Zenless Zone Zero Closed Second Beta is coming to PC, Consoles, and Mobile! Register here: hoyo.link/0nNfFJAL MMO Players NEED to Watch This! ua-cam.com/video/Cn1s1O6jXRk/v-deo.html ▼MMO Reviews▼ World of Warcraft: ua-cam.com/video/uSNgEE7jYc4/v-deo.html Final Fantasy 14: ua-cam.com/video/LsGkNgdvIPg/v-deo.html Albion Online: ua-cam.com/video/7dDdZeWUn2M/v-deo.html New World: ua-cam.com/video/tPokng_z0TY/v-deo.html Warframe: ua-cam.com/video/qG0KYektGB8/v-deo.html Wayfinder: ua-cam.com/video/shion1DiVAs/v-deo.html Black Desert Online: ua-cam.com/video/KA0a4ZwYVrg/v-deo.html Elder Scrolls Online: ua-cam.com/video/RSpGPH5MLr0/v-deo.html Maplestory: ua-cam.com/video/9RuXxirzTUY/v-deo.html Even Online: ua-cam.com/video/CLP9xfHtpYA/v-deo.html Guild Wars 2: ua-cam.com/video/Xi8xtmnngkI/v-deo.html Star Citizen: ua-cam.com/video/06mZyHx1Q5c/v-deo.html ▼TIMESTAMPS▼ 0:00 MMO Tier List 0:13 WoW Classic 1:26 Aion 2:13 Albion Online 2:57 Zenless Zone Zero (ZZZ) 4:08 Archage 4:55 Black Desert Online (BDO) 5:34 Bless Unleashed 5:59 Dark Age of Camelot (DAOC) 6:40 DC Universe Online (DCUO) 7:11 Elyon 8:09 Elder Scrolls Online (ESO) 9:16 Eve Online 10:02 Everquest 10:51 Final Fantasy 11 (FF11) 12:22 Final Fantasy 14 (FF14) 13:45 Guild Wars 1 14:22 Guild Wars 2 15:26 Lineage 2 16:00 Lord of the Rings Online (LOTR) 16:41 Lost Ark 17:16 Mortal Online 2 17:58 Neverwinter 18:25 New World 19:27 Old School RuneScape (OSRS) 20:43 Rift 21:08 RuneScape 3 21:43 Star Trek Online 22:14 Star Wars The Old Republic (SWTOR) 23:15 Skyforge 23:53 Tera 24:41 Ultima Online 25:25 WarHammer Online 26:05 World of Warcraft (WoW) 27:08 Wizard 101 27:42 Wayfinder 28:30 Blade & Soul 28:57 Throne & Liberty (TL)
@@ReignofGuilds hi there, you can find my contact info on my Twitter profile. Looks like youtube removed the about page and my email on there was lost in the process. Thanks for the heads up!
I still miss the low level, queued "battlegrounds" of Warhammer online. Basically sub level 20, grouped with randoms. The way PvP worked with tanks being able to taunt and having actual physical presence so you couldn't just run through them was amazing. Still haven't found a class as fun to play as their melee healers - Disciple of Khaine and Warrior Priest
surprised to see wizard101 make it on a gaming list, first time that's happened for me and the game has a near and dear spot to my heart, it was my first MMO and I still have my account which I use to game every now and then with my childhood friend from 15+ years ago. game is pretty simple, storyline isn't anything to have you on your seats but if you are a big nerd as you quest through the worlds you'll notice all the references from sci-fi books, mythology, even some history references. I'd say check it out if you have free time, they usually do the entire first arc for free during december-january
Honestly I miss Tera. No other game, BDO, BnS, Vindictus, etc, has captured the same feel of combat for me. I wish they made a single player offline version. Private servers are just a hassle to setup.
There is a private one that's still going strong with how TERA left off, called Menma's Tera. I played on it for a long while when I was feeling nostalgia. it's imo the best and closest thing to what TERA was before it shut down. Literal same game files and all. Hassle? yeah. Annoying that we have to use private servers? hell yeah. But it's TERA.
I probably spent hundreds of hours playing Rift and GW2 with my brother. I'm glad to see that GW2 is still going strong because I feel like we really bonded over exploring and completing these massive zones together. The newer zones felt a little bit too convoluted and different from the rest but I think we might actually get back into it at some point if the new ones are really that good. As for Rift, I feel a lot of nostalgia for the game but by the time the later expansions released, the game had already lost a lot of players and we kind of felt like we were running around by ourselves in a completely abandoned game. The only place you saw other players was in dungeons or during holiday events. It was so different from when we first started playing and the world felt really vibrant and alive. It's sad to see something like that happen to a game you loved and spent so much time in and have such fond memories of.
