After 16 years of playing MMOs, I just can’t play single player games anymore

In 2006 – at the age of just 13 – MeinMMO editor Alexander Leitsch played his first online role-playing game, Rakion. A few weeks later he switched to Guild Wars 1 and since then has tried almost every new MMORPG. But he never found his way back to one thing: single-player games. This is not only due to the other players, but also to the fact that success there feels special.

I used to be a single player fan. As a kid, I would spend hours waging war in Settlers 3 and 4, or gambling through the night through Gothic 1 and 2. A little later I got my first PlayStation 2, which was also the last console I spent much time on. RPGs like Champions of Norath and Lord of the Rings Return of the King were the order of the day.

It was a few years before I was allowed to use the internet connection in the living room for online games. Back then, a friend drew my attention to Rakion, a free MMO with a cool combat system. However, that didn’t really excite me.

In 2006, shortly before the release of Guild Wars Nightfall, I bought Guild Wars 1 with 5 friends from school. We were the equivalent of the school’s WoW players, but we couldn’t and weren’t allowed to take out a subscription. From then on the spell was broken and I spent thousands and thousands of hours in the online world and even turned my hobby into a job.

But what was lost as a result was my love for single-player, and there’s a reason for that: single-player titles don’t give me a sense of achievement.

Who is speaking here? Alexander Leitsch is the MMORPG expert on MeinMMO. He spent over 10,000 game hours in Guild Wars 1 and over 8,000 in the sequel GW2. But he also reaches over 500 hours of play in many other games, including LoL, TFT, ESO, Black Desert, WoW or New World.

I’m well known in Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2, I’d like a name in LoL

The theme of success was already with me in Guild Wars 1. I made really bad guides with a friend for the underworld and the rift – two elite instances that we only farmed in twos instead of a group of eight. By the way, back then I added Scooter music to these videos – oh dear.

Over the years my focus shifted to PvP. I led a team that met three times a week and went into battle together. The cool thing about Guild Wars was and is that the winners of the Hall of Heroes were announced with a message in chat for all players to see. So everyone knew: Okay, the Sputti team rocked PvP.

Guild Wars also had another specialty: titles. And some of those titles were really hard to come by. Anyone who had a god among mortals could stand in the cities and be admired. A carrot in front of my nose.

With Guild Wars 2, I satisfied that need for recognition with my own Guildnews website, YouTube channel, and Twitch stream. I was and still is known in the German scene.

But there are also games that I play because I would like to be someone in them:

• In Teamfight Tactics, for example, I played Diamond 1 in Season 4 and was briefly in the top 0.97% of all players in EU West.
• In LoL, I played regularly at gold and platinum levels, especially in the early years.
• I also reached Platinum 2 in Rocket League, putting me in the top 25% in the world.

So I’m generally a very competitive person. Rankings and achievements in MMORPGs and online games mean something to me. Something no single player game can give me.

By the way, fellow players in MMOs are an important accessory, even if they are not always the main reason for my fun. After all, success is only worth something if there are players who admire you for it. In the LoL example, this also applies to my opponents or teammates, who can (d) admire my stats or my rank.

Single-player games are often better in quality, but I enjoy every cucumber MMO more

My attitude has certainly made me miss out on dozens of really good role-playing games in favor of some cucumber MMOs in the last few years. This has led to very strange situations in recent years.

I’ve played the worst-rated MMORPGs on Steam in a YouTube series, spent hours testing every new Asian product, or just tried out indie games that didn’t have a great future on paper. I did that partly for my job, but mainly because of my own motivation.

Maybe the next big hit will be there after all and I’ll be one of the first to ever play it. That’s what makes the games so appealing to me. I’m looking forward to whatever MMO is coming.

On the other hand, there are really good titles on my pile of shame. I spent a full two hours playing Skyrim, caught up (and didn’t even finish) The Witcher 3 just for a livestream project, and missed Mass Effect and Dragon Age completely.

Sometimes I regret that.

But in the end I think to myself: what would have happened if I had played these games? Who can I lure out from behind the stove by beating Skyrim now?

Single player games seem ephemeral to me. Achievements are harder to compare and are often destroyed by the fact that cheaters and modders can easily cheat them.

Achievements in online games mean something. A good rank in LoL, the god among mortals in Guild Wars 1 or the perfect armor in New World, I can relate to that. I feel like I have something in my hands that I can present to others and that I can also brag about.

I’m not a no-lifer, never have been. With dancing, I have a hobby in the real world, family, child and my permanent job here on MeinMMO. Nevertheless, I keep catching myself gambling an extra hour into the night in order to achieve another success in Guild Wars 2, to increase my competence in New World, to do a daily in ESO or a round in LoL to win.

And all of that means more to me than a really good single player game ever could.

How do you see the single player vs. multiplayer debate? Do you also mean more successes in multiplayer or am I imagining things? Feel free to write it in the comments.

Since I have already played well over 80 MMORPGs, I created a tier list for MMORPGs at the end of 2021. You can find out how I rate which game here:

Where are the 50 biggest MMORPGs currently? The Tier List before 2022