I fooled around with the FU2 demo completely forgot about MH till 3U and was still a bit late to the party, but I forget ahead. As a gamer of the SNES era with a brother that had vastly different gaming tastes than I, I grew accustomed to playing solo even well after the days/nights of N64/Gamecube 4-player weekend killer fun. Hell, even after having my original 360 I didn't connect to XbL until I had my own apartment and owned the 360 for a few years.
But I digress. Started with 3U on 3DS playing solo until I got a Wii U, my gf (at the time) got interested and started playing with me since I was afraid of being trampled under foot of the countless "no-lives" that would bring me to shame with how lacking in skills I really was. Until I got to Village High Rank and grew bored of solo'ing. Due to circumstances, my hunting partner was no longer my life partner fulfilling hunting partner duties on the side and I was definitely left with only one choice, especially since my only other Hunter friend had a life and that 3ds I once had belonged to somebody else as an x-mas gift... So I had to brave the online world and meet strangers to fulfill my insatiable bloodlust.
The first few hunts really sucked and it wasn't lack of skill as much as "I need" fucking "roll for" hunters that wanted to cop their nut like I was some cheap prostitute and leave. So I ventured onward, party after party until I found people. But that didn't last long as I work a crazy schedule and my party was never online anymore. Yet I did manage to reach G-Rank before I stopped playing for months.
Between that time of shitty hunting parties, I figured at some point "Reddit has a sub for EVERYTHING. I used it to find a crew to play GTA V with and had great success. MH can't be any different. . ." I found /r/monsterhunterclan and started gathering my items, working on armor/weapons so I could feel like I belonged. Yet it was on the downhill, no real organization nor how to hunt with a group besides posts of "I'm on now, join me." So I let that sit on the back burner.
Forwards to back after I stopped playing for a few months upon hitting G-Rank. I got the urge to play again. Being by myself a lot, bored as hell, no interest in joining the FPS cult (although I did play CS2:GO/Halo for a bit with friends) and even my favorite games becoming dull without somebody to giggle at me for pissing my pants over a good Dark Souls jump scare I decided to check back in on the sub I abandoned. It had new life, new mods, new design and "WHAT'S THIS!?"... a fucking TeamSpeak server.
I still doubted my skills, but decided to hop on anyway... that decision was the best one I made. I found a group of people I talk to everyday that are (what I consider) good friends, have kept me company in a fucked up time of my life and made me feel like I belonged. . . That was almost 5 months ago.
And the summary of it all is simply this...
Tl;Dr: The MH series is an easy one to be intimidated by, especially with the learning curve and the investment of time it takes till you feel truly adept with being a hunter. But when you find yourself amongst a great group of hunters or friends, the game loses all aspect of being difficult and becomes a fulfilling challenge that brings you all together. And I for one am glad that I started playing MH for all of the fun times, experiences and companionship I've had thanks to it.