Free MMOs! Ones you Like, Ones you Hate, and Quirks... (2nd Attempt)

[Surfing HalfOrc]

OK, I tried to post this yesterday; apparently the board ate the post, but left the title to mock me... :smallannoyed:

Anyways, I really don't have any specific goal in mind for this thread, just sharing a few thoughts about the "Free" MMOs out there, and things I like or don't like about them, and other random thoughts.

Games I Like:
Eden Eternal
Grand Fantasia
Wizard 101

GF and EE are both games are from Aeria Games, a South Korean company. Aeria Games makes several other MMOs, which I will probably get around to playing some day. But for now I'm playing these two.

Eden Eternal: Five player races (Humans, halfkins (halflings), anthropomorphic mice, anthro frogs and anthro bears), anime style, male and female for humans and halflings, many classes and customizable characters. The game has two "basic" classes, fighters and magic users, but branches into about a dozen or so, including bards (One of my toons is Elan the Bard, and blue-eyed blonde :smallsmile:). The graphics are good (not quite World of Warcraft, but decent), the user interface is similar to WoW, and fairly intuitive. The game features PvP, PvE, Battlefields, instances, Guild Halls that can grow into Guild Towns (I haven't leveled up enough yet, but the concept sounds cool. You get actual buildings and farmable property), and most of the features that makes WoW so addictive and enjoyable, plus a few of their own. No quirks so far, only been playing for a few days.

Grand Fantasia: One race (humans), highly customizable characters, four initial classes that split into eight classes, enjoyable quests, PvP, PvE, Battlefields, etc, much like Eden Eternal and WoW. I played this first, and really enjoyed it as well. You get a pet, and can have up to three pets, who take care of your farming and crafting (no stopping at every rock outcropping). But is does have a quirk I find... questionable. Not bad, nor good on the face of it, just something odd. The game has a "Lovers" quest, where you find a team mate of the opposite gender and you become lovers. Sounds fun, like getting married in Dragon Quest V, but this is an MMO, and you are looking for another human player. Fine so far again, until you realize this is an anime style game, with a minimum age of 13 (meaning of course 8-10 year-olds will be playing as well). Since I turn 47 next month... Yeah. Nothing creepy there, right? :smallsigh:

Wizard 101: More like "Free to Level 20" World of Warcraft, with a "Collectable Cards" approach to combat. You collect spell cards to build a deck, then battle the monsters with your spell deck. Good graphics, good story, but you have to buy "Coins" to advance past a certain point. GF and EE claim to be free until the end, but I'm not there yet.

Games I Didn't Like:
Fantasia
Free Realms

Fantasia: The graphics were quite good, but I hated the interface. It just wasn't as intuitive as the ones in WoW/GF/EE, and I couldn't get into the story. Not a bad story, just didn't click for me. Fair character customizations, but not as good as the Aeria Games, and nowhere near WoW.
Free Realms: Good graphics, but I wasn't able to customize my character at all (maybe I did something wrong). I didn't want to look like an early 20's hipster with a goatee, and I really didn't get into the various games. Uninstalled it after a few hours.

Other Games I've Tried, and Plan to Get Back To:
World of Warcraft
Dungeons and Dragons Online
Everquest II

Played WoW "Free to Level 20" version. Loved it, built several toons to 20, but just can't bring myself to spending $180/year on one game! Seriously, it's just too expensive for a "casual" player like I am. I figure with them losing players by the truck load, they will eventually go to a "free" model and I'll start playing again.

DDO and Everquest: Both good, but I ended up playing GF and EE more. I'll go back to those two once I get bored with the Aeria Games offerings, or reach the "You can't level up unless you give us money" barrier.

What about the rest of you? Any games you love? Any quirks that make you go "hmmm..."?

[psilontech]

The only MMO I've ever played (and enjoyed) was Tibia. I suppose a larger portion of of my enjoyment came from the politics and player interaction than the actual gameplay, but it was enjoyment nonetheless.

The BRs were taking the server over and ruining the game for everyone. An intrepid band of heroes were forced together to bring forth allies from across the server to unite against the dreaded BR menace. Politicking and power-mongering ensued until the BR empire was banished to the farthest realms of the server and one of my irl friends became what was essentially God of the server.

