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
EverQuest 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.
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.
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 know, I know… But right now the whole “go there and do the thing, good, now go there and do the other thing” is kinda what I need to shut off my brain and have some fun.
No shame in enjoying a serving of slop every now and then. You can’t be expected to eat broccoli and celery all the time, sometimes you just need a burger.
My first modded play through of Stardew valley, first play through of terraria, project zomboid, street fighter 6, and mortal kombat 1. All on my steam deck
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.
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.
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.
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.
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..
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.
Sounds help a lot. For most enemies it’s either sound or literal visible movement. The rest is just learning after getting hit i guess. But just these two things will take you far.
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.
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.
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.
bin.pol.social
Gorące