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.
I love the gameplay of Dead Rising, but the time limits and save point restrictions really do not mesh well with how I want to play it. The game has the perfect setup to be a sandbox where you could just fuck around with finding silly ways to kill zombies, but the time limits - even if they are as generous as people say - just give me constant anxiety and I can’t really relax and screw around with it like I’d want to.
Dead Rising 2: Off the Record did have a sandbox mode and in my opinion was the most fun game in the series. The original had an infinite time mode but you had to get the true ending I believe to unlock it
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.
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 place you don’t have to go.
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.
It’s one of the few 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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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..
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.
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.
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 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.
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
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