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What kind of social aspect are you looking for in GW2, if any?


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This is a topic that I just started wondering about randomly. As a leader of a social guild I am interested in learning more about the different ways people want to be social in this game, and also hearing about what kind of social aspect they expect.

So I'd appreciate knowing how you all feel about being social in MMOs. Do you play GW2 specificly for the social aspect? If you are a solo player, what drove you to MMOs? Are you seeking to not connect with people at all? If you are seeking for connections, do you just want to casually talk about the game? Or make acquaintances you can have light-hearted fun with? Or people who you can actually form lasting friendships with that carry beyond the borders of this game? Do you just look for the sense of there being other people around you, but not necessarily interacting with them? What sort of social interaction do you expect from your guilds?

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Eh sure, i'll answer your questions.

-Do you play GW2 specificly for the social aspect?

! Nope.-If you are a solo player, what drove you to MMOs?! Was a broke boi and a lot of F2P options as a yung boi.-Are you seeking to not connect with people at all?! I'm seeking to simply play the game and whatever comes with it.-If you are seeking for connections, do you just want to casually talk about the game?! God no.-Or make acquaintances you can have light-hearted fun with?! Don't matter.-Or people who you can actually form lasting friendships with that carry beyond the borders of this game?! Not a particular priority.-Do you just look for the sense of there being other people around you, but not necessarily interacting with them?! Once upon a time yes. I would stop playing singleplayer because it felt desolate compared to mmo's with people all around. Got over it though, cause there are too many good games out here to be ignoring.-What sort of social interaction do you expect from your guilds?! Opposite of dead.

Felt like I was answer questions for tryouts.

! So did I make the team coach?

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I wish the game could encourage social interactions in Open World, because people themselves in OW just aren't social at all. I can go several WEEKS in the HoT maps and not see a SINGLE conversation going. There's just barely a "Rez plz" or "halp" or even "ty/np/yw". There's the occasional map chat going that's usually game related (or someone got baited), this is mostly during or after Meta-events like Auric Basins Octovine, or TD's Chak Gerent, and I realize that If you want social interactions the best place to go is just the hub maps, lions arch, DR, etc. People are always chatty there. but otherwise it's as silent as the grave. Even those times I did fractals, people barely uttered a word during the run. Mostly just a "Hi" and "Thx Bye".

I suspect people are simply playing this game with their guild-mates and RL friends, who all prolly use Discord which makes the actual game-chat redundant, so it's probably not as dead as it seems.

The only thing I want for Christmas is proper individual Housing, Wildstar did real good there. Spent a couple hours in that game doing just that and showing it off to friends. It doesn't seem like that's going to happen though.

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I play since beta and I'm lucky enough to have ingame exactly that what I like re social aspect:

  • I am in a "gang" as in a band of game friends with whom I am having big fun and joking of the type I like, lasting over time (we talk years here).
  • I have real life friends with me in the game, what is very enjoyable.
  • I play solo too (I need that).
  • I am officer in a guild (that of the "gang"), where I mainly help others, what I very much like to do and try to maintain a feeling of home/family for guildies.
  • I tag up as commander in PvE, mainly to help others again, but also because I like to lead a team for a together work toward a common objective.

Fun all along <3

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@"Cerioth.7062" said:Do you play GW2 specificly for the social aspect? If you are a solo player, what drove you to MMOs? Are you seeking to not connect with people at all? If you are seeking for connections, do you just want to casually talk about the game? Or make acquaintances you can have light-hearted fun with? Or people who you can actually form lasting friendships with that carry beyond the borders of this game? Do you just look for the sense of there being other people around you, but not necessarily interacting with them? What sort of social interaction do you expect from your guilds?

Personally think that GW2 is probably one of the most anti-social MMO games I've seen, but then again this seems to become more and more the standard in all MMO's these days.

Got into the game for Solo originally (loved a lot of the ideas ANet had for the game, and all over one of the best total packages for design/gameplay, and with the expected MMO story level).

