"Free" MMORPG that's worth playing?

[zagibu]

You can't really get on the whole 'my time is too valuable' high horse on a forum discussion about the best free MMO on the market lol. The idea that those partaking in the discussion have/had some degree of free time is kinda a given lol. We wouldn't be playing these games if that was the case, we wouldn't be playing THIS game if that was the case, and we certainly wouldn't be posting on the forum about it if that was the case.

*edit, not trying to imply noone here has anything better to do, but you gotta figure the guy asking for an MMO to play with their mate has a mind to killing some free time*

Everybody knows that all forms of entertainment are measured by curvature of your smile divided by time invested.

[cmp]

Here is a list of good MMORPGs:

[Miwiw]

Here is a list of good MMORPGs:
World of Warcraft

WHAT!?!

[Molly]

The open-pvp and class system of Lineage 2 with the sieges make a really nice game play with a pretty high skill level needed. That Asian grinder is a pretty awesome pvp game...

[Christo]

Here is a list of good MMORPGs:

 

[Mala]

Tried that game too. Played for a week then gave up.  The combat was your average lame MMO combat. But to its credit , it really was better then some other games in its class for some odd reason. I did end up playin it more then I originally thought.

the group combat was quite nice.
it has started with some random groups for the first bosses, then the usual tank, healer, damage dealer combos and at last the more exotic groups for the extra challenge.
the burglar only runs were quite fun .
ma favorite part was to find out how an encounter works and how you can beat it.

anyway, the introduction of the item spiral and the short farm instances has taken away the fun for me.
noone wanted to take a risk anymore and everyone used a guide of one of the huge raid guilds to the the equipment faster.
but this was before they got greedy went f2p.

[Gravoth_iii]

Another MMO that is being released early 2014 (hopefully, they keep delaying it) is Blade & soul, combat looks pretty rad in it.

[Miwiw]

Miwiw99 recommends 'Silkroad Online R' if you love the grinding experience

Important note: It's fine for the first month while you get a Premium Plus Ticket (for free! and for each new char) which gives you double xp for 5 hours a day (runs for 1 month), after that you will need much more time and the grind will kill you even if you love grinding. You either buy a Premium Ticket (for about 16-20€ a month) or you turn botting (5€ a month). I took the second option when I played. So pro tip: Play some time, but stop playing it soon!

[Grumbs]

If you want to play an MMO I think you really need to be prepared to spend some money on it, if not per month then up front. Even then the options are very limited and there probably isn't anything worth playing except perhaps Eve Online. If you can't get people to pay for a game then its probably shit or they will be trying to accrue costs of making the thing in dodgy ways that spoil the point of the game. You're going to do stuff you don't want to do with the promise of an "end game" that you won't ever reach, or the end game will consist of doing the same repetitive things you did already but with a new phony goal.

They will try to sucker you in with game design made to reward you for playing rather than to make the actual journey fun to play. You will get hooked on skinner box style mindless gameplay, and you won't even enjoy it but more feel compelled to continue.

Anyone thinking of playing a random f2p mmo should at least check out the means they use to get you to play and keep playing, like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWtvrPTbQ_c

With that in mind I wouldn't recommend any MMORPG's out currently because they all pretty much follow the same formula. But if you want to switch off your brain for a bit and try one out then maybe GW2 could be worth a try. You can just play to max level and finish the story and call it quits. At that point you are pretty much done with what the game has to offer and its a good point to quit

Eve Online is OK as it departs from the themepark (grind) formula, but it is quite dull and demands a lot of time with little pay off imo. Darkfall is still quite a grindfest but in a similar vein to Eve

[Kalam]

The Old Republic is a great single-player game (in the vein of all of Bioware's games) that you can play with friends. That's my opinion of it from the first year. I definitely had fun as a marauder, but honesty, the node battles were so lag-tastic and didn't mean anything in the long run. It's all about the end game, and the lack of end game there beyond the usual WoW-esque raid grinding isn't my cup of tea.

Silk Road was like an Asian Dark Age of Camelot. It was good. I think the only reason I quit is because I moved somewhere without access to a computer that supported it.

I do wish there was more innovation. It's sad that of all the games mentioned, Ultima still seems the most attractive. Fucking do something new!

Fallen Earth looks interesting, but alas, my MMO days are pretty much over. Too much RL grinding. -_-

There were quite a few extremely detailed text-based MMOGs (or MUDs) but that's an acquired taste, and the one I played most had the worst internet community I've ever been a part of.

The key to selling an MMORPG to me is:
death having significant consequences
serious role-playing community definitely helps, they're called RPGs damn it!
forcing area sensitive talks, no floaty names, etc, helps with that kind of thing
built in governments that have real power, so that politics is essentially the end game
complex resource gathering/crafting/economy/customization/art system so that the conflict averse have something cool to do
intuitive, yet impossible to master combat system for the PvP heads
again, when it's tied up in RP, it's better, because I think the key is for the community to basically like each other as people, and role-playing helps separate the game from the people.

