Why do you enjoy playing an MMO solo?

The fact is, sometimes I just want to be alone.

I don’t want to group up. I don’t want to run a dungeon or a raid. I don’t want to get six people together and blow up achievements or grind out rep faster. I don’t want to help kill a World Boss. I just want to play the game at my own speed, exploring the world and taking my own pace through it. When I do this, though, I always feel a little weird. World of Warcraft is a big MMO, not a sandbox game — why am I playing it like an old Skyrim save I just found? Why am I happy to run my level 22 Dark Iron through Darkshire, a zone I have been in literally dozens, maybe even hundreds of times? Why did I decide I just wanted to take my level 120s through old raids?

Why am I playing World of Warcraft in all the wrong ways?

Sometimes I’m down for group content, mind you. I do enjoy dungeons and raids, I will run Warfronts, and I’ll pile on a World Boss if I see one. I’m not always antisocial, but when I am, I very much enjoy unplugging from the “Massively Multiplayer” part of the MMO and just exploring the world on my own, making my own fun. I think this is why I enjoy Nazjatar so much — it’s a zone I can take as a solo player or as a grouping player and find fun there either way.

So now I’m going to ask you all — do you ever switch off your socializing and just go play a solitary game in WoW? If so, why? How do you feel about solo play in an MMO?