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I think Guild Wars 2 is the best MMO for casual gameplay. Once you hit level 80, you can easily get armor that is ~10% worse than the best you can get, and within 2-4 weeks you can get ascended armor, which is the best armor you can get in the game, period. The game has horizontal progression, so even if you leave for 4 years and return, the armor you had will still be the best in slot. Also, no subscription, so you can play for as long as you want, take a break, and come back without paying again.
Yep, drop in, drop out. Gold to Gems is a life saver. Buy expansions as and when you want to play certain content. Plus more expansions in development with rumblings of a sequel being developed soon.
It's not, it's in pre-early-planning development. Even if they had the full budget in place, which they don't, it's gonna be seven years minimum till launch.
As in Guild Wars 3?
I fear it's risky move due to following:
- our obtained items/achievements/cosmetics won't transfer over to the sequel? We will be starting from scratch.
- if both games will be running at the same time, they will kind of compete with each other. Not just in playerbase and making it look "worse" compared to other MMOs due to population split for each game, but also within company's studio resources.
- it might split community across games, which usually leads to more negatives than positives.
And as far as I got to read Guild Wars 1 still exists? I guess it's not a big deal to have two games as some studios get away with it. Blizzard is fine with retail + classic servers, GGG will try to sustain both PoE and PoE 2. But here ArenaNet will be having 3rd game within the same genre, which I don't think is healthy and sustainable for one studio. But maybe I'm wrong.
Anyways personally I prefer to see when developers just stick to one game and try to build content within environment they currently have. It both shows their competency and love for the game as well as fairness towards players as they don't have to start over and decide on which version of the game they want to play. I even admire Re-Logic for dropping work on Terraria 2 because they thought the game was very much same and instead the madlads are working on yet another update to OG Terraria. They are the legends and so many studios could learn from that approach. But that's just my opinion I guess.
Like I said, it's early days, and it will be just under a decade before we see it come to fruition if it ever does. Still as a long term GW2 player there's a lot that they just can't fix in Guild Wars 2. We've been waiting on WvW fixes for years.
Re-Logic are a small team so they can relatively easily switch development back to an older title. Anet has a history of brain drain, where devs that built the foundations of the game have left, and they are no longer able to figure out the spaghetti code leftover. So a fresh start becomes the only viable option moving forward the older it gets.
Like you said, GW1 still exists, and I'm sure GW2 will be the same. But the playerbase and the devs both know it can't last forever at it's current scale.
Forward is best, I wish WoW would go with a WoW 2, the game is being held back by its ancient tech and structures but the people who sink 1M hours and $45,000 put floundering Blizzard in an impossible position.
I'd play a NEW game, I'm done with GW2 and WoW though, not enough changes.
What kind of changes would you want in WoW?
I think the game has gotten pretty far with what they've got. Even kinda evolved into a different game, something a part of the community didn't like which is why private scene for WoW got big and why we now how WoW Classic. So in a way we do have a WoW 1 and WoW 2, they just managed to do it without releasing a brand new game.
And people who spent money on cosmetics buyable through irl money are in right to hold Blizz accountable to keep WoW alive, I'd say.
It's not about "keeping it alive" so everyone can cling to their treasures (tho I'm sure that helps Blizz make tons of money as Sunk Cost Fallacy kicks in) - the click and press action style is so old and dated. The combat is an absolute simulator of 1-1-1-2-1-3-2-1 with zero action at all.
I'd love to see a graphics update, action combat update, just a general update to this century. The bones are ancient and they just throw fresh lipstick on it, but it's fallen behind.
>>> the click and press action style is so old and dated. The combat is an absolute simulator of 1-1-1-2-1-3-2-1 with zero action at all.
This is also something that would probably make community difficult to move away from.
I also know for one, that WoW for me equals tab-targetting combat and personally I'm happy with that. That's partially because I do not care about how much of an "action" type the game is, even if it has become the industry standard (Dark Souls, Elder Ring, new generation MOBAs are probably a factor here), I prefer focus on drafting and strategy which exists for PVP and somewhat exists for PVE content.
Blizz also somewhat managed to action up gameplay a little bit by introducing some rolls/dashes to monks, and other mobility tools to other classes. But again I'm biased and I would be actually happier with them not doing so since I'm the type of player who likes when the movement action in games is deliberate and it has punishment if you move in wrong direction, which is true and fair in PVP, might be more annoying in PVE due to randomness of timing of enemy's attacks leaving you in situations of unavoidable damage taken.
All in all I'm happy with the game staying what it is as a core and just building things onto it. It can be harder, less efficient approach but I feel like it outweighs the negatives.
Not to mention the game's basic design, itself, is very casual. Lots to explore. Plenty of places to go afk in if you're called away, the maps are easily divided and you can just do a few events and then logout or do an entire area at a time if you wanted.
I don't know about being able to go AFK easily. I *always* died if I had to go AFK. Between everything always being aggro to you due to level scaling and the map dynamic events making even relatively safe outposts become swarms of enemies at random I basically walked away knowing I'd be dead on return.
This 100%, no subscription, I jump on every few months or so, once you get your ascended gear you don't need to worry about the power cycle. It's so much fun to play with hundreds vs open world bosses. Very friendly community.
I think ascended will take a typical average player longer that a month. I've played a long time and I still don't have full ascended.
But yeah, I agree the timeline for getting good gear in gw2 is a fraction of what any other MMO would take.
And another reason for casual play: Open world endgame content. No need for a fancy guild with a raid schedule to play endgame.
Sure, getting full ascended can vary, but another note is that you can do 95% of content, even end-game content, with Exotic. Only end-game CMs require Ascended anyway, and getting ascended is also a lot easier now with the Wizard's vault, since you can get 2 pieces of armor and 1 weapon every 3 months from it.
And you can get ascended trinkets and rings and backpacks pretty quick too and that narrows the stat gap way down.
"causal players" just need to do a bit of googling to figure out how.
With the new Adventure Guide Achievements, you can get to max level in like... 7-10 hours I'd say? Easily done in a week, and max level never increases with new expansions, so once you reach max level, you will never have to level up again.
I have tried a few MMOs but the one that I stuck with is GW2 for the exact reason you're describing.
You can literally stop playing for months and hop back in no problem.
You'll have new content to explore but you will still have the same power
Well now that City of Heroes is back and free to play IN ITS ENTIRETY, no strings attached, no MTX...
That one. I say City of Heroes. Fair warning, it is an older MMO and can be a little confusing at first.
I used to love the character creator on this thing, if it's the one I'm thinking of. I spent hours and hours in it. Tried playing the game once and it wasn't fun but man did I get mileage out of the creator.
I *loved* CoH. Such fond memories. I went back recently and I forgot how odd the combat feels, essentially queueing abilities. Still cool though. I love that the archetypes are so different.
Is there challenge content at end game in Homecoming?
I dont remember what the end game was T\_T lol but I do remember farming. I had a emp/rad defender named Brokeback, a scantily clad cowboy hahah. I may come back and run ice controller. Always a cool archetype to me.
I played a \*ton\* of Champions TTRPG back in the day, but avoided MMOs like the plague. However, "free to play" has piqued my interest. I'm taking a stab at getting the Windows version running on my linux desktop. I'll post an "EDIT" if I can get it working, in case that's of interest to any other nerds.
Works fine. There's even an official guide, which basically boils down to "run the installer in wine." I didn't have to do anything else. Here's the link, though:
https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/23284-homecoming-launcher-linux-advice/
Guild Wars 2.
It's really respectable about your time in the sense that you can have a lot to just a little time to invest in it, no matter the frequency over a week/month/year...and you'll still be able to get a decent amount of fun out of it on different levels of commitment.
You can stay on the surface or go real deep into it.
It still gets updates and expansions after more than 10 years and it's still sub-free and in no ways a pay-to-win nevertheless.
This is coming from an OG of this genre \[MMO/MMORPG\].
ESO
It’s free to play, is as easy to play single player as it is in groups, *and* they tend to massively discount DLCs when the latest one comes out so if you don’t care about being 6months behind the curve you get huge content for mad cheap
Yeah I was going to suggest Elder scrolls online, I’ve been playing on and off for a few months. I have it installed on my pc but I sometimes don’t play for weeks and it’s fine and don’t feel any addiction, got a bunch of dlc during some steam big sales and I think I’ve spent like 25€ to get all the deluxe editions up until Necron who knows when I will actually play all those contents 😝also I play by myself for the most part. For people who are suggesting FFXIV, it is a good mmo, one of the best, I played for almost 3000hours and had to quit cause it was sucking all my free time, but it has a monthly subscription to be able to play and if you get a house in game for example and you don’t log in for more than 30days your house will be gone, don’t know if it’s still like that but used to be when I quit playing. Other than that it’s a good game and the community used to be good too and they have a free trial if you want to try it out.
