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My experience with free MMOs.
Seekster
Member Posts: 15
Having spent years playing or at least trying out several free MMOs I have found that most of them suffer from the same problems while a few of them were actually fun and made me play them for an extended period of time. As such I would like to list some of the ones that I find more memorable and give a brief impression of them.
Anarchy Online:
Ah now this was a fun game, the large amount of stat customization which was actually explained fairly well. The community was fairly nice and the territorial battle system was also fun. Lots of neat dungeons full of interesting creatures to kill that then dropped interesting loot. So much about this game kept me interested and on at least 3 occasions in my life I have played it for a month or more before I lost interest but only for a short time. The main reason I am not still playing this game is that it is in bad nead of a graphics update. I mean seriously I may not remember Asheron's Call that much but some of the AO graphics do not look much better. In all fairness though I highly recommend this game to those who have not played it. Its free and it is not necessary to actually shell out money to be able to succeed at this game. There is alot to do here and it should keep you hooked longer than most free MMOs at least.
Dream of Mirror Online:
Ah DOMO. This is a charming game. I played it a while back so I dont remember too many details about it but I do remember that I played it for about a month and had fun...at least up until the point that I realized that a character could not continue after a certain level until they paid actual money. Someone please set me straight if I am thinking of another game or if they have changed this but I seem to recall to deadly flaws this game had, 1. The classes were not very well balanced. 2. A character could not advance above level 15 or level 20 unless they became a member which meant they had to actually pay to play which in my book is a cardinal sin unless you are World of Warcraft. I recommend playing this game because it is fun for a while but dont expect to spend more than a month on it if you are like me here. The amazing thing is that this is an Aeria Game, you know Aeria; the guys who release a new MMO like every other month. DOMO is in my opinion the closest they have come to a good MMO.
Fiesta Online:
I am still playing this game and have gotten my mage to about level 15. I recommend this game because its fun. The cartoon like characters and the music is enough to make you at least grin assuming you still have a pulse. The one thing that may get me to stop playing Fiesta soon is the fact that I see little reward in continuing. The community doesnt really strike me as interactive and there are few tools to help out here. Ive never been able to play with a good party even when I was a cleric. The chat options are a little lacking and whenever you feel get about yourself you are passed by a member who used the item shop and so they are wearing a kimono and riding a dragon while you are wearing the same cookie cutter armor as most everyone else and riding a stick horse! One interesting thing to note is that the game allows you from the get go to rest in a mushroom to heal...yeah thats a little unique.
KAL Online:
The perfect example of the Korean grind fest MMO. This was one of the first free MMOs I played and for a while it was fun until I realized that I had spent the first 20 levels grinding and had a good feeling that the only thing I would be able to do for the next 20 levels would be grind. In the end I just stopped playing because I saw no reason to continue. Also please apply the above paragraph to most every other Korean grind fest MMO.
Knight Online:
I think I played this around the same time I played KAL Online. KO was good but had some flaws that I still remember even now years after I played it. The most glaring is that you soon realize that you will never be able to succeed in this game at higher levels unless you pay for it. As I said before I refuse to pay a subscription fee for any MMO that is not World of Warcraft (and after my level 52 Nightelf Hunter was hacked in that game while I was away at college leaving me to find it replaced by a level 1 Gnome Warrior named "Ugothax" upon my return I refuse to pay for WoW as well even though I have found it to be simply the best MMO out there simply for the sheer amount of fun things that it allow you to do). Anyway back to KO. I tried to play it again recently and found that it has now sinned once more by being like Adventure Quest with (slightly) better graphics and reserving spots on the server for members first meaning that unless you pay to play there is no guarantee that you will be able to log in and the odds of that are very very slim. Therefore I cannot recommend Knight Online from my experience with it. If the game has changed since I played it then please someone set me straight about it.
Perfect World:
Perfect World represents the best thing to come out of China since...ok the best thing ever to come out of China. Seriously playing as an elf with wings and being able to fly from the get go is worth at least a week of gameplay on its own. Yeah most of the quest are grinding but the combat is fairly done. The community is decent (I managed to find and play with a few successful parties) and I dont remember the item shop being forced on you that much since several of the items you can get from are actually sold by some capitalistic players (Irony of capitalism in a Chinese made game is not lost on me) and bought with in game money (granted its expensive as all hell but at least its available). I highly recommend this game but the International Version does not start until August and it will be closed Beta so you will have to sign up now to play it then I think. You can still play the game now though, just look for the Filipino or Malaysian game site (can be found on the Perfect World wiki near the bottom). These version of the game are in broken english but the NPCs can be understood well enough, just assume that they want you to kill a certain amount of the monster they talk about. Once again if you havnt played this game I highly recommend that you do.