The sound of "Huehuehuehuehue!" shall haunt my nightmares for the rest of my life.

[Balain]

I really enjoy Lord of The rings Online. Free to play, you buy extra stuff using turbine points( things like unlocking gold cap limit, quest packs, stable locations, etc) Kind of like DDO I hear. You can earn turbine points in the game by finishing deeds. So although it is tedious you can make one can unlock just about everything for free if you have the time.

[Mando Knight]

My current addiction is Star Trek: Online (http://startrekonline.com/frontpage), which went F2P three months ago. You don't need to pay a single cent for any of the actual content, although several of the neatest things (such as the alternate future version of the Enterprise-D from the TNG finale "...All Good Things") are only available through C-Points (so called because of the developer, Cryptic), which can either be purchased with real money or obtained from a player to player exchange with a specific in-game currency.

Plot Synopsis:
The year is 2409... 31 years after Voyager returned from the Delta Quadrant (en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Endgame), 34 years after the end of the Dominion War (http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/What_You_Leave_Behind_%28episode%29), 30 years after Picard defeated his growth-accelerated clone Shinzon (http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Star_Trek_Nemesis) and his massive Scimitar warship, and 22 years after Ambassador Spock disappeared into a black hole (http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Star_Trek_%28film%29), never to be heard from again. (This is a continuation of the "prime" universe, people. The meat of JJ Abram's film never happened.)

In the intervening decades, the alliance between the Klingon Empire and the United Federation of Planets breaks down, and the two powers are again at war... and every other faction has begun to cause trouble again. "True Way" Cardassian extremists ally with a rogue Founder, Devidians plague a Ferengi-run station in the re-established Klingon Neutral Zone, Remans raise hell for the Romulans, the leaders of the Romulan Tal Shiar consort with Iconians, a Crystalline Entity wanders the Alpha Centauri sector... And in the middle of it all, the Borg come back after decades of inactivity, in greater numbers than before.

You are a young Starfleet officer (chosen from multiple races and from the Tactical, Engineering, or Science career track, and with a highly customizable appearance, including the newest change to Starfleet uniform regulations allowing you to wear... a lot of different things), about to be thrust quite literally into the middle of all these conflicts.

Or... (after you've unlocked it) you're a Warrior of the Klingon Empire, fighting with bat'leths, making hit-and-run attacks on transports in Birds of Prey, drinking bloodwine, eating gagh, and keeping your bridge full of Orion women in fetching little iron bikinis... and if you feel like it, also putting aside your differences and working with Starfleet to defeat greater menaces.
The main draw for me was the starship combat... as you progress through the levels, you can fly a number of familiar ships (or Cryptic-designed variants, or a kitbash thereof): the refit Constitution (the Original Series Connie is a C-Store item, though); fan-favorite Akira; the "hero models" Galaxy, Intrepid, Defiant, and Sovereign (and Excelsior, for those of you obsessed with it); and the Odyssey, the new flagship class chosen from a design contest.

There's also away team missions, where you and your bridge officers can run about and get your security escorts killed, and duty officer missions, where you sit in your ready room and send your minions to do things for you.

[Balain]

I have been on the fence about Star Trek On-line. I just noticed you can play a Gorn...I think that just won me over.

[VeliciaL]

I love STO's ship combat. It's a pity its ground combat isn't nearly as good. And that my poor little netbook can't take more than about six ships on screen at a time, I'd still be playing. :)

[Sith_Happens]

I played Champions Online for a while before it went freemium. It was quite good, and they've added a lot of content and features since then.

[XiaoTie]

The only MMO I've ever played (and enjoyed) was Tibia. I suppose a larger portion of of my enjoyment came from the politics and player interaction than the actual gameplay, but it was enjoyment nonetheless.

The BRs were taking the server over and ruining the game for everyone. An intrepid band of heroes were forced together to bring forth allies from across the server to unite against the dreaded BR menace. Politicking and power-mongering ensued until the BR empire was banished to the farthest realms of the server and one of my irl friends became what was essentially God of the server.