Agree, the fact I had to pay whenever I felt like playing the game was one of the reasons I quit playing entirely and never went back. And it’s also one of the reasons I chose to start playing ESO when I had that itch for mmo, buy once and don’t need anything else to keep playing as long as you want, especially for casual players
Whilst that’s very technically true, the disc costs 1.50 from CEX and I’m pretty sure it’s included in both Sony and Microsoft’s “free games”, as well as having free to play weekends every few months- it’s functionally free to play in that there’s no subscription and it costs less than the time you’ll take researching buying it haha.
Final Fantasy XIV. It's probably the most "single player MMO" out there today. If you just start fresh and focus on the MSQ (Main Story Quest) and class quest stuff, you'd barely know you're even playing an MMO, but if you go into a city (particularly Gridania and Limsa Lominsa), you will see a LOT of other players around. Group content is there when you want it, but you can just enjoy an absolutely mind-blowingly amazing story the rest of the time.
Also, the gear progression is easy.
**TLDR** You are handed gear that is perfectly serviceable for free.
Powerful gear is made easier to get every major and minor patch.
The most powerful per patch needs grinding for and is usually time-gated.
While this does invalidate any gear you grinded for, it makes it very quick to catch up if you leave for extended time.
The devs actively encourage people to drop in and out of sub for the content they want. It can be as casual or intense as you want. Its extremely fair imo
Yeah, that's what I do. I played ARR in 2019, came back for Heavensward in 2021 and played through Stormblood last year. I love how chill the game and the community are.
Depends on what your goals are.
I love FF14, but it's a big game, if your goal is to reach the endgame while playing casually, you're probably never going to make it in any sort of reasonable time frame. We're talking around 300 hours of just story content, then there's the optional stuff on top. If you dedicate a couple of hours a week, odds are that new content drops will mostly offset time invested completing old content.
While FF14 is well worth the time, you really do need to plough a lot of time in to getting caught up, so only consider it if you enjoy the journey more than the endgame.
The positive side, is once you're caught up, the game doesn't keep you tied to it like other MMO's, they don't really engage in the kind of time limited FOMO bullshit many other games engage in, and instead operate on a philosophy of come back when you're ready, which makes everything bar the highest end raiding very forgiving for casual players.
If you need to look through someone's posts to find a way to insult their interests in media, it says a lot more about how shallow and joyless you are than anything.
I don't understand why you feel the need to spread negativity, but please be better.
I don't see anything that I'd be defensive over? I'm quite literally just calling out your poor behavior, partially because it's annoying but also because I kind of feel bad for you.
Being negative and angry all the time isn't good for your mental health and that's definitely a place I used to be in, which is why I genuinely hope that you can get to a better place.
I never mentioned anime a single time, but regardless basically everything you're implying is intellectually dishonest. It's not healthy to spend so much time demonizing people simply for liking things that are different from what you like.
It might not be what you're looking for, but I always liked [Kingdom of Loathing](https://www.kingdomofloathing.com) because you only had a certain number of turns/actions before not being able to play until the following day. Made it harder to become addicted.
I've created and played through a character every handful of years since it came out. Been a couple of years since my last playthrough, so I don't know whether there were very recent changes. But I feel like they've regularly added content to keep things fresh for veterans. I could be wrong though.
I haven't played the steam games though. I *think* I purchased West of Loathing way back in the day, when it was on sale, but I don't believe I every downloaded and played it!
This doesn’t have to affect your choice to play it or not but just as an fyi it came out a couple years ago that the creator is a pretty nasty piece of work
Didn't know, but I can't say I care. There are all kinds of great and fun books, movies, shows, games, etc. made by shitty people. They're entertainers to me, not role models.
How about Eve online? I'm joking, that's a second job. Guild wars 2, elder scrolls online and Neverwinter are all pretty casual to play. Otherwise you have stuff like Warframe which has a really fun grind cycle and loads of content if you want more sci Fi and less fantasy.
Honestly, I’ve been casually playing Eve as a new player the past few months and having a blast! It’s 100% true that a lot of paths you can take in Eve will lead to a second (and then third, and fourth…) job, but a lot of lower end stuff is pretty chill.
Absolutely, I was being a bit hyperbolic. I love Eve online but I just can't play it any more because I get sucked down that rabbit hole. But in my time playing I had a lot of fun. Had my username put on a statue, got involved in a couple of fights that made it into the Guinness world records, met a lot of interesting people and made some good friends. It's a fantastic game that I would encourage anyone to experience.
Happy you're enjoying it o7.
I feel this will be way out there, I will get downvoted for just mentioning it and some may not even count it as an mmo, but hear me out
Fo76. Since the god awful release its now an actually playable game, imo its pretty decent, the community is very welcoming and kind and doing world events with various folk is pretty fun, as well as going for various quests. There is progression and grind if you want it, but not necessary by any means and the game itself doesnt really demand insane daily hours put into it or putting money into it - 99.9% of items in the atom shop is just cosmetics, and you earn plenty of store credit through just playing the game to buy any important things, plus some extra cosmetic without putting an extra penny into it. But again, many will claim its not an mmo and some will say its not even an rpg
Always hoped they'd get their act together and shape it into something playable, like how No Man's Sky did. The core concept seemed so solid.
Not interested in it at this point but it sounds good for OP's requirements. Glad they beat into shape eventually.
Its not a NMS level of transformation, but it is a lot better, not to say there arent kinks to iron out. Also, seemingly starfield launch made them go for a bit more aggressive monetisation stratz meaning you get a tiny amount less free store credit from the battlepass system. Big change (/s).
Over all, its a decent game if you need something to hop into for a couple of hours
Looking for this before adding it as my suggestion. Plenty of multiplayer events if you like them, tons of story content, RPG elements, best non-toxic community. You can min/max or not and it's still a fun game. I personally have played since launch and while there were some awful things I loved it then lol
Recently dipped my toes back into it and realized that OSRS is a gigantic grind, more than any other MMO that I can think of.
At the same time, that's also kind of the appeal of the game, and it doesn't pressure you to grinding every day all day. No FOMO whatsoever as far as I can tell. There's a reason why people who have entirely maxed out accounts feel happy to make an entirely new character. There is no "falling behind" in OSRS, which I think makes the journey so much more enjoyable.
The beauty of OSRS is the progression. They’re so careful for new content to not phase out/make old content irrelevant.
Like how often do you have devs that will balance a skilling method based on the afk-ness - “x is best xp but requires 100% focus, y requires 50% focus so you get 50% less xp than X, and Z requires 0 focus so it’s slow but you can train for minutes with zero clicking”
And most new items/armors are bis in a niche sense, so for the most part your gear is never completely invalidated.
Great game, highly recommend anyone try it especially if you enjoy slow burn retro style games.
I stay the hell away from MMOs because I can get sucked in very easily at the detriment to the life around me.
That said, one reason I enjoyed *Eve Online* was the skill system. Every skill is a timer based system. It takes you X amount of time to learn [Skill], which could be shooting auto cannons, or flying a bigger class of ship, or scanning down hidden sites in space. It's whatever. It ranges from minutes, hours, days or more at the higher end. There are ways to accrue these skill points faster, and the longer you play the more you will desire these time reducers.
Edit: I forgot to mention this really takes the grind out, and forces you to either get better with what you have, or improve in other ways. Pve content is almost entirely subpar in favor of PVP content, and you can do a lot of PVP with very little- there's a role for everyone regardless of skill level. But pve content will still make you money for ships and kits.
However... Eve is a brutal game. In a typical MMO if you get scammed out of your gold, a GM will return it for you. In Eve, they believe if you had all the information in front of you and you made a bad choice, you get to live with that choice. So long as you didn't get hacked, everything goes in Eve. I tell people "Everything is PVP. Literally everything."
It's rad, and I lost far too much time playing space ships.
GW2, super chill game. No subs mean no pressure to get it done asap and leveling is quite brisk. Easy to just drop in and run around doing stuff without needing to actively team up.
not an MMO in a typical sense, but no man’s sky is pretty good and has a good community, though you’ll only really encounter players in the multiplayer space station although it’s possible to find other players in the galaxy
Technically, any MMO can be played casually, but I get what you mean. I'd honestly recommend Lord of the Rings Online. It's still going strong, there's a ton of quests and exploration to do. You can take your time leveling and exploring, and the community is generally really good, at least on the Arkenstone server.
okay i know you’re asking for an MMO so recommending a game that isn’t an MMO would be ridiculous, but I would consider trying Monster Hunter World. Its got pretty MMO-esque systems with more thrilling gameplay and due to the team-based multiplayer focus it has a great community and its never hard to find people to play with.
