FFXIV

I don't PVP so I can't speak to that but the lore and PVE is solid. Gameplay is very classic MMO. The releases continue to be ranked and reviewed higher with each one that comes out. Players are strongly encouraged to help new players (sprouts) via the mentoring program. Community has been so good, very helpful, never seen anyone rage or get angry at a new person, or anyone for that matter. Very LGBTQ+ friendly. TONS of fun stuff to do on the side between chapters like glamour or housing for folks that want a chill experience or you can do savage raids or hunts for the more hardcore game play focused players. Me and a friend love to just run around to all the apartments and houses to check out everyone's place from time to time. Some are really amazing. I'll throw mine and my buddy's apartment in that ring we put a lot of work in and did some really cool tricks to make the space feel bigger and more unique. Some people turn their houses into cafes or dance clubs, some require RPing when you visit some don't. They are pretty fun to go to. From time to time they'll have giveaways for gill or items at the parties.

BONUS: It's totally free up to level 70 so you have plenty of time to figure out if the game is for you.

I'm not playing right now, taking a quick break but I'm in the NA server Sargatanas. The name is Obi-Bun Kenobi, I think I have the address to my place in my Adventurer Plate. I leave the apartment unlocked so people can use it for g-posing or just to have a nice place to hang. Come check it out sometime!

This fucked up pay to win one called "Life". Shit is hard as hell and I don't think the devs even care about balance.

The ones I've been playing on and off over the past few years are Guild Wars 2 and Lord of the Rings Online.

GW2 is a really nice game to just pick up and play without needing huge time investments. It has a fun gameplay loop and well designed zones to explore. Haven't gotten around to playing the new expansion yet, but I hear it's pretty good.

LOTRO is great for that traditional MMO experience. The community is very friendly and surprisingly active. It has a nice atmosphere. They are also frequently giving away the expansion packs, so you get a lot of content for free.

FFXIV is a fantastic game, with a fantastic free trial that lets you play the entire base game for free (and i think they recently expanded that to the first expansion too), and its beautiful as hell, has a fantastic story, and doesnt require a super computer to run.

Check out FF14. Great free trial option. Community is overwhelmingly good (though none is perfect). PvE is pretty damn good, especially once you get to late/end game. PvP is not the best (IMO) but it is very active if you do like it. Has a couple different modes including a 5v5 push the objective mode and a 24v24v24 objective capture mode. No RvR.

Kinda boring/typical MMO at first, but really picks up. With the free trial can play the base game and first two expansions for free, plus get the jobs (classes) from those (most of the ones in the game) up to level 70. Including crafting/gathering jobs. Can easily spend 1000+ hours just on the free trial if you choose to maximize it, but the expansions and sub are worth it IMO. And unlike WOW you van access all those classes on one character and switch with the press of a few buttons.

And the next expansion is summer of next year, so you do have time to catch up if you decide you want to get into it.

GW2 for the past 11 years, except for a stretch where I played ESO for a few months.

Community's mostly great. Cooperation between players is strongly fostered by the game's design (no kill or resource stealing, no competing for drops, etc), so players tend to get along in almost every PvE situation.

Lore is good, but not nearly as expanded upon as Warcraft's.

Gameplay is what makes it IMO. Skill effects and some gear skins can be a bit obnoxious, especially when you're in large groups for open world and World vs World, but it's still enjoyable. Don't play normal PvP, so can't comment on that.

Actually the wow you know does exist, they're called Classic servers and have a huge community.

But I stick to retail servers, wow has come a long way and I think it's the most fun it's ever been nowadays.

To each their own tho.

Old School RuneScape, getting in a clean 7 hours a day

I don’t have time for MMOs, but the only one that didn’t completely feel like a waste of time was FFXIV.

WoW Ascension on the Area 52 server. This server is classless, you can pick any ability and talents you want. Plus there are mystic scrolls you can find in the world which when equipped (you can have 17 equipped at once, 1 legendary, 3 epic, then a bunch of blue or green) and these enchants completely change how abilities work to allow for you to make incredibly cool custom classes.

