Free to play MMORPGs

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I was bored tonight after playing a few hours of Call of Duty 4 today.  The over use of air strikes, helicopters, and frag grenades has been rather frustrating.  EQ2 is still of interest to me but I just didn’t feel like logging in tonight and dedicating any serious time towards playing.  I needed something new and something I had not tried before.  I decided to look around the free to play MMO section on Fileplanet.

After looking around I decided to try Fly for Fun (FLYFF).  The website was easy to use and the game looked actually pretty good from screenshots and gameplay movies.  I went through the registration process and downloaded all 700mbs of the game which took about 20 minutes total (including the registration).  When I launched into the game though I was disappointed to see the graphics in-game looked nothing like they did in the screenshots.  The graphics weren’t vibrant and sharp like they were in the picture gallery.  The colors were dull and the game jagged.  I upped all the settings and it had little to no impact.  I continued to try and play for 15 minutes before giving up trying to deal with the horrid control scheme, lack of overall interface polish, and the nausea induced by seeing the XxNamexX’s everywhere.  I uninstalled Fly for Free because it was just no fun.

Maybe I picked a bad one.  I don’t know.  I built up the idea that a free MMO would have the same polish and quality that a ‘normal’ subscription based mmo would.  Games like Maplestory bring in millions every year in microtransactions alone.  It would have been cool to play an anime looking MMO with a little depth to it.  I wasn’t expecting Lineage 2 or FF11 quality but at least something a little … good.

Has anyone tried DOMO?  It’s supposedly in North American Beta now.  I can’t remember where I saw it mentioned; probably on a blog.  I’m looking for a fun free to play mmo that I can just get immersed in but not feel attached to in any way.  Does such a thing exist?  I’m open to suggestions.

  • I haven’t seen anything on DOMO. Space Cowboy was a decent areal combat anime’ MMO, but it’s now “food for the worms”.

    Have you looked at 9 Dragons? I was in the beta for it; the graphics weren’t too bad, the gameplay was decent, but it did suffer from the same problem I’ve found in most of the free MMORPGs…

    …grindy as HELL.

    We should start a “Bloggers’ Free MMO Society”, where we all gang up on a freebie and then bash the h…I mean, constructively critique it.

    Yeah. That’s what I meant.

  • I’m going to give DOMO a try and if it turns out like FLYFF then I’ll probably give up on the free MMOs and go back to playing PotBS Beta and EQ2.

  • I’ve never really gotten any immersion from a freebie. Of course, having said that, I’m wandering aimlessly through the desert of “between games” at the moment. I reupped CoH, and I’ve logged in once so far.

    Sigh.

    I’ve got to find something to get that “buzz” back.

  • I play DOMO and have mentioned it a couple of times on my blog. You can see my impressions of it and some screenshots there.

  • My Dad took a break from EQ2 for a couple months to play “Knight Online”. It was standard fantasy MMO faire, but at least had 3D graphics. No idea if it’s still around or not, though.

  • […] Hobbies 19 12 2007 In my hiatus from EQ2, I’ve been searching for alternate means of entertainment. A post a couple days ago on Keen and Graev’s speaking about free to play MMOs got me thinking about a couple games my Dad played for a while. […]

  • The best would possibly be Guild Wars this is a MMORPG and is surpisingly great! it has been proven to be better than WoW!! The graphics is very excellent and doesnt cause to much frustrations. The game play is very different and unique than most MMORPG’s. This game has to be tried!! It has to be bought from a game shop but there is no charge of fee’s. Good Luk!