What's the beef with boxing?

[sox7d]

Whatever, I'll bite.

The "play by yourself, together" trend in MMOs has turned the genre from immersive worlds to putting a hose in your mouth that shoots a stead stream of shallow-gratification down your throat. Everquest, FFXI, UO, SWG had bullshit in them. Sometimes it took the form of long leveling, difficult, scattered quests, class imbalance, darkness, inability to solo, no maps, harsh death penalties or dependent transportation. But each of those things, while inconvenient, added something to the game.

Long leveling gave prestige
Difficult, scattered quests gave accomplishment
Class imbalance gave personality
Darkness gave realism
Inability to solo gave community
No maps gave immersion
Harsh death penalties gave emotion
Dependent transportation gave ecology

Maybe its not for everyone, but memorable games need bullshit. Think of it like a cake. A cake consists of two parts, the somewhat unpalatable, spongy bread ("bullshit") and the sweet frosting (leveling up, gear upgrades, convenience). Everyone can agree that the frosting tastes better than the cake itself, but what recent MMORPGS have done is just throw a tub of frosting at the player and tell them to dig in. They get to max level by themselves after a month, then they quit and never think about Age of Conan, SW:TOR, TERA, Aion, Warhammer, Marvel Heroes, Guild Wars 2, Rift, Wildstar or Final Fantasy XIV ever again.

Throw two-boxing into the mix, players now play with themselves and community turns to shit like every other MMORPG out there.

"But you don't have to two-box"
When everyone CAN, everyone will. If you think it's hard to find a group now, wait until 1/4 of the server is two-boxing. Then more people will be fed up with the LFG times and start boxing which ends up being a vicious circle until everyone is.

P1999 is the last bastion of bullshit, and I'll be damned if anyone takes any of it away.