I don't think I've found anything with all of that, yet.

[Dach]

Ultima Online
EVE Online

That's the only 2 I deemed to play more than a week.

Still play EVE btw.

Guess I "forgot" about the FREE part... lol 

[Tibe]

Warband type MMO is gonna happen one day.....its just gonna take like mybe 10 years or so. And what makes this story rather sad is that its not the technological limitations fault, but the lack of intrest. Lets face it, Warband and other games that are similar, aim for a very small group of people. Ive tried pimping M&B to my many RL gamingfriends for years now and they only play MOBAs and highbudget mainstream games. At first I thought it was just that they were illinformed of its awesomeness, but they really dont see the charm. Im quessing we are the rare breed that sees the jewel in this game. And saddly we are currently living in a timeperiod where gaming has never been so profitfocused. Its all about who is gonna get the biggest load of cash, publicity and criticscore.

 Who knows, if tempted, Taleworlds might one day jump on the profitwagon too and betray us all who have been holding our thumbs up for them for years. But then again, their publisher is Paradox. A rather rare type of publisher that really does publish games that are for certain groups. Althou they are still buggy.

[Vibe]

My short take on all the mentioned by HESKEY (like I said, I played them all :p):

Miwiw99 recommends 'Silkroad Online R' if you love the grinding experience, and also 'Lord of the Rings Online' for casual play if free.

Silkroad Online is like Miwiw said, it's an AZN grinder botfest, I don't know much about it beyond that, but that alone is enough to put a huge NO stamp on it. LoTRO is nothing special, typical generic PvE MMO and I would only play if you're crazy about the LoTR lore.

Myself and Gravoth_iii vouch for 'The Old Republic' for fun questing and dialogue options ingame in the Star Wars universe.

The Old Republic is a decent SINGLEPLAYER game. I had fun leveling and completing the story but after that, the endgame just sucked. I did stick with it for a while after I hit the level cap but it got really boring really fast. Standard grind PvE and PvP instances for gear endgame. Very very little open PvP.

Pollux says 'Age of Wushu' for martial arts and PvP stuff.

This is one of the few that I actually would recommend right now. For the time I played I had fun with it. Didn't stick with it because I didn't have the time to play MMOs. There's a lot of different stuff and interesting features it has, and also some minigames to make the tedious chores a bit more pleasant. You also have some of the generic mmo stuff in it that might bore you. It's PvP heavy and kind of like EVE. While it is free there are some advantages to being a VIP user (15$ per 2 months I believe). Avoid if you dislike AZN / martial arts theme. (if you recall, I made a thread about this game a few months ago http://forum.melee.org/and-all-the-other-things-floating-around-out-there/age-of-wushu/msg689240/#msg689240)

Clockworkkiller says 'Fallen Earth' for the faction system and open world PvP in post apocalyptic surrounds.

Fallen Earth... dunno really. It seems like the idea is good but the game was just meh. It just got boring very fast.

Finuad likes what he's seen of 'Neverwinter' so far (but it's got a lot of flak from others here).

Neverwinter is meh at best. It's like World of Warcraft really. It has that dungeon maker feature and a bit more actiony combat, but there's nothing beyond that.

Kafein says 'PlanetSide 2' cos apparently the game keeps changing.

Planetside 2 you know about already.

Polobow says 'Mabinogi' is a love-it or hate-it game.

Been years since I played this. It has a few unique features but very outdated cell-shaded graphics. I can't recall how much of a grind it was. Also AZN/chibi themed, so you mind find that annoying.

CrazyCracka says 'Ultima Online' and goes into good detail about it's features (too much to list here).

Ahhh UO. Ultima Online can be great if you can get past the outdated graphics, controls, UI and combat system. It has some really neat features that other MMOs should really learn to adopt. It was great for it's time.

Benkei says 'Lineage 2' for a skill-based 'Asian grinder' with awesome PvP.

Lineage 2 has very interesting PvP. Castle sieges, land control, control land control taxes in villages, etc. The main problem here is the grind. And there's a whole lot of fucking grind. Also not that interesting tab target combat.

[Leesin]

Mehhh  Ultima Online official servers were good over 10 years ago, like the best MMORPG I ever wasted thousands upon thousands of hours on my life on. But EA began wrecking it and now its nothing like it originally was, i.e when it was good. They added lame features to cater to carebear players who couldnt handle losing their items when they got killed by another player, which could pretty much happen anywhere anytime depending on circumstances. Its probably still good,  but it doesnt come close to the harsh pvp game it once was.

There are a few populated custom servers which aim for the old school versions and whilst they do that, the majority of the playerbase are elitist arseholes who roll with a ton of friends, making progress alone or with ppl you barely know, a lot more difficult.

[Sagar]

What is with Age of Conan, Is that game still alive?
http://www.ageofconan.com/