The sound of "Huehuehuehuehue!" shall haunt my nightmares for the rest of my life.

Tibia <3
And being a BR myself I'm well aware of just how evul most Tibia/MMO playing BRs can get. My only beef with Tibia was how long it took to level up and to level skills. I never got high level enough to be directly involved with the politicking aspect of the game, but I did supply some stuff for one side of a war that once happened in the server that I played, they were also fighting my countrymen IIRC XD

Besides Tibia, the only other MMO I actually played was Ragnarok Online (on private servers, so I wouldn't have the same problem I had with Tibia), which is (or was) quite fun to play.

[Ashen Lilies]

Currently playing: City of Heroes!

I loved this game before it went freemium, and now that it has gone freemium, I've been playing it a ridiculous amount.

Major quibble? The ridiculous two character slots they give free players, which combined with my severe altoholism, means I haven't made it past level 14 yet on a character before scrubbing it and starting again. I think I've finally come across a pair of characters I like enough to stick with, but they're still really low level currently. Like, still in Atlas Park/Mercy Island low.

Truncated chat system is a bitch too, but I'm antisocial enough that it doesn't crop up too much, and the other players are used to it enough that they don't mind the "help" channel being used as an impromptu... well, everything else channel. :smalltongue:

[Fredaintdead]

Let's see. Champions Online, City of Heroes, Anarchy Online, DC Universe Online, DDO.
All of them have their downsides (out of the lot, DDO is the one I like the most I'd say), but all of them are pretty good overall. Heck, I still play DCUO and DDO from time to time.
I would pick up CoH/Champions again if I wasn't playing WoW right now.

Specifics:
Champions - Don't remember much, but it was fun while it held my interest at least.
CoH - Again, can't remember much, but it was colourful.
Anarchy - Big. Very very big. Unfortunately repetitive too for levelling, but it managed to keep me playing for at least 6 months on my Adventurer.
DCUO - Had a few irritating bugs, and the accounts who weren't paying every month had some irritating drawbacks (such as being limited to a low amount of currency at any one time, roughly 2000 of the in-game currency, which is about the equivalent of 5 gold in WoW, good luck trying to use the auction house).
DDO - Simply fantastic. The f2p system they have felt perfect to me, the combat was good, the areas are unique, and the people tended to be friendly.

[danzibr]

Tibia <3
And being a BR myself I'm well aware of just how evul most Tibia/MMO playing BRs can get. My only beef with Tibia was how long it took to level up and to level skills. I never got high level enough to be directly involved with the politicking aspect of the game, but I did supply some stuff for one side of a war that once happened in the server that I played, they were also fighting my countrymen IIRC XD

Besides Tibia, the only other MMO I actually played was Ragnarok Online (on private servers, so I wouldn't have the same problem I had with Tibia), which is (or was) quite fun to play.I also played RO on a couple private servers. Unfortunately my main one got shut down. If you can find a good one, I say go for it.

[Grif]

I can't say for games that required downloads like CoH or DCUO, but I did my own exploration of free browser games back when I was bored. Let me list down a few that I actually went and delved into. All are free unless otherwise stated.

Pardus - Ah yes. This one actually held my interest for quite sometime, simply for its simplicity and surprising depth once you get to the meat of the game. It's basically a point and click space game version of X-series of games, where you get to trade or fight in a starship of your own. It does suffer the problem of being quite top-heavy, with veterans dominating the factions and dictating policy, but people are generally friendly. A recommended choice if you wish to whirl some time away but have no wish to download anything.

Kingdom of Loathing - I didn't dwell long on this, simply because it is quite odd for my taste, but I can see the appeal of it to some people. It's basically a quirky browser RPG.

Travian - Self-explanatory. Build villages. Ally with others. Attack to win. A real time sink if you wish to play seriously. A bore honestly, after awhile. If you're into politicking, there's plenty to be found here.

Astro Empires - Me and my friend got into this together, and we found it to be fun when it lasted. It's basically a space version of Travian where you build fleets and colonies, with some quirks.

Elements - Online TCG of a sort. Was fun to play at first, though it quickly got very grindy with the higher-tier (read: fun) cards only available with cash or through grinding. Still, I found it fun when it lasted.

