I was levelling my paladin in the barren wastelands of Hellfire Peninsula the other day when I realized something: World of Warcraft is primarily a single-player game.

It seems odd to even consider this. The whole point of a Massively Multiplayer On-Line Role-Playing Game, or MMORPG, is the MM part. That’s why you pay the $15 per month, right? I haven’t played many single-player RPGs lately, simply because they are not online. I never finished Morrowind, Neverwinter Nights 2 sits on the shelf, and I didn’t even bother with Oblivion.

Why is this? I used to love single-player RPGs, from the moment I first moved my tiny white paragraph character through a randomly-generated dungeon on my Heathkit H-89. Ultima IV and VII were among my favourite games of all time, and I found the original Neverwinter to be completely enthralling. But once I started playing WoW, all other RPG activity ceased.

Yet here I am, levelling yet another character on my own, wondering how I can solo various “Group” quests along the way. Why is this?

It’s not like I don’t enjoy the multi-player aspect of these games. I’ve had fun in dungeons ever since I first ventured into Deadmines. I love the feeling of accomplishment when a good group downs a boss. I’ve run a character through the gamut of Player-versus-Player, having tons of fun getting my Rogue’s rank up to “Blood Guard” back when you could still get such achievements.

I’ve even raided, briefly, taking the same rogue into Karazhan and getting my first-ever dungeon purple. The group stuff is exciting, so why am I out here alone levelling yet another character instead of taking some of my 80s through exciting heroic dungeons?

Partly it is because I like to be able to pause and even quit the game at any point, when real life opportunities arise. You can’t do that in the middle of an instance, not if you want to get invited back. Raiding is an even bigger commitment, requiring dedicated evenings that may last several hours, or even well into the middle of the night. If I was still a student living on my own, I would be all over this.

But I’m not.

Unfortunately, this means that I don’t get to see a lot of the exciting content in the game. I suppose I could I get my Paladin to 80 and go bashing around some of the older Level 60 raid dungeons, but I’ll never get to beat Arthas. That’s kind of a shame, as he’s the biggest anti-hero in the whole game and part of the most exciting lore. He’s even been taunting me through the last few levels in Northrend, and sometimes in my heart I yearn to just throw everything else out the window and disappear into a “hardcore” raiding guild so that I can go kick his ass once and for all.

But I know it will never happen, nor do I really want it to. In the mean time, I’ll just grab a level here and there on my alts and keep grinding their trade skills. For some bizarre reason I enjoy this, and the unique rewards at the end make all the grinding worthwhile.

It's weird, but some of the most fun I've had is taking my pally and doing dungeons that are just a bit challenging to solo. I did Scholo when I was 65 and Stratholme at 68. I find that unlike when I did those dungeons in a group, when you solo them you really have time to appreciate the whole design and artwork and monster placement, especially in Strath.

A couple of weeks ago I took my 70 Shaman through Scholo because a low-level Shammy quest was in there to get a purple (for level 60s) hat that makes you look like Batman, which is hilarious on a troll. Anyway, I soloed all the way there, but he one-shotted me and made me sad. Dvixen came along with her 80 mage and we trashed the place together. He mind-controlled me and she reacted quickly and polymorphed me into a frog, then finished him off herself with her Water Elemental. It was SO much fun!

I guess what I'm really saying is that I love doing dungeons with people I know, but I don't want to raid. Blizzard has realized this and made heroic-mode dungeons give up emblems that you can trade in for phat purplez. I think this is a good idea, but I still have to find people I know to go into these dungeons with. It's hard, because everyone's on different servers and lots of people I know who used to play the game have moved on.

So I'm not sure what to do now.