"If you’re a gamer who primarily plays single player games, you might be suffering from a constant sense of foreboding as new games get announced. It is the fear that this time it might be your beloved series or studio that is the victim. What exactly is this imminent doom coming to ruin everything you love? I’m talking about online multiplayer games. In particular, the Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG)."
The solo centric 'progression' of MMOs ruined the genre. They were amazing when you had to socialise, cooperate and build communities with other players.
Now every MMO seems to be aimed at the casual, and has killed the sense of enjoyment from this once experimental and successful genre.
SWG, old style WoW, Guild Wars, CoH/CoV and Everquest 1&2 were the pinnacle of the type, but it all deteriorated because solo play.
FF 14 is a great game. But one thing they wont tell you about it is that in the end game, making money is VERY VERY hard. Sure, they will tell you that crafting is a great way to make mula. But when there are thousands of other crafters making the same thing or selling the same crafting parts, you dont make much money at all, if any. MOnsters drop barely any gold when you kill them either, if at all. In the beginning you get a good amount of gold for quests. But in the end game, when quests are few and far between, you just don't get any gold. So how do you get that precious gold to buy player crafted armors (extemely hard to make because of rare materials) that is insanely overpriced? You have to BUY gold with real life cash. They are always open for business and always have that amount you need .... for a price. Now if you start going crazy they will, supposedly, run out of gold to sell you. Just to cover their ass as if they are actually farming it. But I'm calling it now, I think SquareEnix is selling it. Just no way they can come up with milllions of gold like that and so fast.
Anyways Final Fantasy 14 is probably the best mmo out there overall. with Guild Wars 2 being a close second. I never heard of anyone buying gold for GW2 before. They probably have though.
Star Trek Online. I solo'd every mission.