[Halberd]

I've been into Realm Of The Mad God lately, and it's quite addicting. It's not like many other free to play MMO's though. Here are a few of its quirks.
It has a purposefully antiquated pixel art style.
It has no PvP to speak of, and has a very co-op aesthetic, for the most part.
Leveling to the maximum level (only 20) isn't the hard part- it only takes about half an hour. The hard part is obtaining various potions that increase your stats after getting to maximum level.
There is no "pay to win" approach, and the items you can buy with real money are mostly cosmetic. To this day, I have no idea how it makes a profit.
Death is permanent, meaning one mistake can lead to the complete loss of a character you spent months improving. You can store items for future characters in a vault, though.

[turbo164]

Played a few of the ones mentioned (COH = good, Elements was fine til you hit the endgame grind, Realm is quick fun but don't see myself committing to it longterm). Other online CCG's like Elements include Tyrant and Clash of the Dragons which are both fun for a while but get grindy; rather a recurring theme for most MMO's.

Silk Road was fun for a while, but the grind kicked in fairly early. My uninstall threshhold was reached when I had a quest to collect 100 Chakji eyes, which had about a 15% drop rate, so killed about 600-700 Chakji. I completed that, turned it in for piddly xp/gold, the followup quest? KILL 600 CHAKJI. They didn't even hide the number with a drop rate, your little questlog said "Chakji slain: 0/600". Yeah, bye. I will say they had one of the most hilarious anti-bot measures I've seen in a game; the basic merchants sold an item that when right-clicked, created a hovering robot with a big flashing strobe light on top (in a world of ancient Chinese fantasy) that would have the name "Chakji Warrior" or "Giant Rat" or whatever the nearest REAL monster was named. When a bot player came along with their "/target Giant Rat /attack /loot /repeat" code, they would attack the robot, which exploded for a million damage. Thus anytime you encountered someone running a bot in the wild, you could hamper their farming quite a bit :) (sadly people dropped them in the tutorial zone a lot too just to grief noobs :( )

Perfect World was pretty good too; had some grinding of course, main reason I quit that one was that the newest expansion really showed the devs didn't know what their own game needed. The first 6 classes were Tank, Melee DPS, 3 ranged DPS and a healer. An expansion added another Melee DPS and another Ranged DPS. Next expansion added another Melee DPS (which was pretty much better than the first two, to encourage you to buy XP boosts to level up your new imba guy) and a Ranged DPS/Summoner/Healer hybrid. Still only one tank class in the game, new classes pretty much replaced the older ones rather than filling gaps (the new summoner even used the same elemental damage as the previous one, so you couldn't even justify "well this is a fire-themed dungeon so we'll take the ice nuker instead" because they were both Nature damage! just one was newer so it had better stuff, like heals.). Buh. Still, mount options included a giant flaming sword for you to surf through the sky, so it's not uninstalled yet, just haven't logged on in like a year :P

Spiral Knights is pretty fun and I still log on that occasionally; they've added a lot of stuff lately.

[Thanatos 51-50]

I played DCUO, rolled a psychic pistolero and... immedately regretted everything. Because, Gods, it was slow and clunky and horrible, even with me clicking all the +DS CHOICES I could find, it seemed like the game hated the idea of ranged combat. I gave up.
Later, I saw a guy playing as a staff-user what must be higher-level play and it looked smooth and fluid and fun. It didn't, however look like it was worth more tedious grindiness.

I remember the pre-freemium Champions Online, and they've been trying to seduce me back. The game was fun and amazing, but without fully-customizable builds, it's not worth the time.

LotRo was actually pretty great, actually. I forget why I stopped playing as a dual-wielding Death Machine.

[Surfing HalfOrc]

I've heard good things about Perfect World, and Allods, but since I live and work in Korea, no playing for me until I make it back to the states.

Still playing Eden Eternal, and I like being able to get Free Stuff with my phone. Only problem I'm running into is Which Character to Play Today. There is a 5 character limit, but I'm not sure if that is per server. I have four characters now, and can always delete one.

Meh, this is just random babble from a long, tiring day at the bicycle races. I'll make a more coherent post tomorrow.

