This is why there is a great benefit to offline and singleplayer modes.
Like Team Fortress 2... initially you could only play online and against people. I basically stopped playing it because the game was so hard... some people just have nothing better to do than play games. I'll never be as good as them.
But once they added a practice mode with bots and the ability to host the game offline with bots, I was back-in-business.
Now I can play it without being online and I can play with friends in my LAN or against bots.
I think all games should do this, but I know there is a lot of database work that has to be done for this to happen. Specially games like MMORPG's. I don't know how Elder Scrolls games work with all the data, inventory, weapons, armor, magic, etc
But they pull it off in single-player.