Submitted 12 hours ago by GrumpyCat@leminal.space to games@lemmy.world
Not sure if this goes here or not?
Ive played a little bit of mmorpgs back int he day, that stars wars one to be exact, which felt more like walking sim more than anything. Im considering picking up old school runescape but im not sure if its good choice or not? What mmorpg that is free would you like to suggest to me a beginner?
Guild wars 2, it’s free to start and B2P for every season and expansion with no FOMO or P2W mechanics, only convenience. I see a lot of recommendations for FF14, but one thing most people don’t tell you is that the vanilla game is absolutely terrible. The main story quest (MSQ) for vanilla is just bad and boring, to the point where they actually cut some content out of it because that content was unnecessary. It’s still long and boring though, and I really wish they would just give people the option to freely skip the vanilla game with a recap video and go straight into Heavensward because that’s when the game gets really good. If you can power through the vanilla story of FF14, then I guess try it out, but my vote is GW2.
I did search and found this article listing 16 to consider.
I found Final Fantasy XIV easy to get into. The full game requires a monthly payment but there is a "free trial", which contains the entire base game and the first expansion for free and can last you at least a few hundred hours.
I tried old school runescape a while ago again but did not enjoy it. It's a very grindy game, and unless you like clicking on a tree for 30 minutes then you aren't going to like it either.
Was about to suggest the same! I feel in love with it 4 years ago and subscribed after beating the base game. Turns out that I had a JP service account, so I had to do the whole base story again on a new NA account (since they don’t allow cross region payments).
It’s also worth noting that FFXIV is practically single-player if you want it to be. Any group content can be played with random match-ups using the party finder. It’s got a great story, too
Of note, the second expansion, Stormblood, is now included in the free trial as well.
I played through it when they released this version, and honestly its an insane amount of free content. I completed the base game but never did complete the 100 quest wall that was in the first expansion. I had a lot of fun, and I agree this is the perfect MMO to pick up. I probably had about 3 months of time spent in it and was not disappointed.
Warframe is an unconventional mmo, and there’s actually a bit of rpg in there too, moreso than I would’ve expected coming in. It’s great fun though.
I will say the mandatory trading for weapon and frame slots is kinda annoying, but gets less annoying as you progress and get more access to better grinds.
Also not good if you get RSI, damn that game destroys fingers.
oh fuck i forgot about that. I had to stop playing atlas altogether because his 1 spam was brutal.
If you enjoy the old school vibe, City of Heroes has been revived through a community effort, and is free with all of the original content plus some new stuff. This has been given official blessing so it’s not going to disappear suddenly.
Warframe.
City of heroes is still available for free and is a lot of fun. Pre-WOW but the graphics are decent. A great community too.
Pirated old WoW on pirate servers is quite nice imo. Vanilla, The Burning Crusade and The Wrath of the Lich King. Never give Microsoft Activision-Blizzard a single cent btw. OSRS seems nice, but I never played it myself. It’s not free at all though.
Old School RuneScape (OSRS) membership prices in USD as of June 2025 are: 1‑month plan: $13.99/month 6‑month plan: $11.99/month (total $71.94) 12‑month Premier plan: $8.29/month (total $99.48)-
There’s a new one coming out, project epoch, that has me interested. Also there was ascension servers that had build your own class. These are free old wow alternatives.
Last time I’ve played on Ascension they also had another project in development, called World of Runescape (basically total conversion fully-custom WoW). Don’t know its current status but it looked amazing in videos.
You can play OSRS for free. Its just got some features locked behind membership. But you can also get membership through items in the game. As an enjoyer of vanilla wow, I’d recommend giving it a shot.
Good to know, because it doesn’t make it clear on the site, I always assumed it’s the same membership model as WoW.
OSRS has a free version that lets you access most of the game, but the paid premium version nets you more content
I played pirate servers for a little bit after a LONG break of not playing WoW. It was a little buggy, but it was enough to scratch the itch, explore some new things, and realize I didn’t want to get back into WoW.
Yep, but also some pservers offer new content (like new locations, classes, skills), and some offer different gameplay altogether, like classless servers where you roll skills for any classes as you level and try to build something that makes sense.
