Sexual innuendo aside - Clive Thompson over at Wired goes through an analysis as to why many gamers prefer playing by themselves in a world populated by thousands of NPCs (such as Fable II), as opposed to a world populated by millions of live users (such as World of Warcraft and most of the other big MMOs).

In Fable II, you're the only "live" human around. Sure, it's crammed full of "non-player characters" — but they're all 'bots, spouting fairly crude dialogue lines, with none of the unpredictability and spontaneity of a multiplayer game. You have no friends with whom to share your feats, to brag to about your awesomeness, to marvel at the beautiful sights. There are no epic, wargasmic, 50-person raids that will be spoken of over mead, four generations hence, in a tavern.

So it's a good question, really. Why do we want to immerse ourselves in a world that emulates all the tropes of a vibrant world like World of Warcraft — but where we are, essentially, alone?

I told my friend he was looking at it all wrong. The reason we single-player fans love world-games like Fable II is precisely because there are no other "real" people around.

Deathsythe via wired.com »