Grand Theft Auto 5 was released in September of 2013 to critical acclaim, revolutionizing many of the aspects of the franchise that made it truly feel like a successor to the PS2 era San Andreas. A month later, GTA 5 Online went live as a side escapade in which you yourself could create your own morally ambiguous knockaround guy and engage in illicit affairs.
Unfortunately what we actually got was not so much the Grand Theft Auto MMO many people were expecting, and instead what we got was a playground full of teenagers and 50 years old Call of Duty players waiting out their current suspensions. On a good day, most other players, a total of 30 per instanced session, will usually leave you alone unless they are feeling particularly spicy. Other times you'll find yourself being sniped, run over and gunned down for the sheer thrill of the kill.
Missions and events in the game will throw you into an oftentimes endless void of waiting for other players to join up to whatever mission you're currently trying to get going, just to have someone waste all of the teams allocated lives, and having Little Jimmy ragequit back to Fortnite and forcing you back to the endless void to try and regain your lost partners.
Once during a Heist I literally cost my team the mission, because during a pursuit I was sniped from the back of the getaway van, a position that I was in no way capable of defending myself. Honestly if you're just a casual player I wouldn't even bother with Heists, as they require a level of resources and skill of the highest regard, or you will only taste failure and the salt of your team mates for being a lesser beta.
If the mission involves a helicopter or an airplane in anyway, you're screwed.
A lot of mission content has come out since it went live, recently with the ability to own and manage a night club under the tutelage of GTA 4 fan favorite Gay Tony. But you need money to get a lot of the additional content, and lots of it. The Doomsday Heists in particular can require millions of dollars, and even my nightclub required an easy investment of a million and some change to get started. Your ingame cellphone will constantly be blowing up to remind you of these additional expenses, in an attempt to annoy you enough to throw down real world cash for digital currency, just to get the game to stop jingling the keys in front of you.
Outside of the missions that try to connect themselves to an overall narrative or at least a lackluster attempt at immersion, there's the usual array of activities like racing and deathmatches. My personal favorite being RPGs VS Insurgents.
If you come into GTA Online expecting an MMO experience you may as well look elsewhere. Everyone is out for themselves and their respective bank accounts. If you come out of a mission and your team mates are near you, fully expect them to try and take you down and take your cut before you've had a chance to deposit it in the bank. Even the games equivalent of guilds, Crews, are merely a means to an end to pad out your wait for certain missions and for certain revenue generating activities that always end in other players in the world hunting you down to take their pound of flesh off your corpse. The lighter activities, like golf, tennis, or even darts, will leave you in the endless void of seeking other players long enough for you to consider the entertainment value of solitaire, because these activities are meant for fun rather than profit, and this is a heresy.
Does it fail? Yes and no. The game has survived almost five years since it's release and is still pumping out content. Unfortunately this is only for the Online and not the single player. There is always new and expensive weapons being added, new clothes to enhance your wardrobe, and more and more overly expensive vehicles for other players to aim their rocket launchers at. It's all about obtaining the almighty dollar so you can feed your habits and obtain bigger and better things.
But beyond the acquisition of material wealth, there really isn't all that much to do in GTA Online. The load times can be soul crushing, and more often than not I was left hanging in a overhead view of the city, obscured by clouds, because the game bugged while exiting out of a finished activity, forcing me to reset my connection just to get it to load back in.
It's a troll's paradise, and you should always expect to be carpet bombed, or have a bounty put on your head or mercenaries sent after you, just because someone didn't like your screen name. Hackers and modders come out in legions, and you will be griefed endlessly. The only way to truly win, is to not play.
Alternatively if you're still seeking an immersive experience, you can always attempt to join the various RP servers, that require third party programs and application processes to access, to enjoy attempts by people to roleplay akwardly over voice chat. The one I joined as a means of science, was plagued endlessly by people failing to understand that running around an RP server gunning people down, was not cohesive, and would easily get you kicked from the servers, because no matter where you go in Los Santos, whatever it's form, it is still a troll's paradise.
If you're thinking of getting GTA 5 purely for the online, you really shouldn't. The frustrations aren't worth the price of admission. What you see on Youtube and Twitch are not the norm. Sadly the real world setting isn't often used to MMO styles much save for The Secret World, and if memory serves right APB closed down years ago. Regardless at the end of the day, GTA Online is a good lesson in why excessive materialism is bad, and will always lead to discontent.
