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The 10 best MMOs and MMORPGsWhere to play with your massive friends
Where to play with your massive friends
If you’re looking for an entire second life, we’re here to judge. We’re only here to serve, which is why we’ve curated a list of thebest MMOs and MMORPGs on PCright now. There’s many a massively multiplayer experience to find out there these days, running the gamut from fantasy to sci-fi and… well mostly those two things, but you can still build a little you and live in a whole new world, make virtual friends to share your life with, engage in huge battles against massive enemies, and spend your evenings on raids to grind out levels. Some of the games on this list are tried and true classics that have stuck around for the long haul, and some are newer entries, but all offer deep worlds that you can disappear into.
What’s It Like To Start World Of Warcraft From Scratch?Watch on YouTube
What’s It Like To Start World Of Warcraft From Scratch?
The 10 best MMO and MMORPGs
To help make things nice and easy for you, you’ll find links to all of the MMOs on this list below. Think of these links like a “raid-finder”, but less fighting a massive dragon and its peons, and more reading a paragraph of - hopefully riveting - text, that’ll ensure you at least level up your video gaming experiences.
10. Destiny 2
Image credit:Bungie
What is the payment model:It’s free-to-play with microtransactions, but the meatier bits of the game are in paid expansions
Destiny 2hasn’t been on this list for a while, but 2024 is set to big a big year for Bungie’s shooter. This year sees the new The Final Shape expansion, which wraps up the game’s first major saga and adds new missions, gear, PVP maps, a new raid, and even a whole new world to explore. It’s a chonker, so now is a great time to get into Destiny 2 and experience the most game that this game has ever had, after seven years of seasons and expansions and new raids slotting in.
And around that, of course, is that it’s a good game! The guns just feel good! The action is exciting and satisfying! And it’s a dramatic space opera with beautiful maps, which helps. As a Guardian, your job is to protect the last safe city on earth, as one of three versatile classes. Destiny 2 has improved matchmaking over the original and has a large and dedicated community. A wrinkle is that it has only been free-to-play since 2019, and there were complaints from the existing players that microtransactions really ramped up in 2023, but dammit, Bungie are very good at making shooters.
9. The Lord Of The Rings Online
What is the payment model:It’s free-to-play with microtransactions.
For fans of Middle Earth,The Lord Of The Rings Onlineis definitely worth considering if you’re after a new MMO. Of course, the main selling point here is that you’ve got Tolkien’s world to embed yourself in. You can play as a hobbit, fight alongside Gimli, and take on the Witch King in Angmar, just to name a few.
Lord Of The Rings Online is also faithful to the books, with plenty of neat little touches for those into the lore. It’s an aging MMO now, first released in 2007, and it was fairly old-fashioned even at release, but it continues to receive updates even now. For reference, the devs Standing Stone Games have promised additions to classes, crafting, in-game events, treasure hunts, and countless more. Not to mention a huge amount of its content is free-to-play, and will take you all the way up to level 95 through the Helm’s Deep expansion.
8. Black Desert Online
What is the payment model:The game costs £8.99 and there is no subscription model. However, there are microtransactions.
Black Desert Onlinemight be one of the nicest looking MMOs out there, with a vast, gorgeous world that puts a lot of others in the genre to shame. It’s worth downloading just to play around with its gorgeous characters creator.
You’ve also got fast-paced combat with an emphasis on aiming, dodging, and blocking in real time, but what really sets Black Desert Online apart is its focus on building empires and civilisations. Yes, you can play this as an action-RPG or MMO, but there’s a huge amount of depth if you want to go a bitAge of Empires. You can hire workers, set up production chains, and even set up full-on businesses, likethis one centered around brewing beer.
7. The Elder Scrolls Online
What is the payment model:It’s free-to-play with microtransactions.
If you can’t get enough ofSkyrimor Oblivion, then I reckon you might just likeThe Elder Scrolls Online. It combines multiple settings from the various iterations of Bethesda’s singleplayer RPGs, allowing you to explore from Tamriel, to the High Elf realm of Summerset and the Khajit homeland Elsweyr.
As if knowing its audience, The Elder Scrolls Online also does a fine job of balancing being an MMO and a decent singleplayer experience. For those who want a solo experience or a massively multiplayer one, there’s no judgement here, and if anything, it has increasingly offered more of the former. Plus, it upholds certain Elder Scrolls tenets, like being able to pickpocket every NPC.
