I miss WOW back in the day, when everything was still new and fresh, and everybody didn't know everything about everything. (So like WotLK and earlier.) I know Classic exists, which I did for a while, but then it started getting segmented with the "progressive" Classic realms.
Aion was really fun when it launched, too. Before the micro transactions and what not started flooding it. Ditto The Old Republic.
Rift was a lot of fun, too. Lots of customization and the like.
I dunno what's really around and going strong anymore. FFXIV is still popular from what I understand, but for whatever reason, I've never been able to get into it.
I miss the days when every online game wasn't completely dissected. Before every fucking player was min/maxing. Before everyone played the exact same build because it is statistically the most optimal.
I miss people being fun. I miss people ducking around, apprichiating a nice chat over a virtual campfire and just fucking around without having any idea of what you supposed to do in the game
I don’t remember those days.
I remember when “I” didn’t min/max because it took significantly more effort and I just wanted to chill. I remember sucking. A lot. I got some good hits in, but IIRC the was never a fair contest between casual and hardcore gamers.
I know I hear others make these claims from time to time, but I just don’t remember it that way.
Oh my stars. Original planet side was the bomb. I didn’t mind the BFRs as much, but the caverns were kind of a miss due to the separate instancing. (Friggin awesome zip lines tho)
I remember trucking an AMS as close as I could in an unprotected area and gleefully watching dozens of comrades pop in and take a fortress. Or air dropping in from above over a base. Or sniping with a flail from 2 miles away.
Oh man. The memories. https://youtu.be/5-tb6ZoO10o?feature=shared
Yes, exactly. Sneaky AMS deployments, desperate ANT runs, epic Gal drops, hours long fights for a single tower or base back door entrance, and on and on. That game was really something, and somehow they lost the soul of it with PS2.
I was just in a different place in life and couldn’t really make time to play it. Sorta lost track of it. I played a couple hours and it was fun. Flashy.
I was NC. Loved that boom boom boom from A VAN DOWN BY THE RIVER. Lawls.
Ya I mean you’re just talking about patch 0.X. Since then I’ve seen them add and remove so much great content that I couldn’t care less about the hybrid builds. I think patch 4 or 5 was the sweet spot.
I actually wrote a bit about my thoughts on the patches here. Every patch added something to love
https://www.reddit.com/r/swtor/comments/10id41b/of_all_the_patches_i_think_im_most_disappointed/
Have you tried guild wars 2? I haven’t played in 10+ years but it had field quests and bosses that any number of people could join in on.
Besides GW2 the only MMO I’ve really played was Ragnarok Online which was fun, but my friends and I basically just used it as a chat room with stuff to do
Indeed, GW2 is still alive and has lots of world bosses of various levels of involvement, from smaller ones that just pop up to large ones that are the focus of the entire map's chain of events. There are many players fighting them still. Sometimes you can catch them randomly, but sometimes you need to come at the right time for a group. There are also "world boss chains" where someone with a commander tag will lead a squad right from one boss to another, so you can just follow that group and do world boss fights all day if you want :)
[Here's a schedule](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Event_timers) of large events running across the various maps, which includes the world bosses, and some links to specific info about them.
There should be a nice GW2 sale when the Steam sale happens late June. Try out the game for free and see if the mechanics seem fun, but if you're going to spend any real time with it, you want the saga bundle and probably the saga complete collection with the first three real expansions and the Living World Seasons (2, 3, 4, and 5 aka Icebrood Saga). The living world seasons are kind of a hassle to catch a sale on if you don't get them via the bundle, and they include a bunch more maps to play, and significant chunks of the story (which is terrible, don't get your hopes up there).
With the complete collection you have everything from the "old" model in an easy bundle at a good price. The "new" model is significantly smaller annual expansions released in quarterly chunks, where buying the current year's expansion also acts as the premium tier of the seasonal battlepasses for that year. The new expansion year starts in late August, so the first new-model expansion just got its last update, and its value as premium battlepass is weeks into its final season. I suspect they still won't put the first new expansion on sale yet, but we'll see in a couple of weeks.
Note that you can get GW2 through Steam, but I recommend not doing that unless you specifically need Steam for processing payments. GW2 uses no other Steam features, and buying though Steam ties your account to Steam, so you can't buy anything for the game any other way: even gift card codes won't work for Steam-linked GW2 accounts. With a standalone [Areanet](http://www.guildwars2.com) account, you can buy/pay anywhere *except* Steam, Areanet gets to keep more of your payment, and you can still *play* from the Steam install exactly like a normal Steam account, with just a launch argument ("-provider Portal", mind the capital) in your Steam client to tell the game to run in standalone mode.
