Its also suppose to be a horror game, playing co op and chatting away to your mates completely undoes that, your suppose to feel alone, so even when you play co op with a stranger you have no way to communicate with them, there just like a helpful Blue ghost thats come into your world for a short time. Or more often a bastard Red ghost that comes into your world to kill you!

DS beeing an sadistic game, pissing player's of with the lack of features. Hell yeah From Software, youre tha manz!
DS2 will go further, killing the console, causing YLOD and RROD when the owner died.

/sarcasm off: .. ugh, thats bad news.. but if hosted on Namdai servers, it could be their fault too. MAYBE it gets fixed or something? Otherwise.. well.. we have to deal with it, since playing with friends was never really intended.

edit@Kyliedog: Thats the same with MMOs. if some so called friends come to a visit, youre screwed. (Since MMO users arent intended to have friends..?)

but at least in offline Mode, there should have been a pause function.

well that sucks

Amen. I almost feel it would be like cheating if I could import my buddies to help me. It's far more exciting when you are joined by randoms.

Well that suck I liked playing demon souls with my friends

this could all change anyway, people are obviously going to want to play with the Online friends and even though this wasnt really intended when namdai realise people would like it they might "fix" it.

I'm with you there.

Demon's Souls is about being alone in a hostile world. The phantoms of other players are meant to be anonymous and possibly not trustworthy. Otherwise they might as well put lobbies in and make it like everything else.

If the anonymity were taken away the experience wouldn't feel so solitary and hence special.

the thing is, whats the reason behind not beeing able to play with friends?

the only thing i can think about is that they've created Rooms (Just like.. well, Monster Hunter? Or heck, take WoW's Realms for example, which are seperated from each other).

if so, it wouldnt be difficult to fix it, IF they werent lazy at From Software.. If all those People in every room are calculated at once for everyone (like, uhh.. having all people rendered , waiting for you to be seen as White Phantom's), it'd give a totalserver breakdown, since were talking worldwide here. and this wouldnt be fixable without changing the game's Code.

correct me if i am wrong, but that's how i think it is.

this is the only thing that I didn't like with dark souls...many people were asking for the ability to invite a friend...they should've atleast allowed you to invite a friend(s) after both(all) beat the game