I still miss the soul system of Rift. It was such a pain to balance, but such a unique experience. I've tried going back but maintenance mode is not treating it well at all.
@@aerix2000 The soul system was genius and is still by far the best MMO skill concept. Being able play as a tank mage by covering yourself with stone magic was just too smart. The perfect mix between being able to have huge variety while still feeling like you're playing your individual class, not being some jack of all trades like New World with low variety or being tightly boxed and cookie cut into your class and abilities like asian MMOs. I'm surprised no other MMORPG has adapted the system to this degree as far as I know.
Tibia is an MMO that always seems to be overlooked. Going on 30 years old now, they just recently introduced sound to the game. Updates twice a year to add more monsters, zones, or other features it seems like a game that should make these lists.
@robznarnii If that's true then there's no sense listing a majority of the games since they all take elements from each other. I'm pretty sure Ultima hasn't seen yearly updates in quite some time, yet somehow Tibia is seeing 2 every year and has a sizeable player base to boot.
I sub to LOTRO a couple times a year for a month or two. It's a weirdly relaxing MMO because the world is just amazing, despite the grahpics being a bit dated. They did such a great job with Middle Earth it's worth checking out for that alone for anyone who likes the books or the movies.
I grew up with LOTRO being the first MMO I really got into and still have so many wonderful memories of spending time in that world and appreciating how the developers interpreted Tolkien's works into an MMO form. I still go back at least once a year to experience it all over again :)
lotro and swtor are games that I will be sad when they go offline. I really wish they'd develop some way to convert them to single player, offline at that point. I'd even pay "new game" prices of $59.99+ for such a version when they do finally go dark
Star Wars Galaxies was revolutionary back in the day. I started on DAoC and moved to SWG as a kid-the open-world PvP, player-built cities, multi-planet travel, and insane class quests like the smuggler’s “get put on every bounty hunter in the game’s bounty list” still seem unmatched to this day.
SWG was my first MMO. The game launched right in the middle of when the prequel movies were coming out, and I was a teenager that just loved Star Wars. I will probably always regard it as my favorite game ever. Initially for me, the vastness of each of the planets was insane, all with their own personalities and lore. As the years went by the standout of the game was the community. You didn't need to be in a top guild with BiS stuff to be a respected or admired player. There was dancers and musicians that were fun to chat with while they buffed your stats, respected and reputable crafters that could utilize player housing to open up their own shops, the player cities like you mentioned and they actually held elections for mayor, a roleplaying community (most notably around Jedi players), and of course the PvE'rs and PvP'rs--and that is just glossing over it. There was multiple ways to succeed in that game and feel like you were getting something out of it. I made real friends on that game. These days MMO gameplay is logging in for dailies or staying on later if its a raid night. Are PvP queues popping tonight anyone? who knows.
@@matthewreynolds558 There is a nice SWG private server, you should take a look. I cant play it anymore sadly, I get severe motion sickness on that engine
I think MMO tier list needs to be split between subscription and non-subscription categories. It is easier for subscription games like FFIV to not offer cash shop P2W items and so, it is even more admirable for non-sub games like Guild Wars 2 to refrain from selling any P2W item. Also, you don't own anything in subscription games: You only rent your character until you no longer pay the sub fee and are locked out of using it again.
@@majorgear1021 it is exactly what I have written: you are locked out of your character (along with all the time and effort you invested in it) until you PAY the sub again. You do not own anything. It is called renting.
I overall agree with most of these. I personally did enjoy GW2 a lot more than FFIV though. It felt less dated and more compelling to me. The story in FFIV is pretty good, but it moves terribly slow if you are a new player and having to work your way through all of the expansions.
I would love to see Asheron’s Call on the list. It was a sad day when it ended, but the fan base resurrected their old data and brought back their own emulators to play and it is still going today.
I was gonna comment that he didn't mention this. I believe if AC would have not been delayed and released before eq1 it would have been bigger than eq. Was my first MMO and still one of the best skill and magic systems to this day.
