome mechanics. That's why GW2 is such a brilliant game. It's very player friendly and streamlined.

FlawedGod: I've only been playing GW2 for a month and by far the most fun I've had is doing world bosses, raids, fractals with other players, obviously solo the story content but the most fun and best times I've had so far have been large meta events, bosses and fractals. I love the social aspect of this game, how you can choose what you want to do, weather you want to take part in group content or not. Also the quick play rift beta thing is good, I matched with other players and then after that we all stayed as a group and carried on up into harder tiers. I've had so much fun so far.

aeow8859: "Most of the people around you could be NPCs"

Honestly I could say the same about work.

onyx1486: When I started GW2 I was in a guild for the first 2 years, then next year ran solo then quit until the beginning of this year, since then I have ran solo, managed to do all legendary rings, trinkets, back, heavy armor set (obsidian) and 3 leggy weapons all solo, just pug whatever needed (convergences t3 rifts, fractal event for gloves) other than that I do everything solo and see no reason to tie myself to a guild and their play times... for me yes it is definitely the best SOLO mmo by far

johnreesekl6249: It is a nice balance, I think. I do some stuff solo, wvw roaming, easy metas, random junk...but I do enjoy doing guild led zerging in WvW, of which I do need to interact. If people don't want to be social and play with others, they don't have to, but in some situations, it will be sub-optimal.

Da5kone001: Osrs is the best solo mmo hands down. Gw2 is close for sure

lostinfrance9830: Solo players have been MMO's bread and butter for years now. I mean you can mostly blame the toxic nature of many players in party finders and guilds for years in games like WoW pushing players away that then made devs hard focus on finding a solo solution experiance in most MMO"s for years now and its worked tbh. solo players are given the time to join guilds and stuff if they want to and not feeling forced to from the get go. It gets people to try the game at least and It has kept games going like FF14 for one and just look at how GW2 is bouncing back right now.

adamii323: There's sweaty Syrma...lol. Disagree, but only because I have played way more solo like MMO's, and that's the wave, simply so the genre survives (you did cover the GW3 announcement, I saw you...lol). I just got my FB after 6 years to where I can solo (some!!!), bounties, lol. I play purposely on a less crowded server, and have never seen anyone do it....lol. Sweats rate MMO's by popular servers where other sweats roam, it's understandable, you go by what you see, but can even you solo a world boss (I'm pretty sure no, lol, and you wouldn't even be able to if you could as there will be too many people). Your title is bait, as you are interacting with them if you are doing the same thing, say participating in the group event, whatever it is (text chatting is tough while fighting for your hide....lol). Can you do stuff where you are basically solo (craft, farm, hunt npc enemies, etc...), sure as you can in every MMO since the beginning of the genre.....lol! GW2 is horizontal, chances are even if you are soloing on purpose, especially noobs and casuals, the majority of GW2, you are going down, and will call for help....welcome to an MMO! It's not a problem, it's great! I've 'happened' into a meta event every day I have logged on this week, and participated, it was great and went right back to what I was doing which was farming solo...lol. there were double figure people plus on every event and it was often right in my farming path (by design). Heck I can barely solo the bandits (but I can), the Executioner popped in twice, once I escaped, the other time he killed me, and the 2 guys that came in to help me, we couldn't kill him but we survived. Bro that's life in GW2 for 'regular players! Try another 0 to hero, don't min max, and wear only whatever gear drops, follow 0 guides and play something just for fun....I bet even with your knowledge it will be different and you will see just how 'solo' unfriendly GW2 can be.....lol!

Vondarkstar: Wow retail is ass now. It’s just a buggy collection simulator. Guild wars 2 is now the best MMO period.

Leonardofontana11: It’s not a problem at all, most MMOs are dying (its a dead genre basically) because nobody likes playing in parties and putting up with a bunch of morons who can't execute a mechanic anymore, if I were to make an MMO today, it wouldn't have guilds or a party system. Solo is the only way. We play games to avoid social interactions; the only reason to play an MMO instead of a single-player game is so you can flex your stuff on the noobs.

SteveWray: Thing is, you're busy using your keyboard to play; move around, use weapons, abilities.

You'd also need to use your keyboard to interact with other players, say something in chat etc.

Its rare to have voice comms on an open world event... I think I've seen it once.

When raiding thats different and voice comms might be organised through discord. It also has very low participation.

A lot of people shy away from voice comms.... because... shy...

So that leaves keyboard. You'd have to make all builds low-interaction if you wanted more player-player interactions.

girmo2676: want to share my recent experience coming from wow (but was playing gw and gw2 already before just returning now). And the open connect in zones is the best feature for fluid socialization. It is not constantly commitment. Sometimes you bump into each other, sometimes you organize in big groups. You meet people through it just like people in wow classic praise it, but here it's different. It's not only during leveling. It's during whole world exploration, which being horizonal and not constant item level chase with dead zones it feels so much different and alive ( I experience that before, it's still the same or even better ). Appreciate your work and you give nice advices for builds also for us returning players. Now I'm making amalgam and unlocking a relic good for the build I want. And it is super fun

A0XY4: I've found that other than GW2 I've bounced off of all of the MMOs I've tried and I think the necessity of social interaction is one of the big reasons. Before quickplay I barely ever did fractals outside of doing my best to solo or with my one friend who consistently plays, and I still haven't finished all the dungeons due to not being able to solo them.

Moskibear: I feel like I have been playing more of a mmo these past 2 weeks in guild wars 2 than I have in the 4 months I tried wow midnight after years of hiatus there. I feel like I have more pleasant interactions in gw2 than I get in wow, even if the interactions are not mandatory.