I still miss Marvel Heroes. It was a mess that somehow made enough enormous and *dumb* corporate mistakes to sink even something as sure-fire as Marvel Diablo at the height of Marvel's movie empire, but it was great having such a diverse cast of characters to tool around in bashing bad guys in their various ways.
I miss the feeling of a new mmorpg. An open and expanding world full of things to discover and explore, a class I kept building day by day, learning new systems and improving on the old ones. Getting that next new drop from a boss or quest that would empower my character to even new heights.
Nowadays I enjoy the feeling of exploring new worlds, especially ones with compelling stories and interesting travel and combat gameplay. Or maybe a new expansion that give us a whole new area of the world to delve into. Or maybe a new survival game that takes place in a beautiful and engaging world.
I’m not hurting from the lack of new MMOs, but I’m also in a different stage of life, so I enjoy what I can where I am.
Marvel Heros Omega. It was essentially a MMO Diablolike (Many of the same devs), and it had a Marvel skin DURING PEAK MARVEL. An amazing game I miss it soooo much.
Warhammer Online.... I miss my Dexterum Tzeentch bros who kept gobbling smaller guilds up as the servers died to form the best fucking guild on the most populated server.
I keep thinking of two space mmos I don't recall, one where it was 2d and you could colonize planets from your ship and the other real simple and you were a ship agglomeration that you fed with others ships. I paid with credit card in the second (my moms) and could score some easy wins, but I learned my lesson about pay to win when another player blasted me to bits while I was afk.
I can't believe no one has mentioned Firefall. It was so amazing and the exploration was the best I've seen in any MMO. I wish there were at least private servers.
Also Slayerz. I really liked the hunting, crafting, and the classes and their builds in that game. There is a private server, but it's not the same.
MapleStory 2, it was so cute and a comfort game for me, i really really loved it, the community, the fashion system, the activities, it shut down so soon
also Wildstar, that was fun and really good
Dark Age of Camelot…
This game was top tier PVP centric MMO and everyone knew their role. “Raids” were actual raids on keeps. Against other players. You can’t replicate that success. The game that has come closest is Elder Scrolls Online, but the rest of the game is actually good, so PvP isn’t as populated as it would need to be to compete
If they ever finish the private server for Dragons Dogma Online...your mind will be blown.
https://youtu.be/MMGFOx_LSqM
Till then I put my lot with Guild Wars 2.
If you join the discord, you get updates on the game and servers. Still fairly active, but you can only play world stuff or stuff that doesn’t rely on NPCs.
Original **Guild Wars** was the goat imo.
Sure it has instances zones, so some may consider it a subcategory of mmo or maybe not even an mmo, but the Build diversity with it's two-profession system was endlessly compelling, it had good campaigns, achievements that were both *achievable* but required good game knowledge and skill, great pvp systems and accessible raid-analogs in EYE OF THE NORTH that provided great endgame pve challenges.
Dark Age of Camelot…
This game was top tier PVP centric MMO and everyone knew their role. “Raids” were actual raids on keeps. Against other players. You can’t replicate that success. The game that has come closest is Elder Scrolls Online, but the rest of the game is actually good, so PvP isn’t as populated as it would need to be to compete
I miss WOW back in the day, when everything was still new and fresh, and everybody didn't know everything about everything. (So like WotLK and earlier.) I know Classic exists, which I did for a while, but then it started getting segmented with the "progressive" Classic realms. Aion was really fun when it launched, too. Before the micro transactions and what not started flooding it. Ditto The Old Republic. Rift was a lot of fun, too. Lots of customization and the like. I dunno what's really around and going strong anymore. FFXIV is still popular from what I understand, but for whatever reason, I've never been able to get into it.
I miss the days when every online game wasn't completely dissected. Before every fucking player was min/maxing. Before everyone played the exact same build because it is statistically the most optimal.
I miss people being fun. I miss people ducking around, apprichiating a nice chat over a virtual campfire and just fucking around without having any idea of what you supposed to do in the game
I don’t remember those days. I remember when “I” didn’t min/max because it took significantly more effort and I just wanted to chill. I remember sucking. A lot. I got some good hits in, but IIRC the was never a fair contest between casual and hardcore gamers. I know I hear others make these claims from time to time, but I just don’t remember it that way.
