Ive played a little bit of mmorpgs back int he day, that stars wars one to be exact, which felt more like walking sim more than anything. Im considering picking up old school runescape but im not sure if its good choice or not? What mmorpg that is free would you like to suggest to me a beginner?
I recently started playing World of Warcraft, the current version, and my gosh it was way too easy and way too fast. I got to level 70 in 5 days, and gave up and started playing WoW classic instead, which is much more difficult. So I’d say WoW is probably your jam, just stay away from Classic.
Old school runescape free to play is a great introduction but you should go into it knowing that its not a free to play game and you’ll likely be paying a subscription fee.
Guild wars 1 is a old but its good and its like $10 one time payment. It can be done solo or with other players.
Depends what you like, but I’m still nostalgic for old school WoW and find myself wanting to play every now and again but don’t want to subscribe for a whole month. My recommendation for that would be Turtle WoW, it’s an expanded vanilla private server that has it’s own launcher and everything so it’s pretty simple to get started with.
Been playing on twow for about a month now, it scratches the vanilla itch better than classic did, folks seem reasonably friendly and it’s nice to have a community on the server vs modern WoW of never seeing the same person twice
Interesting. How likely is it that Blizzard throws another tantrum and files a lawsuit? I heard they’ve done that before against people running private servers.
That’s what worries me a bit as well. As far as I’m aware, they seem to be pretty safe for now? Nostalrius WoW was a big private server that got shut down by Blizzard, but they were located in the USA. Turtle WoW is based in Europe (UK if what I found is accurate) and has done transformative work to the game, including working on a whole new compatible client in UE5 that should be releasing this year. But the issue still remains that they primarily have Blizzards assets, story, etc as the base of their game. I guess time will tell, I’m hoping it sticks around though.
I’d suggest Guild Wars 2. It’s an MMO that can be played quite casually and doesn’t require massive time investment or grinding. It has a fun gameplay loop that encourages free exploration. Collaboration with other players arises freely from gameplay.
I vaguely recall getting about 30 days out of the free tier until I decided to start purchasing base/expansions.
So, I think I’d just say be aware that it’s probably not an “indefinitely free” kind of thing – but will give you a sufficient amount of entertainment until you want to consider if you want more.
Yep absolutely seconding this one. Everything is very much a play-as-you-want playground, with many ways to level and a low stress, community based world. Pretty much everything that causes friction against other players in other MMOs (kill stealing, limited resource mining, open world pvp etc) just isn’t in the game or in its own place you don’t have to go.
I will say that it has a lot of complexity and systems on systems that have built up over time that can be opaque and overwhelming. But again, you have the choice not to engage, and can do perfectly well running your character around maps exploring and picking cabbages and pumpkins and doing whatever you think looks interesting. Just remember to change out your armor and weapons every few levels on your way to 80.
It’s one of the few MMOs I bought at launch and made it from level one to the cap without ever actually teaming up with anyone. And the story was good too!
In contrast to the other commenters, fuck FFXIV.
I tried it twice and it’s just… annoying. Maybe because I was already annoyed with MMOs in general by then.
You should still try it yourself eventually, but it’s really bleh for me.
To be honest, most f2p MMOs don’t work as a f2player. You have to end up paying or it becomes stressful.
Anyway, i don’t recommend them, but they felt the least annoying the longest. Star Trek Online and Neverwinter (grindy as hell or expensive pay2unlock), Guild Wars 2 (needs buying the first two expansions to unlock permanent mounts and character specializations) and if you’re brave enough to go the private servers route, try searching for private, yet somewhat reputable servers of games you think might’ve been nice like Wildstar…
Ffxiv has a lot of content available in the free trial but it is not really a “free mmorpg” since if you want to do content that released less than 6 years ago, or join/use FC guilds or linkshell chats, or trade, have any significant quantity of gil, get housing, or use player markets, then you have to buy the game and pay a subscription. Mahjong is free though and it’s quite a good mahjong client.
