Any worthwhile FREE MMOs?

[tmp]

I liked Lineage2 except I couldn't justify running bent over at the waist.

All the time.

That was just game saving you trouble of manually bending over before each random pvp encounter.

[Signe]

I like Lineage II, too.  I hear they added solo content but I'm not sure how that would work in this sort of game.  I also wonder about that Hellbound Expansion because of this feature:  • Enhanced pet system, featuring pet evolution, ridable wolf pets and more.  That SO sounds like something I'd enjoy.

[Falconeer]

I hear they added solo content but

It's an outright lie. Stick to that "but".

And this comes from a known Lineage 2 lover.

[Xanthippe]

I like Lineage II, too.  I hear they added solo content but I'm not sure how that would work in this sort of game.  I also wonder about that Hellbound Expansion because of this feature:  • Enhanced pet system, featuring pet evolution, ridable wolf pets and more.  That SO sounds like something I'd enjoy.

Pet evolution!

That reminds me, when is the PokeMMOG coming out?

[Hoax]

Hasn't L2 had a dragon-growing fucking crazy kekegrind endgame for quite some time now?

[Nerf]

Yeah, you can do a long, annoying, grindy quest to get a baby dragon.  Then you get to level that baby dragon up at a painfully slow rate (and get no xp for yourself in the process).  Then you do yet another long grindy quest to turn it into a strider and ride it.  Then you level it up even more, this time at an exponentially slower rate, do another really really long, really grindy quest and turn it into a wyrm and have a ridable mount.

Play L2 for awhile and you'll understand why the Korean war ended in armistice, there just isn't an amount of pain that you can inflict upon koreans to make them surrender.

[climbjtree]

There's always The Endless Forest(http://tale-of-tales.com/TheEndlessForest/).

It's a game where you are a deer with a humanoid face and so is everyone else. There's no chat so you just emote to each other. The potential for griefing is enormous.

[NiX]

The potential for griefing is enormous.

We'll soon find out!

[Xanthippe]

I just received this from Gameforge.  It seems they have a game for every genre.  Or maybe it's the same game with a slightly different script each time.  The screenshots cracked me up.  From an email that I received

Hello Xanthippe,
play quicker than your own shadow!

The settling of the Wild West has just begun! Enter the first wagon-train and decide whether to dig up the hatchet or light the pipe of peace.

Choose whether to conquer the prairie as a Cowboy, Indian or Mexican:  Turn your village into a big town Dig up the hatchet and give those pale-faces, redskins and vaqueros what for Invent new rifles and cannons Take your wagon-trains West and colonise new territories Team up with others and take over the prairie!

Join now for free at
www.wildguns.co.uk

I played Ikariam for a little bit - it was like playing a half finished game.  In fact, I still play it and shuffle resources around despite the fact that really, I'm done with it.  I'm afraid to try another one of their games.

[Nerf]

It's a shame it looks so shitty, a game that lets me oppress mexicans AND indians? Sign me up!   

[schild]

Wow.

Did they really, REALLY need to put a tequila stain on the mexicans shirt?

Or have a tiny yellow chubby poking out from his pants right below the popped button?

[tmp]

Did they really, REALLY need to put a tequila stain on the mexicans shirt?

Or have a tiny yellow chubby poking out from his pants right below the popped button?

This is the kind of attention to detail and humour that gave Blizzard its 10 mil subscribers, y'know.

[WindupAtheist]

Normally I'd be down for any game where character classes correspond to real-life ethnicities, just for the lulz, but this doesn't even look like a real MMO from the screenshots.

[lac]

Battlefield Heroes looks like it could be fun. It isn't out yet but they should open public beta pretty soon.

[tmp]

Normally I'd be down for any game where character classes correspond to real-life ethnicities, just for the lulz, but this doesn't even look like a real MMO from the screenshots.

It's more of "massive multiplayer turn based strategy". You get your base, build the infrastructure and troops, get into alliances to conquer the territory. Sort of EVE with quantized rather than random lag.

[SuperPopTart]

Play L2 for awhile and you'll understand why the Korean war ended in armistice, there just isn't an amount of pain that you can inflict upon koreans to make them surrender.

