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[ductape]

some of the small persistent worlds for Neverwinter Nights are still rocking it. Hit me up if you want a recommendation, some of the best multiplayer RPG experiences possible happen there.

[Folly]

the whole point of a modern f2p mmo is to make you obsessively waste all your free time on it...So... I'd avoid those.

What's wrong with designing a game so that players will want to obsess over it and spend all their time playing it? Sounds like the ideal game to me.

[Ozyton]

That kind of game would be great if players didn't spend all that time playing 'getting to the fun part'.

From a business perspective it's good though, as long as the people are paying money.

[Mailo]

The Repopulation is an up and coming MMO modeling something like Star Wars Galaxies, with full on faction v faction warfare, lots of skills to learn through usage, and the ability to learn anything in the game. Still in alpha stages, but looks very promising.

Oh yeah forgot about Repopulation. That is pretty much exactly like SWG.

As an SWG vet I was really looking forward to The Repopulation, unfortunately it is rather unlike SWG in the parts where it matters most to me, namely the resource system, crafting and PVP.
As far as I know, resources come in different quality levels from resource nodes. SWG had resources with multiple quality values ranging from 1-1000, all of which mattered (at least to someone). Also, they could be found anywhere, not just nodes.
The crafting system seems to be way over the top regarding sub components of sub components for sub components that make up ... a sub component. I haven't found anything about being similar to the experimentation system of SWG, which could tailor the weapons in my case to the customer.
Finally, The Repopulation PvP system is totally unlike SWGs and much closer to EVE Online, with 2/3 of the world being free for all nonconsensual PVP.

[Malus]

I tried to play WoW once, almost a decade ago. I was like 11 years old and there was so much hype about it on the internet I pretty much begged my parents to buy it for me for my birthday. I rolled a hunter and played until level 12 or 13 and then just quit. Hated every moment of it.

Spoiler: Warlords of Draenor rant (click to show/hide)

Eight years later, my friends (most of them huge fans of the game) managed to convince me to pick up Warlords of Draenor. It was, ostensibly, the MMO. I told them I tried WoW once and hated it -- they assured me the game had changed, and I began to doubt myself. Certainly, my tastes have changed in the past 8 years, I thought. My friends told me WoW PVP was like Dota 2 -- but deeper! They told me there was just so much to do, that it was "incredibly challenging", and I definitely would not regret dropping another $60 on the game.

I like Dota 2 a lot. I've poured more hours into Dota than any other game in the world (the only two that come close are EU4 and CK2.) The hours I've poured into those games are minuscule compared  to the hours my friends have sunk into WoW. We're talking like 7000 hours or something utterly ridiculous. There had to be some draw to keep people playing that long, and I was determined to find it.

So I preordered Warlords of Draenor and in anticipation, the five of us rolled new characters. We were gonna level up to cap and be ready for Draenor when it hit. The early levels went much faster, I'll give Blizzard that, but it was still the exact same game I'd played almost a decade prior. When my friends started bitching at me because I offhandedly mentioned I was just deleting vendor trash instead of wasting time hauling it back to the shop (we're talking greys worth like 10 copper) I thought they were joking. No, they were seriously annoyed I wasn't playing "optimally" by scraping together the pennies I was making. These were people with hundreds of thousands of gold pieces in the bank.

The quests were still the same old MMO "go here fetch this kill ten rats in these three spots" that have plagued the genre for its entire lifespan. The entire game just felt like a cheap skinner box. I'm not really opposed to that style of game design (I "played" like 20 hours of Cookie Clicker while I was binge-watching Game of Thrones) but it just felt so much dirtier when I realized I was paying Blizzard for the privilege of performing the same boring, repetitive tasks.

Running heroic dungeons wasn't fun. It was monotonous. There was no puzzle solving or decision-making -- it was literally just me using my abilities in the "optimal" rotation over and over again, and then at the end, rolling some dice for a chance to get a shinier set of clothes. PVP seemed marginally interesting, but suffered from a lot of the same issues. I suspect if I found the mechanics more interesting I might've been able to get more out of it, but I reached a state of apathy where I just didn't care.

At least when I play Dota, I want to win and I'll do everything possible to make that happen. When I was playing Warlords of Draenor, I just didn't care, because nothing I did really affected anything. If I was a second or two late with some casts, it didn't matter. Hell, I could get up and grab a sandwich and play with one hand and still make it to the end of a heroic with a bunch of randoms and collect my loot. It was basically an idle game at that point.

I got to level 50 or so on my fresh character, and then when Draenor hit I rolled a max level character just to see if the "end game" content was any different. It was the exact same thing except my XP bar took about 20x longer to fill. I quit after maybe a week.

I've pretty much come to terms with the fact that MMOs just "aren't for me". I absolutely love the concept -- immersive, multiplayer worlds -- but they always seem to boil down to grind, grind, grind, and I've yet to really find an exception -- and I've tried a lot of them.