That said, it is a good way to figure out if you like the basic gameplay systems: the UI and menus which are very customizable, controls (switch to legacy if using M&KB), tab target combat and global cooldown, main scenario questing, instanced dungeons and normal mode bosses, unlocking multiple jobs to try out.
All this with the caveat that basically all jobs at level 70 feel like an empty shell of the combat rotation of level 100, and high end content is only available and populated for the most recent patches + the 6 ultimate raids.
(cont.) Guild wars 2 is another mmo that is worth trying to see if you like the feel of the action combat. You can again play a whole lot free, but you do have to pay if you want the expansion content (which i feel is kind of diabolical to lock mounts behind max level expansion content). I also do not like that you can buy in game currency with real money, and then buy legendary (best in slot) weapons off the trading post with in game currency.
Theres maplestory which is mainly singleplayer, just make sure you make your char on the reboot (non-p2w) servers. Scratches the itch.
Honorable mention to private/classic servers like tera classic which i’ve been meaning to try out. The population being tiny is the most obvious factor but it is nice that the game has been preserved at all for people to play.
The cryptic mmos. Champions online, star trek online, and neverwinter are all fairly easy with it sorta getting harder along that list but even neverwinter is not super hard. They are free to play mmos and when I played it was completely possible to be competitive with mild grinding. In particular they have several events per year where mild grinding (10 or 20 minutes a day and maybe more like 2 or 3 if you don’t alt) will get you high end stuff. Champions stuff is more about costuming to begin with and its top gear is easy to grind. You can make a support character where the passive effects are enough to help a team and I have pointed them out as good games for disabled (Can setup to not need fast reflexes or such) folks. The character does need to be well built but its not hard to learn and there are nice guides on steam. Star trek had an activer reddit community and guides strewn around. It gets a bit more complicated as it has space and ground which is sorta like two different games and your roles can change between them (sci is controllers and debuffers in space and ground but also ground healers, eng are space healers and buffers and ground pet masters and debuffers. honestly they all get mixed around. tac are dps ground or space. there are tons of generic modules that can be used across jobs). Your ship has more effect on your role to some degree and how its built. Fast tactical vs carriers vs behometh type and sci ships. I don’t have allot with neverwinter but its made more arcadey. The mmo aspects go down as you go down the list to. champions has day/night cycles in the main area with traffic showing rush hour, ligths coming on as folks get home in their condos, and china town having nightly fireworks. Star trek had day/night on risa but got rid of it and by the time you get to neverwinter its sorta faux open world with most places being a series of trails. All the games allow you to grind for the in game currency but that is not the easy grind of the events and take more time but its a common enough award that if you do not pay attention for a few years you will find you had built up quite a bit from happenstance. Won’t allow you to buy everything but eventually you can pick up some particular thing you may have wanted. Star trek also had events that gave away coupons to the store that pretty much would let you get almost anything without to much grind as long as you did not have to have the latest offerings. Now my experience with these where awhile ago. Not with champions you can choose a more comic book rendering or a more standard rending for game play. All are so old it should be practically impossible to have a machine that can’t handle the requirements. I know folks complained it did not take enough advantage of gpu and did not require much of one but could hog cpu decently.
Old School Runescape i’ve had a decent bit of fun with and i’d recommend it. It takes a lot of reading, but there’s a free option for you to try if you’re unsure and it runs on damn near anything. Granted i’m not the target audience for MMOs. I usually hop in and dick around a little bit then pop out
Its not new, but maybe check out Ragnarok Online. I don’t know how beginner friendly it is, but I was able to pick it up pretty easily with no prior knowledge.
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Warframe.
I recently started playing World of Warcraft, the current version, and my gosh it was way too easy and way too fast. I got to level 70 in 5 days, and gave up and started playing WoW classic instead, which is much more difficult. So I’d say WoW is probably your jam, just stay away from Classic.
