So many free MMORPGs, but do you play any of them?

[J T]

There have been a lot of free MMORPGs appearing in the past few years:

http://www.freemmorpglist.com/

I'm wondering if anybody here plays any of them? Are there any good ones? I've never played and MMORPG for fear of them becoming a time suck. Are there any that are not?

[neilencio]

When I upgraded my ISP a few months back i went on a free MMORPG binge. Majority of the ones I tried were fun for a couple of days, and then got boring, either because of too much grinding, or because the game offered nothing interesting.

Off the top of my head, the ones I kind of enjoyed are:

Cabal Online
Tantra
Granado Espada

and eXteel (not really an MMORPG but an MMO third person shooter).

The problem with most free MMORPGs is not the time-consuming factor but the fact that the social dynamics encourages bullying and dickishness to the point that you'd probably have more fun if you just played alone instead of interacting with others, which means you're basically playing a single player game anyway.

My tip is to find a newly opened free MMO, that way there'd be less high level bullies and by the time they appear, you're already high level as well. Newly opened MMOs also have healthier economies, which is usually the problem with most MMORPGs.

[General Chaos]

If you're willing to put a little work into getting it up and running and aren't concerned with graphics, there are still a lot of active free Ultima Online servers. Just do a google search and you should come up with some popular ones.

Otherwise, I'm a big fan of A Tale in the Desert. I believe there's still a free mode for it. http://www.atitd.com/

Oh, and I agree that you run the risk of encountering a lot of immaturity in MMOs, but both of these I've mentioned have a fairly mature player base, especially ATitD.

[crux]

Out of curiosity, why a free one? In general you get what you pay for. Ultima Online would be a good free option, however.

[RyaNtheSlayA]

Only free MMORPG I ever got into was Silkroad online, but that has since been filled with tons of level bots. They ban like 50 people a day for it. It's so sad.