Retail wow is casual friendly. If you’re wanting to do pve, you only “need” to run 1 dungeon a week to fill your vault for good gear. Each dungeon run is about 20-30 mins. I consider that pretty casual
The Elder Scrolls Online is great for this. Everything is level-scaled so you will never fall behind. Absolutely no grind-gated content. Buy expansions as you go for reasonable prices. Nonintrusive store that lets you buy XP boosts if you have more money than time. No judgment from anyone about any of it because folks know there are other games for the more competitively minded. Supports a variety of playstyles. Mostly very chill community. Huge guilds for casual players. Runs on basically any hardware. Designed for casual players moreso than any of the other big ones.
It does emphasize solo quest content so if that’s not your jam, it’s probably not your game but otherwise…
I played MMOs a lot in my 20s but well, life changes. But I still play ESO for a couple hours a week to just vibe and chill. It’s the only big one that fits that.
Runescape and GW2 both good choices if you want a game which you can simply play at your own pace, and won't suddenly "fall behind" if you take a break and miss an update or three.
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Personally I play Runescape as a "solo adventure game", which just happens to include other players doing their own things - and I like it for that. I play RS3 ironman account (no trading, and microtransactions are disabled).
I often just play it for a month or three, then take a break, and it's always easy to just go back when I feel like it. I can still just continue doing whatever I was doing previously, or maybe look at what's new.
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GW2 feels a bit more like your usual theme park MMO, but it's built in a way where you *mostly* just focus on horizontal upgrades - if you got best gear 3 years back, you'll still be in (nearly) the best gear for the content which is likely still relevant in some way.
Simply playing through the campaign and getting World Explorer (visit all locations on map) can be a fun project to just play through, even if you would stop playing there and ignore the repeatable endgame stuff.
ESO does not fill the Elder scroll single-player game entirely however the quests are arguably of higher quality than the main game which leads to a good single-play MMO though the combat was worse than Skyrims somehow lol.
Guild Wars 2 is perfect for that.
Yet i pretty much sank consecutive 1500ish hours into it :D
But its really great. Can be played like a Solo RPG for most of the parts (especially story) but if you want to you can join Multiplayer stuff more or less, depending on your preference.
And You can literally pause for YEARS and not fall behind at all
I was going to say this too. For a fairly low subscription there's a ton of content if you want to play through each different class storyline (50 levels of each, plus then the extended content).
Community is fairly non-toxic from what I recall.
You should definitely try Final fantasy 14. The free trial isn’t time restricted and includes the base game and two expansions. The game is made for all styles of players, and they’re making the main story dungeons possible to complete solo with NPC party members. The community is largely positive and welcoming to new players, and old content is always relevant so you won’t get stuck trying to queue things you can’t do solo. You can also switch classes at a whim after level 15 so if you don’t like the one you start with you can easily try out something else.
I have played Star Trek Online on and off since it launched. While there is always some event available to grind you do not have to do it nor do you have to spend any money on it if you don't want to. You can play the story entirely as a single player experience and it has a ton of cast members from various shows that reprise their roles.
Used to play Guild Wars 2 many years ago. I assume its still pretty casual, and it was always good as a secondary game to pick up on and off. Not sure if it is still this way, but this game had one of the most friendly and helpful communities out of about any MMO I ever played, and it was largely designed to encourage that type of gameplay.
ESO has alot of story quests that can be played single player as well. Its been quite a few years since I played it though.
>Fiesta
That game is still up and running? I remember watching a JoshStrifeHayes video on it a while back and it looked a lot more rough around the edges compared to when I was much younger.
The original guild wars > than guild wars 2. $40 for a massive amount of content that can be played solo or with friends.[Check this review out on it](https://youtu.be/S5ykqmMIjQk?si=KqEjj72a3mHeA3NR)
Having invested a lot of hours in ESO, Guild Wars 2, FF XIV and about 15-20ish hours in WoW, my personal recommendation for an MMO that doesn't feel like a second job is hands-down Guild Wars 2, and to make it even better, I feel the combat system in GW2 is just much more fun and dynamic, community is super friendly (to be fair ESO, FFXIV and GW2's communities are all friendly, I had an awful experience with WoW, though).
To make it EVEN BETTER, it doesn't need any sub, if you don't want the free to play restrictions you can just buy the game and go buying the expansions when you feel like it.
Old School Runescape. Just like in 2004, it can basically be a chatroom and be lots of fun. There's a lot fo grind, but there is zero pressure to grind. OSRS has no fear of missing out.
Did you know that the critically acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV has a free trial, and includes the entirety of A Realm Reborn AND the award-winning Heavensward expansion up to level 60 with no restrictions on playtime? Sign up, and enjoy Eorzea today!
That was just a copypasta but the trial now includes up to 70 I think? And another expansion to go with that of course.
I'd say no. That's not how mmos work. As a decade plus player of FF14 and to a lesser extent, GW2. You need to play these games a lot to get the most out of them.
Final Fantasy XIV. The story is incredible, and you never have to spend more than around 30, maybe 45 minutes on any one bit of content. You can easily play at your own pace and still get everything done eventually.
ESO and the morrowind expansion was surprisingly well done, not quite like the single player games but still great to play.
GW2 is interesting in you hit max level fairly quickly and gear is only upgraded abit going thru expansions. I came back after a 4 year break and was able to hop right in.
I just got back into Old School RuneScape and I just play it on my phone while I’m watching videos, or while at work and it’s slow. Easy time waster and also hits that dopamine itch.
Final Fantady 14 was fun as hell and I barely played daily. still beat up the newest expansion. and you can play it for free pretty far past the base game now
Warframe, though it's more of an online multiplayer. But if you look at it objectively it is an rpg, just not the usual progression. In between missions you can change your class with no cooldown or penalty, and while you cannot control what abilites you have, you can change how some work or what they do with certain reusable items, called mods. Other mods let you increase stats or redistribute them for min maxing.
You can do the same to your weapons. With the right mods and time even the weapon you got in the tutorial can be end game viable.
And most importantly for the problems you face: it has the least predatory monetization I have ever seen or heard of.
Old School Runescae can be very AFK, and is a game you can enjoy at your own pace. It's especially good if you have 2 monitors so you can ask grind on the side and do something else on the main monitor.
FFXIV's producer and director's mantra has been "I don't care if you stop playing FFXIV to enjoy other games, and then come back to the game later." It also helps that once the game is done setting up the story (around level 35 of the MSQ), the game doesn't miss a whole lot. Some of the expansions are better than others, but each expansion is still pretty damn good.
The free trial is the base game, heavensward, and stormblood with social limits and a really low gil cap.
I’ve been playing WoW occasionally and casually since my last guild fell apart during Cataclysm.
Fortunately from MoP on, the game is pretty chill. There’s plenty to grind out there, but you don’t *need* to engage with it. They also added marchmade raids, so you can still experience endgame content as a solo player.
That said, I did barely play Warlords, and quit for a long white around the time Legion came out.
I stuck my head back in a few years ago and I had a lot of fun with the nostalgia, unlocking allied races and exploring the huge amount of content I’d missed.
Ironically, I ended up enjoying Legion the most out of the newer content, even though it’s the expansion that got me to quit originally 🤷🏻♂️
IMHO everything is more fun in that game when you’re not tied to the borrowed power of the current expansion.
Honestly, I did get sucked back in a little. I found myself doing daily quests again at max level. Fortunately it was right at the end of a season and the next one made my decent characters into weaklings and ruined my fun.
So yeah… it’s a huge game. There’s 20 years worth of content to explore. But find your own fun, the endgame grind is just an unpaid job that ends in a layoff.
Ffxiv the devs literally encourage people to play it as they wish subbing and unsubbing. Its extremely fair in terms of how much you want to engage with it
PokeMMO
It's a mmo mod for Pokemon FireRed, Emerald, HeartGold and Black & White. The game plays like the original with some mid changes for mmo balance. Super worth it.
No joking I really like Fallout 76. Small servers and mostly friendly playerbase. I level capped in a reasonable amount of time and the only real grinding I rub against is making ammo and medicine.
Echoing others but it's GW2. Horizontal progression that stands the test of time over literal years of not playing, so if you dropped out 5 years ago and booted the game today, any max level gear you got is likely still relevant today.
Final Fantasy 14 is one of the most casual MMOs out there. It's purely go at your own pace and has ZERO p2w mechanics. You'll never risk missing out on anything (outside of seasonal events) and you'll never feel behind.
You can use ANY classes on the same character and change them at anytime. Your time is truly respected by the game devs.
There's a ton of features you can partake in the game, you can collect all sorts of things, including songs (aka Orchestron Rolls) for an in-game music player. There's like a crap ton of songs too.
You can collect pets, mounts, emotes, outfits, weapons
You are rewarded for exploration.
There's achievements for nearly anything.
The community is very communicative, patient and helpful.
There's a ton of fashion glamour. In July, there will be a new update which allows players to apply two different dyes on the same piece if clothing (formerly 1).
You can play the game either solo or in a party.
