Moonlight/Sunlight are both really great options. The only problem I’ve encountered with either is that the mouse cursor is encoded into the video stream itself. It adds a little bit of lag when moving the mouse and makes it feel not quite right. Steam doesn’t encode to the stream, so it feels much more responsive. Parsec doesn’t either, but it does not support hardware decoding in Linux so you’re going to be stuck with an added ~10ms decode time.

Just because this level of cringey fanboying should never be tolerated, here is a hurtful fact: Valve has argued in court that they are a subscription service and you do not in fact own any game in your library. https://hothardware.com/news/valve-loses-french-court-battle

I think a lot of it has to do with risk reward management too. Like this isn’t exclusive to the MMO genre, you see it elsewhere. You have two questions: why and what do I get?

The hardest fight in Final Fantasy 7 is the optional emerald boss. Virtually nobody fights him. Why fight him? Its not required and the loot can be gotten elsewhere without fighting a 1mil HP boss.

Skyrim. Why play anything other than stealth archer? You do more damage and don’t risk your health. The reward is the same. You still get the loot.

D&D even if milestone. If I get experience from advancing the story only, then combat earns me very little. It unnecessarily puts me at risk.

If a game is sandbox, then why should I fight these optional bosses or put myself at risk? I stand to lose more than I gain. Management wise, it’s better for me to do nothing which leads to a pretty boring game.

I think you need some story. I don’t think it always has to be good, though. Look at WoW, it has awful storytelling. Quests are mostly just fetch quests where you kill 8 of X and 5 of Y. Few people read the quest dialogue, but its still there. There is some overarching story line, but its mostly conveluded and designed more for an excuse for you to continue leveling.

Now look at MMOs that did not have a story like Shadowbane. That was probably the purest sandbox PvP game I’ve ever played. At level 4 you’d leave the newbie island (which was honestly really fun and social) and get dropped into the world. No guide, no quests, just you vs everyone else. There was no motiviation or goal, just go kill people. Those kind of games have super high burnout rates. There just is no structure to them or real content.

Early 2000s were filled with MMOs like that. Some games were able to pull it off like Ultima Online, but most failed after 2-3 years. Games like Shadowbane, Asheron’s Call 2, Ryzom, etc. There just has to be some pre-defined goal your players are working towards otherwise it’s just pointless.

Hey, maybe not quite video gaming, but have you thought about getting into DnD or Vampire: The Masquerade? DnD has lots of open groups to find on Discord or services like Roll20. That gives you voice communication so you are talking and playing with real people. VtM isn’t as popular, but is a really great setting and does have at least one massive Discord server for RPing with others (https://discord.com/servers/seattle-by-night-517427294915002371).

I can understand your attitude towards MMOs. I really want to like them myself and keep retrying them, but somehow they end up being more isolating then single player games. I think so much of their content is based around group play that if you somehow manage to go full hermit mode in them like I do, they don’t really work. Single player games emulation human interactions so feel more rewarding somehow.

Since you mentioned GW2, you might try other games like that if it worked for you. WoW, Elder Scrolls Online, FF14. The Payday series might also be a good match as it has auto teaming and voice chat. I would probably stay away from card games like MTG: Arena though. Those are incredibly fun, but are based on fast paced matchmaking with little user to user interaction possible.

Gluttony might be an interesting idea. It’s not necessarily necromantic, but the idea of using magic to force a person to eat until they cannot continue and literally rupture.

Or, and this probably sounds stupid, but you could have a modified form of the grease spell that’s just wet noodles. I don’t know if you’ve ever stepped/slipped on wet noodles, but it’s disgusting and traumatic.

Yeah, those people are so heavily invested in this game that it has to be great at all costs. I mean dropping $100 just to play a few days early and the subsequent justifications made after the fact really speak to that.

I’ve heard people talk about how this is the greatest game ever released. Like dude, this isn’t even the greatest game released so far this year.