I've tried:

Spoiler: "I actually paid money for these!" section (click to show/hide)

• ArcheAge: I actually played to level cap but got burnt out because I had no one to play with. The combat was boring, but the PVP/piracy seemed interesting.
• The Secret World: the setting is great! The quests are interesting! The combat is terrible.
• FF14: the crafting is pretty cool -- my "trial" ran out though and I wasn't really enjoying it enough to subscribe.
• The Old Republic: a WoW clone, but the quest writing is good, a pity the combat and 'generic' instances are the same-old. If TOR had 1/3 the number of combat encounters, it'd be 3x better.
  
• City of Heroes/Villains: Loved the customization, the base/clan PVP seemed really interesting, but I quit before I made it to cap.
• Star Wars Galaxies: I was *really* young when I bought this. It barely ran on my PC. I was fascinated by it, but I quit because 5fps wasn't really playable. Years later I went back to it after the "NGE" and it was pretty much another WoW clone.
• The Repopulation: This actually might be interesting if they flesh out the crafting more. The combat is some of the worst I've ever experienced, but the rest of the mechanics are very appealing. I'm not happy with the way the weapon system works (the "shell" aka what the weapon looks like, is almost entirely irrelevant and everything boils down to the fittings you put in it) but the larger-world PVP stuff could be awesome. If the crafting system was actually reasonable, like developing scopes, magazines, barrels, etc, and having those affect stats, then I'd be a fan. As it is, I'll give it another shot once it launches.
• Dungeons and Dragons Online: I remember really liking this one but not having the money to stay subscribed. There were some really cool dungeons.
• Lord of the Rings Online: I was super hyped for this game. Then I bought it and dropped it within a week like almost every other MMO. Once you got past the LOTR setting, it was extremely bland.
• Auto Assault: No one seems to remember this gem. What a ridiculous concept. It was pretty fun though.

I'm sure there are some more, but that's all I can think of off the top of my head. I never played Guild Wars/GW2 but from what I've seen it doesn't look like it really stands out.

Spoiler: Free to play (click to show/hide)

Oh boy. This list could stretch forever if I listed everything so I'll just list the ones I actually liked:

• Mabinogi: This was genuinely cool. The combat was unique (though frustrating if you were underleveled) and the rebirth/aging system was super interesting. The daily jobs were very grindy but totally optional. I sunk maybe 20 hours into Mabinogi, which is a lot for me (for an MMO, anyway). I think my interest just dwindled eventually and I moved on to other games.
• Shin Megami Tensei: IMAGINE: This game had a lot of interesting mechanics. Unfortunately the interface was obtuse and I could never convince my friends to play with me, and eventually I hit a wall going at it solo and quit. Now it's dead. RIP.
• Haven & Hearth: Played this quite a bit. Definitely not a traditional MMO. It did a lot of interesting things. I liked it.
• Salem: Much like H&H, this was not a traditional MMO. I convinced a few friends to play it with me and it was pretty fun. Not as good as H&H.
• Puzzle Pirates: I loved Puzzle Pirates. I had a crew and several ships. For a 13 year old I was quite proud of my accomplishments. I played it again recently and it was still as fun as I remember, but none of my friends are interested. Oh well.
• Wurm Online: Could probably put this in the "I paid money for this" section but what the hell. I played a bit of Wurm 2 years ago. I started a small village with two of my friends and it was fun for a while. Unfortunately we'd settled a bit too close to another group. The village got drained once and we all sort of lost interest.
• Phantasy Star Online 2: English localization when? I actually thought this game was fun but the missing translations on a lot of abilities, items, etc kept me from playing more of it. Also I'd like to be able to spend money. If it ever gets an English release I'll be trying it again.

I don't think there's much left to be improved upon on the "traditional" MMO front, but I hope we see a boom in open PVP/survival-style sandbox MMOs. The big problem games like Rust have is that there's no incentive for the players to actually band together as part of a larger whole and form a "civilized" society. There's no end-game; it's all about amassing better equipment, building a better base, then going out and killing other people. Haven&Hearth and Salem suffered from the same kinds of problems, and I kind of view H&H as the "proto" survival game.

If you're interested in traditional MMOs, from what I hear, World of Warcraft is still the best. I don't think modern MMOs have evolved much past the level WoW was at a decade ago.

Meanwhile, I'm cautiously optimistic for the few massively-multiplayer games that seem like they're actually doing something interesting. I really hope Star Citizen pans out because it sounds like the kind of game that could really shake things up.

[itisnotlogical]

Maybe you could narrow down what kind of games your girlfriend likes.

The ones I've played are Star Trek Online, Everquest, and Guild Wars. Star Trek Online is nicely casual with tons of story missions to do. It's not pay2win; anything worth having can be bought with in-game currency. Exploring is a strong point in Everquest but it might be too dated for your taste. Its sequel has a solid fanbase. Guild Wars is a lot like Everquest but a much smaller game IMO. I've heard it has a solid endgame.