It's full of fresh ideas, I love it a lot!

It's been years since I played but can't recommend GW2 enough if you didn't try it yet. One of the more unique thempark style MMOs with the focus on dynamic events instead of quests - the events branch out into other events, with different branches based on if you succeeded or failed with some dilogue in between (do stick around when events end!). Lore is rich and story is nice (it has ups and downs).

The game had its rough patches and reinvented intelf several times but now it seems its in a nice place.

Also, I figured I would plug !mmorpg@lemmy.ml - it's not much active unfortunately, but seeing as there are somr MMO enjoyers here there could be some activity to be had if you don't yet know it

I was the same way. I quit WoW after WotLK, and started looking into it again about two years ago. Then I saw the bad reviews and how the story tanked. So I looked around at the other big ones, and FFXIV looked interesting. The story is kind of average until you get past level 50 stuff, but it gets really good. Shadowbringers is just a masterpiece. Easily as good as any other FF title you've played. I came for the graphics, and stayed for the lore. Compared to WoW, the graphics are great, that is.

The PvE is good, especially when you consider that you don't need an alt. If you make it to level 60 and find you don't like the class you picked, you can just start with a new job on your same character and continue. So you can pay all classes without going back to the newbie tutorial zones. Plus, you will "level sync" to old content. Making the level 20 dungeon worth running as a level 89. It's not instantly forgotten, dead content.

PvP isn't as good as WoW. It's fun, and I do it daily, but there's no rock paper scissors mechanics or supreme balance like back in the day in WoW.

I don't feel like I'm on a treadmill, and I'm not pressured to log in every day or fall behind. I can play casually, take a break, and not feel like I've lost out. Some people are hardcore raiders, but those days are behind me.

I would never go back to WoW now. I like it better overall than I ever did running Molten Core, or Burning Crusade even. Which was pretty peak WoW, imo.

I'd recommend watching Josh Strife Heyes videos on MMOs, but if you want an overview, the biggest ones are WoW, FFXIV, and Guild Wars 2. I'd recommend the latter.

I still play EVE online, having a lot of fun in faction warfare these days.

A video came out on the history of the game recently, just a cool 6 hour deep dive. https://youtu.be/BCSeISYcoyI?si=1sKdXt8oPRUTbzs1

I've also gotten into Guild Wars 2 recently and I'm a little addicted. The game just feels great: nice community, events are engaging, so much stuff to do but at the same time not demanding like games can be sometimes.

I dislike MMOs that require friends, working together, joining other people. I'm not knocking it. It's just not for me.

So the closest things to MMOs that I like are more single player but with people. Kinda like people who go to coffee shops with a laptop.

The list:

Fallout 76. I jump back in every few months to check out my house and then leave. I played for about 350 hours before I felt like I did everything.

New World. It got pretty good! Honestly I just like chopping wood. Maybe 100 hours?

Elder Scrolls Online. The combat is so "floaty". But if you can get passed it, the story is really really really good. Maybe 400 hours?

Even though I don't play many MMOs anymore, I still boot up Old School Runescape every now and then. It's still a good time.

I've also heard good stuff about STAR WARS: The Old Republic, but have yet to try it myself

I usually play Guild Wars 2, but at the moment I’m trying out World of Warcraft: Classic Hardcore. It’s quite fun and challenging.

WoW: Seasons of Discovery has also ~~peaked~~ piqued my interest. I hope it has potential to become WoW: Classic+.

I recently got the urge to play WoW again, so I figured I'd cash in on the 'free play til level 20' thing and play on a Classic server. Except those are pay only. Decided I'd try retail since it was free and quit within an hour. I've been really loving Turtle WoW, however.

