"Dropping in" on an epic fantasy story is both technically possible and completely pointless. It's like reading 10 pages from the middle of Lord of the Rings. The story makes no sense. The characters make no sense. It sucks.
Okay, I guess that's an opinion. But it's not one everyone shares, quite clearly, given the general popularity of drop-in/drop-out co-op in games. And whilst you may well be playing DOS2 as an "epic fantasy story", I think a lot of players are engaging with it in very different ways, and this is extremely evident if you watch videos of people playing it, or read people's reviews of it and so on. It seems like an awful lot of people thought the story was kind of "meh" or overblown, but that the gameplay and the interactions within the story were a lot of fun.
So what we've really got down to here is "Due to the way I, Paul, engage with DOS2, I would not enjoy the multiplayer!".
That's fine and reasonable. It does not, however, mean that in any broader sense the MP "sucks". Especially given how many people are essentially playing DOS2 like a really joke-y, silly and exploit-filled D&D campaign.
This is unfortunate given you then say:
It sounds to me like you are incapable of accepting that that people like different things to you, and are trying to claim that actually no one liked it and the statistics are fraudulent. As Indiana Jones said "everyone is lost but me!"
Hoo boy. You literally are saying a game's MP "sucks", because it's not suited to how you play the game, even though it's demonstrable that other people love it. You can't even argue otherwise, there's too much on YouTube, Twitch and other sites showing people enjoying the hell of out of the MP.
And yet I'm the one, apparently, who is "incapable of accepting people like different things". Wow, that's er kind of next level lol.
Re: fraudulent, er, nope. I'm saying the we don't have the figures. So how on earth can you take this as them being "fraudulent"? That doesn't make any sense. You see to think we do have the figures and I'm disagreeing with them, maybe? We don't. So you're simply incorrect to claim that I'm saying they're "fraudulent". We can put that on the big pile of things you've claimed that are objectively false in this conversation, right next to ME2 having MP, ME3's MP being PvP, and so on. It's kind of a big pile! Be nice if you admitted you were dead wrong about those things.
I can't prove that you are wrong about multiplayer DOS2, other than to say I though it was an excellent D&D-with-the-numbers-filed-off single player CRPG, and to remind you that Baldur's Gate has always had a multiplayer option in exactly the same way.
I'm not sure what you think you're saying re: BG, but that supports my point, logically (i.e. that MP increases sales but leaves a lot of people with low/no-hours played copies). Okay I guess?