Changed opinion somewhat over the years, and gotten more interested in group play. So I guess what I'm looking for is closer to the traditional "Static group" from other MMO's where you have a bunch of ingame (or outgame) buddies that play group content and do things together with.

I've gone from liking GW2's openworld system where you can "play together, but not together...." to really disliking it because of how anonymous it makes everyone (both socially and mechanically/skill). And these days I'm pretty tired of and avoid most of the open world events if there are more than 5 players there.

I miss more harder areas where players have to generally team up and cooperate/communicate in order to survive, doesn't need to be entire maps, even just corners of maps or specific dangerous areas etc. Give players a reason to form parties and discuss/talk what they need to do/should do, that doesn't just devolve into "zerg it with 50+ to trivialize it".

/rant

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  • 3 weeks later...

Do feel that the social aspect of gw2 has declined over the years. Mmos are what you make it.

So, i personal play mmos because of communities and enjoy bring my own into them the best way i can. Considering being an oceanic player, finding people is general hard. So doing this is my way of helping and also l giving myself and anyone in my timezone a community they can call upon to hekp in what ever content they need.

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I particularly like the way things are done now. I belong to a very casual guild. We get together weekly for missions and communicate off and on. If one of needs help, the others are quick to jump in. I run with them because I enjoy their company... regardless of the content. I also belong to a guild that is active in WvW. While I'm not as social with this group, I do run with them because I enjoy the way they approach WvW and their willingness to accept players who may not be as skilled as others.

As for open world, I like that I can join squads for metas as necessary but I can also play with a group without joining anything if I so choose. I love the ability to jump in and play when and where I find the action. And when the event is done, I can go my own way and do whatever else I want. The game, as it's now structured, makes it very easy to play with others when and where I want.... but doesn't force me into groups for open world content.

I have done some instanced content with groups, but tend to shy away from LFG for the most part... personal preference.

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A couple of weeks ago, I was browsing the forum and noticed one of the various "Looking for people to play with" topics in the Players Helping Player section. The thing was already unanswered for a few days, so I gave it a try and loged into the game. After a while the person showed up, new player, started a few days ago. I created a new character and offered to explore the world with the person.

We were doing Lonars Pass, one of my all time favorite maps. So I decided to lure him into Windy Cave, to check if he was into adventuring or just leveling. The person really enjoyed exploring a secret old dwarven tomb, even the jumping part did not cause any real problems. Once we were done, we kept exploring the map but tried to catch as many secrets and cool locations as possible. This was the first time I ever brought a newbie to Griffonrook run, we even did the Beaker achievement. It was a really fun night and the hours just passed by.

The next days we continued with exploring maps, but the person also had plenty of questions about the game, mechanics ... the usual stuff. So I have spent a lot of time writing and explaining things, also tried to learn by example and show things directly - like how CC and breakbars work. One of the main reasons why I decided to bring the same class as he played. We did more explorations, more secrets, more puzzles and got deeper and deeper into the game.

A couple of days ago, we did explore Metrica Province, which he mapped already 100 %. But he was so excieted about all the hidden areas, events, we even did the puzzle. It was really fun. However he had a girl with him this time, and after about an hour of playing together, she popped up with "What is your name btw?" We instantly realized that we had our entire communication for weeks, did so much content together and NEVER had the urge to exchange our RL names. I still do not know exactly if he is actually a guy, I do not even care. The person is awesome to play with, interested, motivated and a really cool person.

But the girl kept asking those basic things, my name, where I come from, my age ... all the stuff that does not matter to me when I play the game. I play Guildwars 2 to have fun and relax from work and RL.