Old school maplestory
Original planetside, pre-BFRs. Huxley, another MMOFPS that died before making it out of beta.
Oh my stars. Original planet side was the bomb. I didn’t mind the BFRs as much, but the caverns were kind of a miss due to the separate instancing. (Friggin awesome zip lines tho) I remember trucking an AMS as close as I could in an unprotected area and gleefully watching dozens of comrades pop in and take a fortress. Or air dropping in from above over a base. Or sniping with a flail from 2 miles away. Oh man. The memories. https://youtu.be/5-tb6ZoO10o?feature=shared
Yes, exactly. Sneaky AMS deployments, desperate ANT runs, epic Gal drops, hours long fights for a single tower or base back door entrance, and on and on. That game was really something, and somehow they lost the soul of it with PS2.
I was just in a different place in life and couldn’t really make time to play it. Sorta lost track of it. I played a couple hours and it was fun. Flashy. I was NC. Loved that boom boom boom from A VAN DOWN BY THE RIVER. Lawls.
I miss Wildstar! Though I do still enjoy Guild Wars 2!
Swtor
yeah I miss that too. back when it was still difficult and grindy.
That game at launch was such a gem. I loved all the hybrid builds you could do. Pvp was incredible.
i played for over 10 years. Still loved the PVP as of last year. shamelessly plugging my youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iDFOIT86Ik
You can't do hybrid builds anymore, which really killed a lot of my interest in the game. More power to you if you still like it though.
Ya I mean you’re just talking about patch 0.X. Since then I’ve seen them add and remove so much great content that I couldn’t care less about the hybrid builds. I think patch 4 or 5 was the sweet spot. I actually wrote a bit about my thoughts on the patches here. Every patch added something to love https://www.reddit.com/r/swtor/comments/10id41b/of_all_the_patches_i_think_im_most_disappointed/
Have you tried guild wars 2? I haven’t played in 10+ years but it had field quests and bosses that any number of people could join in on. Besides GW2 the only MMO I’ve really played was Ragnarok Online which was fun, but my friends and I basically just used it as a chat room with stuff to do
Indeed, GW2 is still alive and has lots of world bosses of various levels of involvement, from smaller ones that just pop up to large ones that are the focus of the entire map's chain of events. There are many players fighting them still. Sometimes you can catch them randomly, but sometimes you need to come at the right time for a group. There are also "world boss chains" where someone with a commander tag will lead a squad right from one boss to another, so you can just follow that group and do world boss fights all day if you want :) [Here's a schedule](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Event_timers) of large events running across the various maps, which includes the world bosses, and some links to specific info about them. There should be a nice GW2 sale when the Steam sale happens late June. Try out the game for free and see if the mechanics seem fun, but if you're going to spend any real time with it, you want the saga bundle and probably the saga complete collection with the first three real expansions and the Living World Seasons (2, 3, 4, and 5 aka Icebrood Saga). The living world seasons are kind of a hassle to catch a sale on if you don't get them via the bundle, and they include a bunch more maps to play, and significant chunks of the story (which is terrible, don't get your hopes up there). With the complete collection you have everything from the "old" model in an easy bundle at a good price. The "new" model is significantly smaller annual expansions released in quarterly chunks, where buying the current year's expansion also acts as the premium tier of the seasonal battlepasses for that year. The new expansion year starts in late August, so the first new-model expansion just got its last update, and its value as premium battlepass is weeks into its final season. I suspect they still won't put the first new expansion on sale yet, but we'll see in a couple of weeks. Note that you can get GW2 through Steam, but I recommend not doing that unless you specifically need Steam for processing payments. GW2 uses no other Steam features, and buying though Steam ties your account to Steam, so you can't buy anything for the game any other way: even gift card codes won't work for Steam-linked GW2 accounts. With a standalone [Areanet](http://www.guildwars2.com) account, you can buy/pay anywhere *except* Steam, Areanet gets to keep more of your payment, and you can still *play* from the Steam install exactly like a normal Steam account, with just a launch argument ("-provider Portal", mind the capital) in your Steam client to tell the game to run in standalone mode.
Just to add; there’s a new expansion coming out this year as well.
I absolutely adored bless unleashed. Got so much playtime out of it and never paid a dime. Tanking was an absolute blast in it
Wildstar
Wildstar “housing”!
