It's probably too early for anyone to know for sure and I feel a little sad having to ask this question with regards to a massively multiplayer online role playing game but after the debacle of Elder Scrolls Online my friends and I went though I thought I should ask anyway. The issue is that I read somewhere that the devs intend to make the content solo friendly and this is perfectly fine, there are plenty of good reasons to make it so the multiplayer elements get relegated to dungeon instances and raids.

To elaborate on the aforementioned debacle of ESO. Myself and few friends were looking for a mmo to play together and since we were fans of the Elder Scrolls the choice was natural. Now we wanted to play together but ESO in its appeasement of the solo player constantly thwarted out attempts. Now the first issue was that is a significant portion of the content was made with it being done solo in mind which meant as soon as we were together it became ridiculously easy and boring. The next issue may have been bug related but I think it was intentional design and that's the phasing. It's a cool idea, when the quest say the temple has been cleansed of undead the undead are actually gone from the temple. The problem is that when you're in a team it get frustrating when you can't see each other because you've been shunted into different phases which leads to the next problem. Quests updated individually not collectively. This is mildly frustrating when instead of just collecting 10 macguffins for Sessile the sidequest elf you effectively collect 40 but it completely ruins the game when each time the quest advances it throws you into different phases to individually face enemies multiple levels higher then yourselves because you all decided it was a good idea to go to a higher level area in an attempt to keep the game challenging. Finally there probably were group dungeons later in the game but we wanted something to play together not play separately then team up occasionally to play an instance. All of these barriers to playing as a group just resulted four people cancelling their subscriptions and uninstalling the game.

I can't recall where I read it but apparently the sentiment is that the game can be done solo but the best rewards will require teaming up and this I interpret as the final issue listed above i.e. a solo game with occasional multiplayer instances (this alone will stop me playing a massively multiplayer game). So a final question to consider is how can a developer strike a balance between the solo and the team?

For me sticking 'the best rewards' at the end of some raid doesn't quite cut it (the rewards never really motivate me). What I would rather see is some kind of passive bonus you get while together in a team e.g. xp, cash or something else.

Another would be that if the team required elements were to be kept to instances then the number of players required should vary i.e. not every instance should require a full team. DCUOs Duos are an example of this.

Of course forced solo missions should be the exception not the norm, quest should update collectively and not fling you into separate phases. Basically don't be ESO.