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@TwiceDead.1963 said:The only thing I want for Christmas is proper individual Housing, Wildstar did real good there. Spent a couple hours in that game doing just that and showing it off to friends. It doesn't seem like that's going to happen though.Housing always seemed like a dead weight with horrible ROI for me. Reallistically speaking, how often anybody will have opportunity to see your unique thing? And taking this into account, how much time you'll spend playing with it, knowing probably very few people will ever see it and/or care? Let's be honest here, when it comes to cosmetics, at least half of associated enjoyment comes from showing your style to others. And if in case of outfits everybody around will see them pretty much anytime you're playing the game, your house will be empty pretty much all the time. Except from rare RP reasons, what would be the reason for somebody come visit you there, and stick there for a while? It does'n work like that, most people come to play the game, and don't want to sit in some house, doing nothing. You need to provide them some activities they can only do while in someone's house, and make them fun enough to compete with the actual game. So you need new mini-games of sort, you need tons of investments spent on for a wide diverse set of housing decorations - and the whole thing probably won't be popular at all, and will be mostly useless.

Or instead you could just develop a full new DLC with new maps and replayable events which will be visited by all players, for many weeks after the launch, and by majority still long after the launch.

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@MoriMoriMori.5349 said:

@TwiceDead.1963 said:The only thing I want for Christmas is proper individual Housing, Wildstar did real good there. Spent a couple hours in that game doing just that and showing it off to friends.
It doesn't seem like that's going to happen though.
Housing always seemed like a dead weight with horrible ROI for me. Reallistically speaking, how often anybody will have opportunity to see your unique thing? And taking this into account, how much time you'll spend playing with it, knowing probably very few people will ever see it and/or care? Let's be honest here, when it comes to cosmetics, at least half of associated enjoyment comes from showing your style to others. And if in case of outfits everybody around will see them pretty much anytime you're playing the game, your house will be empty pretty much all the time. Except from rare RP reasons, what would be the reason for somebody come visit you there, and stick there for a while? It does'n work like that, most people come to play the game, and don't want to sit in some house, doing nothing. You need to provide them some activities they can only do while in someone's house, and make them fun enough to compete with the actual game. So you need new mini-games of sort, you need tons of investments spent on for a wide diverse set of housing decorations - and the whole thing probably won't be popular at all, and will be mostly useless.

Or instead you could just develop a full new DLC with new maps and replayable events which will be visited by all players, for many weeks after the launch, and by majority still long after the launch.

I respectfully disagree.

New maps we already get through living seasons, and honestly I am not excited by repeatable events. They are mostly a means to an end like if I need to grind it for a map currency, or if it's for map completion, otherwise there's only a handful map events that are actually exciting and they released in 2015.

Nobody should be surprised that simply crafting and decorating a space of your own is surprisingly fun to many people because you really get to express your creativity along with your friends, otherwise games that completely bank on this aspect, games that don't even need mention; wouldn't have become as popular as they are. It's a wonderful social interaction which can last for hours on end and depending on the accessibility of tools, and potentially be endless fun. Guild Halls already do this to a degree so it's not that far fetched.

Depending on how Housing is implemented, you don't need visitors to personally have fun with it. Showing off is just a bonus.

The housing in Wildstar was VERY basic, you got teleported to an instance-garden where you got to pick an outside look and inside layout of your house, and otherwise there were hundreds of different assets you bought and could color, resize, and place wherever you wanted on the lot, either in the garden or inside the house. The result was that some people created entire cave-networks in the garden by merely resizing rocks and placing them in clever ways to mask the jank much like how ANET has done on many maps, and the inside could by anything you wanted like a treasure trove due to oversized gold-piles or a mad scientist lab that would be right at home in the Herbest West novel, or as in it's obvious inspiration Frankenstein.

GW2 already has all the assets required for a good housing system, it just needs the system itself.

... Now with that said, throw in something else, a new core mechanic or new classes or somesuch, and I'll pick the Expansion any day of the week because they really throw a wrench into the tried and true gameplay.

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@TwiceDead.1963 said:New maps we already get through living seasons, and honestly I am not excited by repeatable events. They are mostly a means to an end like if I need to grind it for a map currency, or if it's for map completion, otherwise there's only a handful map events that are actually exciting and they released in 2015.Those maps cannot even be remotely compared to awesomeness of those which are part of HoT and PoF. They are not even bound by common theme and don't have tons of new gameplay stuff bound to them. They are just some more or less generic place with a few interesting event, to push plot further on.

