Not sure if this goes here or not?
Ive played a little bit of mmorpgs back int he day, that stars wars one to be exact, which felt more like walking sim more than anything. Im considering picking up old school runescape but im not sure if its good choice or not? What mmorpg that is free would you like to suggest to me a beginner?
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Wow isn’t very newbie friendly due to the mere SIZE of this behemoth but if you work at it, it can be enjoyable. You’ll never run outta stuff to do.
It’s free till level 20. Then you can decide whether you wanna continue. You can pay for the sub with in-game gold.
City of heroes is still available for free and is a lot of fun. Pre-WOW but the graphics are decent. A great community too.
Guild wars 2, it’s free to start and B2P for every season and expansion with no FOMO or P2W mechanics, only convenience. I see a lot of recommendations for FF14, but one thing most people don’t tell you is that the vanilla game is absolutely terrible. The main story quest (MSQ) for vanilla is just bad and boring, to the point where they actually cut some content out of it because that content was unnecessary. It’s still long and boring though, and I really wish they would just give people the option to freely skip the vanilla game with a recap video and go straight into Heavensward because that’s when the game gets really good. If you can power through the vanilla story of FF14, then I guess try it out, but my vote is GW2.
If you still enjoy cartoons, WoW is a good start…
Its not new, but maybe check out Ragnarok Online. I don’t know how beginner friendly it is, but I was able to pick it up pretty easily with no prior knowledge.
If you don’t like the back and forth type stuff, you’re probably looking for a theme-park style MMORPG. You might try something like Warhammer: Return of Reckoning.
Depends what you like, but I’m still nostalgic for old school WoW and find myself wanting to play every now and again but don’t want to subscribe for a whole month. My recommendation for that would be Turtle WoW, it’s an expanded vanilla private server that has it’s own launcher and everything so it’s pretty simple to get started with.
Been playing on twow for about a month now, it scratches the vanilla itch better than classic did, folks seem reasonably friendly and it’s nice to have a community on the server vs modern WoW of never seeing the same person twice
Interesting. How likely is it that Blizzard throws another tantrum and files a lawsuit? I heard they’ve done that before against people running private servers.
That’s what worries me a bit as well. As far as I’m aware, they seem to be pretty safe for now? Nostalrius WoW was a big private server that got shut down by Blizzard, but they were located in the USA. Turtle WoW is based in Europe (UK if what I found is accurate) and has done transformative work to the game, including working on a whole new compatible client in UE5 that should be releasing this year. But the issue still remains that they primarily have Blizzards assets, story, etc as the base of their game. I guess time will tell, I’m hoping it sticks around though.
I’d suggest Guild Wars 2. It’s an MMO that can be played quite casually and doesn’t require massive time investment or grinding. It has a fun gameplay loop that encourages free exploration. Collaboration with other players arises freely from gameplay.
Yep absolutely seconding this one. Everything is very much a play-as-you-want playground, with many ways to level and a low stress, community based world. Pretty much everything that causes friction against other players in other MMOs (kill stealing, limited resource mining, open world pvp etc) just isn’t in the game or in its own place you don’t have to go.
I will say that it has a lot of complexity and systems on systems that have built up over time that can be opaque and overwhelming. But again, you have the choice not to engage, and can do perfectly well running your character around maps exploring and picking cabbages and pumpkins and doing whatever you think looks interesting. Just remember to change out your armor and weapons every few levels on your way to 80.
It’s one of the few MMOs I bought at launch and made it from level one to the cap without ever actually teaming up with anyone. And the story was good too!
+1 for guild wars 2!
Warframe.
I don’t reaaly play MMOs, but I had a lot of fun with Star Wars: The Old Republic. I put over 300 hours in to do all the class stories.
Warframe is an unconventional mmo, and there’s actually a bit of rpg in there too, moreso than I would’ve expected coming in. It’s great fun though.
I will say the mandatory trading for weapon and frame slots is kinda annoying, but gets less annoying as you progress and get more access to better grinds.
If you enjoy the old school vibe, City of Heroes has been revived through a community effort, and is free with all of the original content plus some new stuff. This has been given official blessing so it’s not going to disappear suddenly.