RF Online:
I played this a while back and it was good but the controls felt a bit clunky, the user interface was not friendly but its was not mean either. It was more like being in school and told to do a group project with the emo kid in the class who doesnt care about anything and makes you do all the work while he writes poems about how things suck. The community was a combination of Runescape-like assholes who spent their time in the newbie zones killing everything, and a few good souls who tried in vain to rally their race during the periodic mining wars that go on every few hours. These are actually not as fun as they might sound though. I was never able to find a working party in this game and so spend most of my time solo grinding before I quit after losing interest. I will say this about the game it is fairly pretty to look at. I understand the game is dying right now and am not surprised but if you want to check it out I would not try to turn you away from it but I will say dont get your hopes up.
Runescape:
Most everyone on here has at one point or another played runescape. For the few of you who havnt Runescape's better points are that it is entirely browser based and that it is free. Its bad points cannot be listed here since there are too many ranging from the fact that 75% of the content is unavaliable to you unless you want to subscribe to the game (I refuse the pay $5 a month for a game this badly made and that has graphics that make Habbo Hotel look polished) to the fact that mining in the game is liable to cause some people to lose their faith in humanity and is probably responsible for the deaths of at least of few people either due to suicide or homocide by the guy whom they stole the adamantine ore from. Let me make this clear, the game seems to giggle everytime you come across something neat only to click on it to find out that its for members online. Everytime you gain a skill level the game congratulates you but then says if you were a member you could use fletching. So much of the content is locked away and avaliable only to those suckers who pay $5 a month for it. To the games credit it is still playable for free as long as you are willing to accept that the only class that you will be able to play is a warrior (techincally there are no classes in the game but too much of the archery and magic content are locked IMO to make playing as an archer or magic user effective). I honestly still play this from time to time but only when im waiting on something to finish downloading and need to waste some time.
Second Life:
Second Life is a game I have been playing off and on since the year 2005 and thus holds the record for the MMO that has held my attention for the longest. The best thing about Second Life is that you can do pretty much anything. The worst thing about Second Life is that you can do pretty much anything. Most people walk in expecting this to be like most MMOs and leave after finding that there is no drive to play it. Those who stay a little longer soon realize that this is perhaps the most community driven program (I hesistate to call it a game) in existence. Almost everything in Second Life is made by a user like you. Yes there is an option to become a premium member but the only thing this allows you to do that regular members cannot is own land and there are ways around this such as renting land that are easy to do. Now the game does have a big underbelly and some places are like three dimensional porn but the grid (the term used to describe the world of Second Life) is so huge that there is something for everyone. I understand that several colleges and universities (not just little ones but big name ones) have online operations in Second Life and I know at least 5 countries have embassies in Second Life. If you have not experienced it then I highly recommend it. If nothing else you may find yourself comming back whenever you get tired of grinding.
Silkroad:
Silkroad was a fun game and had a good deal of promise but it is hampered by its unfriendly controls, constant grind questing, lack of clear class definitions (there are no classes so the character growth is confusing and does not make it easy to party since no one has defined roles). To top it all off the tech support is next to abysmal. The game is infested with bots and several times you will find that you cannot get on to any server for hours because the server is full and even if you can get on the lag almost makes the game unplayable. If you can play it, try it, you might like it but I simply did not.
These are not the only free MMO's I have played they are simply the only ones that I can write more than a few sentences about and that I actually remember playing for more than a week. I have also played: 9Dragons, Cabal Online, Entropia, Fly for Fun, Habbo Hotel, Mabinogi, Metin 2, Mu Online, Oz World, Ran Online, Rappelz, Scions of Fate, Shaiya, Granado Espada (Sword of the New World), Tantra Online, Thang Online, World of Kung Fu, Xiah, Zu Online, and probably a few others that I do not recall the names of. I did not talk about any of those games because I either did not play them long enough to justify giving my opinion of them (since I am not still playing them my opinion of them likely is not very good) or that I do not have anything to say about them that is very meaningful.
Comments
The thing I find with free mmorpgs is that there is nothing within them making me want to go back and play again unlike p2p. Now I'm not sure if my minds thinking 'Oh I've paid for it I better play it' or they just put loads more work into the pay to play ones but I generally hate f2p mmo's.
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I generally agree that p2p MMOs are almost always going to simply be better than f2p but I am looking for a f2p MMO that is just fun. As I have said many times the only MMO that I could ever justify paying a subscription fee for would be World of Warcraft and that is simply because it is the only game where I know that I will get my moneys worth. However when something is free and good enough then I feel like ive gotten more than my moneys worth and that is what I am looking for.