Star Trek Online also has player-created "Foundry" missions, many of which are even better than the official storyline (although there's plenty of typos )

[Sensei]

I remember Auto Assault. Oh god do I remember Auto Assault. Loved the writing and the atmosphere, and combat was a little different. Used to just drive around the world a lot. Oh yeah, and I was lucky to get 20 FPS with that game on my computer, and it was buggy at the best of times. I loved that game but in retrospect it was doomed to failure: Netdevil delayed the release, took forever with any kind of expansion or update. Nowadays it would be an abandoned Early Access. You may recall netdevil was sued into oblivion for not making their next game in time for a contract deadline... (Well, next game aside from Lego Universe, which was also shut down for some reason or another)

[Folly]

@Malus, you might try Elder Scrolls Online. The quests have much more involved stories compared to those other MMO's, and the dungeons require a lot of movement and reaction.

[lordcooper]

Eve pretty much has a monopoly on the 'good MMO' subgenre.

[werty892]

Eve pretty much has a monopoly on the 'good MMO' subgenre.

Yeah... EvE and WoW are basically the only two remaining 'good' (Wow never caught on for me...) subscription based MMO's. EvE is as complex as you want it to be. I know people who use it as nothing but a way to relax at the end of the day, as basically a interactive wallpaper. And I know people that go extremely hard and sink their entire life into it. And both playstyles are equally valid. Probably the best thing about EvE is you don't even have to be online to 'level up' as everyone's 'XP bars' tick all the time, no matter if you're off or online, at the same rate*. It takes about two months I'd say for it to really bite you. Depends on who you play with really. EvE is also the last 'social' MMO in that respect. You NEED people you can trust and depend on to do high level stuff. Things like controlling space, living off the grid, can't be done as solo activities*. And you can't just queue with random mouth breathers to do that. Because of EvE's ruthlessness and difficulty, you need people who will watch your back, not stab you in the back for shits and giggles.

And the world... EvE is played entirely on one server, with no instancing. There are dungeons, in a sense. But players can scan you down, enter those dungeons, and blow you up, with varying penalties depending on what area of space you are in. Also, the entire world is run by players. For example, recently some players recovered the deceased remains of someone who discovered a new threat, but got killed. He managed to broadcast the threat before he died. The players were approached by the in game security force for the remains. They refused to hand them over. So, they will now be engaged by the police force of the game, and have had a bounty put upon them equal to 750 U.S. Dollars. The in game security and such is run by the devs, so instead of forcing them to hand it over, they are allowing this to play out and may take action against their in game guilds. You can read the full story here. EvE's tagline, "In EvE, the story is not real, until players become a part of it." is completely true. Actions you take have ramifications everywhere. It's not like WoW, where you can slay the boss that wants to destroy the world once, and then he's back, threatening the same exact shit, as if nothing happens. For a smaller example, yesterday, one of my ships got blown up. That ship, and all of the stuff on it, was built by players. It's also gone forever, and everything in red in that message. I don't get it magically regenerated. If I want to fly it again, I have to go out and buy a new one, also built by players. No other MMO is like that. EvE is not a theme park you can stroll your way through. As cliche as it sounds, EvE is real.

[DJ]

Planetside2 is pretty good. Hey, you said MMO, not MMORPG

[LordPyrrole]

That kind of game would be great if players didn't spend all that time playing 'getting to the fun part'.

From a business perspective it's good though, as long as the people are paying money.

This makes me realize that I probably shouldn't play Runescape, but I swear to you there is a fun part there somewhere, I just have to get to it.

[TempAcc]

You can try Wakfu for something currently unique among MMOs (turn based Final Fantasy Tactics-eske combat, an ecosystem you can actualy interact with in non destructive ways, tons of classes with nice variation in gameplay between them, mostly, etc), altough if you aren't playing it with a friend or more people, it'll get kinda bleh later due to grinding, and the professions aren't to exciting either (gathering professions and crafting professions, old style spend an hour gathering this, craft it into other stuff for profession levels, etc), but it can be pretty fun if you have some people with you to goof around while playing and come up with combat strategies with.
Dungeon crawls/instances go from "series of sucessive group fights" to "what the fuck do I have to do" combinations of puzzles and combat.

Like people said, GW2 is decent since it doesnt require you to play TONS of hours of it per day to level (at least it didn't when I played) and its very action packed with a strong focus on pvp (due to the way world versus world conflicts work, you can technically start pvp-ing from level 1, and actualy level off it).

There's also Tree of Savior, which is a far more actiony Ragnarok Online sequel-ish MMO with tons of classes. Its not released yet, though.

[Dutrius]

Planetside2 is pretty good. Hey, you said MMO, not MMORPG

Yeah, Planetside2 is good. Of you like first person shooters. With tanks and aircraft.

[MasterFancyPants]

Planetside2 is pretty good. Hey, you said MMO, not MMORPG

Yeah, Planetside2 is good. Of you like first person shooters. With tanks and aircraft.

And bugs that are still in the game since launch and absolutely no endgame other than farming up your stats.