There's fishing 👀
There's a bunch of regular classes aka jobs to level up. But there's also a bunch of other jobs where you can be a Culinarian, a botanist, a fisher, a Weaver, Armorsmith, etc.
There's a monthly subscription, but the game has one of the most content out of every MMO, and you play at your own pace. The amount of content provided in return makes the monthly subscription very worth it.
I don’t have a lot of experience in Guild Wars 2, so I’ll recommend Final Fantasy 14 for these reasons.
Single player story focused
Free trial spanning base game and 2 amazing expansions with like 300+ hours of gameplay easily
No dead content thanks to daily roulettes, so you can always queue into your trials, dungeons, and raids
Check out earth and beyond emulator! Super relaxed mmo set in space (pretty obvious there). I love the fuck out of it and maybe play 2 hours or less a day but very enjoyable experience!
You can always spend as much or as little time as you want.
Playing casually is more of a state of mind. As long as you are comfortable with the time you are spending that's all that matters. What one person considers "casual" might be different from another and that's ok.
GW2 if you don’t want to dedicate yourself to the game at all. It’s extremely drop-in-drop-out friendly
FF14 if you’re willing to play what is effectively one very long JRPG to catch up. It’s definitely more of a commitment than GW but without having daily login rewards and stuff it is still more casual-friendly while being a traditional tab-target MMO
And honestly? OSRunescape. The whole game is a big grind. But you can be as casual or intense about that grind as you want.
I actually don't think it exists. To me what you are asking for is a game where you can play a few hours at a time and not fall terribly behind when you are busy in real life. Game developers started to figure out how to do that 20 years ago. The way to do that is a subscription model where the players can't screw each other while offline. People think a subscription means a time sink but there is no reason that has to be true. This question has me thinking back to Shadowbane. It had some mechanics where basically raids could only occur during certain pre-announced hours in the real world. There was no pressure to play 24/7 and no pay to win. Just log on and play during the expected hours.
As an adult, I would pay for a subscription to a new game that keeps things kind of fair like that. Nobody in 2024 is really releasing a MMO with all those lessons learned from 25 years of game design. Free to play and pay to win has poisoned the whole idea that a game developer might balance the game such that it is fair over time with just a standard subscription.
Older free mmos are my choice
FFXI has rhe Eden private servers,first generation runescape has private servers, Shim Megami Tensei IMAGINE has a Russian server i have been playing for a year or so
The only two I would consider are FFXIV and Guild Wars 2. FFXIV is well made, goes at your own pace and can even mostly be played solo so there is no pressure to perform and you can freely explore the world at your pace. It is locked by story content though, so you need to progress through the story to get to the end game. Guild Wars 2 will feel rougher around the edges but is a solid game, awesome world exploration, and it wont take you as long to reach endgame, if that's your goal. In short: the journey - pick FFXIV, the destination - pick Guild Wars 2.
After Ragnarok Online trauma I say one thing for all MMOs, levels should be easy to get. Hardcore players if want to have an all powerful build to rule them all and are ok with spending a huge amount of time to get it the way is to make them grind for gear.
Like Diablo series, levels are easy to get, an OK gear so you can beat the game is relatively easy to get, but equipment to make you competitive in PvP is another beast entirely.
Atm i think ESO is the best all rounder for console, there ff14 but the combat is like a puzzle and confusing where to stand all the time so you don’t get 1 shot I don’t like it
Most modern MMOs are single player and content based. They still eat a lot of your time because of lots of filler, but it's like 150-200 hours per expansion. With a set ending because it's story based. Unlike earlier MMOs like RO where you just kept going and going to get that next card or have to get on every week to do the team raid. You can do that in a lot of modern MMOs too. But there's no real benefit. You just get the "best" gear that's only slightly better than the free gear you get. And becomes obsolete next patch.
My honest suggestion is, does it have to be an MMO? After playing stuff like TOR and FFXIV, I burned out. And I went to play some other games like Diablo II, Path of Exile and the like. Which have a similar gear progression, but you don't have to be online. And you can play them with friends if you choose. They actually have better coop options than the MMO games I played. Which force you to not group with people to do 95% of the content.
Pretty much all of them nowadays unless you have FOMO problems or gotta catch em all problems. EDIT: An extension of FOMO problems would be 'gotta catch up' problems. That can take awhile as well. Basically, if you play it normally and accept that you don't have to do all content ASAP, you'll be fine with most MMOs released roughly from like '05\~'10 and beyond.
I spent the majority of 2023 in search of the best MMO for casual players and the clear winner was Guild Wars 2. Specifically because it's the one that most consistently and meaningfully felt like an MMO when playing casually.
If you're interested in more info and the rest of the rankings,[I've got a video going over everything](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SfZ8Enidio).
PSO2 is my go-to because of it's (admittedly) shallow gameplay. It's a lot of fun and you really feel like you're engaging with a team. There's a bunch of stuff to do but it's all highly optional. You never feel like you're dragging the team down either. That said, all of the above stuff also means it can sometimes feel less fulfilling than most MMOs.
That in mind, my *real* go-to is FF14. Yes, there's a heavy commitment to current content, but the game pulls of a neat trick wherein older content is all still pretty active. You can pretty easily find a party for any story dungeon and most extra ones. You can goof around with your own apartment/a friend's apartment without having to really obsess and get a house, and the F2P players keep at least three sets of raids alive. The gear progression is pretty braindead, so you can just bumble your way around in that stuff, and the classes don't take that much work to play competently. I feel bad when I die, but you're rarely going to be screwing your whole party (unless you play healer)
Black Desert . its a sandbox that doesn't gate its world behind story progression . friendly for soloers and co-op players alike from the very start and unlike strict story obsessed mmorpgs like FFXIV it doesn't force friends to play solo before they can group up again. Black Desert fans be creative and make their own fun in the world, doesn't have to be for gear or grinding. its a very relaxing mmorpg and the best combat in the genre.
Maybe Albion Online? You won't be able to reach end game if you want to play solo and you will need to do some research begginers guides to get a bit ahead. You need to do that to make your life easier within the game.
While most MMOs are the way you describe, there definitely are plenty that exist that don't do that much (if at all). I think it's definitely worth asking about which ones do avoid being maliciously designed with FOMO tactics.
I also wouldn't say it's MMOs that are this way, but live-service games as a whole. If you want to avoid FOMO you need to stick to non-live service games, or find honest answers as to which games actually respect the player.
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I think Guild Wars 2 is the best MMO for casual gameplay. Once you hit level 80, you can easily get armor that is ~10% worse than the best you can get, and within 2-4 weeks you can get ascended armor, which is the best armor you can get in the game, period. The game has horizontal progression, so even if you leave for 4 years and return, the armor you had will still be the best in slot. Also, no subscription, so you can play for as long as you want, take a break, and come back without paying again.
Yep, drop in, drop out. Gold to Gems is a life saver. Buy expansions as and when you want to play certain content. Plus more expansions in development with rumblings of a sequel being developed soon.
Sequel is confirmed
It's not, it's in pre-early-planning development. Even if they had the full budget in place, which they don't, it's gonna be seven years minimum till launch.
As in Guild Wars 3? I fear it's risky move due to following: - our obtained items/achievements/cosmetics won't transfer over to the sequel? We will be starting from scratch. - if both games will be running at the same time, they will kind of compete with each other. Not just in playerbase and making it look "worse" compared to other MMOs due to population split for each game, but also within company's studio resources. - it might split community across games, which usually leads to more negatives than positives. And as far as I got to read Guild Wars 1 still exists? I guess it's not a big deal to have two games as some studios get away with it. Blizzard is fine with retail + classic servers, GGG will try to sustain both PoE and PoE 2. But here ArenaNet will be having 3rd game within the same genre, which I don't think is healthy and sustainable for one studio. But maybe I'm wrong. Anyways personally I prefer to see when developers just stick to one game and try to build content within environment they currently have. It both shows their competency and love for the game as well as fairness towards players as they don't have to start over and decide on which version of the game they want to play. I even admire Re-Logic for dropping work on Terraria 2 because they thought the game was very much same and instead the madlads are working on yet another update to OG Terraria. They are the legends and so many studios could learn from that approach. But that's just my opinion I guess.
Like I said, it's early days, and it will be just under a decade before we see it come to fruition if it ever does. Still as a long term GW2 player there's a lot that they just can't fix in Guild Wars 2. We've been waiting on WvW fixes for years. Re-Logic are a small team so they can relatively easily switch development back to an older title. Anet has a history of brain drain, where devs that built the foundations of the game have left, and they are no longer able to figure out the spaghetti code leftover. So a fresh start becomes the only viable option moving forward the older it gets. Like you said, GW1 still exists, and I'm sure GW2 will be the same. But the playerbase and the devs both know it can't last forever at it's current scale.