Been playing 9Dragons, Cabal Online, Last Chaos, Rappelz, now I am playing Talisman.
9Dragons is made by bugs.Last Chaos, Rappelz and Cabal online are all super-heavy weight skill grinding.
Talisman game quality is not as good as Rappelz or Cabal online but the game hiding the skill grinding so you don't feel you are grinding skills like any other F2P based on skill points.
There are so many quests in the game which is different from other F2P as well. Basically it is kill a number of target but there are many different mobs which is also different from other F2P uses same creature from level 1 up to lv100 by changing the text only.
The game also have instances to kill the boss, and it is doable by a group.
Hmm Talisman Online...looks like World of Warcraft...and thats a good thing in my book, ill give it a go and get back to you if I dont like it. If I do like it there is a chance you wont hear from me for a while
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I have tried a few free MMos and the one I enjoyed most was Anarchy Online.....Its kinda hard to link it with some of the other free MMOs because it pretty much failed as a P2p and they offered the original game (without expansions) for free to get people to try it.......The full game with all expansions is still p2p.... I agree with you on Runescape...i have no idea how anyone can enjoy that game...it has far and away the worst community I have ever seen in any game and the graphics are just awful......Another good free game is Rubies of Eventide but the community is very small....the players are very nice and the game has some very interesting character development you wont find in any other game (at least not that I have seen).... There are also free shards for popular p2p games like UO, DAoC, WoW, EQ, etc and most of them are pretty good but only for a short time.......The main thing that always seems to stand out for me in f2p though is the community is never as good as the p2p games......
Probably because when someone buys the mmorpg, they are set in they're mind that they will have a good time, less critical of the game's problems so less hostile. Nobody wants to feel like they got ripped off, which is why p2p games usually have stronger community, cause everyone is in a much better mood.
f2p games get shat on by people because they don't have to sacrifice anything to play the game- maybe I little time downloading, but that's really about it. So they are more critical because if they think the game sucks, they weren't cheated out of any money.. This can put people in some hostile moods... Even if they continue to play.
Oh yeah ive played Anarchy Online and I agree completely. AO's only problem is that it badly needs a graphics overhaul and Funcom needs to give it more attention instead of wetnursing Age of Conan...or they could do with AoC what they did with AO, release it as a f2p and then release some expansions and hope people buy them. (I know this will never ever happen but Im allowed to dream arent I?)
My problem with free to play MMOs has always been: massive GRINDING for no reason. When you kill an even level enemy and get .1%(one tenth of one percent) exp there is a problem. A serious problem. Pretty much every single free to play MMO I have ever played has had this problem.
Another major problem is that the world seems very superficial. The NPCs, the mobs, the quests, everything in these MMOs feel disposable. Like they have no meaning and no purpose. These MMOs all feel like faceless clones with no personality of their own.
I'll comment on the MMOs listed that I have played:
DoMO - very cute with some great systems(loved the class system) but after level 20 it was a total grind fest.
Fiesta - uninstalled after an hour. Faceless Clone syndrome.
RF Online - after a certain point you have to go to PvP zones and if you are not the dominant race you reroll or uninstall. I uninstalled.
Perfect World - the best effort so far. Incredible character creator. I quit playing because I was in a closed beta and I won't play long if my character will be wiped.
Knight Online - played this a long time ago. Don't remember much.
Silkroad - another I played a while ago.
There's a bunch of others I have played but all the reasons for quitting would be the same: grinder, clone or both.
Yes we all know 90% of all free mmog's are garbage. The other 10% are decent, but I wouldn't call them great either. I'm currently playing Requiem and find it enjoyable, especially for free. Still a grinder, as always.
It's idiotic that you think WoW is some how the only online game worth paying for. This also shows your ignorance as WoW has to be one of the easiest, and least complex games on the market. I went from 1-70 in 2 weeks time. And was completely bored with the PvE aspect of the game after 6 weeks. I tried the PvP but it was simply god awful. It certainly has to be one of the most overrated games in MMO history. This is actually starting to show from the masses (read: dumb general public) as it has 20+ games ranked higher than it now on this website.
Thats is maybe I still enjoyed it and it is without question the most succesfull MMO out there. I never said it was the best but it is certainly one of the better ones IMO. Yes WoW has its flaws all games do but as I have said before the main reason I consider it the only MMO worth paying the subscription for is that there is such a high volume of fun stuff to do in the game that even if you get tired of one aspect you can go do something else. I expect some people will disagree with me but hey they have the right to.
I have to give credit to the elaborate free mmorpgs even if most can't compete with the biggest named game providers simply because of the shear drive it takes for a developer to build a game with no guarantee of retail sales.