Ceimash: The GW2 PvP lobby actually counteracts this. I have made good mates just messing about in there doing 1v1s.

ProuvaireJean: If GW2 forced you to group to play the game, I wouldn't play the game.

Cobalt665: I intended to play this game to experience the story, I had other MMOs I was progging on and just wanted to play something new. During the fractal incursions I played group content for the first time and it was a lot of fun, I'm glad both options exist. GW2 was just early to a trend that other MMOs are just now catching up to doing, creating an environment where you can experience the game solo.

ZafyrArt: The reason I love guild wars 2 is because it allows a player to play on their own and do their own thing and discover their own self sufficient abilities. But it doesn’t stop there. Sure, you can get full exotic gear on your own, even a few ascended pieces of gear too. But if you join up with others and do fractals, or wvw, or raids / strikes, you’re able to tap into even greater rewards for yourself. I like it more when an mmo allows me to get strong and powerful through self sufficient means, but cooperating with others will get me the last few steps to getting the most powerful I can become. But I think the greatest reward of all should always be vanity. Arenanet understood that. Some of the coolest stuff you can have is locked behind content that requires a group/cooperation. That is how an mmo should be.

chirotastic2502: I really enjoy the degree of nuance that you bring to this type of discussion. I'm just returning to the game from a 9-year break after hearing about their commitment to GW2 going forward. I've been binging your content and it's been a massive help in getting me up to speed with the game as it is today. Thank you for being such an awesome resource for the community!

iridradiant: That is an interesting question: what is the floor player count for an MMO's activities? The public can't even form a consensus as to what the minimum ceiling player count should be, but considering the floor count is neat too. I don't think there should be a floor count, as even players who are gung-ho about doing group stuff might log in and find insufficient players to do the things they would usually do. I think this is why players don't really think about minimums. Gate-keeping the game behind a guild system from the outset, while an interesting idea, would not get the playerbase it would need to support that gameplay. Using an example that undermines my point, players would have too much decision paralysis if there were multiple guilds that actually had some benefit. If you think of WoW's factions as mega-guilds where back in vanilla the choice to be a paladin or shaman was reliant on that choice, that had only 2 factions to pick from, but generated so many discussions by my friends over what to pick, even later when class benefits were moot it became a choice of best racial abilities. Or, the guilds would mean nothing if it was just a color choice and in either case players would just insist on hopping to whatever choice had the best benefit or the most players (the latter being evident in the large number of 90%-10% pop servers in WoW).

MMOs should be defined by how Massive the Multiplayer is, their player content ceilings; I've long commented that using metric prefixes would clarify a lot for that. Diablo 2 (not an MMO by anyone's metrics) has a 8 player world map cap, League of Legends (another obviously non-MMO) only allows 5v5 outside of the rare event of 6v6 they did at least once, and there's only a few areas in GW1 that allow that many (which is why I don't consider it an MMO, nor any of those "hub-based" ones). It is why players ask "where's the raids" when an MMO is labeled such, since that traditionally had 20 players, why GW2 was pressured to add them despite WvW and world bosses filling that Massively Multiplayer definition. So I guess that answers the question: 20 players working toward a single goal, usually a boss monster, is the floor for MMO. So, to me, MMO means multidecaplayer at a minimum.

Opus_Fluke: Interesting point. I know I play a lot solo but I also do WvW with the guild. Even gang up for the occasional Dungeon (remember those?). Fact is MMOs were social hubs back before Voice Over Internet was practical and we were using stuff like ICQ to chat with friends. World's changed and so have the games. Still fun though.

xKazerux: My main MMO is Final Fantasy XIV but have been playing a lot of GW2 in downtime, and honestly it's the same thing over there. They've implemented a system called Duty Support and gone back and patched up the game so that you can run all dungeons and some trials (8-man content) with NPCs and you can basically solo the entire game now with some minor exceptions.

The endgame hunt mobs on the overworld are roughly similar to World Bosses in that no one really speaks during them either, sometimes you have some people trying to make conversation though. The main difference between the two games to me seems to be that boons and healing and such affect people outside your party in GW2 compared to FFXIV only affecting your party. But they're both very strong "soloable" MMO contenders imo.

The guild thing is pretty similar to free companies on our end as well. A lot of the point of free companies don't seem to exist anymore with the rise of social apps like Discord, so people don't even need to log in to speak to friends and such anymore. The in-game guild/FC chats are just so quiet or people don't tend to log on most of the time as the social aspect the MMO provides isn't needed.

QuilldorJenkins: Wasn't like that at first we had to group to do events for materials and community was getting built. Then when we didn't need to depend on others in wvw, pvp, and raiding for legos it went solo but we still get community everywhere you go in game all zone are alive

myselfme767: Gw2 has the best balance btw playing solo and playing with other players. Also I want to chill sometimes, I don’t want to constantly go,go,go and Gw2 gives me that. The fact it lets you get legendary from the open world is just the best thing! For me the social interaction is just enough, I play with other people every single day without being forced to speak unless I want to.

SatelliteMind89: I've been playing ESO for a bit and I came back to Guild Wars 2 because it felt more social than ESO was. Even if you aren't actively talking to people, the world is alive and most events have more than one person participating in them. This is the opposite experience I have had with ESO when the only time I was in a group with players was when I was running dungeon content. The rest of the time I was just doing the story which gets boring after awhile going from point A to point B.

Jul 11 2026

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