Depends what you like, but I’m still nostalgic for old school WoW and find myself wanting to play every now and again but don’t want to subscribe for a whole month. My recommendation for that would be Turtle WoW, it’s an expanded vanilla private server that has it’s own launcher and everything so it’s pretty simple to get started with.
Been playing on twow for about a month now, it scratches the vanilla itch better than classic did, folks seem reasonably friendly and it’s nice to have a community on the server vs modern WoW of never seeing the same person twice
Interesting. How likely is it that Blizzard throws another tantrum and files a lawsuit? I heard they’ve done that before against people running private servers.
That’s what worries me a bit as well. As far as I’m aware, they seem to be pretty safe for now? Nostalrius WoW was a big private server that got shut down by Blizzard, but they were located in the USA. Turtle WoW is based in Europe (UK if what I found is accurate) and has done transformative work to the game, including working on a whole new compatible client in UE5 that should be releasing this year. But the issue still remains that they primarily have Blizzards assets, story, etc as the base of their game. I guess time will tell, I’m hoping it sticks around though.
Wow isn’t very newbie friendly due to the mere SIZE of this behemoth but if you work at it, it can be enjoyable. You’ll never run outta stuff to do.
It’s free till level 20. Then you can decide whether you wanna continue. You can pay for the sub with in-game gold.
Final Fantasy 14. It’s base game and first couple expansions are free to play. No subscription needed unless you keep playing after that
Ffxiv has a lot of content available in the free trial but it is not really a “free mmorpg” since if you want to do content that released less than 6 years ago, or join/use FC guilds or linkshell chats, or trade, have any significant quantity of gil, get housing, or use player markets, then you have to buy the game and pay a subscription. Mahjong is free though and it’s quite a good mahjong client.
That said, it is a good way to figure out if you like the basic gameplay systems: the UI and menus which are very customizable, controls (switch to legacy if using M&KB), tab target combat and global cooldown, main scenario questing, instanced dungeons and normal mode bosses, unlocking multiple jobs to try out.
All this with the caveat that basically all jobs at level 70 feel like an empty shell of the combat rotation of level 100, and high end content is only available and populated for the most recent patches + the 6 ultimate raids.
(cont.) Guild wars 2 is another mmo that is worth trying to see if you like the feel of the action combat. You can again play a whole lot free, but you do have to pay if you want the expansion content (which i feel is kind of diabolical to lock mounts behind max level expansion content). I also do not like that you can buy in game currency with real money, and then buy legendary (best in slot) weapons off the trading post with in game currency.
Theres maplestory which is mainly singleplayer, just make sure you make your char on the reboot (non-p2w) servers. Scratches the itch.
Honorable mention to private/classic servers like tera classic which i’ve been meaning to try out. The population being tiny is the most obvious factor but it is nice that the game has been preserved at all for people to play.
If you still enjoy cartoons, WoW is a good start…
I’ve enjoyed OSRS on and off since about 2004, but if you’re wanting to avoid walking simulators, it is the worst offender. A big part of the game is calculating the best possible path to follow. You are making trips to the bank in between every activity and multiple times per quest. Many skills exist just to ease to burden of traveling around the world.
My personal favorite MMO is vanilla WoW. I’m obviously biased but it is just what I had the most fun with back when it came out and I think it still holds up incredibly well today. I play on a private server called TurtleWoW and it is 100% free. They have continuously added their own expansions over time and are currently working on a client that runs the game in Unreal Engine if you desire more modern graphics.
If it seems to old school, Guild Wars 2 is a really good choice as well. I played through the base game and first expansion of FF14 and ultimately wasn’t impressed. It’s great if you like to role play with other players, but everyone is so focused on playing the meta that it took all of the fun out of the game for me. People would kick me out of groups for trying to play with my own personalized set up.
Does tWoW have a client that would run on an old Linux laptop with no graphics card?
Do I need to worry about legal issues if I’m playing on a private server?
They recently released an installer for Linux. It’s an ISO which I did not have much luck running on Linux Mint. Before that was released, they released TurtleWoW as a portable zip file. They still update the game with that release. I use Proton on Steam to run it on Mint with no issues.
