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F2P MMOs: Free To Play (And Sometimes Pay To Win)
Owenashi
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Who loves free games? We all do! And free MMOs are even better...most of the time. For people like me who are too broke to afford a subscription for games like WoW and too shy and/or socially awkward to go out in public, free to play (or F2P) MMOs are a godsend. So I thought I'd make a thread where we could talk about them all. The good, the bad and the leet-speak ugly.
Ones I'm Playing & Liked:
City Of Heroes: Slightly older then WoW by several months and still pretty fun. A lot of said fun comes from the character creator which gives you plenty of options to tweak your hero and villain. It went F2P last year but kept it's subscription as a way for players to unlock features F2P-ers don't get to touch. If you want to see if it's worth paying 15 bucks a month (which is particularly needed if you plan to spend time in the endgame stuff), go find an unopened copy of the Going Rogue expansion as it brings a free month's worth of subscription time. This also gives you an unlock-token for the Vet-Reward tree, 400 points to spend in their cash shop and permanently unlocks anything connected to the Going Rogue expansion if you decide to stick to the free play. There's also a dedicated Penny Arcade chat channel if you need any help.
Star Trek Online: Released in 2010 and going F2P this year, this is a fun sci-fi title that lets you fly around in your own starship and have fights with lizard-people. Leveling up can be somewhat quick though, especially when you gain access to the Duty Officer system. There's also not a lot of endgame content outside of playing the six STF 'dungeons'. Cryptic's working on Season 6 right now though which will include Fleet Starbases (AKA guild bases) and new story content involving the Tholians. Like CoH, the game kept it's subscription plan to lock down some stuff from F2P-ers though they also offer a lifetime subscription with even more perks if you don't mind spending 200-300 bucks. There's also a PA chat channel as well as Fleets for both factions in the game.
Champions Online: Released 2009, CO can be easily called CoH's younger and hotter sister. Once intended to be a Marvel Comics MMO that could be played on X-Box Live, the game has a character-creator just as good as CoH and offers features like creating your own gallery of arch-villains, open-area missions where anyone can join and help out for prizes and 'quickie-dungeons' known as Alerts. The game's biggest feature was being able to load up your character with any power you chose. That however was locked to the subscription-paying players under the title of a Freeform character while they made classes for the F2P-ers. That's however changed recently as now you can buy a Freeform slot for 40-50 bucks. CO shares the same chat channel as STO.
Eden Eternal: The only non-Cryptic game on the list (so far), EE is a completely F2P MMO from China that's certainly one of the best. The game sports five races, three being untypical races for MMORPGs in the form of the Zumi (mice), Anuran (frogs) and Ursun (bears). The game's notable for having an Final Fantasy V-esque class system in that players can unlock and switch between classes from five different types. The game also allows guilds that grow big enough to have their own towns, needed places for both those that belong and those that don't as guild towns are the only spots in the game to do mid to high-level gathering and crafting. There's also plenty of quests and ways to earn experiance for both you and your classes to avoid flat out grinding. If you don't mind cutesy anime graphics, this is pretty good to try.
Ones I'm Thinking About Playing:
Forsaken World: A overseas-based game made around 2010 and run here by the same people hosting CO and STO. I've actually downloaded and tried the game. It's fantasy-based but with some tech like guns and such and it features like EE a pair of untypical playable races in the form of Kindred (AKA vampires) and the rocky Stonemen. There's apparently plenty of quests to do, unusual jobs included with the crafting and gathering system like Socialite and Adventurer, and party instances which seem to include puzzles and the like for teams to work with to advance. The only reason why I haven't played much of it yet is because a removed feature for the international version of the game was replaced by a permanent buff on the servers that grants three times the quest experience. I actually got to Lv20 in an hour or so. Great if you want to power-level to the good stuff straight away but not so hot if you don't know how the game works yet or like to take your leveling a little slower. It doesn't help that the game's website seems more concerned with advertising for cash shop items in their news section then actual news about what's going on and what will happen in the game.
