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?
You must log in or # to comment.
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.
deleted by creator
Guild wars 2 maybe ? Beware, it’s chonky.
Chonky as in looks or gameplay?
I used to love Mabinogi. It’s a bit different then most MMORPGs but it had some real cool features. My favorite is any character could learn any skill in the game. It also has a coherent story with some surprising plot twists. On to of that, you character ages and will even get fat if they eat too much. Haven’t played it in years, as well as any MMORPG for that matter, but this is one of the ones I have the fondest memories of.
Pirated old WoW on pirate servers is quite nice imo. Vanilla, The Burning Crusade and The Wrath of the Lich King. Never give Microsoft-ActivisionBlizzard 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)-
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
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.
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.
Star Wars: The Old Republic
The base game has the best quests and dialogue of any MMORPG I’ve yet played. The later expansions (Knights of the Fallen Empire and Knights of the Fallen Throne) are awful and cost money, so you can just play the base game for free and never even have to spend a penny to get eight unique class storylines to play for free. It’s honestly the last great game from Bioware.
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.
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.
Old school runescape free to play is a great introduction but you should go into it knowing that its not a free to play game and you’ll likely be paying a subscription fee.
Guild wars 1 is a old but its good and its like $10 one time payment. It can be done solo or with other players.
I did search and found this article listing 16 to consider.
Warframe.
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.
This is really helpful! I don’t hate FF14 but it feels like a lot of busywork and I don’t think I’ve ever made it out of the vanilla game.
I did finish vanilla, but then there’s another like 5-10 hours of pre patch content, THEN you get into Heavensward, and frankly I just didn’t have the time to deal with that much filler.
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.
If you want to check out some classics look up project 1999 for EverQuest or the classic world of warcraft servers. RuneScape isn’t a bad choice if you’re into the grind.
Modern I don’t think there’s much I can recommend, even the subscription based games have stores attached now & few or no in game events run by GMs
Classic WoW requires a subscription too
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.
If you like Lord of the Rings: Lord of the Rings Online is extremely nice story wise. It’s an old school MMO, but that shouldn’t shock you when you only know old school ones anyway.
If a low initial fee is fine, wait for Elder Scrolls Online sale. You can regularly get the base game for $5 or so. It has no forced monthly cost so those $5 are worth hundreds of hours or quest content.