No legal issues for players to worry about. My understanding is that since it is a version of WoW that doesn’t exist anywhere else at this point, it’s ok to run severs for it as long as money isn’t being charged for it. TurtleWoW devs do accept “donations” which will reward players with in game cosmetics, but as far as I know, no pay to win items. Unless you count a pet that acts as a portable bank. Using it let’s you interact with your bank that can otherwise only be accessed from various cities in game. I don’t have that pet myself, but I have been able to use other players’ when I come across them in the world.
I don’t reaaly play MMOs, but I had a lot of fun with Star Wars: The Old Republic. I put over 300 hours in to do all the class stories.
If you don't like the back and forth type stuff, you're probably looking for a theme-park style MMORPG. You might try something like Return to Reckoning.
In contrast to the other commenters, fuck FFXIV.
I tried it twice and it's just.. annoying. Maybe because I was already annoyed with MMOs in general by then.
You should still try it yourself eventually, but it's really bleh for me.
To be honest, most f2p MMOs don't work as a f2player. You have to end up paying or it becomes stressful.
Anyway, i don't recommend them, but they felt the least annoying the longest. Star Trek Online and Neverwinter (grindy as hell or expensive pay2unlock), Guild Wars 2 (needs buying the first two expansions to unlock permanent mounts and character specializations) and if you're brave enough to go the private servers route, try searching for private, yet somewhat reputable servers of games you think might've been nice like Wildstar..
I recently started playing World of Warcraft, the current version, and my gosh it was way too easy and way too fast. I got to level 70 in 5 days, and gave up and started playing WoW classic instead, which is much more difficult. So I’d say WoW is probably your jam, just stay away from Classic.
What?!? I haven’t really played since WotLK, so 70 in 5 days sounds insane to me.
Star Wars Galaxies is still alive and well on emulated servers hilariously if you actually liked it.
Its not new, but maybe check out Ragnarok Online. I don’t know how beginner friendly it is, but I was able to pick it up pretty easily with no prior knowledge.
You may consider what it is you’re looking to get out of an MMORPG before you just jump in. Speaking as someone who played MMOs for about a decade (mostly WOW, but several others as well), you would be surprised how insidiously that type of game can alter your habits. Also, MMORPGs could be absolutely mind numbing at the height of their popularity, modern MMOs are so heavily streamlined that I would argue many aren’t even all that fun to play anymore.
I’m not saying MMOs are bad, or that you won’t enjoy them, but maybe just think about what the fun you’re seeking looks like.
I totally get your feeling. I stopped playing and sometimes im very tempted to download them again but they do become addicting in the way those stupid phones games get people like from the south park episode. Log in in the morning for quick grinds and then after work for more extensive grinding and over the whole weekend. They are fun but you are more trying to get things than play most of the time.
Do you still get the free TF2 hat in that one?
I do not remember, but I do have that hat, since I played it back in the time.
If you want to check out some classics look up project 1999 for EverQuest or the classic world of warcraft servers
Modern I don’t think there’s much I can recommend, even the subscription based games have stores attached now
Everywhere was a throw back, but I cut my teeth on the realm. I would love a simple guy like that again. Also the present events when you find those rare sashes, man that lit up a monkey part of my brain.
Unless you are playing purely for nostalgia, I would very much avoid runescape. It isn’t a game for kids to play during typing class. It is very much an obnoxiously sweaty (set of) game(s).
I think you can play the entire original campaign for FF14 for free? And FF14 is probably THE best theme park MMO out there. That said, my experience is “it is the best community on the internet” is very much marketing and you WILL have bad experiences during dungeons… which are mandatory for story progression. You can negate that if you join a clan but then you aren’t really playing with The Community and are already into hardcore-ish play.
I don’t know where the free/paid demarcations are, but I would actually recommend Guild Wars 2 or Elder Scrolls Online for a newbie. The latter does suck if you want to do any crafting as a free player (and inventory management in general will be hell) but you are there for the overworld gameplay. And both GW2 and ESO are very much geared toward playing solo in a crowd. As in you’ll walk around the overworld which is basically a single area with 10-20 other players. You’ll do event quests together, see each other while you go to the store or walk toward an instanced area, and so forth. But you won’t have to worry about someone telling you they are going to <REDACTED> your family because you didn’t skip a cutscene or aren’t holding aggro properly in newbie dungeon.