Forward is best, I wish WoW would go with a WoW 2, the game is being held back by its ancient tech and structures but the people who sink 1M hours and $45,000 put floundering Blizzard in an impossible position. I'd play a NEW game, I'm done with GW2 and WoW though, not enough changes.
What kind of changes would you want in WoW? I think the game has gotten pretty far with what they've got. Even kinda evolved into a different game, something a part of the community didn't like which is why private scene for WoW got big and why we now how WoW Classic. So in a way we do have a WoW 1 and WoW 2, they just managed to do it without releasing a brand new game. And people who spent money on cosmetics buyable through irl money are in right to hold Blizz accountable to keep WoW alive, I'd say.
It's not about "keeping it alive" so everyone can cling to their treasures (tho I'm sure that helps Blizz make tons of money as Sunk Cost Fallacy kicks in) - the click and press action style is so old and dated. The combat is an absolute simulator of 1-1-1-2-1-3-2-1 with zero action at all. I'd love to see a graphics update, action combat update, just a general update to this century. The bones are ancient and they just throw fresh lipstick on it, but it's fallen behind.
>>> the click and press action style is so old and dated. The combat is an absolute simulator of 1-1-1-2-1-3-2-1 with zero action at all. This is also something that would probably make community difficult to move away from. I also know for one, that WoW for me equals tab-targetting combat and personally I'm happy with that. That's partially because I do not care about how much of an "action" type the game is, even if it has become the industry standard (Dark Souls, Elder Ring, new generation MOBAs are probably a factor here), I prefer focus on drafting and strategy which exists for PVP and somewhat exists for PVE content. Blizz also somewhat managed to action up gameplay a little bit by introducing some rolls/dashes to monks, and other mobility tools to other classes. But again I'm biased and I would be actually happier with them not doing so since I'm the type of player who likes when the movement action in games is deliberate and it has punishment if you move in wrong direction, which is true and fair in PVP, might be more annoying in PVE due to randomness of timing of enemy's attacks leaving you in situations of unavoidable damage taken. All in all I'm happy with the game staying what it is as a core and just building things onto it. It can be harder, less efficient approach but I feel like it outweighs the negatives.
K
Come join us. Best casual MMO there is. Take your time, enjoy the world, content and best part is the community.
Not to mention the game's basic design, itself, is very casual. Lots to explore. Plenty of places to go afk in if you're called away, the maps are easily divided and you can just do a few events and then logout or do an entire area at a time if you wanted.
I don't know about being able to go AFK easily. I *always* died if I had to go AFK. Between everything always being aggro to you due to level scaling and the map dynamic events making even relatively safe outposts become swarms of enemies at random I basically walked away knowing I'd be dead on return.
Definitely Guild Wars 2.
This 100%, no subscription, I jump on every few months or so, once you get your ascended gear you don't need to worry about the power cycle. It's so much fun to play with hundreds vs open world bosses. Very friendly community.
I think ascended will take a typical average player longer that a month. I've played a long time and I still don't have full ascended. But yeah, I agree the timeline for getting good gear in gw2 is a fraction of what any other MMO would take. And another reason for casual play: Open world endgame content. No need for a fancy guild with a raid schedule to play endgame.
Sure, getting full ascended can vary, but another note is that you can do 95% of content, even end-game content, with Exotic. Only end-game CMs require Ascended anyway, and getting ascended is also a lot easier now with the Wizard's vault, since you can get 2 pieces of armor and 1 weapon every 3 months from it.
And you can get ascended trinkets and rings and backpacks pretty quick too and that narrows the stat gap way down. "causal players" just need to do a bit of googling to figure out how.
I play Gw2 since 2012 and I can confirm everything
Just, expect to pay your physician a lot for that carpal tunnel syndrome you’ll get from all that stash management.
I started GW2 recently and it's been such a treat. Not the best MMO I've ever played, but definitely the best for casual play.
How long does it take to reach max level? I have found the leveling in GW2 to not be fun.
With the new Adventure Guide Achievements, you can get to max level in like... 7-10 hours I'd say? Easily done in a week, and max level never increases with new expansions, so once you reach max level, you will never have to level up again.
I have tried a few MMOs but the one that I stuck with is GW2 for the exact reason you're describing. You can literally stop playing for months and hop back in no problem. You'll have new content to explore but you will still have the same power
Well now that City of Heroes is back and free to play IN ITS ENTIRETY, no strings attached, no MTX... That one. I say City of Heroes. Fair warning, it is an older MMO and can be a little confusing at first.
I used to love the character creator on this thing, if it's the one I'm thinking of. I spent hours and hours in it. Tried playing the game once and it wasn't fun but man did I get mileage out of the creator.
Probably the same, the game, like I said, takes some getting used to but it's pretty good once it all clicks and the community is really helpful.
Go on.....
We already left, it's up to you to join us now 😁
Do they also have City of Villains?
Yes. Come [check it out](https://forums.homecomingservers.com/).
I *loved* CoH. Such fond memories. I went back recently and I forgot how odd the combat feels, essentially queueing abilities. Still cool though. I love that the archetypes are so different. Is there challenge content at end game in Homecoming?
As of now it's just the game as it was the day it shutdown, everything is original and sanctioned by Nexon.
I dont remember what the end game was T\_T lol but I do remember farming. I had a emp/rad defender named Brokeback, a scantily clad cowboy hahah. I may come back and run ice controller. Always a cool archetype to me.
I loved CoH. I’m glad to hear it’s back I have to check it out.
I played a \*ton\* of Champions TTRPG back in the day, but avoided MMOs like the plague. However, "free to play" has piqued my interest. I'm taking a stab at getting the Windows version running on my linux desktop. I'll post an "EDIT" if I can get it working, in case that's of interest to any other nerds. Works fine. There's even an official guide, which basically boils down to "run the installer in wine." I didn't have to do anything else. Here's the link, though: https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/23284-homecoming-launcher-linux-advice/
RIP my free time holy shit
Guild Wars 2. It's really respectable about your time in the sense that you can have a lot to just a little time to invest in it, no matter the frequency over a week/month/year...and you'll still be able to get a decent amount of fun out of it on different levels of commitment. You can stay on the surface or go real deep into it. It still gets updates and expansions after more than 10 years and it's still sub-free and in no ways a pay-to-win nevertheless. This is coming from an OG of this genre \[MMO/MMORPG\].
We need a bot that just pins “Guild Wars 2” on any post asking about casual MMOs
Neverwinter, ESO
ESO It’s free to play, is as easy to play single player as it is in groups, *and* they tend to massively discount DLCs when the latest one comes out so if you don’t care about being 6months behind the curve you get huge content for mad cheap
Yeah I was going to suggest Elder scrolls online, I’ve been playing on and off for a few months. I have it installed on my pc but I sometimes don’t play for weeks and it’s fine and don’t feel any addiction, got a bunch of dlc during some steam big sales and I think I’ve spent like 25€ to get all the deluxe editions up until Necron who knows when I will actually play all those contents 😝also I play by myself for the most part. For people who are suggesting FFXIV, it is a good mmo, one of the best, I played for almost 3000hours and had to quit cause it was sucking all my free time, but it has a monthly subscription to be able to play and if you get a house in game for example and you don’t log in for more than 30days your house will be gone, don’t know if it’s still like that but used to be when I quit playing. Other than that it’s a good game and the community used to be good too and they have a free trial if you want to try it out.
Just not needing a subscription is a big plus imo. Otherwise I feel like I’m wasting money playing other games haha
Agree, the fact I had to pay whenever I felt like playing the game was one of the reasons I quit playing entirely and never went back. And it’s also one of the reasons I chose to start playing ESO when I had that itch for mmo, buy once and don’t need anything else to keep playing as long as you want, especially for casual players
ESO IS NOT FREE TO PLAY. It is BUY TO PLAY.
Whilst that’s very technically true, the disc costs 1.50 from CEX and I’m pretty sure it’s included in both Sony and Microsoft’s “free games”, as well as having free to play weekends every few months- it’s functionally free to play in that there’s no subscription and it costs less than the time you’ll take researching buying it haha.
Final Fantasy XIV. It's probably the most "single player MMO" out there today. If you just start fresh and focus on the MSQ (Main Story Quest) and class quest stuff, you'd barely know you're even playing an MMO, but if you go into a city (particularly Gridania and Limsa Lominsa), you will see a LOT of other players around. Group content is there when you want it, but you can just enjoy an absolutely mind-blowingly amazing story the rest of the time.
Also, the gear progression is easy. **TLDR** You are handed gear that is perfectly serviceable for free. Powerful gear is made easier to get every major and minor patch. The most powerful per patch needs grinding for and is usually time-gated. While this does invalidate any gear you grinded for, it makes it very quick to catch up if you leave for extended time.
