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[Cyroth]

I'd kill for a decent MMO that takes its inspiration from Everquest or Ragnarok Online and kicks your sorry behind if you try to solo your way through it.

Pantheon is actually being developed by some of the original Everquest team; it is very similar to EQ in a lot of ways, with a strong emphasis on teamwork. ETA for publicly playable build is 'later this year', but they already have some videos up of in-house play sessions and it seems to be coming along nicely.

Looks interesting, thanks.
Going to watch this one, maybe getting a founders when they're a bit further along.

[Muz]

I wonder if MUDs and MU*es are still going strong. The tools for creating them are better than ever and there seems to be a new MU* opening every day. Most of the ones I frequented have dropped a bit but still maintain that active core.

[MrRoboto75]

Does Warframe count?

[Moghjubar]

The only interesting MMOs out there IMO are-

The Repopulation - Star Wars Galaxy like.  Problem: Company that made it had drama/issues and the Hero Engine company acquired the game and say they are going to finish/release it... uncertain future.

Project Gorgon - A strange take on classic MMOs with longer term consequences for characters like curses, riddles in game you have to solve, etc.  Problem: Still pretty early dev, miniscule size dev team, runs on Unity and has all the problems a MMO trying to run on Unity has.

Hazeron - Only game of its kind, 5x empire building space mmo.  Problem: Single person dev, tons of bugs, mounds of issues, in middle of a massive designer revamp thats taken a long time and a very dwindled playerbase.

Honorable mentions:
Shroud of the Avatar had me interested for awhile but lost it awhile back - Basically Richard Garriot making "Not Ultima Online" 2.0 3.0

Star Citizen is Star Citizen, and honestly doesn't even make the category of MMO right now anyway.

----
World of Warcraft is still king of the Skinner Boxes anyway, and still is the gold standard (of sorts), or at very least the elephant of mmos.

FF 14, however, has gotten quite a lot of modern dev and looks pretty damn nice aesthetically now, and is at least fun to play with what seems to be decent story/characters (I tried it on a free trial thing).

That said, these two are still your bog standard MMO experience and anyone going into them need to be sure to have an escape route (avoid the skinner box / getting sucked in) and have a clear way to tell when they are done with the game (actually stop playing when you've seen enough / come back later in a new expansion or whatever)

Pretty much no other mmo is worth even going thru that I know of (this includes Wildstar, unfortunately)

[Folly]

I really enjoyed the Wildstar 1-50 solo experience; lots of pretty landscapes, colorful characters, and decently interesting plot.
It kind of fell short as an MMO though...both PVP and endgame PvE were extremely inhospitable to anyone not using very select cookie-cutter classes and customization.
Still, it's apparently F2P now, so if you go in with measured expectations you might find the experience worthwhile.

[Chiefwaffles]

Personally, I'd avoid Hazeron for now.
It's an awesome game, but the ongoing designer revamp and tiny (~10 players online midday) player base aren't great. Hopefully there'll be a landmark point when some giant improvement is finally done and lots of people start playing again; then I'd recommend it.
Super fun looking at the updates, though. They're pretty fast considering the one-man development team. Just recently, launch tubes and docking procedures were added for small spacecraft like fighters launching and entering larger ships.

[Moghjubar]

I'd kill for a decent MMO that takes its inspiration from Everquest or Ragnarok Online and kicks your sorry behind if you try to solo your way through it.

Pantheon is actually being developed by some of the original Everquest team; it is very similar to EQ in a lot of ways, with a strong emphasis on teamwork. ETA for publicly playable build is 'later this year', but they already have some videos up of in-house play sessions and it seems to be coming along nicely.

I watched the Pantheon vid, it quite literally looks like a complete remake of Everquest 1 (specifically 1, not 2) with a few modern quality of life fixes... without the real movement based action you see in games like Wildstar (or WoW for that matter).  I mean, if you want some MMO nostalgia it looks like its going to be a pretty good contender. 

