Decent MMO?

I've been looking around for a decent multiplayer game with a good community as I am mostly a single player man. The only issue is that the game also has to have some sort of decent game play, as I've seen quite a few MMO's that bore the hell out of me.

WoW

I can only speak to The Secret World myself, as it is the only MMO I ever seriously got into. It drew me in with lore and setting, but the gameplay is also a lot of fun. I highly recommend you at least check it out. It definitely is at least somewhat different from the other MMO's out there. In terms of gameplay a bit, but especially the setting. It's a lot of fun.

WoW can be alright. Can be downright repulsive at times, but that is almost every MMO. I've met cool people in WoW, SWTOR, Guild Wars 2, and FFXIV.

I started Wildstar last week. I'm usually a single player gamer too, and I've been having a pretty good time so far playing by myself. I'm sure I'll get more social once I become useful and figure out what the crap I'm doing, but for now I'm enjoying the combat and exploring the world.

Wildstar seems to be something worth checking out, maybe check into that one and see if its a good fit for ya.

Obviously Destiny. It's got pretty much all the hooks of a MMO, as well as pitch-perfect action gameplay. If you enjoy shooting guns in games, Destiny is clearly the MMO for you.

If you preorder now for PS3 or PS4, you'll be able to play the Beta in two weeks (17th of July). It's a little later for Xbox and Xbox One. No PC version however. Can't wait for the 17th. I'm hooked.

The most recent trailer should get you up to speed...

Man I want a PC version of this game so bad. It's the only exclusive that I feel like I am really missing out on. Might have to eventually get a ps4 anyway :/

WoW is really great if you can find a good community. Guild Wars 2 is pretty fun but some of the lower level stuff is kind of broken by assholes farming stuff in starter areas. Finding some good people to play with can fix that too. Wildstar is really damn solid but may be a really tough intro to Mmos.

Like others have said- glomming on to a community or at least a group of people to chat with helps the MMO experience immensely.

I'd dip your toes in a couple F2P games first to see how you like different playstyles/mechanics. WoW has a trial, Tera is a fun, more action-oriented thing. Star Wars: The Old Republic is WoW with Lightsabers and a few tweaks here and there. Wildstar is my current jam, but I don't have the time to play much lately.

Maybe try the Guild Wars games. There's also WoW which is the standard for most people. And as far as free stuff goes, Lord of the Rings Online has a really nice community in my experience. Just make sure you get on one of the high population servers.

Secret World or Old Republic.

Have you played the alpha? It is really awesome. Totally forgot it qualifies as an MMO as well. So yeah, Secret World and Destiny.

Tera and The Secret World are great MMOs I often go back to. Right now it's Tera. There's some creepy ass shit in that game, but the action combat is a ton of fun. Secret World is just cool. It's got some great settings and some really neat non-traditional quests. Combat is fine; you can configure it to play like an action game but it'll still feel like an RPG.

Acquiring skills is interesting with Secret World. There's basically a huge wheel with everything, and you can pick and choose how you want to develop your character. Sword and magic? Shotgun and hammer? Pistols and Rifle and Chaos Magic? Whatever you want. I remember the moment it really clicked for me was when I chose a passive from a magic category that healed when you did certain attacks after realizing that my shotgun attacks were applicable.

So I was now healing myself thanks to a random magic passive I got, without having any interest in actually using magic weapons. You can only have a certain number of passives and actives at a time, so eventually you'll probably be able to do some really interesting stuff with character builds.

Character creation's not that great in Secret World however, and hit or miss with Tera.

I thought WildStar would be the next MMO to hook me but was sorely disappointed by the beta. Guild Wars 2 was fun in the beginning but quickly devolved into a boring grind with not nearly enough pay-off.

Final Fantasy 14 was actually another fantastic recent experience I had. After my month was up I was satisfied though. Not a lot of rough edges there, but I guess that's what happens when you fuck up real bad the first time. Character creation's alright, maybe a little hit or miss. Combat felt like a nice middle-ground between tab-targeting and more actiony.

Old Republic had great character creation, and the story stuff is basically a single-player BioWare game (to the point where I was instinctively hitting F5 to quick-save before conversations only to remember "oh right, MMO"). But last time I was in there it was pretty rotten with the microtransactions. Combat is basically WoW. Worth taking a look at to see if it does anything for you.

It really depends on what you're looking for.

The Old Republic has phasing, and the way planets are set up, a lot can just seem outright barren. You'll see people in the main city hub, but that's about it. The community there is all right, but the engine is just... blah. Everything 20 feet in front of you looks great, and anything past that looks jarringly bad. I think this week's a double XP weekend, so now would be a good time to try it. But I would recommend not trying to play it F2P. Don't get caught in the cartel coin crap. It's EA free2play at its finest. Subscribe, use your cartel coins you get to buy prize boxes, and sell the prize boxes on the auction house for credits and use those credits to buy the drops you want. You'll never get the items you want from a prize box.