Allods Online: A MMORPG from Russia, the game's set in a world where islands float around an ocean of energy and the top two factions, the League and the Empire, duking it out on both the islands and the airships that travel between them for control. It's biggest feature is players being able to create their own airship and man it alone or with others to fly around and shoot up other player-run ships. Also the eight classes go by different names and possibly sport tweaked abilities depending on the race you choose. The biggest reason why I haven't tried it yet is due to the ill reputation it got a while back for making use of the cash shop pretty much required though I also heard that was eventually fixed. I've also heard that the game locks you into playing only from the three races of the faction you initially choose, not letting you try out any from the other side unless you delete characters though I can't confirm that or not.
Runes Of Magic: One of the more notable 'WoW-clones' out there, the game's set in a world who's people are rediscovering it after a big war against magical golems they created went Terminator on them. Big features include housing for both players and guilds and the Double Class System which allow players to add a secondary class to their original at around Lv10 and if it's TV-Tropes page is correct, a third at Lv20, the benefits depending on what you choose for your first class and what you then pick for your second (and maybe third). There's only three races within the game though with the third only recently added and the game's client is 6 to 8 GB according to Gamershell.com which is a mite too big for me to DL at my wimpy DSL speed.
Rusty Hearts: Not a regular MMORPG, the game's more 'Diablo 1 meets Devil May Cry'. The game's set around a town which features among other dungeons a monster-filled castle. Rather then create your own character, players choose from one of four free pre-made ones (or unlock more from the cash-shop) and run into the dungeons solo or up to four-person parties for quests, loot and top clearance scores. I haven't tried it yet since I do like creating my own character and it's actiony enough that you'd be better off playing it with a game controller but it apparently doesn't accept all brands.
Places To Find More MMORPGs To Play:
The Free MMO Überlist - A thread over in G&T made and updated by Aldo which has a BIG list of F2P-MMOs covering it's first few posts.
MMO Grinder - A review web-show created by Jon 'ChaosD1' Burkhardt that focuses on F2P MMOs and only recently covering certain subscription MMOs through a small spinoff called Sidequest. While some of his reviews can be considered outdated due to updates to the games, they still hold plenty of weight and are worth watching if just to see if it's worth investing time downloading one of the games he's so far covered. While his videos are hosted on Blip, he's been putting up backups of his reviews on Youtube. If you want to see some examples of his work, look in the box below.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOrmRbE07cs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wCDuoPsk44
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmiG9XYTItw
Owenashi on
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pip...
Lots of f2p shooters and things
Moon Breakers is a really fun arena based space combat game
And Airmech is a combination dual joystick shooter/rts where you play as a mech that can turn into a jet
That one's in closed beta but you can get a key from Alienware Arena here or by buying the indie Royale bundle, which you should do anyway.
Yes
And the guys reponsible for it, they're makin a f2p transformers browser based mmo
And they got bought by another company and are releasing it ahead of their original schedule
Hmm, based on MMO Grinder, Maple Story's not too hot of a game. Do they still have 10-minute travel time between major areas of the game?
Hey, I'm willing to learn about other good F2Ps if you want to list any. I'll even put up their links in the OP if you feel they deserve more people from here playing them.
Let's Play Final Fantasy 'II' (Ch10 - 5/17/10)
Guy paid me for the first piece then didn't pay me for the next two.
Fuck that guy.
my SMNC obsession is well known, and @Rorus Raz recently got me a beta invite to Smite, which is quite fun
What does SMNC stand for or is that the actual name of the game?
Let's Play Final Fantasy 'II' (Ch10 - 5/17/10)
Super Monday Night Combat. It's pretty awesome.
ineedmayo.com Eidolon Journal Updated
ross~kun...
As for f2p shooters, America's Army 3 is pretty decent, despite the bugs and lack of updates (I believe they fired the entire development team the day the game was released). It's kind of hardcore but that's part of why I enjoy it I think, plus playing it with a friend helps a lot.