I keep going back to Star Trek Online for some star ship pew pew. I usually get a month or two in going back over the story arcs and participating in events until the constant event schedule makes me realize I'm trapped in the grind and not playing any other games. So I drop it to break free and play the rest of my game library. The community isn't something I really interact with as pretty much all of the game content is playable solo or antisocial (the team content is easy enough you can just random queue and don't really have to talk or strategize with them). It is overwhelmingly PvE (though PvP is technically in the game) and it has some fun lore if you are a Star Trek fan.

My girlfriend and I play Elder Scrolls Online, and I'll boot up the Dark Age of Camelot private server Eden from time to time.

This post spurred me to see if Rift were still a thing; apparently it is! I got in quite early when it was still unfinished and played it well after launch. They ended up doing a pretty big overhaul at some point and that's roughly when I got out as I didn't want to have to figure things out again. I may pick it back up. I have no idea what the playerbase (or the actual game these days) is like, though.

World of Warcraft Retail ... still.

You can play Classic (Vanilla) WoW officially and you can play Wrath of the Lich King. Next will be Cataclysm. So the old WoW still exist in some way.

It's still in pre-alpha, but I've been playing a lot of Veloren.

As a disclaimer, I am very casual with my game play, but I do love me some MMOs.

I was playing New World pretty much since it's release and I've loved every minute. Good graphics, ok story line, cool combat, no subscription (which is a big factor for me since I'm so casual). Pvp, pve, raids are relatively new, good community from what I've seen.

From my understanding is that if you play a bunch of hours everyday and grind, grind, grind, you'll quickly be bored since there's lack of end game content, but I haven't been bored at my pace.

I've recently downloaded and have been playing Starfield, so I haven't been playing NW since, but I do miss NW.

WoW, but with short and longer breaks. It’s a massive time sink, and I simply do not have the time that WoW demands in order to accomplish most of the things.

It can be an enjoyment, can be fun, can also cause you to burnt out so fast.

City of Heroes

Currently winning at EVE Online.

If you watch the blizzcon talk where hozzikostas talks about the new features coming out in the next xpac, you'll want to reinstall GW2 too.

All of them. If it exists I'm on there.

I started with MMOs back in the MUD days, both on dial up BBSs and (eventually) on university servers. I will always remember the sysop who walked me through signing up for his BBS MUD while I was giving responses like “y” and “go north” because I thought he was just an infocom game and not an actual person. Twelve year old me was so embarrassed that I never went back. If you’re out there, sysop, or if you’re just someone who has tried their best to support online communities despite the best intentions of absolute idiots, I salute you.

I played EverQuest since it came out, stupidly choosing a ranger and studying fletching all very badly because I didn’t know about gaming the game mechanics and had read too many fantasy novels. I played a lot, mostly by myself, and didn’t get too far. I also tried EQ2 when it came out, and when Diablo 2 released I decided to experiment with gaming the trading market.

I was an early WoW adopter. I played through the level caps two or three times. I joined a more serious raiding guild when I hit 60 (instead of my old rpg guild) and cornered the market on cotton a couple of weeks in a row here and there. I eventually fell out of it - end game content turned into feeling like a job, where you had to study and rehearse in order to get past bosses, your loot dropping was like a 1 in 20 chance, and if you screwed up a single person could cause a group wipe. Honestly, it just got boring compared to being a level 8 warlock wandering around.

What is keeping me from trying new ones is that there’s a massive disadvantage in starting an MMO that’s already been going on for years and years. You can fire up Skyrim for the very first time this afternoon, and have the exact same experience (honestly, a much improved one) as if you fired it up on launch day. I can launch Baldur or Disco or Stray and just not have to worry about getting ganked other than what was already intended by the devs. There was a time in EverQuest where another player challenged me to 1v1 and finally talked me into trying it, then proceeded to beat the living shit out of me but then bandage me right before I died. He kept on doing it until I disconnected. As funny as that was in retrospect, it’s also a problem with MMOs in general.

I would love for there to be a new WoW - something that restored the magic of the game when you could solo or group up and both explore the world and feel progress. I’m still waiting.