If you get into those? You can maybe find a guild and play some of the higher level content. Or you can go pick up FF-MMO or WoW or even SWTOR (apparently it is still going).
As far as dungeons in FF14, at this point, I believe that basically every dungeon can now be done “solo” (that is taking 3 other NPCs with you to complete the dungeon). And the trials, I believe, mostly have that as well, though I’m 100% positive on all of them.
But the point is: as far as dungeons go a player can get through them by themselves now. In fact, I think much of the main storyline content is now solo-able.
The cryptic mmos. Champions online, star trek online, and neverwinter are all fairly easy with it sorta getting harder along that list but even neverwinter is not super hard. They are free to play mmos and when I played it was completely possible to be competitive with mild grinding. In particular they have several events per year where mild grinding (10 or 20 minutes a day and maybe more like 2 or 3 if you don't alt) will get you high end stuff. Champions stuff is more about costuming to begin with and its top gear is easy to grind. You can make a support character where the passive effects are enough to help a team and I have pointed them out as good games for disabled (Can setup to not need fast reflexes or such) folks. The character does need to be well built but its not hard to learn and there are nice guides on steam. Star trek had an activer reddit community and guides strewn around. It gets a bit more complicated as it has space and ground which is sorta like two different games and your roles can change between them (sci is controllers and debuffers in space and ground but also ground healers, eng are space healers and buffers and ground pet masters and debuffers. honestly they all get mixed around. tac are dps ground or space. there are tons of generic modules that can be used across jobs). Your ship has more effect on your role to some degree and how its built. Fast tactical vs carriers vs behometh type and sci ships. I don't have allot with neverwinter but its made more arcadey. The mmo aspects go down as you go down the list to. champions has day/night cycles in the main area with traffic showing rush hour, ligths coming on as folks get home in their condos, and china town having nightly fireworks. Star trek had day/night on risa but got rid of it and by the time you get to neverwinter its sorta faux open world with most places being a series of trails. All the games allow you to grind for the in game currency but that is not the easy grind of the events and take more time but its a common enough award that if you do not pay attention for a few years you will find you had built up quite a bit from happenstance. Won't allow you to buy everything but eventually you can pick up some particular thing you may have wanted. Star trek also had events that gave away coupons to the store that pretty much would let you get almost anything without to much grind as long as you did not have to have the latest offerings. Now my experience with these where awhile ago. Not with champions you can choose a more comic book rendering or a more standard rending for game play. All are so old it should be practically impossible to have a machine that can't handle the requirements. I know folks complained it did not take enough advantage of gpu and did not require much of one but could hog cpu decently.
The thing that usually sucks about MMORPGs is the combat. For this reason I recommend the Monster Hunter series instead.
PonyOfWar@pawb.social 11 hours ago
I’d suggest Guild Wars 2. It’s an MMO that can be played quite casually and doesn’t require massive time investment or grinding. It has a fun gameplay loop that encourages free exploration. Collaboration with other players arises freely from gameplay.
Nefara@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
Yep absolutely seconding this one. Everything is very much a play-as-you-want playground, with many ways to level and a low stress, community based world. Pretty much everything that causes friction against other players in other MMOs (kill stealing, limited resource mining, open world pvp etc) just isn’t in the game or in its own little spot.
I will say that it has a lot of complexity and systems on systems that have built up over time that can be opaque and overwhelming. But again, you have the choice not to engage, and can do perfectly well running your character around maps exploring and picking cabbages and pumpkins and doing whatever you think looks interesting. Just remember to change out your armor and weapons every few levels on your way to 80.
Thassodar@sh.itjust.works 7 hours ago
It’s one of the fee MMOs I bought at launch and made it from level one to the cap without ever actually teaming up with anyone. And the story was good too!
etchinghillside@reddthat.com 3 hours ago
I vaguely recall getting about 30 days out of the free tier until I decided to start purchasing base/expansions.
So, I think I’d just say be aware that it’s probably not an “indefinitely free” kind of thing – but will give you a sufficient amount of entertainment until you want to consider if you want more.
kcweller@feddit.nl 8 hours ago
+1 for guild wars 2!