I played it in BETA. I remember the demo download before BETA that was sent out for people to try out. I still have it on my old Windows 98 machine. I played strictly in DARKTIDE. Cerberus was my character name. I play ESO now. I would give up every game I play just to go back to play Asheron's Call even with the simple graphics.
@@rikmuao4699 There is a community project that did a complete reverse engineer of the client to restore the game. There are a few tricks to get the emulator and game up and running, but not terribly complicated. I think there are a couple of servers to choose from. Yes, there are buff bots in the starter towns and when you get back in, it brings a tear to your eye. The environmental sounds are all there. Graphics are horrible, but exactly what we had back in the day. It was my first MMO and the experience was so magical.
Tera had the best tank class mechanics in my opinion. Trying to level a tank class or play the campaign solo of a game as the tank is a horrible or impossible experience. Tera's tanks were actually tanky and could block even the hardest of attacks from dungeon bosses making it the best tank class I've ever played.
Still remember the good old Tera, I mained the High elf tank and was once called the best tank on my server ahh playing tank was so rewarding, I really miss those times. The game went to shit after becoming F2P... such a waste of potential :/
God this takes me back. I couldn't afford WoW back in the day, so i started to play Runes of Magic, my first real MMORPG and i had such a blast playing it. The only game that sparked this joy again, was the reveal trailer of Blade and Soul, i played it on the Korean Server with insane lag and it was still fun. When it finally released in EU i grinded that game soo much and didnt hate a second of it. Still waiting for a 3rd MMO that can spark that joy again.
No vertical progression, content drought, god awful class balance, pvp is left in the dust, so many paywall for older contents, almost no earnable mount in game, time gated legendary grind. Gw2 is a good game, but don't pretend like it doesn't have a lot of flaws.
Dude no vertical progression is a huge win. Horizontal is superior by far. Some people need a carrot on a stick, the vertical progression is just padding some extra hours and makes you play more to reach the same numbers as everybody else, to me it's pointless because once you reach the point, you stop playing the game. On the other hand in gw2, there are so many other things to focus on. Plus, you can stop playing stress free and come back after a couple of months or even years, and your character is still mostly relevant. Pvp is left in the dust for sure, but then again I don't know any other mmo that support the same large scale organized pvp i.e. 50vs50 You mean no earnable mouns skins ? Sure, but probably just farm the gold "in game" then unlock the skin ? Does that count as "in game"? It's not perfect but what do you expect in a non-subscription model ? In wow, there is sub fee and earnable mount skins for sure, but the best mounts are in the store anyway. Some legendaries are time gated, what do you expect they just hand you all legendaries at once ? Do you think you can farm all them in a week if it's not time gated ? That's a ridiculous statement. It has its flaws sure, but overall I think it's a better designed mmo compared to others in general, definitely S tier. Best combat, best theorycrafting, most detailed maps, best mounts system, best large scale pvp, all voice acted decent story.
@@triple1 bruh, "horizontal progression" is something every single mmorpg have at this point. Basically chasing cosmetic, housing, map completion, collecting other trinkets, etc. Those are not special to GW2, not anymore. Also, you don't know any other mmorpg with large scale PVP? Have you been living under a rock? ESO and BDO don't exist? ESO has 3 factions war PvP zone with hundreds of players at the same time. And bruh, all that talk about "you can leave the game then come back later", but the things that most player would want requires months to complete, and you think that's fine? You can easily get 20+ mounts in FF14 in just couple of days. GW2 is a time sink for the sake of player engagement, and very much disrespect player's time. And once again, ESO with no sub required, with farmable mounts, large scale PvP, all voice acted, actual theorycrafting and not copying build on 1 website, no content drought, does not sunset story content just to sell it back to the players years later. If that ain't S tier, then GW2 ain't either. Love both games, but they ain't S tier.