@TwiceDead.1963 said:Nobody should be surprised that simply crafting and decorating a space of your own is surprisingly fun to many people because you really get to express your creativity along with your friends, otherwise games that completely bank on this aspect, games that don't even need mention; wouldn't have become as popular as they are.This is the most important part of it: "that completely bank on this aspect". That's why games always target a specific audience. People who want gameplay consisting of crafting decorations and arranging them in a neat manner play those very games which specialize on this experience. While GW2 specializes on fast-paced action / combat. It's not economically feasible to cover both, and normally if a game tries to do this, overall result is just mediocre and isn't appealing to any audience.

@TwiceDead.1963 said:It's a wonderful social interaction which can last for hours on end and depending on the accessibility of tools, and potentially be endless fun. Guild Halls already do this to a degree so it's not that far fetched.For it to be social, you first need to make other people care enough to come all the way to your home instance to see it. Otherwise your social part will only exist in a dedicated part of the forums. Now, we have a game focused on action almost entirely, with players who came here for this very experience. Many of them don't have enough time to play the game, and hardly will want to do something else, not combat-related. Quite a lot of them don't like social part at all, and won't be interested to do anything with you at all. How do you plan to make them do some boring (from their point of view) things like going to someone's home, poking around it? Your friends may agree to check it once, may twice. That's about how far it will go for majority of GW2 players, I presume.

@TwiceDead.1963 said:The housing in Wildstar was VERY basic, you got teleported to an instance-garden where you got to pick an outside look and inside layout of your house, and otherwise there were hundreds of different assets you bought and could color, resize, and place wherever you wanted on the lot, either in the garden or inside the house. The result was that some people created entire cave-networks in the garden by merely resizing rocks and placing them in clever ways to mask the jank much like how ANET has done on many maps, and the inside could by anything you wanted like a treasure trove due to oversized gold-piles or a mad scientist lab that would be right at home in the Herbest West novel, or as in it's obvious inspiration Frankenstein.I wonder, what percentage from the whole players body those people constitute? I assume it was a very tiny fraction of it. I even dare to say, that majority of people just tried to play with it a bit, then lost interest in it completely. After all, decorating some house which will hardly ever be seen by 99% of players for hours isn't something people come for into a game about an alien world full of adventures. There are specialized software you can use for this very purpose, with much, much better functionality and variety of options, after all :) You don't need to do it in game at all, if you have that kind of creative urge. Yet, it seems like they invested tons of effort into this purely cosmetic, literally devoid of any actual gameplay content. I wonder, what role such irrational prioritization of goals played in its premature death?

@TwiceDead.1963 said:GW2 already has all the assets required for a good housing system, it just needs the system itself.I doubt it's that simple..

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I'll agree with the people who said this is the most antisocial MMO they've ever played. I think it's remarkable (in an unfortunate way) that you could easily go two years in the game, hitting every major milestone for your character without ever needing to engage another player in conversation.

And yes, of course I know that you can join a guild and be just as social as you want to be. But I wish it was more "baked in" to the gameplay itself (and not totally superfluous to it).

I've never felt more immersed in any MMO than I did in Everquest 1. And there were a lot of things that went into that sense of immersion (massive amounts of risk, competition for non-instanced content, naked corpse runs, inter-class dependencies for non-combat needs like movement speed, rez, buffs, etc...). But a huuuuge part of that immersion was also the unavoidable engagement with the community of other players. You simply could not play the game in any meaningful way without putting yourself out there socially.

And I miss that a lot in GW2. Every engagement just seems like a cheap, five minute, zero-cost encounter where you can die and throw yourself at the objective as many times as you need without ever saying anything to anyone in the process. Then everybody drops off the edge of a cliff and goes their merry way without a word of acknowledgement.

When you have objectives with no risk/cost whatsoever... and you combine that with no obligation to ever even talk to another player... it makes the whole game feel cheap, and plastic, and meaningless.

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What social aspect are you talking about?

  • megaservers killed pve communities
  • server linking and bandwagoning killed wvw server communities
  • no guild content since 2015, no guild missions since 2013
  • gvg is still not a thing
  • every content in the game can be pugged or done alone

There is no reason to join a guild anymore.