Ugh I ran the L2 Radio station for like five minutes and was subjected to the game itself. 5000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 bots can't be wrong.

He speaks the truth.

[Sir T]

Reminds me of why I quit playing Grenulo Espada. One of the quests involved you having to kill the main boss of a dungeon. Now the main boss spawned on every room in sequence so if you ran round the dungeon you would get him eventually especially if someone else got to him before you.

HOWEVER this one required you to kill him in one particular room. With 5000 other characters that had left their characters on autoattack.

So you had to wait for this asshole to spawm then fight with the other asses that were around him and if you didn't get him you had to wait for him to cycle around again which could take up to 2 hours.

And again.

And again.

I would rather have my teeth extracted than face that again.

[Falconeer]

You forgot to mention that the reward for that robotically insane task was batshit on a broken stick.

[Sir T]

I knew there was some memory my brain had deleated for the sake of my sanity.

[rk47]

Yeah, you can do a long, annoying, grindy quest to get a baby dragon.  Then you get to level that baby dragon up at a painfully slow rate (and get no xp for yourself in the process).  Then you do yet another long grindy quest to turn it into a strider and ride it.  Then you level it up even more, this time at an exponentially slower rate, do another really really long, really grindy quest and turn it into a wyrm and have a ridable mount.

Play L2 for awhile and you'll understand why the Korean war ended in armistice, there just isn't an amount of pain that you can inflict upon koreans to make them surrender.

I used to play with this kid called exxon, a dwarf bounty hunter. We're in a pvp clan and got quite a list of enemies who won't flag against us, but we always try to screw them over. While we were grinding we noticed a rival clan dude grinding his pet. Trying to mess around, exxon went and stun the pet. The pet hit back automatically, flagging it for pvp. 3 whacks later it died. The dude was pissed it was quite hard to lose 10% exp, luckily he had rez scrolls to recover some exp back and prevent it from perma-death. Yeah, 'luckily' but exxon wasn't finished yet.

The scroll casting takes time, while the dude was spinning and glowing, exxon stunned him. Scroll went poof. He panicked and cast again. Exxon stunned him. By the third time, the little dragon corpse decayed. I think a forum flame-fest ensued for a week after that. 

[dannyBstyle]

That is fucking awesome. I hope he cried.

[rk47]

yeah there was an awkward silence on the clan vent and in-game general chat for a moment. Then the dude's clanmate said 'that's not very nice exxon'
 

and we burst out laughing on vent. 

[Nerf]

The dannyb post was mine, i've been drinking heavily and forgot to log myself in.  I don't think dannyb has the intestinial fortitude to play l2.

[Falconeer]

petslaying...

That's exactly why I never ever thought about getting a pet in L2.

[teler]

/lurk mode off

A not-so-grindy Korean free MMO is Bloodymare, at level 10/50 is still pretty fun and has boobs+gore, currently in final stage of open beta. If you're not in the AoC early access or have time or whatever: sign up, download the client and try if u dare 

http://www.playrequiem.com/index.aspx



/lurkmode on!

[Signe]

I was in the Bloodymare beta (I guess it was a closed beta because it was some time ago) and it wasn't too awful but for some reason it made me depressed.  It wasn't very horror-y, either.  Night time was kind of almost sort of very nearly cool.

[SuperPopTart]

Hey Sig.. I want to give you this. I made it for something else but I can't help but to notice your affinity for Hello Kitty.




I show my love for hello kitty.

[Mrbloodworth]

I was in the Bloodymare beta (I guess it was a closed beta because it was some time ago) and it wasn't too awful but for some reason it made me depressed.  It wasn't very horror-y, either.  Night time was kind of almost sort of very nearly cool.

Yeah, how can it be horror when shits standing around in fields?

[Nija]

Yeah, how can it be horror when shits standing around in fields?

At this point in my gaming 'career', just seeing that ONE FONT that all Korean games use is pretty horrifying.

[Stephen Zepp]

So I was bored this weekend (travel plans got canceled last minute), and decided to give the free Shadowbane version a shot. Yeah, yeah, I know--masochist.