@@lamsauce4266 Vertical prog. only makes sense if you have some infinite Korean grinding mechanics like BDO etc., otherwise it's just a meaningless timesink that doesn't affect your gameplay or anything, just to catch up, buy subscription out of fear of missing out. It's just a hook. The fact that most mmo's have it doesn't make it right. Gw2 is ahead on this one. The most important thing is old content is not invalidated and even old maps stay relevant to this day and full of people. Currrently that's even something wow players complain about and I think it originates from the lack of horizontal prog. Have you really played the game and still talking about the game not respecting your time? Are you kidding me ? It's one of the mmo's that respects your time the most, lol. Most things are account shared, achivements, materials, ascended and above gear... switching between alts is soo easy... You have tons of leveling tomes given you by playing the game, so you don't even have to level again on alts. You obviusly don't know what I'm talking about since you're comparing bdo and eso pvp with gw2 :) Can you wrap your head around 50vs50? It's not just about people hitting each other as hard as they can, it's about the collaboration, the synergy that each class have with each other, the party compositions matter, the gear stats compositions matter, the build (talent tree) matters and affect each one in the party potentially, each party member has their duty. I'd say they feel really different almost like a different genre from what you can do in BDO pvp. "The things that most player would want requires months to complete" That's false. What do you want ? If it's the legendaries you want but you want it now ? Then what's the point of playing an mmo, you want to be spoon fed gear ? If it's gear to do content, it's unbelievably easy. Just go to the wvw vendors and buy all the exotic gear, or just go to trading post and buy the gear you want for really cheap instantly. Now you can play any content you want, except the latest tier fractals, but other than that you're ready. I don't really understand the complaint on this one. Let's not get into ffxiv mounts. Gw2 has the superior mount system and it's deeply tied to exploring, not even a contest. Since open world content in ffxiv is non existent at this point, it's more of a cosmetic fluff rather than a functioning part of the game that's used for gearing up faster, doing jumping puzzles, give advantage in pvx, progress through the story etc. If you're talking about the skyscale grind, they just give it to you in the latest expansion. If you like ESO, who am I to judge you. Keep on enjoying, and I didn't say anything negative about it. There are tons of comparison videos of its strenghts and weaknesses on YT, and I chose gw2 in the end. My point is this game definitely doesn't deserve to be lower tier than ffxiv and wow while being superior in most aspects.
I probably have around 7,000 hours in gw1 and gw2. It has casual elements and hardcore (takes alot of time) elements too. I wish gw2 had more weapon drops versus crafting component drops like gw1 but gw2 is still a great game and its only gotten way better over the years. Id pay big money for a gw1 remake however.
Gw2 has a cash store, pay 2 win elements, so meh nooo thank you. Also dont want to go for there predatory marketing practices like paying for all 9 character slots after buying the game and all expansions, buying bank slots, build storage???( Lmfao u can copy and paste it onto a text file btw), built templates... i could go on but yeah you get my point. If they made the game good, and not force you to pay to skip the bad parts, then maybe i wouldnt have dropped it as soon as i found the pay to win elements and grind skips late game.
@@flailmail7069 first of all, this system is called "pay for convenience". Since there is no gear score and no gear enhancing, you can only "win" against other players with your skill. Second, GW2 also doesn't have any sub fee and has to run between releasing their expansions too: keeping their servers alive, do maintenance, fix stuff that's broken and, ofc, develop new content. Moreover, ANYTHING in the gemstore can be easily bought for ingame currency after gold-to-gem conversion. Sure, it will be a hell of a lot if you try to get all the unlocks at once, but there is literally no point in doing it. If you're a new-ish player - you DON'T need 9 char slots for all the classes in limited time span, you can create a few, try them out, delete the ones you don't like or dive deeper into ones you do like. That alone will give you tons of hours of gameplay, during which you WILL earn gold (and therefore can convert it to gems). If you're an experienced player - you can farm that gold, and not just in brainded open-pve way, but also with doing raids, high-tier fractals, or PVP tournaments. And, after crafting legendary gear, you'll be able to change your build on the fly for whatever content you want to run. There are tons of ways to earn those gems, if you like the game and want to play it. But if you wanna whine and spread negativity about a non-sub game's cash shop instead, nobody can stop you :)
@@flailmail7069pay 2 win elements? How? I don’t think you’ve played the game. There are things in the cash shop that make playing the game easier but not to the point that gets you ahead of everyone else because it has horizontal progression. So why would you say that?
I wish wildstar and Firefall was still around 😞 Also, New World has massive potential. I think it’s gonna be one of those MMOs like ESO or FFXIV where it started really bad, but needed some time before it gets really appreciated. I say the next 2 to 5 years it will be up there with the tops
I played New World for a while and really had a good first impression but over time I started to notice how similar everything felt. Same mobs, same types of quests, same town layout, etc. One day I realized I couldn't name a single NPC from the game even after playing it for over two months, and that made me realize I wasn't really immersed in the world, I was just enjoying the gameplay. I quickly started to lose interest after that because I didn't see any future in the game. I think the game would be great if they spent more time on making the story and setting more interesting but unfortunately they seem to have moved more towards catering to the PvP group.