Back in the old mmo days the community was part of the content. It kept you playing.

Now all we get is single player games disguised as MMO's. GW2, ESO, WoW... and so on.

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@MoriMoriMori.5349 said:

@TwiceDead.1963 said:New maps we already get through living seasons, and honestly I am not excited by repeatable events. They are mostly a means to an end like if I need to grind it for a map currency, or if it's for map completion, otherwise there's only a handful map events that are actually exciting and they released in 2015.Those maps cannot even be remotely compared to awesomeness of those which are part of HoT and PoF. They are not even bound by common theme and don't have tons of new gameplay stuff bound to them. They are just some more or less generic place with a few interesting event, to push plot further on.

HoT, I agree, it really threw a wrench into peoples schedules and how they navigate a map, HoT wasn't afraid to experiment.PoF is no different from the core Tyria maps aside from requiring mounts to traverse. They made a complete 180 from the experimentation of HoT and dialed it back to safe levels. The events and the return of hearts are unremarkable compared to the HoT events. Not to mention how empty every PoF map feels due to sheer size, it really casts a light on why GW2 feels antisocial when there's hardly a soul to be seen despite the map being full. All in all, PoF is my least explored zones of all time. The only reason I recommend PoF to people is for the Elite Specializations and Mounts.

@TwiceDead.1963 said:Nobody should be surprised that simply crafting and decorating a space of your own is surprisingly fun to many people because you really get to express your creativity along with your friends, otherwise games that completely bank on this aspect, games that don't even need mention; wouldn't have become as popular as they are.This is the most important part of it: "that completely bank on this aspect". That's why games always target a specific audience. People who want gameplay consisting of crafting decorations and arranging them in a neat manner play those very games which specialize on this experience. While GW2 specializes on fast-paced action / combat. It's not economically feasible to cover both, and normally if a game tries to do this, overall result is just mediocre and isn't appealing to any audience.

I am not going to pretend to know what's economically feasible for Anet. Only they know that.

@TwiceDead.1963 said:It's a wonderful social interaction which can last for hours on end and depending on the accessibility of tools, and potentially be endless fun. Guild Halls already do this to a degree so it's not that far fetched.For it to be social, you first need to make other people care enough to come all the way to your home instance to see it. Otherwise your social part will only exist in a dedicated part of the forums. Now, we have a game focused on action almost entirely, with players who came here for this very experience. Many of them don't have enough time to play the game, and hardly will want to do something else, not combat-related. Quite a lot of them don't like social part at all, and won't be interested to do anything with you at all. How do you plan to make them do some boring (from their point of view) things like going to someone's home, poking around it? Your friends may agree to check it once, may twice. That's about how far it will go for majority of GW2 players, I presume.

You are looking for material gain incentives to do something(which is completely fine, not being accusatory). I find the activity itself already rewarding as wealth doesn't concern me in this game. And as I already mentioned, it doesn't have to be super detailed, just "good enough". Different audiences I suppose, but you are right that GW2 banks on the action-combat exploration aspect of gameplay.

@TwiceDead.1963 said:The housing in Wildstar was VERY basic, you got teleported to an instance-garden where you got to pick an outside look and inside layout of your house, and otherwise there were hundreds of different assets you bought and could color, resize, and place wherever you wanted on the lot, either in the garden or inside the house. The result was that some people created entire cave-networks in the garden by merely resizing rocks and placing them in clever ways to mask the jank much like how ANET has done on many maps, and the inside could by anything you wanted like a treasure trove due to oversized gold-piles or a mad scientist lab that would be right at home in the Herbest West novel, or as in it's obvious inspiration Frankenstein.I wonder, what percentage from the whole players body those people constitute? I assume it was a very tiny fraction of it. I even dare to say, that majority of people just tried to play with it a bit, then lost interest in it completely. After all, decorating some house which will hardly ever be seen by 99% of players for hours isn't something people come for into a game about an alien world full of adventures. There are specialized software you can use for this very purpose, with much, much better functionality and variety of options, after all :) You don't need to do it in game at all, if you have that kind of creative urge. Yet, it seems like they invested tons of effort into this purely cosmetic, literally devoid of any actual gameplay content. I wonder, what role such irrational prioritization of goals played in its premature death?