Well, I was actually amazingly surprised. Sure, the game is still relatively ugly (amazingly ugly if you require teh shiney in your games), and people don't like point-click movement, but:

--after about an hour of checking the tech support forums, I figured out how to get it working fully with no crashes on Vista (compatibility mode off, not on as stated in the official Vista thread, and using the sb installer config screen --not the in game one--, turn off "cache models to hardware"). After I did those two things, I haven't had a crash, ever.

--it's taken me one weekend (of pure catassing I'll fully admit, like I said was totally bored and needed some mindless distractions) to get a confessor to 59, and a scout to 56, on the lore server (for those that don't remember/know, that means there are like 3 guilds total in the server that even allow fessors)--in full gear for PvP. The only thing I'm missing is a 30 int rune and he's totally specced out (for that level), and that's only because the server is only 2 months old and no one has them stockpiled really.

--the server population on the lore server is pretty damned low, but that's not that bad. PvP isn't hard to find at all--there are roving solo/duo/small group teams all over the place. Of course, they are level 75 (effectively max) super gankers, but being heads up and track equipped and you're fine.

--the game itself is still pretty fun, although some changes have made PvP a bit harder (no more blue dots on your mini-map makes situational awareness difficulty during the heat of battle). Of course, your definition of fun is probably different, but since a majority I'd say here on f13 hate the grind, and the "grind" for two high R5 characters was a total of -maybe- 20 hours /played, the grind is just about nothing compared to what it used to be.

--configured properly (which may be a chore if you read the wrong messages), the game is very stable. Still has many of the bugs (terrain flattening code still horribly broken from what I can see), but overall no crashes. I did have one period where I kept getting disconnected for about 20 minutes, but I think that was a comcast thing since no one else was.

--a bigger guild is definitely a must. My particular lore guild is quite small, plus Cleansing Flame charter is pretty restrictive, but even so we won about 40% of our fights this weekend.

--for me at least, the PvP beats Eve hands down. For whatever reason, people actually like to fight, and losing a fight doesn't hurt the wallet so damned bad as it does in Eve. My 8 or so PvP encounters in Eve over 2 months resulted in myself getting on the killmail for exactly one ship (as a capsule no less), the loss of 6 ships totalling more than 170 million in assets (3/4 of my bankroll and at least 3 weeks worth of grinding isk), and endless hours of being mostly bored trying to convince others to engage. I'm not giving up on Eve (training long run skills at the moment), but I have no motivation at all to login right now, while I'm itching to go get some PvP in SB right this second. I've already killed more, died for less agonizing resource loss, and fought more in 3 days than in 10 weeks in Eve.

Moral of the story: If you can handle pretty bad graphics, totally outdated GUI (although fully customizable, I've found many of the windows don't let you adjust their size, and on a large monitor are postage-stamp sized), a stable but still buggy in some ways game, yet love fast action PvP and hate grinding to get to the "end game", I'd give it an "eyes open" shot.

And yes, it's totally free--in fact, I haven't even seen any of the in-game adds or movies mentioned last year.

[Signe]

But the end game for Shadowbane large scale sieging.  Low population sort of makes that unpossible, no?

Also, if you want something COMPLETELY mindless and disgusting, Postal 2 is free and disgusting.  Really disgusting.

[5150]

This one looks interesting, 14 day free trial and only a two step download to get it working.

You forgot to add

"and no one ever got nerfed playing a SOE!"

[5150]

There are literally hundreds of pirate lineage 2 servers

At the risk of asking a question I shouldn't probably ask, how does one go about getting on these?

[SuperPopTart]

There are literally hundreds of pirate lineage 2 servers

At the risk of asking a question I shouldn't probably ask, how does one go about getting on these?

Google "Lineage 2 Private Servers"?

God knows they are out there en masse.

Why you'd ever want to put the time into googling it is beyond me..

Course some people would say the same about my EQing..

[rk47]

well if u really want a lineage fix, just go load up www.playrohan.com

it's heavily modified, but at least the skill set feels fresh. Graphic wise, no difference.