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[ductape]

The title is a bit of a trap and I am sure we all agree "good" is subjective. So heres some stuff to work with. But by all means everyone who is inclined to, go ahead and share what MMos you like and play and why.

So yeah, I played lots "back in the day" Starting with MUDs of course long before anything "modern". My first graphical MMORPG was Meridian 59. Then eventually on to Asherons Call, then Everquest, then Star Wars Galaxies (my favorite), then the obligatory WoW.

After all that, and so age and experience on me, I noticed the grind and shallowness of the games all to glaringly. I finally dug deep into Eve and got pretty far with that, ran a corp, did all the null and back again, finally pirated a bit. The complexity I liked, but once I had seen it all kinda lost interest. I dabbled in a few titles for only a brief time, never getting back into anything.

What am I looking for? Not something as deep as Eve I think. I had enough of that. I am a daddy now and my play time must be more casual. Maybe now, something snappy and fun to play with a good community is what I want.

• Free is a bonus, but I have little experience with free games, do they suck?
• Decent community where i can find a group of mature players to guild up with
• no major life investment, play when you can and just for fun
• not in Beta
• not utterly boring, like WoW is to me
• looks good

Any ideas?

[Chiefwaffles]

What about Star Wars - The Old Republic? Pretty fun, though a bit WOW-like. Still has content updates, and also has 100% fully voiced NPCs for just about everything (I cannot think of a single quest that didn't have 100% of the NPCs that you could talk to voiced)

Good production quality, good story (for a MMO), and gameplay is fun, though not too unique. It's also free.

[NullForceOmega]

Maybe TERA?  If you can get past the sexualized female 'armor' (and some of the animations), the combat is NOT what you are used to, being very different based on class (Lancers are tanks, Berserkers are Death, warriors are medium armored high-mobility DPS, Gunners are OP as hell right now, etc.)  The level cap is 65, and while you won't hit that FAST, there isn't a stupid amount of grind that I've encountered so far (my highest char is a lvl. 46 berserker)  If you can stand a bit of grind then Firefall might be cool, it's a sci-fi TPS with jump-jet equipped power armor.  Both are free to play, and they do have some benefits that can be purchased for cash, but by my definitions, neither is pay-to-win.  Both are pretty graphically impressive as well.

[Sonlirain]

If you can stomatch cutesy animu characters (more chibi than gainax boob vawing) and live in north america you could try Mabinogi.

- It's free.

- There is a B12 guild there (sadly can't play it because the game started blocking european players all of a sudden after a period of leninecy when the EU servers closed down)

- There is a lot of grinding to get your skills up but i personally never saw this as a problem. if anything it makes being a max rank crafter something special rather than something to tick off after getting max level (and speaking of that. There is no max level as the game uses a original leveling system i won't bother to explain here.). And even with all the grind there is a large variety of things you can do including the games own (similar to WoW) archeology system poping up in one location.

- It's been out for years now but might get cranky with some PCs. Never had an issue with my rig from 2012 but it had a tendency to bluescreen out on my old 2006 PC so that's something to keep in mind.

- It's all subjective. Can't say you won't be bored.

- Not really... but its still better than runescape i guess?

[Nelia Hawk]

Just quickly throwing these two rather good mmos in here:
Star Trek Online (free to play so no harm giving it some test days, pretty much no "level grind" at all.)
Guild Wars 2

[Naryar]

Anarchy Online ain't bad.

It's pretty extreme cyberpunk though, and sometimes the missions are obnoxious due to small items and stuff. Also the basic game is free, and it has more content than free runescape.

[Uristides]

Anarchy Online ain't bad.

It's pretty extreme cyberpunk though, and sometimes the missions are obnoxious due to small items and stuff. Also the basic game is free, and it has more content than free runescape.

Haha, I was tempted to post that, but didn't really felt like because last time I logged the game was completely dead and you can't really talk about decent community when there is none left 
Damn shame, that game was the best MMO I ever played. The setting was amazing(it has a 400 page ebook novel written by Ragnar Thornquist as an introduction!), despite the dated graphics the world looked really nice and immersing, the music was good and the class rooster was like nothing I'd seen before.

[Haspen]

You can try Uncharted Waters Online, if sailing themes of 14/15/16th centuries are your bunch of thing. You can craft, explore world, trade between ports, plunder from merchants, hunt pirates, join a fleet, help your country, traverse ruins full of treasure, discover ancient tales and artifacts, and plethora of other things.

The only bad thing is the grind. It's not really noticeable at first couple levels of a skill (they follow 'Morrowind'-like system aka the more you do X, the higher rank in X you get), but later you will spend whole hours doing the same thing over and over again to grab that extra 1 rank...

...or you can just switch your job and try something else for a change. It's common for a player to have one or two extra 'jobs' on the side for variety.

UWO is free, either via Steam or the game's own launcher provided by OGPlanet.

[Folly]

I'm currently playing Elder Scrolls Online, and probably going to stick with it until Skyforge reaches open beta.

ESO has an initial purchase price, but no subscription required after that.
My experiences with the community have entirely been positive.
There's no guild raids or anything like that to get overly invested in. You can keep it casual.
Not in Beta.
Not boring. The quests are all well written, interesting places to explore and people to interact with. Combat never boils down to button-mashing like those other MMO's; even against regular enemies, you will be constantly dodging, blocking, interrupting, and moving around.
One of the better looking MMO's out there certainly. I recommend setting up SweetFX to push the graphics over the top!

[ductape]

Wow thanks peeps!

I did my time in puzzle pirates...would have been fun but the puzzle kinda sucked and super repetitive, so yeah...

I tried Star Trek, seemed neat at first but for some reason it just wasnt very compelling. I think I expect so much more from Star Trek just because it is Star Trek.

Have always wanted to try Guild Wars but the cost drives me away, would rather spend that amount on a single player game.

I will add to my list Star Wars thingy and Elder Scroll Online.

[endlessblaze]

I used to love free realms, I still do....but its gone now.....lost to the abyss....

does its code even exist anymore? who can say.....

[ductape]

I just found out about Pathfinder Online, does anyone have a buddy key they can share with me?

[PrimusRibbus]

These days I mainly play MUDs when I get that itch for MMO-style game.

If you're familiar with John Gilmore's quote, "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it"; MUD communities tend to view grind as damage and route around it. With a modern MUD client and an active, semi-popular community, you tend to have all the tools you need to avoid grind and just play the fun parts of the MUD (via scripting, triggers, macros, and such).

Aside from MUDs, SWGemu has an awesome community (for the most part) if it's nostalgic enough for you to ignore the grind.

[Tres_Huevos]

If you liked SWG, you should look at The Repopulation. It's heavily inspired by original SWG.

[Sensei]

Repopulation is very much In Beta. Some important features aren't fully implemented and it runs like crap.