I don't have actual numbers to make an accurate guess as to how popular such a function would be, so again I am not even going to pretend I do. I agree people hardly play MMO's for a housing system. The housing systems are just in place as time-killers when the adventures become stale and repetitive and you need a break, but you still want to play the MMO. GW2 has admittedly other activities for this, like Beetle Races which are GREAT.

You don't seem to consider designing your own space a gameplay activity, which I just utterly disagree with, we already discussed how other games specialize in this aspect. And yes we could just go play those games but then we'd just argue in circles. Even ANET seems to have acknowledge that people want a space they can customize of their own, or at least watch grow; with the implementation of Sun's Refuge. It's hardly a housing system, but it's treading into the territory, just like the Guild Hall customization.

@TwiceDead.1963 said:GW2 already has all the assets required for a good housing system, it just needs the system itself.I doubt it's that simple..

Ofcourse it's not that simple. Game development never is.

Eitherway we are just speculating benefits, drawbacks and what-ifs.

A housing system is NOT going to happen for GW2, else it would have somewhere the past 7 years. Either Anet doesn't know how to, or they don't WANT to. I lean towards the latter and I am fine with that.

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@"Fallesafe.5932" said:I'll agree with the people who said this is the most antisocial MMO they've ever played. I think it's remarkable (in an unfortunate way) that you could easily go two years in the game, hitting every major milestone for your character without ever needing to engage another player in conversation.

And yes, of course I know that you can join a guild and be just as social as you want to be. But I wish it was more "baked in" to the gameplay itself (and not totally superfluous to it).

I've never felt more immersed in any MMO than I did in Everquest 1. And there were a lot of things that went into that sense of immersion (massive amounts of risk, competition for non-instanced content, naked corpse runs, inter-class dependencies for non-combat needs like movement speed, rez, buffs, etc...). But a huuuuge part of that immersion was also the unavoidable engagement with the community of other players. You simply could not play the game in any meaningful way without putting yourself out there socially...

My own reaction is very different. If I had to "put myself out there socially" in order to play the game, I wouldn't play it. As it is, I avoid the parts of the game that require coordinated teamwork, like raids, dungeon runs, or fractals. I haven't always been this way. Back around 2005-2006 I played a very basic MMO called Urban Dead, a zombie apocalypse game. There was little social interaction built into the game so those who wanted that built their own communities adjacent to the game. I got involved with a group working around the Malton Fire Department (an ingame thing similar to a faction) and we built up a whole community infrastructure on a forum. We set up our own leadership system with ways of moving up the ranks, along with training programs for new players, group strategies for taking on zombie hordes ingame and so forth. I happily spent hours a day immersed in the life of our self-organized community.

These days I'm in a very different place though. In a few months I'll be turning 70 and I very much feel my physical and emotional energies waning. I simply don't have the capacity for a high level of social engagement anymore. Irl I've become a hermit maintaining contact only with my closest family and friends and I like it that way. Ingame, I can happily run solo for hours, without having any of the responsibilities, commitments, or obligations often involved in working with others. Heck, I belong to three guilds but they are very special guilds.They are all headed by the same person, who maintains them for hermits like me that want access to guild buffs and resource nodes without having to be actively engaged with others. Again, I am very happy with that. It is well suited to where I am at in my life right now.

One of the nice things about GW2 is that it allows for both solo and group play. There are game modes where teamwork is essential and game modes where you can run solo, casually zerging along the way as one desires. Personally I would hate to see changes in the game that forced everyone into either group or solo play. Let everyone decide for themselves how they want to play.

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I play MMOs to have FUN, and as long as that criteria is met thats all that matters to me .All a MMO is , is a game where there are lots of people playing, but how they are playing or required to play is not defined, which means that an MMO can have lots of people all playing as solo players and its still an MMO.

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