I also just recently started playing Blacklight: Retribution which is fun. The gunplay is solid and there is a lot of customization available for weaponry and whatnot. I'd suggest giving it a look if you're into quasi-futuristic shooters.
I was thinking of giving it a try even though I'm not a dedicated LOTR fan. Besides the possible big DL stopping me though, I also heard you still have to pay for the expansions or else you're basically blocked from continuing in the game after a certain point.
Let's Play Final Fantasy 'II' (Ch10 - 5/17/10)
yeah
there's just not much information right now I don't think
other than the whole programming aspect which sounds interesting but is something I am hoping that you can just take or leave
I haven't checked in a couple of weeks though
got updated recently with a new class and a bunch of stuff? I should patch mine
Well you can actually earn turbine points (or whatever their form of currency is called) in-game and use those to buy the expansions, but it would take a long fucking time to do so. I've heard the fastest way is to do every quest and deed that gives those points on a character, then start a new character and do the same until your player slots on that server are full, then start all over on another server (since stuff you unlock is account-wide). I think you can do it with just one character though if you don't spend the points you get, I'm not sure. I threw $10 their way since I've played about 30 hours so far and it's been fun enough and I haven't gotten bored with it yet.
I will say that the Shire has the best beginning quests and is probably one of the nicest places I've seen in an MMO.
get inside my butt of holding
got bored and also a lot of areas were locked
And league too, but everyone knows about that.
I played it to 20 for a nexon event and never got my reward
Yeah, I played Vindictus for a little while and it was kind of fun, though pretty simple. I liked Dragon Nest a lot more, actually, although playing it with friends may have been why.
I actually dropped a little money on that, but then I got to like level 47 and just sorta very suddenly got out of the habit of playing
I was a pretty big fan of duty officer assignments and some of the player created content was actually pretty enjoyable
I told myself I'd try my hand at making a mission but this is probably not a thing that is going to happen
some of the plays for money were hilariously awful though, like feeding you a message every single time anybody anywhere in the game won a particular ship from the lottery or whatever that was
I have pictures. Give me a minute and i will get a picture of a dancing bear on an airship.
Well the newest ship to be offered in a pack-type deal is a freighter that counts as a small craft and has a lot of cool stuff for those that like the Duty Officer System. The pack itself isn't a loot-drop but rather a Duty Officer Pack you buy from the cash-shop so even though you don't get the ship you still get the DOs you wanted. Plus the other prizes aren't as lame as the ones you mostly got from the Lockboxes.
As for the Foundry, they're adding quite a few things to it as well as trying to attach rewards for completing player-made missions as if they were dev-made.
Let's Play Final Fantasy 'II' (Ch10 - 5/17/10)
I should reinstall that.
I wonder if the Cardassian Lock Box market has started up. Filled my stash up with the things since it was too much work to trash them as they showed up, and selling them quickly became an exercise in futility.
Made an asston of money off of someone who was trying to corner the market early. Boy was he disappointed.
is it
a +1?
Also, how's the character builder in DDO?
it's kinda standard MMO stuff, slightly more involved the WoW? or probably about the same
Well CoH has more content to it due to it being older as well as a more defined endgame via the Incarnate System and it's related raid-type instances. However if you don't subscribe, you don't get access to it so you don't have a lot to do or ways to buff up your character once you hit Lv50.
CO on the other hand didn't have much of an endgame itself outside of the UNITY missions and max-level Lairs (AKA dungeons) until the Alert System was implemented and even then out of the four types of Alerts only one is restricted to high-level players. But while CO sells costume-pieces in the cash shop like CoH, the game also allows you to get more via costume-unlock items dropped by villains and scoring certain achievements. Plus they recently made buying a Freeform slot available to F2P-ers. And if you grind for a new currency called Questionite Ore, you can exchange it for cash-shop points and buy stuff without having to spend an actual dime.
Let's Play Final Fantasy 'II' (Ch10 - 5/17/10)