Speaking of Everquest though, it, of course, is still going, so you could just play that... or even play Shards of Dalaya, which is more or less EQ with some massive changes on a private server thingy (though it still suffers from Everquest limitations and imo wont keep interest for too long)

[nenjin]

Gotta mention The Secret World, what I feel was one of the last big subscription-based MMOs before it too learned people won't pay for that shit anymore.

You can easily dump 100 hours getting through the initial content before you have to start buying the DLCs (although I've heard that's changing?)

Anyways, it's stupidly story rich and, if you can keep yourself from reading spoilers, full of some very devious puzzles of all varieties. As an actual MMO it's...passable. Mechanics are a little on the meh side for me. It's one of those games you have to make one character badly to figure out how to make the second correctly. But I enjoy it. Been meaning to go back for a while.

[Teneb]

I'll throw in a recommendation for ESO for those into more traditional MMOs. The game does change some things up though: mostly no level-gated content since a recent update abd more dynamic combat.

If someone on the NA server wants to add me to their friend list, shoot me a pm.

[Greiger]

I don't know of any current bay12 group in an mmos though there have been some in the past.

As for ones I would recommend.  There's Guild Wars 2 and Elder Scrolls Online.  There's also Marvel Heroes if you count that kind of game it's more of an always online diablo in my mind.  I've returned to all of those multiple times.  Note that Marvel Heroes is Free to Play so you should expect more microtransactions than the other two.  Though both GW2 and ESO have microtransactions in some form.

Spoiler: GW2 Description (click to show/hide)

Guild Wars 2 has an interesting story, and more unique races.  Playable races are humans, Silvari(young, naive, plant people that are literally grown from their home city), Asura(Combination of magic and technology. A very small supersmart race with a superiority complex), Norn(Tall humans, Kinda nordic, werebears/wolves/ravens) And my favorite, Charr (Big bulky militaristic catlike beasts with horns and a love of mechanical engineering and explosives).  There are other races that aren't player controllable, and they for the majority fall into the animal people kind of deals, (Quaggan are manatee, Skritt are rats, Tengu are crow people, etc.)  Mostly their behavior is what makes them interesting.

The plot is that some number of huge (they are indeed huge) ancient dragons have awoken straight out of myth, and have pretty much been screwing up the world for some time before the game even starts.  The vanilla plot involves dealing with one of the dragons, which has the power to make and control undead, and happens to be based out of a long sunken city that he raised out of the ocean.  So they are zombies, but with a bit of a drowned twist mostly.  Map exploration I think is the game's strong point, you will be rewarded for exploring, and there are dynamic events that happen in the world that unless you spend a lot of time in the same area a lot won't get old easily.  Weak point I think are the dungeons, though I haven't tried raids as I was more of a pvper. 

The instanced World pvp is fun and is based on server vs server. The solo world pvp experience is enjoyable, and there are minor objectives a solo player can do to help their side.  Unfortunately most of the world pvp enthusiasts moved to the top three ranked wpvp servers.  So you likely won't see any interesting matches unless you play on one of those 3 servers.  There are no subscriptions.

Spoiler: ESO Description (click to show/hide)

Elder Scrolls online gets bonus points if you already like other elder scrolls games.  Races are a touch weak in my opinion, if you are not familiar with elder scrolls it's basically a few flavors of human, a lot of flavors of elf, and a pair of animal races with little differentiating each other.

Plot is that a daedric prince has decided to take over the world, and it just so happens that the imperial empire has fallen apart at the same time, and is essentially being run by a puppet of the big bad.  3 Big factions are at war with eachother to try to take the throne of the empire when everyone should be really dealing with the impending apocalypse instead.  I feel the game's strong point is the crafting, I feel the weak point is the plot.

The instanced world pvp is also enjoyable, I feel it is more fun to run with large groups in ESO's world pvp than in GW2, but the solo world pvp experience is terribly unbalanced and not much fun.  You are either one shot or you can tank an entire group of players solo, and there is little to nothing a solo player, or even a small group can do to help their side.  It does not require a sub to play, though subbing does give significant quality of life improvements.

