Free to play MMOs

[Unrulyhandbag]

My current unemployment has forced a tightening of belts at home leaving me without a subscription fee for WOW and EVE. LoTRo looks interesting but isn't free to play in Europe yet but I have to wander what effect going free to play will have on it's community. I've only played Ultima online, Everquest, WOW and EVE before so have no experience of these types communities.

So I'd like to know what peoples experiences of free to play MMOs are\were.

What are the current best ones?

How does the experience measure against subscription games?

Are the communities better than WoW (I'd like to hope so)?

Are they genuinely free to play, some I've seen seem to have essential stuff on the store.

 

[Arawn.Chernobog]

There are no "good" free MMOs, not by comparison with the level of quality in payed ones.

Whichever you choose: Expect lack of moderation, lack of customer service care and plenty of "12 year olds on the internet".

 

[Marter]

The only one I've ever played is Runescape.

It was a fair bit of fun, but I kind of got bored after a while. It has some paid servers as well though, and that's where the best stuff is.

 

[Boneasse]

Lord of the Rings: Online. Just turned F2P the other day. Try it out here [http://www.lotro.com/free.php]

 

[noble cookie]

Well theres RuneScape, if you like that kind of thing...

Um, personally, i'm not into MMOs that much but i used to play a couple...

Theres Conquest online...that was kinda cool. Can't really think of any sorry.

 

[AugustFall]

DnD online is pretty fun. www.onrpg.com can answer this better.

 

[Aloran]

Conquer online is one I used to play a while ago, but I jumped back into Conquer 2.0 a few weeks ago and it was a lot different and, for new players, very hard to get into.

Legend of Mir is also f2p, rather fun too, but only play it if you like grinding. There are quests, but it's grindy grind grind. The community ain't bad either.

 

[Jasper Jeffs]

Free to play MMO's suck, and they usually have a money shop for the good shit. The only MMO that doesn't require a subscription I can recommend is Guild Wars. You have to buy the game, but it's only like 17 quid for a shitload of content and the gameplay is fun, the game is kinda dead though, so you might be playing alone unless you find some people to play with. Nobody really does the single player missions now unless they're going for the titles (and even then you won't be able to join because they'll be doing hard mode), but it's a great experience nonetheless, and the PvP has a lot of depth and tactics.

I've got 2000+ hours logged on it, that's damn good value for money.

 

[JamesStone]

Two things: first, if a game is FreeToPlay I usually don`t play it, because I now that is probably just shit, and if it isn`t, its still a MMO, a game type that recieves all my hate because its either boring or addictive, in the bad way, letting people careless. The second thing is that if you´re unemployed, you should be less worried about MMO`s, and more about your career, don`t you think?!

 

[Kpt._Rob]

I don't know that it's exactly an MMO, and it's certainly not an mmorpg, which, admittedly, is what it seems like the OP is looking for. That said, Minecraft can be played for free and it's such a ridiculous amount of fun that part of me thinks it should be regulated, just like any drug, just to make sure that I don't ruin my life with it. I wouldn't want that of course, because then I'd have to go through Minecraft withdrawals... but still. All I'm saying, is it's enough fun to make the world's biggest barrel of monkeys look pretty damn lame.

 

[Cronqvist]

"Dungeons and Dragons" is quite fun if you have peoples you regularly play with. The lvling system ist quite something else compared to other wowlikes. Sadly without an Premium account or excessive point grinding your lvling grinds to some sort of halt around 12+. You can also buy points to unlock content for your account, via several payment methods such as paypal if you wish to.

I also gave "Runes of Magic" a try recently before SC2 sucked up all my attention and i have to say that for a wowlike free to play it's quite good. Gameplay feels a bit like Aion and you have to dual class which sprinkles a bit of guild wars in the mix. If you want something like wow but don't invest money, this is probably as close as it might get.

 

[Unrulyhandbag]

Two things: first, if a game is FreeToPlay I usually don`t play it, because I now that is probably just shit, and if it isn`t, its still a MMO, a game type that recieves all my hate because its either boring or addictive, in the bad way, letting people careless. The second thing is that if you´re unemployed, you should be less worried about MMO`s, and more about your career, don`t you think?!

Having been playing MMO's since 98 I clearly like them and no being unemployed means we have little money but I didn't lose my job I left to be a house father, I'm both busy and have time to play games in the evening.

Both of us were in the military and having to send the children to live at my parents for six months when we both deployed was more then enough to convince me that a family needs a home no matter the financial burden.

But I asked about the games not about my own life.

 

[Charli]

I have played Free MMO's back when I was young and would have had to rely on parents to pay the subscription, the second I can pay for my own, I switched to WoW and never went back.


My old haunts were: Maple Story, Trickster, Rappelz and Guildwars.

Feel free to try any of them but really the communities aren't alot better.

I would recommend maplestory recently for it's freedom of character variety choices. Which changed alot since I was playing, and the cutsey 2D interface is easy to enjoy. Just don't go near the cash shop, it's how they get you.

 

[StriderShinryu]

I'll echo what someone else said earlier, LOTRO is now free to play and seems to have a sizable contingent of Escapist members trying it out as noted in this thread:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.231458-Lord-of-the-Rings-Online-Now-Free-To-Play

 

[Valksy]

I suspect most "Free" MMOs really want to nickel and dime you with some sort of item store. At least one off payments like WOW let you know exactly where you stand.

Neither should being unemployed require you to sit in the dark, in a hair shirt and only eating things that you got out of a rubbish bin. There are a lot of things that you can do to save money and still allow yourself some sort of entertainment. Worth taking another long look at your budget? Do you buy mostly own brands for example? Can you walk/bike rather than bus/car. Any stuff hanging around - old games for example - that you can flog and use the money for your sub.

Take a long, objective look at what you are doing. If you play WoW or EVE 1 hour per day and pay 8.99 GBP for it then you are getting a cracking good bargain. What else are you doing for fun? You are allowed to have some.

 

[Unrulyhandbag]

DnD online is pretty fun. www.onrpg.com can answer this better.

cheers for the link. It's worth nothing that almost everything with a decent score on that site is very Korean in style and a lot look to be 2D platformers in the combat areas.

I'll give a couple of those a go just to see what they're like but I'll probably join LotRO when the Codemasters get the EU servers updated.

I suspect most "Free" MMOs really want to nickel and dime you with some sort of item store.
Worth taking another long look at your budget? Do you buy mostly own brands for example? Can you walk/bike rather than bus/car. Any stuff hanging around - old games for example - that you can flog and use the money for your sub.

Yeah LoTrO looks to have almost everything on the store but at least sounds playable till mid game without buying anything.

The tight budget is only short term, need to buy a few particular large items, but if F2P games are worthwhile then I'd like to find out while I have a reason to.

edit: yeah that was a pretty large edit

 

[Rusty Bucket]

DnD online is pretty fun. www.onrpg.com can answer this better.

cheers for the link. It's worth nothing that almost everything with a decent score on that site is very Korean in style and a lot look to be 2D platformers in the combat areas.

I'll give a couple of those a go just to see what they're like but I'll probably join LotRO when the Codemasters get the EU servers updated.

I'm in the UK and I'm playing it. Just download the client and go, works fine. If you do, join this group. We're trying to get organised and get a guild set up.

 

[AtmaPhil]

DDO and Dungeon Fighter online are the 2 best right now.