Guild Wars 2 has a fun leveling experience, but I didn't care for the end game. Granted, I haven't played in over a year, but with yellow/orange tier end game stuff and laurel gear, I still felt like I'd get one shot.

I enjoy WoW. I play it with my girlfriend and that's about it. I will do random dungeons, but that's about it. While the game is full of players, it sometimes feels like a dead game. It could be because I most likely have 90% of the people that talk on /ignore. Some folks are fine, and I recently spent 4-5 hours in a random dungeon group doing dungeon after dungeon because we were having fun. Othertimes, I'll get a "LUL U R 535 GEAR TANK GTFO *kick*" or "OMG ONLY 515 WURLUK U DO 80% OF GROUP DEEPS IN DUNGEON BUT LUL SCRUB". In my battle group, the only battle grounds that pop up are AV and IoC. 90% of the group is bots and it's just loss after loss because of it. At this point in the game, no one wants to play it. They want to simply overgear every encounter they run into.

If you want to try out Wildstar, PM me. I have some guest passes. I like the game ok, but it needs optimization. It feels like WoW with GW2 combat to me.

FF14 is mostly geared solo play at first. Most quests are single player only. You might like it!

If you want a tight-knit duder community check out the Giantbomb EVE corporation!

One of our newduders has been chronicling his adventures in space over the last few weeks, so check that out too.

It's a complex game that you won't experience anywhere else. If you want to hang out with duders while exploring space check us out.

--

I recently picked up The Secret World on the last Steam sale. It's pretty fun and has some great writing, but I wouldn't call it an MMO. There are other people in the world, but at no point do you really interact with anyone. It's a single player game for the most part. I've played about 20 hours of it and I've yet to even chat with anyone else. It's pretty fun, but there's very little social interaction. If you find it on sale I would suggest trying it out.

I have to say the best MMO out there is still WoW. So many players, and so much content, it will do you good for a long time. However, if you want to avoid the sub costs, I hear good things about Guild Wars 2.

It really depends on what you're looking for combat-wise, as most MMOs are slightly different in that category and is probably ultimately what will cause you to like/dislike a game.

WoW, TOR, and FFXIV:ARR are all great tab-target MMOs. WoW is what it is; I've been in multiple server-first raiding guilds, but at a certain point you move on. TOR is Burning Crusade-era WoW in the Star Wars universe; I have a couple max level characters but I never got into raiding. I just bought FFXIV last week on steam and am having a blast with it; they do enough different and interesting things with the auxiliary systems that it's probably my favorite MMO since WoW.

GW2 and Wildstar (and I've heard Tera as well, though I haven't played it) are all mostly well-made action-style MMOs, but I can't stand that style of combat so those games aren't for me. GW2 is alright. It does some things differently (skills based on your weapon, no 'traditional' quest-givers, no true tank/dps/healer group trinity, no item-level treadmill) but I think it ultimately suffers for them. There isn't much progression at max level aside from a lengthy grind for cosmetics. It's helped along by the fact that there's no sub, so if you want to play for four days every 2 months you can totally do that. Wildstar (from my limited knowledge) seems to bring the GW2 action-style combat to a more traditional MMO structure (essentially just WoW with the active combat instead of tab-targeting), but just playing during one of the closed beta weekends was enough for me to know that I still don't like that style of combat in an MMO and the game is not for me. I don't really know anything about Tera other than the fact that I have a friend who really likes it, but he's too hipster for his own good and often plays completely garbage games just because they're obscure and/or nobody else plays them, so take that with a grain of salt I guess.

Ultimately most people will swear by their 1-2 MMOs, but all of the popular ones are popular for a reason: they're totally fine games. It comes down more to personal preference than anything else.

Really, so many mmos have some sort of f2p component that it's pretty easy to try them for yourself and see what you like.

That said, here's the four I rotate between and recommend.

Star Trek Online. It has a pretty good f2p model. I've never once felt I had to pay for anything but have gladly bought a few ships to support the game. As someone who loves the ships of Trek, the space part is fantastic but the ground stuff is just okay. I generally rush through ground content to get to the good stuff.

WoW. I just recently played this pretty heavily again for a couple of months. Tons of content (a lot of which you can solo as you get more powerful through expansions), great customization mods, and a very deep lore. Downsides are that finding a good guild could be tricky and you may not want to pay a sub.

FFXIV. Takes the basics of WoW and does some interesting things with it. Also has an interesting and well told story. Once again, there's a sub price and no way to try before you buy. Also, the community can be both great and terrible. Much like WoW, you'll want to find a good free company (guild).

Marvel. It's not really your typical mmo as it's a top down action rpg but the community can be pretty good and it really is a fantastic game in its genre. However, it is a bit more restrictive in its f2p aspects. Nothing to the extent of The Old Republic but you could feel the clench of limited storage space and character selection. As Jeff has mentioned, though, if you can just buy one character you can get by pretty well with a $10-$20 investment. Also, they do have sales on characters now and then and you can earn more, slowly, in-game.

Final Fantasy XIV gets my vote of confidence. Especially if you are a fan of pre-FF13 Final Fantasy stuff.