I don't play many MMORPGs any more unfortunately due to a combination of not having much time and a backlog of games in the triple digits. However, back in my teens I played a hell of a lot of World of Warcraft starting with vanilla and quitting at the tail end of Burning Crusade. However, before I gained some financial independence and I was able to pay the monthly fee for the game, I used to seek out free MMO games so I thought I'd share with you some of my old, F2P MMO experiences from back in the day.
1) Sword of the New World
Sword of the New World was an MMO me and my friends played over one summer holiday from school. It was released in 2006 in Korea and had English versions going live in 2007 and it had an interesting gimmick of multiple character control. Most of the time when you think about MMOs you imagine controlling one player and then if you want to group up you have to find other players, right? Well in this game you controlled up to 3 and from there you could party up with people for quests and stuff so even our small group of 4 players looked like a huge group of people in game. That said though, aside from the multiple player control and the interesting world set in a sort of fantasy take on the Americas during the age of exploration, I can't really recall much else.
2) Rappelz
A friend of mine once introduced me to Lineage 2 back before it became free to play except instead of actually paying for it he showed me a private server that allowed us to play for free, it was a good time. However, as you would expect, the private server got shut down and it was really that first experience with Lineage that gave me my first MMO itch. Rappelz attracted me because, at least graphically, it reminded me of Lineage so I thought this might help scratch my grind itch. It did for a while, the game play was nothing special but it played fairly well and it's gimmick was something involving pets that you had to collect and level in order to help you in combat and stuff.
Interestingly it seems like this game is still available to play so you can check it out if you have a weekend to waste on an MMO from 2006.
3) Trickster Online
A very cutsey online game that I remember very little of which looked sort of similar to that other isometric MMO that almost everyone played but the name I can't remember right now. Anyway, the thing I remember most about this game is digging. You could dig to get items and a lot of the quests I vaguely remember involved digging up stuff. While it wasn't the best game I've ever played I was looking for something to go hard on the grind with and this said that it had a level cap of 300 which just blew my goddamn mind. I didn't play it for very long and I probably got no higher than about 25 but it was the thought that counted.
I thought that Trickster went down for good years ago but a quick google search for the image revealed that the site is still up, the client is (probably) still available and the level cap is now 400. I would kind of like to try it again but a grind that hard would mean I'd have to sever all ties with anything else I think so I'll stick to working on my endless backlog.
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It would be nice to one day find time or not have a backlog so huge that I could really sink my teeth into another MMO. That said, I'd probably be staying away from the Korean F2Ps and trying something like Final Fantasy 14. Maybe one day.
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