I've been wanting to play New World for so long now, my potato cant run it but im upgrading in just a couple weeks and im excited to play it. It looks like it has the most potential of anything upcoming aside from Ashes of Creation and will most likely be my main MMO.
New world is awesome now. It really has a solid core currently. All it needs is more PvP maps and the dungeon finder fully added. The rest can be just content added the core is really set now.
I miss wildstar so bad, I was just looking at the Nexus Forever project- but it's no where near complete and more like a tourist visit of what the MMO was. I will never play an NCSoft MMO again because of it.
I second this! I haven't had the time to play recently, but last time I checked the overall experience on the Homecoming server was quite good. (With everything that was a paid service or item in the shut-down retail version now being free stuff on Homecoming and overall a healthy population.)
Eve Online has plenty of dungeons! Some of them spawn in space and you have to scan them down. They also update the story lore as they go, often introducing new tech, new factions, mechanics and a lot of stuff. They also have a Council of Stellar Management (CSM) which is a stakeholder status group of elected players that provide feedback to the developers. I would argue it has a scope that is unmatched, though due to this it is difficult to polish everything to suit a mainstream audience. The offline meta experience keeps many players of high corp and alliance ranks up at night to say the least...
somewhat agreed but CCP still can do a better job in dungeon systems, the biggest difference of Eve is that when you die, you lost tons of in game money and probably the time invested in the game, which makes it unique in terms of attacking and defending. Its not an easy game to start for sure.
You need to factor in cost as well. Do you make an up front purchase, pay a subscription, or keep getting gatcha boxes you have to pay to open? Is the cash store pay to win or does it only offer cosmetics?
RIP Asheron's Call - Darktide. Some good times on that server, the political pvp map the players divided the world up into with almost no interference from the Devs was absolutely fantastic
@@hoopoop239 The most fun I ever had was during the Ayan Baqur war, when the town was first put into the game, as that was the only place to get level 7 spell components, and all the PK and anti-PK guilds fought over it for like a week solid. The bodies strewn across the landscape was a sight to see. I also laughed my ass off when I ganked Zunk Sun of Blood/KoC in Lytelthorpe on my noob axer because he was wearing acid stone GSA and thus had zero protection against my lightning atlan axe, got him in one shot, looted his pre-patch olthoi helm (which you could NOT get anymore), and he sent me tells for hours begging me to give it back, sell it back, etc. etc. Anyone who played on Darktide knew that Bloods were absolute dickholes (even more so than back in the Ultima Online days), so I told him I'd meet him at the Dryreach lifestone to trade it back, and as he showed up I dropped it into the lifestone; it was now irretrievable and would decay after a while. He got SO mad. No town guards meant guilds had to hold territory by strength of arms, and the political map that developed was a one-of a kind thing in an MMO. It wasn't dev created, it just grew organically; everyone knew you didn't go to the southern Lugian Citadel to level because that was where various PK guilds leveled, and you kept your nose clean around Kara due to BRN's influence in the region, etc. Sawato was a haven for noobs thanks to the Professionals under Ronan keeping it safe for them, and if you saw a Smurf anywhere, you RAN :D
Such a shame that the MMORPG market became a revolving door. Too bad they weren't able to be ahead of their time in the changes that they made, and "bots" and eBay forced reality into it's innocent situation.
Definitely should have a mention for Everquest II which launched when WoW Classic came out in 2004, and seems to be doing well still with a new expansion this year. As well as Runes of Magic (probably C Tier) that was very interesting. As well as Anarchy Online from 2001 that was my first first MMORPG.
Oh I remember Anarchy Online, I was trying to remember the name so thanks for that. It was really different for its time and gave me such a strange feeling when I first played it. But I remember it was not too bad or at least I thought it was good enough to play for a while.
It has a very instanced based gameplay, so it off puts the people who like fully fledged open world games. But the gameplay was fun and the gear Crafting was cool that it was from parts of bosses
Eve player for over 2 years here, the game definitely has "equivalents" to raids and dungeons. abyssals/exploration/combat sites are very dungeon-esque while doing incursions with a 10+ man fleet can itch that need for a raid. there are a LOT of things to do in eve so I don't fault you for not knowing about them, especially at a surface. To me, it's really a game where you can find anything that interests you and there's always something fun to do for everyone.
i am personally REALLY enjoying Lotro after watching alot of people play WoW classic. It feels like WoW except with the lore of The Lord of The Rings. It stays on the main story along with soooo much extra stuff and places.