What?!? I haven’t really played since WotLK, so 70 in 5 days sounds insane to me.
Old school runescape free to play is a great introduction but you should go into it knowing that its not a free to play game and you’ll likely be paying a subscription fee.
Guild wars 1 is a old but its good and its like $10 one time payment. It can be done solo or with other players.
I did search and found this article listing 16 to consider.
I don’t reaaly play MMOs, but I had a lot of fun with Star Wars: The Old Republic. I put over 300 hours in to do all the class stories.
Depends what you like, but I’m still nostalgic for old school WoW and find myself wanting to play every now and again but don’t want to subscribe for a whole month. My recommendation for that would be Turtle WoW, it’s an expanded vanilla private server that has it’s own launcher and everything so it’s pretty simple to get started with.
Been playing on twow for about a month now, it scratches the vanilla itch better than classic did, folks seem reasonably friendly and it’s nice to have a community on the server vs modern WoW of never seeing the same person twice
Interesting. How likely is it that Blizzard throws another tantrum and files a lawsuit? I heard they’ve done that before against people running private servers.
That’s what worries me a bit as well. As far as I’m aware, they seem to be pretty safe for now? Nostalrius WoW was a big private server that got shut down by Blizzard, but they were located in the USA. Turtle WoW is based in Europe (UK if what I found is accurate) and has done transformative work to the game, including working on a whole new compatible client in UE5 that should be releasing this year. But the issue still remains that they primarily have Blizzards assets, story, etc as the base of their game. I guess time will tell, I’m hoping it sticks around though.
Final Fantasy 14. It’s base game and first couple expansions are free to play. No subscription needed unless you keep playing after that
I’d suggest Guild Wars 2. It’s an MMO that can be played quite casually and doesn’t require massive time investment or grinding. It has a fun gameplay loop that encourages free exploration. Collaboration with other players arises freely from gameplay.
I vaguely recall getting about 30 days out of the free tier until I decided to start purchasing base/expansions.
So, I think I’d just say be aware that it’s probably not an “indefinitely free” kind of thing – but will give you a sufficient amount of entertainment until you want to consider if you want more.
Yep absolutely seconding this one. Everything is very much a play-as-you-want playground, with many ways to level and a low stress, community based world. Pretty much everything that causes friction against other players in other MMOs (kill stealing, limited resource mining, open world pvp etc) just isn’t in the game or in its own place you don’t have to go.
I will say that it has a lot of complexity and systems on systems that have built up over time that can be opaque and overwhelming. But again, you have the choice not to engage, and can do perfectly well running your character around maps exploring and picking cabbages and pumpkins and doing whatever you think looks interesting. Just remember to change out your armor and weapons every few levels on your way to 80.
It’s one of the few MMOs I bought at launch and made it from level one to the cap without ever actually teaming up with anyone. And the story was good too!
+1 for guild wars 2!
In contrast to the other commenters, fuck FFXIV. I tried it twice and it’s just… annoying. Maybe because I was already annoyed with MMOs in general by then.
You should still try it yourself eventually, but it’s really bleh for me.
To be honest, most f2p MMOs don’t work as a f2player. You have to end up paying or it becomes stressful.
Anyway, i don’t recommend them, but they felt the least annoying the longest. Star Trek Online and Neverwinter (grindy as hell or expensive pay2unlock), Guild Wars 2 (needs buying the first two expansions to unlock permanent mounts and character specializations) and if you’re brave enough to go the private servers route, try searching for private, yet somewhat reputable servers of games you think might’ve been nice like Wildstar…
Ffxiv has a lot of content available in the free trial but it is not really a “free mmorpg” since if you want to do content that released less than 6 years ago, or join/use FC guilds or linkshell chats, or trade, have any significant quantity of gil, get housing, or use player markets, then you have to buy the game and pay a subscription. Mahjong is free though and it’s quite a good mahjong client.