[Maryring]

Do MUDs count as postable here, or is it only graphical games that are of interest?

[Makensha]

Fiesta, Champions Online, DCU, Eden Eternal, Maple Story, Wonderking, Windslayer 2, FlyfF, Last Chaos, Star Trek Online, Shaiya, Twelve Sky, Last Chaos, Dragon's Nest, DDO, Stick Online, Mabinogi, Runescape, Eternal Earth, Rusty Hearts, CrimeCraft, Wizard 101, Free Realms, Forsaken World, and I know there are a few I'm forgetting about. There are also MOBA's like Rise of Immortals, HoN, LoL, DOTA 2, and one I'm forgetting about.

Thankfully I didn't actually seriously invest time in most of those. As far as recommendations...

The Good: DCU, Eden Eternal, Star Trek Online, LoL, Fiesta, CrimeCraft, Rusty Hearts, DDO, and Dragon's Nest.

The Bad: Maple Story, Runescape, Wizard 101, Maple Story, Rise of Immortals, FlyfF, Maplestory, and Free Realms.

The Ones That I Didn't Like But Might Have Value: Champions Online, Shaiya, Forsaken World, HoN, Last Chaos, and DOTA 2.

Ones That Have Been Shut Down: Wonderking, WindSlayer 2(Its coming back eventually), Twelve Sky, Eternal Earth, Stick Online (Kinda), and a few that I can't find or remember the name of.

Good
DCU: The combat is fun and the movement capabilities are nice.

Eden Eternal: The ability to switch classes makes what is a normal MMO rise above the rest.

DDO: It was fun. I stopped playing because my graphics card died. I should probably pick it back up some time.

Star Trek Online: Good space combat, but prepare to be overloaded managing EVERYTHING.

Leagueo of Legends: Not an MMO. My opinion of this game is heavily skewed by that I joined a community that happens to mostly play this game, so I'll just say the game mechanics are strong and move on.

Fiesta: A typical MMO with some odd quirks. One of my bets MMO memories is with this game, so that's probably why its here.

CrimeCraft: TIGHT combat. Really, really good gunplay, but not really a true MMO and the community was practically dead when I played it.

Rusty Hearts: Beat 'em up with a heavy story emphasis.

Dragon's Nest: Beat 'm up as a TPS. Also heavy story emphasis.

Bad
Maple Story: Platformer with terrible community and several (glaring) mechanics that are there for the sole purpose of getting you to buy merchandise.

Runescape: Run. Escape. The title says it all.

Rise of Immortals: MOBA that could've been decent, but unneeded RPG emphasis causes huge problems.

Wizard 101: A basic card game lacking depth and severely restricted for non paying players.

Free Realms: The kart racing was decent. The combat was... a distraction. More minigame and community based, but lacking depth/substance/reasons to keep playing.

FlyfF: Nothing horrible about it, just old, convoluted, and outdated. Lots of grinding and potion chugging.

[The Glyphstone]

Maple Story was bad enough to make it into the list twice over, huh?:smallbiggrin:

[Vilyathas]

My two cents about Dungeons and Dragons Online, from the perspective of a casual gamer with no experience with other MMOs.

The Good
1. Real-time combat is excellent. Melees walk right up to monsters and starts whaling away, while archers and mages pew-pew away in the back rows with no friendly-fire issues.

2. Instance-based questing, with random loot assignment. No more loot-griefing shenanigans.

3. Most of the game is PVE, with the only PVP in specially-designated gladiatorial pits inside taverns. Personally, I like it that way, although I can see some players preferring a more expanded PVP areas in the outside environment.

4. Very nice selection of questing. While I can say that 90% of the content can be completed by killing something, there are puzzles that require coordination and a diverse set of abilities. Trapping skills are invaluable. A lot of diverse environments from the outskirts of Stormreach city, to the deserts of Menechtarun, to the devil-infested Shavarath.

5. The LFM system allows you to create quest-groups consisting of six-man (or twelve for raids) by level range, class, and quest.