Solid tier list but personally I think GW2 should've been S tier. Tbf I haven't gotten around to playing it but I have been just buying all the expansions lol. Man I haven't played some of these games in so long (R.I.P Tera). I tried out some but couldn't get behind them long term like FFXIV mostly cause of the monthly sub AND having to buy each expansion, still a pretty good game.
S tier? The game only has servers in America and EU. That automatically brings it down compared to other MMOs. Maybe if your in either of those regions it's an S tier but because I am not it's significantly lower for me.
@@bank869 yeah and after making it to endgame it doesn't have the greatest endgame content either but it's more than enough content if your a new player. I highly recommend you don't touch it if your in Asia or Oceania like myself because the ping is atrocious even with exitlag.
Lord of the Rings Online is a hidden gem. It follows the lore and is a relaxed game. It is formatted around the journey to max level. But man..... what an awesome journey with a storyline that competes with FF14. Best part is, it follows the lore of Tolkein so well.. they didnt sell out and stuck to their roots.
I kinda like what you're saying. Idk the lotr lore though. I watch the main three movies but I didn't read anything. Be worth it to try even if idk the lore?
@@didisaythat4230 Yes. Whats funny is that alot of the storyline is formulated around the movie. But at the same time. For example, while the fellowship is working with Strider to get the ring to Mt. Doom, you are working at teh same time to fight off obstacles to make that happen. Its quite ingenioius.
@Thatcrazyearth It's free now up to level 95 plus you can build up LOTRO points while playing the game and probably by lvl 95 you'll have enough points to purchase the next bit of content ☺️
Loved RIFT. I've played many ftp MMOs and a few months of WOW but never find any addictive features & Rift managed to make me in love with MMOs. My most favorite memories include: - Swimming from one island to another just to save a couple of gold. - Getting many server first items from loot bosses and had my names being announced. - Finding rare artifacts on some random corner while doing quests. - The ability to 1v4 enemies in battlegrounds long enough so my teammates can do objectives. - Raiding. I was close to each and every one of the 20 men raid. I would say Wow raids are a little too big and FF14 are a little too small. 20 people are just perfect. It's sad that the game died down too quick as I think SWTOR and Guild Wars 2 came out after RIFT and the community split into 3 and it didn't take off. My next fave is definitely FF14. So many things to do. But at the same time, the sad part is if we take a month break, there's too much to catch up, I ended up stopping due to IRL commitment.
I absolutely loved rift and still log in for nostalgia once in a while. I loved it so much that i took their world and made it my homebrew dnd campaign❤🎉
I'm sorry, but putting "Wizard101" and "reasonably monetized" in the same sentence is an insult to every single other MMO in this list. I've never played a game with more predatory monetization tactics, it's especially awful because it's a game build towards children first.
Dungeons & Dragons online I think should be mentioned in this list. Have been playing mmos since Everquest and hands down it has about the best pve content of all mmos I have played. Despite its dated graphics, its def worth a try. It launched a year before Lotro did and is my two go to mmorpgs even to this day, FFXIV on occasion.
Note about ffxi and eve. Ffxi still has multiple hundreds of hours of gameplay pre 100 and post 100. Sad about maintenance mode but still worth trying out. There's also an HD pack you can setup via UA-cam. Eve technically doesn't have dungeons but there is a ton of group content. Abyssal dead space, high level missions, rat complexes, forward operating bases, etc. There's a ton you can do as a group in pve.
You're right about both, Lucky Ghost is a PvE player. He put EVE there only because incompetence. He literally knows nothing about EVE. He played it for a short while, and I watched the aftermath upload, and he did really nothing. The stuff you're explaining he has no idea what even is. These tier lists are dumb as hell, and this one specifically if from a PvE player, who doesn't even play all these games. It's a blind tier list.
EVE belongs much higher than the list goes in some ways and at least in top level in others. But it is NOT like other mmos at all, it is far more player driven and reliant on player cooperation, as well as still having an INSANE learning curve.
Gw2 is definitely S tier. It’s been shaping the future of mmo for years. Dynamic mount momentum and abilities, account-wide features and many more features were inspiration to world of Warcraft which they had no choice other than following the same. I tried many AAA mmos, none of them respects your time and your pocket more than gw2. Its horizontal progression is hard to get used to it at first but once you get the concept you also understand that it’s way better than grinding for items at each expansions.
