"Free" MMORPG that's worth playing?

[Vibe]

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.

Yeah exactly. Too many stupid and casualizing changes. Sure you can play on one of the older version shards (and it's free) but like you said, it's underpopulated and full of elitists.

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

Conan still lives. It went F2P a few months ago. It has an interesting combat system but the PvP sucks. Way too much gear dependence at endgame/level cap PvP. Siege is still a lagfest I heard, so PvP is mostly in instances. While most of the community wants PvP-based patches, expansions and fixes (I mean Conan was supposed to be a PvP game), the devs (failcom) keep vomiting PvE expansions and new raids, so it's all meh. It's still a decent game but... many things that could bother you. The most fun I had with it was all the random, open world PvP while leveling and the beautiful fatalities:

(click to show/hide)

[Polobow]

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 It has a few unique features but very outdated cell-shaded graphics.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.

And that's exactly the reason. Great unique features, with quite an in-depth combat system, but the graphics are outdated (if you care about that), a bit grindy (it's a MMO :/) and probally the worst one, AZN/chibi themed.

If you can look past that then you got a great game.

[Joseph Porta]

I wondered what was up with runescape a month or so ago and decided to make a new char for shits and giggles, ended up playing for three hours! Havent gamed at all since but it was fun, just casually doing some stuff, brought alot of old memories back aswell, recognizingbstuff all around allthough a lot has changed, actually i spend most of my time "sightseeing" and looking up stuff i  could remember from t way back

I would recommend turning off  all chat filters and set private on friends, good lord the spam made me lag.

[TheAppleSauceMan]

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

I have a feeling they may shut down the servers in the imminent future. They went F2P awhile back as Vibe said, but they did it terribly. They basically had no ads for it. It's like it was a secret, think it could've helped a lot more if they made it known that it was going F2P. 

[Clockworkkiller]

I wondered what was up with runescape a month or so ago and decided to make a new char for shits and giggles, ended up playing for three hours! Havent gamed at all since but it was fun, just casually doing some stuff, brought alot of old memories back aswell, recognizingbstuff all around allthough a lot has changed, actually i spend most of my time "sightseeing" and looking up stuff i  could remember from t way back

I would recommend turning off  all chat filters and set private on friends, good lord the spam made me lag.

Ahh, runescape....good times

How much change have they thrown in? One day, I decided to hop on their homepage for some nostalgia, and the screenshots make it seem like it's totally a different game

Also I hear their making a runescape 2?

[SeQuel]

They keep throwing "optimization" like it's top priority while it's the same shit for a year now, if not worse.

SmedBux only does this because it probably doesn't even run on a PS4, so he lashes planetside team fiercely to work it out until november, sigh

Long story short, I can't afford to have a nuclear reactor just because of SOE being retards

https://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/quick-optimization-update.152487/

[Christo]

https://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/quick-optimization-update.152487/

Finally.

Oct 23, eh? Told you, it doesn't run on PS4 probably as it is now. 

Although I remember.. GU 3 or GU 2, that was supposedly "optimized" and ruined the game for everybody.
Expect everything from SOE.   

[Rumblood]

Try Tera. It's free now and is a modern RPG (unlike Planetside 2 and some of the other Freemium games mentioned here, he asked for MMORPG's). It added some interesting twists to the combat and was pretty fun to play.

http://tera.enmasse.com/

Now if you're willing to shell out the dollars, try Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. 90% of the gamers I know that are playing it from a couple of clans I frequent have had good things to say about it. Even the ones who have been jaded with MMORPG's for the last decade and still talk fondly about "the good old days" of Ultima and Everquest are logging on every night and enjoying themselves.

[Molly]

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.

You won't survive too long if you actually tab-target people In 50 vs 50 vs 50 vs 50 siege you have to pick targets very carefully.
I played retail for like 2 yrs and then switched with my whole clan to a private free server with 50x XP. We all noticed that the time investment became way to high to keep going. So, there is an alternative to the grind

[Vibe]

You won't survive too long if you actually tab-target people In 50 vs 50 vs 50 vs 50 siege you have to pick targets very carefully.
I played retail for like 2 yrs and then switched with my whole clan to a private free server with 50x XP. We all noticed that the time investment became way to high to keep going. So, there is an alternative to the grind

Didn't mean tab-target as actually using tab key to get your targets, but as a naming for a combat system - you know, choose your target, spam hotkeys. No aiming required.

[Joseph Porta]

Ahh, runescape....good times

How much change have they thrown in? One day, I decided to hop on their homepage for some nostalgia, and the screenshots make it seem like it's totally a different game

Also I hear their making a runescape 2?

Alot of it changed its "HD" now and all that fancy stuff, lots o new skills and areas, some areas seemed totally alien to y and i have a vivid memory of the world, spend quite some time inthere back when i was a kid!

T'was fun, allthough i rarely play games anymore.

[Molly]

Didn't mean tab-target as actually using tab key to get your targets, but as a naming for a combat system - you know, choose your target, spam hotkeys. No aiming required.

Oww, I see. Never heard tab-target before tbh. And you won't survive either with spamming hotkeys
L2 is much more than that but I am biased anyway.

Actually, there is one class that has a lot of spamming but... different

Anyway, really loved that game for it's open world pvp system. You can fight wherever and whenever you want, except inside cities. No instances, everything is up for grab by the stronger one or the first one which makes nice fights for boss drops or other collectibles. The whole approach is good fun with a very balanced class system.

...but  it's not good for solo play. You can certainly do 1v1 but mostly that turns out in FFA last man standing which has its charm Otherwise you always want a 3 player party with DD (Archer/Mage), Support (Overlord preferably, always has been my class and I was good ) and a Healer (Bishop or a very capable Elven Elder).

[Vibe]

Oww, I see. Never heard tab-target before tbh. And you won't survive either with spamming hotkeys
L2 is much more than that but I am biased anyway.

"Tab-target" is a common term for games with such combat system (ala Everquest/World of Warcraft), where you lock on to your target (either with a click or tab) and then use hotkeyed abilities that automatically follow/hit the enemy, unable to miss due to player/aiming error, unlike FPS/shooter combat system. Most of MMOs use this system. Some have actiony combat with soft lock (Tera Online, upcoming TESO, Neverwinter), which means you basically just need to aim in the general direction but can still miss due to bad positioning. Then you have very few that actually have a combat system where real aim is required, ala Darkfall Online, Planetside.

[Tibe]

Runescape. Played that game a lot when I was a kid. I havent really visited it in years. They say it got screwed hard and transformed into another Wowkiller. As a kiddo going to the wilds and stealing the other players shit was very fun. Occasionally I got screwed and lost my best items too, but it was all kinda mutual screwing eachother kinda thing.

 A lot of virtual gold and items started going hand to hand and even quite descent ammount of RL money was made. Also a lot of people got duped too. I gave up on that game years ago, but some of my pals continued to play it. They said that at somepoint Jagex pulled the plug on all the money and item trading and Wildernessstuff was basically history and then returned it back to its original form. However now I dont know what the situation is.

[Rumblood]

Then you have very few that actually have a combat system where real aim is required, ala Darkfall Online, Planetside.

Planetside is NOT an MMORPG, it is an MMOFPS FFS, quit lumping it in with actual MMORPG's