6. The D&D 3.5 class system. You can make just about any character combinations you can think of, up to a maximum of three different classes. Traditionally "gimp" classes like the paladin and the monk have been reworked and are now playable. And not just the class combos. All classes and races have their own set of customizable traits called "enhancements" to boost certain aspects of your race and class. Certain combinations of enhancements can unlock unique enhancements which is equivalent to "prestige classes". Example: you can be a 20-level ranger with an "Arcane Archer" enhancement, or "Tempest" enhancement, or the 20-level wizard can be a "Pale Master" or "Archmage".

The Bad
1. Remember the "linear fighter, quadratic wizard"? It exists here, in spades. The spells-per-day system is replaced by a spellpoint pool. Most of the endgame content can be completed with a full group of casters.

2. No <3 for non-casters. Cure X potions are piddly little things when a pure melee build has over 600+ HP by level 20. To even use Heal scrolls require advanced character building skills that the casual gamer might not pick up on early in the game. A full group of pure melees can't even finish most of the middle-to-endgame content and have to wait for a dedicated healer to join up.

3. Related to above, there's a culture of elitism in DDO, as most of the quest LFMs are looking for players who "know it" and must have "minimum X HP to join", or even blatant class-ism ("Casters only", "Bring your own healing"). While quests have a Casual-Normal-Hard-Elite difficulty selection, hardly anyone form LFMs for anything other than Elite anymore due to the implementation of a mechanic that rewards players for having an unbroken streak of Elite completions. Newer players might be turned off and intimidated at having to start their own groups for quests they're new to. And other new players might also be leery of joining any group that says so.

4. Endgame, it's starting to look like D&D Epic. And we know D&D is poorly equipped to handle Epic. AC is useless unless it's in the 70+ range, due to high-level mobs having ridiculous attack bonuses. Some elite mobs and all bosses have immunities to a lot of things. Vorpal, banishing, and disruption now deals a flat 100 damage on a roll of 20. The result: with bosses having HP in the 100k range, immune to all forms of instakill, cannot be charmed, tripped, stunned, disarmed, dazed, feared, confused, etc, all endgame fights are basically DPS-meatgrinding sessions.

5. Bugs. Some small, some big. I'm not even gonna start or I'll never finish.

Conclusion. Dungeons and Dragons Online, as a free-to-play MMO, is fantastic. A player who doesn't spend a single cent can still have plenty of gameplay options, while earning points that can be used to purchase premium content. From the perspective of someone who has played the game for more than two years, there's a lot of room for improvement to address the class balance issues, quest options other than hack-n-slash, and endgame gameplay.

[Grinner]

Maplestory and Runescape aren't that bad.

Maplestory: A 2D sidescrolling MMO: interesting to try, not worth staying. Between the massive inflation of in-game currency and the community's decidedly uncaring temperament, you won't find yourself enamored with it. It gets points for its fairly unique format, though.

Runescape: The perfect example of a Skinner box. Combat is real-time/turn-based, so your character's efficacy depends upon it's build entirely, which means dozens of hours of grinding. Also has tradeskill-based activities, but these tend to fall victim to the same issues combat faces.

That said, the minigames and quests surpass those in every other game I've played. Whereas the quests in the typical MMO fall under one of three categories(kill, deliver, gather), quests in Runescape tend to be puzzle-solving affairs. The minigames vary in quality, but a few are paragons of fun.

[nhbdy]

No love for Pirates of the Burning Sea? The learning curve is steeper than most, and the ground combat needs work, but the player driven economy is fun to take part in and the ship based combat is fantastic, that and it's free, I love it personally.

[Righteous Doggy]

I used to play Vindictus alot, its something different. I think its called Mabinogi Heroes in some other regions. Its an action game run on source, plays very differently from the Tab 123 gig. Doesn't force you into cashshop, you don't lose content for not putting any money in it. But... its very heavily instanced. You might want to look into it, I'm not sure if I could do justice in a forum post for something that varies so much with opinion.

[LansXero]

I can say without a doubt Knight Online had the best PvP system Ive played. Not sure how it holds out now with all the expansions, and the PvE is a hateful, horrid grind, but the PvP system and the massive wars were great.

Another probably unknown MMORPG with a pretty unique combat and a cool but bizarre plot is Atlantica Online. Worth trying at least once :P