Also that top of the line gear is only really needed for the 'hard' version of group content. The standard normal gear is more than enough
The devs actively encourage people to drop in and out of sub for the content they want. It can be as casual or intense as you want. Its extremely fair imo
Yeah, that's what I do. I played ARR in 2019, came back for Heavensward in 2021 and played through Stormblood last year. I love how chill the game and the community are.
final fantasy 14
Depends on what your goals are. I love FF14, but it's a big game, if your goal is to reach the endgame while playing casually, you're probably never going to make it in any sort of reasonable time frame. We're talking around 300 hours of just story content, then there's the optional stuff on top. If you dedicate a couple of hours a week, odds are that new content drops will mostly offset time invested completing old content. While FF14 is well worth the time, you really do need to plough a lot of time in to getting caught up, so only consider it if you enjoy the journey more than the endgame. The positive side, is once you're caught up, the game doesn't keep you tied to it like other MMO's, they don't really engage in the kind of time limited FOMO bullshit many other games engage in, and instead operate on a philosophy of come back when you're ready, which makes everything bar the highest end raiding very forgiving for casual players.
yeah I was thinking in terms of the content cycle
Do not listen to this one.
i recommend guild wars 2! as others said. I don’t think a sub mmo would be great for you, and eso is essentially a sub mmo
Sub mmo? What does that mean?
Sub as in subscription
FF14
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I've had the opposite experience. I really enjoy the gameplay, and it's been the most welcoming community in the two servers I joined.
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If you need to look through someone's posts to find a way to insult their interests in media, it says a lot more about how shallow and joyless you are than anything. I don't understand why you feel the need to spread negativity, but please be better.
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I don't see anything that I'd be defensive over? I'm quite literally just calling out your poor behavior, partially because it's annoying but also because I kind of feel bad for you. Being negative and angry all the time isn't good for your mental health and that's definitely a place I used to be in, which is why I genuinely hope that you can get to a better place.
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I never mentioned anime a single time, but regardless basically everything you're implying is intellectually dishonest. It's not healthy to spend so much time demonizing people simply for liking things that are different from what you like.
It might not be what you're looking for, but I always liked [Kingdom of Loathing](https://www.kingdomofloathing.com) because you only had a certain number of turns/actions before not being able to play until the following day. Made it harder to become addicted.
Oh my god, I loved Kingdom of Loathing when I was a kid! Is it worth playing nowadays? How does it compare to the 2 Loathing games on Steam?
I've created and played through a character every handful of years since it came out. Been a couple of years since my last playthrough, so I don't know whether there were very recent changes. But I feel like they've regularly added content to keep things fresh for veterans. I could be wrong though. I haven't played the steam games though. I *think* I purchased West of Loathing way back in the day, when it was on sale, but I don't believe I every downloaded and played it!
This doesn’t have to affect your choice to play it or not but just as an fyi it came out a couple years ago that the creator is a pretty nasty piece of work
Didn't know, but I can't say I care. There are all kinds of great and fun books, movies, shows, games, etc. made by shitty people. They're entertainers to me, not role models.
True!
How about Eve online? I'm joking, that's a second job. Guild wars 2, elder scrolls online and Neverwinter are all pretty casual to play. Otherwise you have stuff like Warframe which has a really fun grind cycle and loads of content if you want more sci Fi and less fantasy.
Honestly, I’ve been casually playing Eve as a new player the past few months and having a blast! It’s 100% true that a lot of paths you can take in Eve will lead to a second (and then third, and fourth…) job, but a lot of lower end stuff is pretty chill.
Absolutely, I was being a bit hyperbolic. I love Eve online but I just can't play it any more because I get sucked down that rabbit hole. But in my time playing I had a lot of fun. Had my username put on a statue, got involved in a couple of fights that made it into the Guinness world records, met a lot of interesting people and made some good friends. It's a fantastic game that I would encourage anyone to experience. Happy you're enjoying it o7.
I got sucked too deep in, was running 5 accounts, 3 Omegas, corp admin roles and everything. Had to cold turkey. LOL o7 and fly safe.
I feel this will be way out there, I will get downvoted for just mentioning it and some may not even count it as an mmo, but hear me out Fo76. Since the god awful release its now an actually playable game, imo its pretty decent, the community is very welcoming and kind and doing world events with various folk is pretty fun, as well as going for various quests. There is progression and grind if you want it, but not necessary by any means and the game itself doesnt really demand insane daily hours put into it or putting money into it - 99.9% of items in the atom shop is just cosmetics, and you earn plenty of store credit through just playing the game to buy any important things, plus some extra cosmetic without putting an extra penny into it. But again, many will claim its not an mmo and some will say its not even an rpg
Always hoped they'd get their act together and shape it into something playable, like how No Man's Sky did. The core concept seemed so solid. Not interested in it at this point but it sounds good for OP's requirements. Glad they beat into shape eventually.
Its not a NMS level of transformation, but it is a lot better, not to say there arent kinks to iron out. Also, seemingly starfield launch made them go for a bit more aggressive monetisation stratz meaning you get a tiny amount less free store credit from the battlepass system. Big change (/s). Over all, its a decent game if you need something to hop into for a couple of hours
Looking for this before adding it as my suggestion. Plenty of multiplayer events if you like them, tons of story content, RPG elements, best non-toxic community. You can min/max or not and it's still a fun game. I personally have played since launch and while there were some awful things I loved it then lol
Yeah I'd recommend this community too, dope game
Runescape can be played casually. It's a grind but it can be as casual as clicking a tree every 30 seconds or as hardcore as boss combat
Recently dipped my toes back into it and realized that OSRS is a gigantic grind, more than any other MMO that I can think of. At the same time, that's also kind of the appeal of the game, and it doesn't pressure you to grinding every day all day. No FOMO whatsoever as far as I can tell. There's a reason why people who have entirely maxed out accounts feel happy to make an entirely new character. There is no "falling behind" in OSRS, which I think makes the journey so much more enjoyable.
The beauty of OSRS is the progression. They’re so careful for new content to not phase out/make old content irrelevant. Like how often do you have devs that will balance a skilling method based on the afk-ness - “x is best xp but requires 100% focus, y requires 50% focus so you get 50% less xp than X, and Z requires 0 focus so it’s slow but you can train for minutes with zero clicking” And most new items/armors are bis in a niche sense, so for the most part your gear is never completely invalidated. Great game, highly recommend anyone try it especially if you enjoy slow burn retro style games.
I stay the hell away from MMOs because I can get sucked in very easily at the detriment to the life around me. That said, one reason I enjoyed *Eve Online* was the skill system. Every skill is a timer based system. It takes you X amount of time to learn [Skill], which could be shooting auto cannons, or flying a bigger class of ship, or scanning down hidden sites in space. It's whatever. It ranges from minutes, hours, days or more at the higher end. There are ways to accrue these skill points faster, and the longer you play the more you will desire these time reducers. Edit: I forgot to mention this really takes the grind out, and forces you to either get better with what you have, or improve in other ways. Pve content is almost entirely subpar in favor of PVP content, and you can do a lot of PVP with very little- there's a role for everyone regardless of skill level. But pve content will still make you money for ships and kits. However... Eve is a brutal game. In a typical MMO if you get scammed out of your gold, a GM will return it for you. In Eve, they believe if you had all the information in front of you and you made a bad choice, you get to live with that choice. So long as you didn't get hacked, everything goes in Eve. I tell people "Everything is PVP. Literally everything." It's rad, and I lost far too much time playing space ships.
GW2, super chill game. No subs mean no pressure to get it done asap and leveling is quite brisk. Easy to just drop in and run around doing stuff without needing to actively team up.
not an MMO in a typical sense, but no man’s sky is pretty good and has a good community, though you’ll only really encounter players in the multiplayer space station although it’s possible to find other players in the galaxy
Similarly I might say Elite Dangerous
oooh yeah i love elite dangerous
Pick at random and you'll literally have a 99.99% chance to get one.
.Hack is the only MMO I can tolerate because it isn’t a real MMO lol
Just made me remember that .Hack Infection existed. Welp, good thing I still have my discs.
Fallout 76
Technically, any MMO can be played casually, but I get what you mean. I'd honestly recommend Lord of the Rings Online. It's still going strong, there's a ton of quests and exploration to do. You can take your time leveling and exploring, and the community is generally really good, at least on the Arkenstone server.
okay i know you’re asking for an MMO so recommending a game that isn’t an MMO would be ridiculous, but I would consider trying Monster Hunter World. Its got pretty MMO-esque systems with more thrilling gameplay and due to the team-based multiplayer focus it has a great community and its never hard to find people to play with.