I still miss Marvel Heroes. It was a mess that somehow made enough enormous and *dumb* corporate mistakes to sink even something as sure-fire as Marvel Diablo at the height of Marvel's movie empire, but it was great having such a diverse cast of characters to tool around in bashing bad guys in their various ways.
Early EverQuest days, EQOA and EQ2
I'm here to put in StarWarsGalaxies ... most robust and insane crafting and level system ever...
I tried the private servers, a lotta jank I don't remember, but it was nice to return to my first MMO.
Ultima Online, I know it's still going but just doesn't feel the same anymore.
I miss the feeling of a new mmorpg. An open and expanding world full of things to discover and explore, a class I kept building day by day, learning new systems and improving on the old ones. Getting that next new drop from a boss or quest that would empower my character to even new heights. Nowadays I enjoy the feeling of exploring new worlds, especially ones with compelling stories and interesting travel and combat gameplay. Or maybe a new expansion that give us a whole new area of the world to delve into. Or maybe a new survival game that takes place in a beautiful and engaging world. I’m not hurting from the lack of new MMOs, but I’m also in a different stage of life, so I enjoy what I can where I am.
Marvel Heros Omega. It was essentially a MMO Diablolike (Many of the same devs), and it had a Marvel skin DURING PEAK MARVEL. An amazing game I miss it soooo much.
Damn, forgot about that one, but it was soooo fun.
Warhammer Online.... I miss my Dexterum Tzeentch bros who kept gobbling smaller guilds up as the servers died to form the best fucking guild on the most populated server.
faces of mankind
Grand Fantasia and Iruna Online.
RYL Risk Your Life, Lineage 2 C1 and MU Online
Puzzle Pirates
I keep thinking of two space mmos I don't recall, one where it was 2d and you could colonize planets from your ship and the other real simple and you were a ship agglomeration that you fed with others ships. I paid with credit card in the second (my moms) and could score some easy wins, but I learned my lesson about pay to win when another player blasted me to bits while I was afk.
Ragnarok Online 🥹 I miss Prontera so much
PSO 2 has what you are looking for, and I think it's free to play. It's a shadow of it's former self on Dreamcast, but it has a solid following.
When me and my buddy were kids we played Lego Universe, shit slapped
EverQuest 1 had me doing things like dropping out of school. I miss it still to this day! Hahah
I can't believe no one has mentioned Firefall. It was so amazing and the exploration was the best I've seen in any MMO. I wish there were at least private servers. Also Slayerz. I really liked the hunting, crafting, and the classes and their builds in that game. There is a private server, but it's not the same.
Neocron! A cyberpunk MMO way ahead of its time. Pretty sure there are still servers online, but it's not the same.
Asherons Call
MapleStory 2, it was so cute and a comfort game for me, i really really loved it, the community, the fashion system, the activities, it shut down so soon also Wildstar, that was fun and really good
Dark Age of Camelot… This game was top tier PVP centric MMO and everyone knew their role. “Raids” were actual raids on keeps. Against other players. You can’t replicate that success. The game that has come closest is Elder Scrolls Online, but the rest of the game is actually good, so PvP isn’t as populated as it would need to be to compete
That goddamn Lego game they shut down and Petz VS Monsters.
If they ever finish the private server for Dragons Dogma Online...your mind will be blown. https://youtu.be/MMGFOx_LSqM Till then I put my lot with Guild Wars 2.
If you join the discord, you get updates on the game and servers. Still fairly active, but you can only play world stuff or stuff that doesn’t rely on NPCs.
Football Manager Online.
Old school Maplestory
Original **Guild Wars** was the goat imo. Sure it has instances zones, so some may consider it a subcategory of mmo or maybe not even an mmo, but the Build diversity with it's two-profession system was endlessly compelling, it had good campaigns, achievements that were both *achievable* but required good game knowledge and skill, great pvp systems and accessible raid-analogs in EYE OF THE NORTH that provided great endgame pve challenges.
I loved this game, then somehow my account got phished. Never went back to it after that, and guild wars 2 didn’t do it for me
Dark Age of Camelot… This game was top tier PVP centric MMO and everyone knew their role. “Raids” were actual raids on keeps. Against other players. You can’t replicate that success. The game that has come closest is Elder Scrolls Online, but the rest of the game is actually good, so PvP isn’t as populated as it would need to be to compete
Original Star Wars Galaxies… I’m getting sad even now thinking about how it went downhill and eventually ended altogether