I found Final Fantasy XIV easy to get into. The full game requires a monthly payment but there is a “free trial”, which contains the entire base game and the first expansion for free and can last you at least a few hundred hours.
I tried old school runescape a while ago again but did not enjoy it. It’s a very grindy game, and unless you like clicking on a tree for 30 minutes then you aren’t going to like it either.
Of note, the second expansion, Stormblood, is now included in the free trial as well.
I played through it when they released this version, and honestly its an insane amount of free content. I completed the base game but never did complete the 100 quest wall that was in the first expansion. I had a lot of fun, and I agree this is the perfect MMO to pick up. I probably had about 3 months of time spent in it and was not disappointed.
Pirated old WoW on pirate servers is quite nice imo. Vanilla, The Burning Crusade and The Wrath of the Lich King. Never give Microsoft-ActivisionBlizzard a single cent btw. OSRS seems nice, but I never played it myself. It’s not free at all though.
Old School RuneScape (OSRS) membership prices in USD as of June 2025 are: 1‑month plan: $13.99/month 6‑month plan: $11.99/month (total $71.94) 12‑month Premier plan: $8.29/month (total $99.48)-
There’s a new one coming out, project epoch, that has me interested. Also there was ascension servers that had build your own class. These are free old wow alternatives.
Last time I’ve played on Ascension they also had another project in development, called World of Runescape (basically total conversion fully-custom WoW). Don’t know its current status but it looked amazing in videos.
You can play OSRS for free. Its just got some features locked behind membership. But you can also get membership through items in the game. As an enjoyer of vanilla wow, I’d recommend giving it a shot.
Good to know, because it doesn’t make it clear on the site, I always assumed it’s the same membership model as WoW.
Ya I will say they do tend to try and push you towards the membership in a few different ways but its not too bad overall.
OSRS has a free version that lets you access most of the game, but the paid premium version nets you more content
I played pirate servers for a little bit after a LONG break of not playing WoW. It was a little buggy, but it was enough to scratch the itch, explore some new things, and realize I didn’t want to get back into WoW.
Yep, but also some pservers offer new content (like new locations, classes, skills), and some offer different gameplay altogether, like classless servers where you roll skills for any classes as you level and try to build something that makes sense.
I’ve enjoyed OSRS on and off since about 2004, but if you’re wanting to avoid walking simulators, it is the worst offender. A big part of the game is calculating the best possible path to follow. You are making trips to the bank in between every activity and multiple times per quest. Many skills exist just to ease to burden of traveling around the world.
My personal favorite MMO is vanilla WoW. I’m obviously biased but it is just what I had the most fun with back when it came out and I think it still holds up incredibly well today. I play on a private server called TurtleWoW and it is 100% free. They have continuously added their own expansions over time and are currently working on a client that runs the game in Unreal Engine if you desire more modern graphics.
If it seems to old school, Guild Wars 2 is a really good choice as well. I played through the base game and first expansion of FF14 and ultimately wasn’t impressed. It’s great if you like to role play with other players, but everyone is so focused on playing the meta that it took all of the fun out of the game for me. People would kick me out of groups for trying to play with my own personalized set up.
Does tWoW have a client that would run on an old Linux laptop with no graphics card?
Do I need to worry about legal issues if I’m playing on a private server?
They recently released an installer for Linux. It’s an ISO which I did not have much luck running on Linux Mint. Before that was released, they released TurtleWoW as a portable zip file. They still update the game with that release. I use Proton on Steam to run it on Mint with no issues.
No legal issues for players to worry about. My understanding is that since it is a version of WoW that doesn’t exist anywhere else at this point, it’s ok to run severs for it as long as money isn’t being charged for it. TurtleWoW devs do accept “donations” which will reward players with in game cosmetics, but as far as I know, no pay to win items. Unless you count a pet that acts as a portable bank. Using it let’s you interact with your bank that can otherwise only be accessed from various cities in game. I don’t have that pet myself, but I have been able to use other players’ when I come across them in the world.
