Free online mmorpg Options

[LINK1416]

Anything at gpotato.com is decent. I've gotten into FlyFF, and its less-cartoony counterpart (if you will), Rappelz.

[Bolzmania]

Meh, flyff gets old fast.

[Nottheking]

I personally still play a third-party server for Ultima Online. I don't think MMOs have gotten any better in the some 11 years since UO's first commercial release. Too quickly people looked at EverQuest, and realized you didn't need UO's stupifyingly exhaustive level of detail and thought; just get decent art, use tons of grind as filler, and then throw in the multiplayer/social aspect as a crutch. Charge people $10-15US a month, and pow, instant millions.

Plus, to me, the idea of instancing is just lame; it's a sign that the developers are too lazy/unwilling to put forth the effort and resources to actually make enough/large enough dungeons for everyone. Or too lazy and uninspired to make dungeons suitable for a wide range of levels, such as ones that AREN'T largely one-dimensional. Or serve little purpose for going by the time you're high enough a level to solo them. Or ones that don't necessarily require setting aside the next couple hours to do them or not touch them at all.

[seerauna]

Yea, my entire family plays World of Warcraft, and it's soo annoying. All they talk about are the instances. Personally, I don't get it. I mean, all that really happens is you go in, kill a bunch of stuff, and get yelled at part of the time for not doing it correctly, especially in the bigger party ones. (Sadly, since they play all the time, I understand a lot about the game.)

[Nottheking]

Part of my problem with Instances/Raids is that, for almost all intents and purposes, they're linear. In some cases, a quest might send you down a slightly different path through it, but you still can't go back and do that before leaving. Of course, designing them all around having a 5-person party going through them helps ensure that no one will try doing things differently, for fear of retribution from the rest of the party.

Likewise, I also enjoy how UO has a flatter leveling slope, actually involves a degree of player skill, and has a much faster-paced play; DPS is largely a useless statistic in the game in light of simply considering one's ability to stay alive. Likewise, virtually every dungeon retains at least some use to players even at endgame levels; there's a POINT to soloing things, and it's not impossible, as the game's PvE isn't entirely the same pattern of tank/nuke/heal roles; with some player skill, characters can actually stand on their own two feet.

This ability to go it alone is especially important in a game where there are no pre-defined classes, where you've got an Elder Scrolls-esque system of skill selection and gain that has some 43 skills, and far more possible combinations. Hence, there's a lot of creativity involved, rather than seeking out a pre-defined line to follow.

This post has been edited by Nottheking: Jul 4 2009, 03:47 AM

[seerauna]

That sounds really interesting, and a lot more fun than one of the MMOs like W.O.W. Might have to try it.

[Nottheking]

Well, it WAS the first true MMORPG. (games like Meridian 59 were not massive, even if they had subscription fees; M59 was actually smaller in player capacity than NWN) Origin didn't really know the genre well, since it outright didn't exist. So they tried far harder than they had to. It wasn't until some time later everyone realized it was an easy cash cow that'd slipped right beneath their noses the whole time.

The server I play on is free. It's called UODemise, and is the closest mirror of the official servers. You can take a look at how to get onto it here; EA allows people to download the client for free. And yes, I'm on those forums under the exact same name.