That said, it is a good way to figure out if you like the basic gameplay systems: the UI and menus which are very customizable, controls (switch to legacy if using M&KB), tab target combat and global cooldown, main scenario questing, instanced dungeons and normal mode bosses, unlocking multiple jobs to try out.
All this with the caveat that basically all jobs at level 70 feel like an empty shell of the combat rotation of level 100, and high end content is only available and populated for the most recent patches + the 6 ultimate raids.
(cont.) Guild wars 2 is another mmo that is worth trying to see if you like the feel of the action combat. You can again play a whole lot free, but you do have to pay if you want the expansion content (which i feel is kind of diabolical to lock mounts behind max level expansion content). I also do not like that you can buy in game currency with real money, and then buy legendary (best in slot) weapons off the trading post with in game currency.
Theres maplestory which is mainly singleplayer, just make sure you make your char on the reboot (non-p2w) servers. Scratches the itch.
Honorable mention to private/classic servers like tera classic which i’ve been meaning to try out. The population being tiny is the most obvious factor but it is nice that the game has been preserved at all for people to play.
Star Wars Galaxies is still alive and well on emulated servers hilariously if you actually liked it.
https://swglegends.com/
The cryptic mmos. Champions online, star trek online, and neverwinter are all fairly easy with it sorta getting harder along that list but even neverwinter is not super hard. They are free to play mmos and when I played it was completely possible to be competitive with mild grinding. In particular they have several events per year where mild grinding (10 or 20 minutes a day and maybe more like 2 or 3 if you don’t alt) will get you high end stuff. Champions stuff is more about costuming to begin with and its top gear is easy to grind. You can make a support character where the passive effects are enough to help a team and I have pointed them out as good games for disabled (Can setup to not need fast reflexes or such) folks. The character does need to be well built but its not hard to learn and there are nice guides on steam. Star trek had an activer reddit community and guides strewn around. It gets a bit more complicated as it has space and ground which is sorta like two different games and your roles can change between them (sci is controllers and debuffers in space and ground but also ground healers, eng are space healers and buffers and ground pet masters and debuffers. honestly they all get mixed around. tac are dps ground or space. there are tons of generic modules that can be used across jobs). Your ship has more effect on your role to some degree and how its built. Fast tactical vs carriers vs behometh type and sci ships. I don’t have allot with neverwinter but its made more arcadey. The mmo aspects go down as you go down the list to. champions has day/night cycles in the main area with traffic showing rush hour, ligths coming on as folks get home in their condos, and china town having nightly fireworks. Star trek had day/night on risa but got rid of it and by the time you get to neverwinter its sorta faux open world with most places being a series of trails. All the games allow you to grind for the in game currency but that is not the easy grind of the events and take more time but its a common enough award that if you do not pay attention for a few years you will find you had built up quite a bit from happenstance. Won’t allow you to buy everything but eventually you can pick up some particular thing you may have wanted. Star trek also had events that gave away coupons to the store that pretty much would let you get almost anything without to much grind as long as you did not have to have the latest offerings. Now my experience with these where awhile ago. Not with champions you can choose a more comic book rendering or a more standard rending for game play. All are so old it should be practically impossible to have a machine that can’t handle the requirements. I know folks complained it did not take enough advantage of gpu and did not require much of one but could hog cpu decently.
Old School Runescape i’ve had a decent bit of fun with and i’d recommend it. It takes a lot of reading, but there’s a free option for you to try if you’re unsure and it runs on damn near anything. Granted i’m not the target audience for MMOs. I usually hop in and dick around a little bit then pop out
Wow isn’t very newbie friendly due to the mere SIZE of this behemoth but if you work at it, it can be enjoyable. You’ll never run outta stuff to do.
It’s free till level 20. Then you can decide whether you wanna continue. You can pay for the sub with in-game gold.
Its not new, but maybe check out Ragnarok Online. I don’t know how beginner friendly it is, but I was able to pick it up pretty easily with no prior knowledge.