somone already touched on the reason, econemy. in a single player rpg its you against the game straight difficulty, however you have the option to go in any amount of people so therefore the challenge becomes easier if your could get the 1337 items soloing then youd just get a good team of 3-4 or more people who would just farm it 15X faster generating a ton of them in the market

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Original post by smr Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game.

I hear this "argument" alot. Why is it that a game called an MMO is expected to be multiplayer but doesn't have to involve any role-playing? Which part of the acronym are you basing your conclusions on? Considering that most MMORPG's have very poor built in support for both multiplayer and role playing activities, perhaps a new acronym is in the works?

IMHO, there is no problem with allowing for single player progress in a game that sport a multiplayer environment but is not inherently a multiplayer game. In the popular case of World of Warcraft, characters can progress throughout the majority of the game alone. The looking for group system for this "multiplayer" game is yet to be implemented in an upcoming patch.

In traditional multiplayer games, the entire gameplay experience is contingent on having multiple players to play with. Co-op modes require two players, online competetive modes require an entire slew of friendly and foe players. MMO's don't have that direct dichotomy between single and multiplayer modes: they are a blend. Ultimately, if you lack a sufficient matchmaking system for multiplay and you provide single player progression for the vast majority of the game, you should probably refer to grouping as an alternate playstyle, not the purpose of the game or the next step in gameplay progression.

From a designer standpoint, it is obvious that no one really wants to need other people to play with. It would be most utilitarian to provide a game in which the widest possible variety of playstyle was supported: either single or multiplayer modes would please the greatest number of players. Given the general lack of support for specific niche and even supposedly intended modes of gameplay (WoW's LFG tool being released two years after the game itself), wouldn't that be logical?