I’ve read many bloggers playing with one specific person, usually their romantic partner, but some, like Wilhelm plays with his child. I did the same. That is a niche in itself: “MMO for 2”. A game that is “forced grouping” with the fixed group size of 2. You can’t progress solo and the content is complicated enough to prevent 2 multiboxed characters efficiently progress, but should be solvable by two matching characters (tank + damage dealer or healer + damage dealer).
There should be some special buffing link that activates when they are playing together and it’s something that grows over time, to prevent randoms just duo up. I mean if you start playing with someone, the link is first weak and reaches its normal strength over 20 hours of playing together. If you start playing with someone else, the old link weakens as the new one grows.
All game systems are designed in a way that the group of two work together. The items are “soulbound to two”, ergo both members of the the team of two who claimed it can use it. They can share a bank. They can control the NPC minions. They are practically a guild of two with all features. The quests are designed with the idea of the two are on the same page of progress.
Since people don’t stay together forever, there should be catch-up mechanisms for new twos who are not on the same page. If they are on a different level, the bigger can shrink down to the level of the other, doing his quests together, but getting no XP, all of it goes to the smaller one. This is a kind of boosting, but it needs both players actually play together instead of a booster pulling a small one over the content.
There can still be guilds and bigger group content, but with the duo link in play. So if the guild takes only one member to the raid, he’ll miss his link and will be seriously underpowered, practically making it mandatory to take both.
Sure, this game is not for everyone. This is the point. This is a niche MMO, targeted especially for those 1% who want to play with one special person. This is its unique selling point and main value. Other games don’t provide such “play together” experience. On the contrary, if you play together a normal MMO, you trivialize the content. This is necessary, as the content is tuned to (not so skilled) solo players. So WoW can’t just take on this feature. Only a niche MMO can do it.
It’s not just bloggers, my wife and I game together and we would love a game like this.
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While not having been made with this in mind, Guild Wars 1 (not 2) in its current state is the thing closest to the description. Specifically, most of its current content is made soloable, but it’s much more comfortable to complete in duo, and some places (Urgoz’s Warren and The Deep) are significantly easier in duo due to some peculiarities in game mechanics. Of course, it’s even easier to complete anything in >2 people parties, but those are hard(er) to find and two people feels “enough” for anything.
So “playing duo” could be just the “soft” requirement (you can play solo or in big groups, but duo is optimal). It might be more difficult to advertise the game this way, though.
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well bring back harder or less convenient games and small groups build naturally.
pre 2005 games. the guild was full of people in need of some one else or trio. remember dedicated tanks and healers in vanilla wow. naturally they had guild or friends to duo or trio to help each other farm consumables. Heck that is how cliche pair-bonding occurred in wow and other MMOs back then. usually support played by female with some DD or tank played by male … grinding hours on end and enjoying each others company.
I don’t know if a honeymoon MMO would be the way to go. because schedules differ and you want some flexibility to swapout and do different things. If your MMO means that it becomes harder, great, I’m all for it!
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Would love a game lioke this. I’d play it with my son…
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This is how I play MMOs, and when I’m usually doing so, I’m fighitng the inherent game systems (have to sync up your quest logs, if you enter a dungeon in’s scaled for more than two people, open world mobs are too easy for a healer to be useful).
City of Heroes is a game I loved before they took it down, for reasons I don’t quite understand. I wouldn’t normally advocate its features here, as my reasons for enjoying it are “social”, but it had some ideas that a partner-based MMO would do well to look at. Most quest content was instanced, and rewarded everyone who participated (no quest log synchronizing necessary).A level synchronizing system that was fully integrated before vanilla WoW was even on store shelves. Most support classes could build themselves for force multiplication (buffs/debuffs) rather than healing a large group.
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I’d certainly love a game like this (duo) or at least one that supports ‘small friends group’ play more broadly than trying to complete dungeons meant for 5 or 6 with only 3 players. Taking WoW as just one game to examine this; its flex-size raiding is a nice idea, the scenarios were great in Mists as they fitted our needs perfectly (3 players, can even take one less able or active and still complete it with 2 good players), but dungeons remain stubbornly set at 5 until you outgear it enough to duo/solo them…
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