Seeking Free-To-Play MMO's

**Ksandra** · 2009-07-16 15:47

Originally Posted by fishstix

Perfect world is one of the better well made free MMOs, but I heard it's a grind to reach the upper levels.

If you want free to play I suggest ^ or Fly for Fun. Both have been around for awhile and have been doing pretty well.

Free Realms like said above is fun to poke around with. but when I tried it seemed there was way too much stuff to be bought with IRL cash to make it worth it (ie have to buy pets for pet class with irl money).

Also free realms kinda creeps me out. It's made by Sony which does EQ. And if you've ever played eq, and tried free realms...It's like Sony was thinking "We will prepare the youngin's! And when they are ripe and addicted.........EQ3!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! BWHAHAHAHA"

It is pretty cute though. XD

**Falisa** · 2009-07-16 15:53

Originally Posted by Ksandra

Also free realms kinda creeps me out. It's made by Sony which does EQ. And if you've ever played eq, and tried free realms...It's like Sony was thinking "We will prepare the youngin's! And when they are ripe and addicted.........EQ3!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! BWHAHAHAHA"

It is pretty cute though. XD

Shhh don't let our secret out!

Originally Posted by zoobernut

That is very cool. Do they still make you purchase items for your character when you are playing? My friend plays and she is a modeler for them and had to purchase an item that she modeled lol, I am not ragging on them for that I just though it was kinda funny when you thought about it.

I don't actually play Free Realms in my free time but if I asked my lead, maybe.

**Halion** · 2009-07-16 18:04

I have tried out a ton of free MMOs (I have too much free time and get bored easily<_<) and unless you are really hardcore into PVP I agree with

1.) Free
2.) Fun
3.) MMORPG

Pick two.

on the caveat that you have any standards as far as graphics are concerned. You are also basically splitting into three categories of MMORPG. Open PVP, PVP/PVE, social. Then of course these is MMORTS, MMOFPS etc but it sounds like you guys want more RPG. I don't know of any social that aren't anime themed, some examples would be Rose, Bread and Butter and Fiesta.

After playing p2p I can't quite bring myself to play the really nasty or spritey looking ones so some of the older more established games like RO, Dofus, Shards of Dalaya could very well be fun. Secret of the Solstice and Atlantica Online also seem like decent sprite games. Atlantica has a turn-based party battle system that is pretty fun.

The thing about asking for no grind is that American companies don't make many free MMOs, they just buy the distribution rights to translate Korean, Chinese etc MMOs and those are all based on grindfest; and the distribution companies tend to suck at their jobs hardcore which = bot/hack/gold farmer infested servers. A lot of them have added good low level tutorials and starter quests but after a while the quests kind of drop off. A LOT of anime styled MMOs have very little job variety.

Granado Espada is gorgeous for free graphics if you like tha Old England style but is one of the grindiest grindfests to ever grind. They start off right at lvl 1 on that.

Perfect World and Runes of Magic seemed boring and bland to me so I didn't make it very far. Rappelz is better for that style imo, not too grindy for at least the first 40 lvls and seems to have a good amount of people running pug instances. Rappelz is the more realistic version of Fly For Fun which is anime styled and iirc doesn't let you choose your job until much later level, and also has open PVP. Other well-run games in this same vein would be Shaiya and Rohan. Good starter quests, good graphics, pretty WoW-clonish so the ability, skill, quests windows etc don't drive you crazy. I'm not sure how much PVE content the latter two have though. Shaiya has an interesting hard mode where if you die and are not resurrected in a certain amount of time you lose your character.

Chronicles of Spellborn would give you that medieval feel if you enjoy their unique ability use system.

A Legend of Mu emulator would be a good option for hardcore PVP.

The game I'm looking into right now is Requiem, it's got some buggy stuff but they have their major update coming before the end of summer. I'd say best graphics for all free games but the style might not be for everyone as it is horror inspired and has a lot of weird shit. They have a lot of battlegrounds and are adding many more instanced PVE areas. Unfortunately the devs don't seem to be too apt to fix bugs :X

Bounty Bay looks an interesting game that's a rip of Pirate of the Burning Sea, you make a pirate and battle with your historically-realistic ship. I haven't played it but worth a try if that sound interesting to you.

I could list a ton more but the main thing I do before even DLing a game is checking a couple free MMO review sites as well as the official game forums to see how much people have to say or complain about 2 things: how left behind you are going to be if you don't use the item mall and how prevalent botting and MAJOR bugs are. ArchLord is probably the best example of item mall overpowering. You cannot even *be* the Arch Lord as a free player. Since you're looking to play with your wife I would even make a post on the newbie forums looking for a friendly social guild to start out in. If you can't find one that's probably a good indicator you won't be happy with the community.

One last thing about that site that was linked, I checked out their top 10 list and unless Shin Megami Tensei got a COMPLETE makeover on the control system, map system, fighting system, and quest tracking I would say it belongs on a worst 10 list, not a top 10 list. Out of all the games I've tried it's the only one that had such a clunky and annoying to use overall system I couldn't even give it a chance.

Wall o text. Really really depends on your views of PVP to be more specific and there is just soooooo many free MMO.

**izembo** · 2009-07-16 18:07

Originally Posted by Ksandra

If you want free to play I suggest ^ or Fly for Fun. Both have been around for awhile and have been doing pretty well.

Free Realms like said above is fun to poke around with. but when I tried it seemed there was way too much stuff to be bought with IRL cash to make it worth it (ie have to buy pets for pet class with irl money).

Also free realms kinda creeps me out. It's made by Sony which does EQ. And if you've ever played eq, and tried free realms...It's like Sony was thinking "We will prepare the youngin's! And when they are ripe and addicted.........EQ3!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! BWHAHAHAHA"

It is pretty cute though. XD

this, play flyff

**Insanecyclone** · 2009-07-16 18:13

I got to 13 on flyff and couldn't go on. I want too but I just can't because of how boring it felt and Do Not play Silkroad played that few years back and that grindfest is worse than anything

**Devia** · 2009-07-16 18:21

Originally Posted by Halion

Atlantica has a turn-based party battle system that is pretty fun.

This. I thoroughly enjoyed my time playing Atlantica. It really is unlike anything else out there.

**krazylakshmi** · 2009-07-16 18:35

Perfect World is fun but the lvl cap is very high at lvl81 u need like 7-8mil exp just to lvl.. which is just dumb. At lvl30 ur able to PK ppl and higher lvl ppl can attack u also which fucks up ur quest im stuck at 29..lol need like 90k exp to go from 29 to 30 which is just dumb im installing Shaiya atm almost done