6. Star Wars: The Old Republic
What is the payment model:It’s free-to-play up to level 60 with two expansions included. You can subscribe for around £9 a month to unlock the full experience.
One ofStar Wars: The Old Republic’sbiggest selling points is its storytelling. This is one of the few MMOs where your character development isn’t all about making numbers go up, but in the relationships you form with others. You can befriend and betray, murder or confess your undying love to NPCs who aren’t just static quest-givers.
Like ESO above, TOR’s developers know a lot of people are coming to it from their love of Knights Of The Old Republic, and once you’ve reached the expansions, you’re hit with this episodic structure that’s frankly more like a singleplayer game than an MMO. You’re thrown into your own instance and free to make plenty of tough decisions that’ll affect your story alone, no one else’s. This is easily one of thebest Star Wars gamesout there.
5. Guild Wars 2
What is the payment model:It’s free-to play. You will need to purchase expansions, though.
Players praise Guild Wars 2 for its lack of grind as well. Nearly everything you do awards experience, from crafting to exploring to combat. Even if someone else has attacked a big monster before you, helping them out will still give you some EXP. Guild Wars 2 wants you to have a nie time, and to see its world and story without needing to work thousands of hours for it.
4. Runescape
What is the payment model:A great deal of content is free. You can pay £5.25 a month for a 12 month membership that will unlock the entire world map, quests, and more.
The quest variety is also on point in Runescape, as you won’t find the usual barrage of fetch quests, but actual stories with engaging conversations, fights, and puzzles; there’s even some longrunning quest lines and penguin conspiracies. Seriously, the game has some of the most inventive quests in MMOs that trade bombast and combat for brain-teasers and thinking on your feet.
Let’s not forget Old School Runescape too, which allows you to experience the 2007 version of the game with updates based upon player voting. Nice.
3. EVE Online
What is the payment model:There’s a free-to-play model which is fairly limited. You can pay £8.33 a month for a year’s membership to unlock the full experience.
EVE Onlinehas earned a name for itself as being a cold, callous universe filled with exploitative players - and that’s justified. This is an MMO where war, betrayal and espionage between real players is the norm, with results that are engrossing for those involved andfascinating for everyone else to read about.
2. World Of Warcraft
What is the payment model:You can play free up to level 20. A 6 month subscription costs £8.69 a month. You will also need to purchase the latest expansion to get access to all of those before it too.
I mean, you’ve heard of this one.World Of Warcraftis that MMO everyone thinks of when you say “MMO”. World Of Warcraft took the model of the MMOs that came before it -EverQuest, for example - and applied a level of Blizzard polish which you’ll be hard-pressed to find anywhere else. Today, it’s a beautiful world to explore and almost frictionless to play - for better and for worse.
In Liam and I’s first episode ofInventory Space, we took a look at World Of Warcraft and found it to be a disjointed experience that’s a far cry from its glory days. However! There the game does have a “Classic” component (included for free with a subscription) that’s essentially a portal to the old days, before all the streamlining and numerous updates. Sure, WoW may not be the juggernaut it once was, but it’s always evolving and still features plenty of options for players who either want it to be a lifetime investment or a casual after-work sesh.
1. Final Fantasy XIV
What is the payment model:There’s a free trial which lets you play up to level 60 with no time restriction. You can also pay £7.69 for 180 days game time to unlock the full experience. The “Complete Edition” unlocks all of the expansions too, so you’ll probably want to purchase this version of the game.
Final Fantasy XIVhas an undeniably slow start and initially feels very similar to other MMOs, but over time you’ll have an increasingly diverse range of activities to do. I think that’s down to the fact it doesn’t impose any limits. On one character you can bounce between different Jobs (classes) that’ll evolve into more complex roles as you level them up. This extends to your secondary Jobs, like crafting, fishing, cooking and more. Again, you can pick up whatever you’d like and just give it a go.
Final FantasyXIV’s story is a high fantasy epic, and even within the free trial, you’ll be doing stuff that doesn’t just involve smacking things to right wrongs. Instead, you might need to help a ‘beast tribe’ reincarnate their god, with less time spent fighting and more time spent actually digging into the nitty gritty behind their need to do so.
Each expansion only serves to make the game even better: read ourFinal Fantasy 14: Endwalker reviewto get a better idea of how. And last but not least, the game’s community is - for the most part - an extremely lovely bunch. Theyrestored my faith in humanity, after all.