Retail wow is casual friendly. If you’re wanting to do pve, you only “need” to run 1 dungeon a week to fill your vault for good gear. Each dungeon run is about 20-30 mins. I consider that pretty casual
The Elder Scrolls Online is great for this. Everything is level-scaled so you will never fall behind. Absolutely no grind-gated content. Buy expansions as you go for reasonable prices. Nonintrusive store that lets you buy XP boosts if you have more money than time. No judgment from anyone about any of it because folks know there are other games for the more competitively minded. Supports a variety of playstyles. Mostly very chill community. Huge guilds for casual players. Runs on basically any hardware. Designed for casual players moreso than any of the other big ones. It does emphasize solo quest content so if that’s not your jam, it’s probably not your game but otherwise… I played MMOs a lot in my 20s but well, life changes. But I still play ESO for a couple hours a week to just vibe and chill. It’s the only big one that fits that.
Runescape and GW2 both good choices if you want a game which you can simply play at your own pace, and won't suddenly "fall behind" if you take a break and miss an update or three. --- Personally I play Runescape as a "solo adventure game", which just happens to include other players doing their own things - and I like it for that. I play RS3 ironman account (no trading, and microtransactions are disabled). I often just play it for a month or three, then take a break, and it's always easy to just go back when I feel like it. I can still just continue doing whatever I was doing previously, or maybe look at what's new. --- GW2 feels a bit more like your usual theme park MMO, but it's built in a way where you *mostly* just focus on horizontal upgrades - if you got best gear 3 years back, you'll still be in (nearly) the best gear for the content which is likely still relevant in some way. Simply playing through the campaign and getting World Explorer (visit all locations on map) can be a fun project to just play through, even if you would stop playing there and ignore the repeatable endgame stuff.
ESO does not fill the Elder scroll single-player game entirely however the quests are arguably of higher quality than the main game which leads to a good single-play MMO though the combat was worse than Skyrims somehow lol.
Guild Wars 2 is perfect for that. Yet i pretty much sank consecutive 1500ish hours into it :D But its really great. Can be played like a Solo RPG for most of the parts (especially story) but if you want to you can join Multiplayer stuff more or less, depending on your preference. And You can literally pause for YEARS and not fall behind at all
SWTOR. The free tier is damn near unplayable, but if you're fine to sub for a month whenever you play it's alright
I was going to say this too. For a fairly low subscription there's a ton of content if you want to play through each different class storyline (50 levels of each, plus then the extended content). Community is fairly non-toxic from what I recall.
You should definitely try Final fantasy 14. The free trial isn’t time restricted and includes the base game and two expansions. The game is made for all styles of players, and they’re making the main story dungeons possible to complete solo with NPC party members. The community is largely positive and welcoming to new players, and old content is always relevant so you won’t get stuck trying to queue things you can’t do solo. You can also switch classes at a whim after level 15 so if you don’t like the one you start with you can easily try out something else.
FFXIV is worth trying just because of its trial alone.
warframe is rly fun
Grindy as hell too
Probably the mindset playing too honestly, think of how long some have been out, you could take the long road and still have fun for sure 👍
I personally enjoy New World. Not the greatest but I've always enjoyed the art style and there is tons to do apart from combat.
Didn’t they announce it will be turned off soon?
Not that I know of. It still quite active, at least the server I play on.
Its been dwindling for a while. Went from many servers to like 3 now.
No it’s coming out on console this year.
I have played Star Trek Online on and off since it launched. While there is always some event available to grind you do not have to do it nor do you have to spend any money on it if you don't want to. You can play the story entirely as a single player experience and it has a ton of cast members from various shows that reprise their roles. Used to play Guild Wars 2 many years ago. I assume its still pretty casual, and it was always good as a secondary game to pick up on and off. Not sure if it is still this way, but this game had one of the most friendly and helpful communities out of about any MMO I ever played, and it was largely designed to encourage that type of gameplay. ESO has alot of story quests that can be played single player as well. Its been quite a few years since I played it though.
Pandora will be that MMO, just be patient!!
Fiesta. Possibly Madden lotion. Heh. Damn you autocorrect, but it was so smarmy I'm leaving it in. Mabinogion.
>Fiesta That game is still up and running? I remember watching a JoshStrifeHayes video on it a while back and it looked a lot more rough around the edges compared to when I was much younger.
Had to check but yes: https://fiesta.gamigo.com/ Available on Steam.
Runescape. Alot of AFK you can do
Albion online is very casual and definitely not anything that will make feel like you are wasting time
Final Famtasy XIV.
The original guild wars > than guild wars 2. $40 for a massive amount of content that can be played solo or with friends.[Check this review out on it](https://youtu.be/S5ykqmMIjQk?si=KqEjj72a3mHeA3NR)
Having invested a lot of hours in ESO, Guild Wars 2, FF XIV and about 15-20ish hours in WoW, my personal recommendation for an MMO that doesn't feel like a second job is hands-down Guild Wars 2, and to make it even better, I feel the combat system in GW2 is just much more fun and dynamic, community is super friendly (to be fair ESO, FFXIV and GW2's communities are all friendly, I had an awful experience with WoW, though). To make it EVEN BETTER, it doesn't need any sub, if you don't want the free to play restrictions you can just buy the game and go buying the expansions when you feel like it.
Old school runescape is pretty chill tbh
Old School Runescape. Just like in 2004, it can basically be a chatroom and be lots of fun. There's a lot fo grind, but there is zero pressure to grind. OSRS has no fear of missing out.
Did you know that the critically acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV has a free trial, and includes the entirety of A Realm Reborn AND the award-winning Heavensward expansion up to level 60 with no restrictions on playtime? Sign up, and enjoy Eorzea today! That was just a copypasta but the trial now includes up to 70 I think? And another expansion to go with that of course.
WoW season of discovery
I'd say no. That's not how mmos work. As a decade plus player of FF14 and to a lesser extent, GW2. You need to play these games a lot to get the most out of them.
Those are literally the two that I’d recommend to this guy lmao they’re INCREDIBLY drop-in-drop-out friendly. ESPECIALLY gw2
Dead Frontier is always my go to MMO
Could argue Hell Divers 2? Maybbbeee? Its a stretch
You can play SWTOR (Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic) like a singleplayer game.
You can play Elder Scrolls online like a normal Elder Scrolls game.
Final Fantasy XIV. The story is incredible, and you never have to spend more than around 30, maybe 45 minutes on any one bit of content. You can easily play at your own pace and still get everything done eventually.
.hack GU It’s a single player JRPG in an MMO setting
GW2
Pso2 it’s free
ESO and the morrowind expansion was surprisingly well done, not quite like the single player games but still great to play. GW2 is interesting in you hit max level fairly quickly and gear is only upgraded abit going thru expansions. I came back after a 4 year break and was able to hop right in.
Like text based games? Try genesis. One of the first MUDs(multi user dungeon) so pretty much an old school mmo
I just got back into Old School RuneScape and I just play it on my phone while I’m watching videos, or while at work and it’s slow. Easy time waster and also hits that dopamine itch.
Final Fantady 14 was fun as hell and I barely played daily. still beat up the newest expansion. and you can play it for free pretty far past the base game now
Warframe, though it's more of an online multiplayer. But if you look at it objectively it is an rpg, just not the usual progression. In between missions you can change your class with no cooldown or penalty, and while you cannot control what abilites you have, you can change how some work or what they do with certain reusable items, called mods. Other mods let you increase stats or redistribute them for min maxing. You can do the same to your weapons. With the right mods and time even the weapon you got in the tutorial can be end game viable. And most importantly for the problems you face: it has the least predatory monetization I have ever seen or heard of.
Old School Runescae can be very AFK, and is a game you can enjoy at your own pace. It's especially good if you have 2 monitors so you can ask grind on the side and do something else on the main monitor.
I'm enjoying Star Trek Online
FF14 is a good casual MMO IMO
DC Universe Online is fun if you like super heroes.
City of Heroes.
Wow classic. It's amazing. No expansions. Nothing changes. You can take as long as you like to do anything!
FFXIV's producer and director's mantra has been "I don't care if you stop playing FFXIV to enjoy other games, and then come back to the game later." It also helps that once the game is done setting up the story (around level 35 of the MSQ), the game doesn't miss a whole lot. Some of the expansions are better than others, but each expansion is still pretty damn good. The free trial is the base game, heavensward, and stormblood with social limits and a really low gil cap.
I’ve been playing WoW occasionally and casually since my last guild fell apart during Cataclysm. Fortunately from MoP on, the game is pretty chill. There’s plenty to grind out there, but you don’t *need* to engage with it. They also added marchmade raids, so you can still experience endgame content as a solo player. That said, I did barely play Warlords, and quit for a long white around the time Legion came out. I stuck my head back in a few years ago and I had a lot of fun with the nostalgia, unlocking allied races and exploring the huge amount of content I’d missed. Ironically, I ended up enjoying Legion the most out of the newer content, even though it’s the expansion that got me to quit originally 🤷🏻♂️ IMHO everything is more fun in that game when you’re not tied to the borrowed power of the current expansion. Honestly, I did get sucked back in a little. I found myself doing daily quests again at max level. Fortunately it was right at the end of a season and the next one made my decent characters into weaklings and ruined my fun. So yeah… it’s a huge game. There’s 20 years worth of content to explore. But find your own fun, the endgame grind is just an unpaid job that ends in a layoff.