Wow I ended up writing little mini essays here.  Oh well.  Anyway hope that gives some insight into those games so you can judge if they would be fun for you.  I do personally like GW2 better.  But both are enjoyable in their own way.

[Shadowlord]

It doesn't appear to be possible to start playing the secret world at this time?

P.S. Describing a game as "a remake of everquest" makes me want to avoid it like the plague.

[Folly]

Bumping this thread for the new year, and hopes to see some fresh MMO's in 2018.

Here's what's currently on my radar:

Ashes of Creation
This game reminds me a lot of ArcheAge, with open-world housing and PvP resource-escorting. Honestly, my only problem with AA was the insane pay-to-win that grew exponentially worse with each patch, so if AoC can manage to reproduce the good stuff without the bad, it'll be pretty great.
The most significant way that AoC promises to distinguish itself from AA and other recent MMO's is with a robust PvE system built around the concept of classes that are both unique and essential. With 8-man parties, you can expect the holy trinity of dps/heals/tanks, as well as buffers, debuffers, and crowd control, all of which will be necessary to dive into dungeons and raid open-world bosses for precious crafting resources.
AoC is currently in early Alpha, with release expected late 2018/early 2019.


Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen
This game started out looking and sounding very much like a rebuild of Everquest. Over the course of 2017, it has come a long way, with graphics now looking much more modern and gameplay systems developing well beyond it's spiritual predecessor. Still, at the core, Pantheon promises to deliver an experience very much like Everquest, with a list of races and classes that is almost identical, and a set of cities, factions, fields, and dungeons, that should all feel very familiar to anyone who was there the first time around.
Pantheon is currently in early Alpha, with release estimated for 2019.


Crowfall
Crowfall looks a lot like Albion Online, in that it is an open-world pvp sandbox with entirely player-crafted weapons and armor. A couple of key differences are the fully 3D graphics, and campaigns that play out over the span of a few months at a time. AO went wrong in a lot of ways...but I'm cautiously optimistic that Crowfall will be better.
Crowfall is currently in Alpha, with full release expected for late 2018.


Ascent Infinite Realm
From the makers of TERA and PUBG, AIR is yet another upcoming game promising a return to the holy trinity. The gimmick here is jetpacks and gliders, allowing for 3-dimensional movement and platforming gameplay mixed with traditional MMORPG dungeon raiding and grinding. The main concerns right now are performance issues, and the potential of a cash-shop, both of which we have very little information right now. Still, it could be decent.
AIR is currently in closed beta, with full release expected sometime in 2018.

[Folly]

Project Gorgon arrived on Steam a few days ago. It looks like a fairly substantive game despite lackluster graphics.
Anyone here have firsthand experience they would care to share?

[Akura]

Project Gorgon arrived on Steam a few days ago. It looks like a fairly substantive game despite lackluster graphics.
Anyone here have firsthand experience they would care to share?

Not firsthand, since it doesn't look like anything I'd put $40(currently $30) down on, but some of the features sound kinda... iffy.

You can drop items on the ground, and other players can pick them up. What’s so great about that? Imagine laying down a trail of literal (virtual) breadcrumbs to guide your friends (or lure your enemies) into the woods.

There's generally a few reasons why most MMOs don't do that sort of thing, at least not without some kind of delay. Drop-trade scams, and otherwise common scam, are usually blocked simply by dropped items not appearing on the ground for a period of time, for example.

[etgfrog]

Project Gorgon arrived on Steam a few days ago. It looks like a fairly substantive game despite lackluster graphics.
Anyone here have firsthand experience they would care to share?

The game involves lots of grinding to unlock different ways to grind. Maybe that is just me being a bit bitter about the cow being nerfed so heavy handedly quite a while ago, but in a single patch it had rendered most of my gear unusable by invalidating 3 different effects the gear could have. This was also before they introduced a npc that fixed invalidated gear. I really didn't want to have to grind up my gear again from almost nothing and couldn't really get myself back into playing the game again.