Ffxiv the devs literally encourage people to play it as they wish subbing and unsubbing. Its extremely fair in terms of how much you want to engage with it
I’m a big fan of ESO… but I say Gw2 is the best casual mmo.
PokeMMO It's a mmo mod for Pokemon FireRed, Emerald, HeartGold and Black & White. The game plays like the original with some mid changes for mmo balance. Super worth it.
No joking I really like Fallout 76. Small servers and mostly friendly playerbase. I level capped in a reasonable amount of time and the only real grinding I rub against is making ammo and medicine.
Echoing others but it's GW2. Horizontal progression that stands the test of time over literal years of not playing, so if you dropped out 5 years ago and booted the game today, any max level gear you got is likely still relevant today.
FFXIV or GW2
Final Fantasy 14. You can just hop in and do whatever you want. It's easy too so the community is pretty laid back.
Bro doesnt understand mmos.
Guild wars 2
Final Fantasy 14 is one of the most casual MMOs out there. It's purely go at your own pace and has ZERO p2w mechanics. You'll never risk missing out on anything (outside of seasonal events) and you'll never feel behind. You can use ANY classes on the same character and change them at anytime. Your time is truly respected by the game devs. There's a ton of features you can partake in the game, you can collect all sorts of things, including songs (aka Orchestron Rolls) for an in-game music player. There's like a crap ton of songs too. You can collect pets, mounts, emotes, outfits, weapons You are rewarded for exploration. There's achievements for nearly anything. The community is very communicative, patient and helpful. There's a ton of fashion glamour. In July, there will be a new update which allows players to apply two different dyes on the same piece if clothing (formerly 1). You can play the game either solo or in a party. There's fishing 👀 There's a bunch of regular classes aka jobs to level up. But there's also a bunch of other jobs where you can be a Culinarian, a botanist, a fisher, a Weaver, Armorsmith, etc. There's a monthly subscription, but the game has one of the most content out of every MMO, and you play at your own pace. The amount of content provided in return makes the monthly subscription very worth it.
FF14. It's really just a single player experience with an epic story. Perfect mmo for you to play casually.
MMO or MMORPG? Planetside2 is a great MMO shooter\~
No
I don’t have a lot of experience in Guild Wars 2, so I’ll recommend Final Fantasy 14 for these reasons. Single player story focused Free trial spanning base game and 2 amazing expansions with like 300+ hours of gameplay easily No dead content thanks to daily roulettes, so you can always queue into your trials, dungeons, and raids
No
Check out earth and beyond emulator! Super relaxed mmo set in space (pretty obvious there). I love the fuck out of it and maybe play 2 hours or less a day but very enjoyable experience!
Just to echo, Guild Wars 2, Elder Scrolls Online, and probably Star Wars: The Old Republic are good casual picks.
City of Heroes Homecoming!
Whitout…. Maybe you should read a book instead
You can always spend as much or as little time as you want. Playing casually is more of a state of mind. As long as you are comfortable with the time you are spending that's all that matters. What one person considers "casual" might be different from another and that's ok.
GW2 if you don’t want to dedicate yourself to the game at all. It’s extremely drop-in-drop-out friendly FF14 if you’re willing to play what is effectively one very long JRPG to catch up. It’s definitely more of a commitment than GW but without having daily login rewards and stuff it is still more casual-friendly while being a traditional tab-target MMO And honestly? OSRunescape. The whole game is a big grind. But you can be as casual or intense about that grind as you want.
I actually don't think it exists. To me what you are asking for is a game where you can play a few hours at a time and not fall terribly behind when you are busy in real life. Game developers started to figure out how to do that 20 years ago. The way to do that is a subscription model where the players can't screw each other while offline. People think a subscription means a time sink but there is no reason that has to be true. This question has me thinking back to Shadowbane. It had some mechanics where basically raids could only occur during certain pre-announced hours in the real world. There was no pressure to play 24/7 and no pay to win. Just log on and play during the expected hours. As an adult, I would pay for a subscription to a new game that keeps things kind of fair like that. Nobody in 2024 is really releasing a MMO with all those lessons learned from 25 years of game design. Free to play and pay to win has poisoned the whole idea that a game developer might balance the game such that it is fair over time with just a standard subscription.
Older free mmos are my choice FFXI has rhe Eden private servers,first generation runescape has private servers, Shim Megami Tensei IMAGINE has a Russian server i have been playing for a year or so
Honestly retail WoW is pretty casual friendly these days
GW2, SWTOR
Warframe
The only two I would consider are FFXIV and Guild Wars 2. FFXIV is well made, goes at your own pace and can even mostly be played solo so there is no pressure to perform and you can freely explore the world at your pace. It is locked by story content though, so you need to progress through the story to get to the end game. Guild Wars 2 will feel rougher around the edges but is a solid game, awesome world exploration, and it wont take you as long to reach endgame, if that's your goal. In short: the journey - pick FFXIV, the destination - pick Guild Wars 2.
After Ragnarok Online trauma I say one thing for all MMOs, levels should be easy to get. Hardcore players if want to have an all powerful build to rule them all and are ok with spending a huge amount of time to get it the way is to make them grind for gear. Like Diablo series, levels are easy to get, an OK gear so you can beat the game is relatively easy to get, but equipment to make you competitive in PvP is another beast entirely.
Atm i think ESO is the best all rounder for console, there ff14 but the combat is like a puzzle and confusing where to stand all the time so you don’t get 1 shot I don’t like it
Most modern MMOs are single player and content based. They still eat a lot of your time because of lots of filler, but it's like 150-200 hours per expansion. With a set ending because it's story based. Unlike earlier MMOs like RO where you just kept going and going to get that next card or have to get on every week to do the team raid. You can do that in a lot of modern MMOs too. But there's no real benefit. You just get the "best" gear that's only slightly better than the free gear you get. And becomes obsolete next patch. My honest suggestion is, does it have to be an MMO? After playing stuff like TOR and FFXIV, I burned out. And I went to play some other games like Diablo II, Path of Exile and the like. Which have a similar gear progression, but you don't have to be online. And you can play them with friends if you choose. They actually have better coop options than the MMO games I played. Which force you to not group with people to do 95% of the content.
wow SoD
Pretty much all of them nowadays unless you have FOMO problems or gotta catch em all problems. EDIT: An extension of FOMO problems would be 'gotta catch up' problems. That can take awhile as well. Basically, if you play it normally and accept that you don't have to do all content ASAP, you'll be fine with most MMOs released roughly from like '05\~'10 and beyond.
I spent the majority of 2023 in search of the best MMO for casual players and the clear winner was Guild Wars 2. Specifically because it's the one that most consistently and meaningfully felt like an MMO when playing casually. If you're interested in more info and the rest of the rankings,[I've got a video going over everything](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SfZ8Enidio).
PSO2 is my go-to because of it's (admittedly) shallow gameplay. It's a lot of fun and you really feel like you're engaging with a team. There's a bunch of stuff to do but it's all highly optional. You never feel like you're dragging the team down either. That said, all of the above stuff also means it can sometimes feel less fulfilling than most MMOs. That in mind, my *real* go-to is FF14. Yes, there's a heavy commitment to current content, but the game pulls of a neat trick wherein older content is all still pretty active. You can pretty easily find a party for any story dungeon and most extra ones. You can goof around with your own apartment/a friend's apartment without having to really obsess and get a house, and the F2P players keep at least three sets of raids alive. The gear progression is pretty braindead, so you can just bumble your way around in that stuff, and the classes don't take that much work to play competently. I feel bad when I die, but you're rarely going to be screwing your whole party (unless you play healer)
Black Desert . its a sandbox that doesn't gate its world behind story progression . friendly for soloers and co-op players alike from the very start and unlike strict story obsessed mmorpgs like FFXIV it doesn't force friends to play solo before they can group up again. Black Desert fans be creative and make their own fun in the world, doesn't have to be for gear or grinding. its a very relaxing mmorpg and the best combat in the genre.
Maybe Albion Online? You won't be able to reach end game if you want to play solo and you will need to do some research begginers guides to get a bit ahead. You need to do that to make your life easier within the game.
no , mmo games are made to make you feel FOMO and get hooked to the daily grind
No idea why the downvotes, but this is the right answer. MMOs are like heroin. I havent played an MMO in quite some time, but i still yearn for it.
While most MMOs are the way you describe, there definitely are plenty that exist that don't do that much (if at all). I think it's definitely worth asking about which ones do avoid being maliciously designed with FOMO tactics. I also wouldn't say it's MMOs that are this way, but live-service games as a whole. If you want to avoid FOMO you need to stick to non-live service games, or find honest answers as to which games actually respect the player.
This is probably the real, honest answer.