I hear you, its always a tough choice for me on these lists. I'm always torn between giving it S tier or A tier. I think the lack of holy trinity is what really held it back for me. I always miss having your stereo typical tank healer and dps roles when I'm playing it. its like organized chaos in group content lol. Super subjective, so I can easily see why someone else would place it S tier. it does so much right
@@LuckyGhost It might be confusing at first but actually I love it doesn’t follow typical holy trinity. Because every class has self sustainability until a certain point. There are still roles more focused on healing, tanking but it doesn’t limit or force you to play a certain class for that. You can do anything by swapping weapons and builds. Once you get familiar, it’s not that chaotic actually. A smart formation should follow some criterias such as having alacrity quickness buffers inside the squad while maintaining the flexibility especially for open world contents. But yeah, as you said it’s S tier for some, F tier for others. All subjective
@@LuckyGhost I agree with @josephcw. Lack of holy trinity also means you aren't waiting around in queue for the missing role to show up. There's also the ability to freely change your build outside of combat so if there was something specific people want brought (like the alacrity boon), they can change to it quickly, particularly if they have the equipment and build tabs set up ahead of time. It's as convenient as FFXIV's class changing without the hassle of leveling up completely different classes for the role. And with all the Support builds in the game, really the only thing missing is a dedicated Tank role. You are free to play what you want with the class kit you want in GW2.
@@christianna4404 I respect your opinion but I have to disagree. Its 2023, nearly 2024... MMOs need to adapt with the times and accommodate console or else the MMO genre will quickly be a relic of the past like other genres such as RTS and FMV. From a developmental point of view, MMOs are a terrible ROI. It makes no sense for devs to not put their MMOs on console.
I rember the old clasic Runescape, browser and basicly 2d, I was one of the first (later on called) pures. The update of grafic and combat system ruind so many hundred of hours of grinding I never went in again 😢
Odd that none of the Everquest footage was from the Everquest game. The progression servers are well populated. The game is still supported and they are just launching their 30th expansion. Even without nostalgia, if you enjoy older style games, it's worth some time. But it may not hold your attention for 100s of hours like it did back in the day. I think C tier is the correct spot, even though I love the heck out of the game. It's unlike anything else when it comes to socialized group content.
If you’re gonna talk about EverQuest, you gotta talk about EverQuest 2. It was the first to go down the “classic” business model, opening up TLE servers years before wow and still is fairly fun to play for a tab targeter
Everquest 1 had TLP servers before eq2, also Holly Longdale who was in charge of everquest for like 10 years moved onto WoW and is now lead for classic :)
Eve online is quite literally its own RPG genre. It is definitely A tier and most likely S tier in everything it has to offer. It is a hard game because the depth it has throughout.
I'm sorry but you said ESO doesnt have a subscription when 85% of the content is locked behind ESO Plus or outright having to buy all of the DLC to play any of the content
@@LuckyGhostreasonable! the only part about ESO the turns me away a bit is the insane amount of content you “gotta pay for”, though still one of my favorite mmos :)
Asheron's Call came out in 1999 and was fun. Horizons: Empire of Istaria was also a fun mmo. Horizons allowed you to multiclass your classes. I had a healer/druid/blood mage which were level 80 each before I stopped playing the game. The problem was the game wasn't able to get enough subscribers to break even on its costs. It came out in 2003 and was completing with World of Warcraft.
Really appreciate the kind words about Wayfinder, we have no illusions about the bumps in the road we have faced. But the team is dedicated and we can't wait to show the world everything we are dreaming for the game. Love the videos!
@MadManDan-MMD working on our first entry level raid now and two more open world zones. We have plenty of content in the hopper, it'll just take time. Still just Early Acess ;😜
@@sir_snarfi purchased this and refunded after an hour, while it wasnt for me it wasnt actually that bad of a game. will take a closer look upon release.
I agree with pretty much everything except for New World being A tier. I think at best it should be B tier since they’re trying to make it better, but there’s still so many problems with the game from bugs, to bad game design.
Ye getting better every patch. Still has issues and especially since their combat code is a bit spaghetti code. Each patch does tend to have some combat bugs with them. But they get fixed every time. They are rewriting the combat code and releasing that sometime soon to make it less buggy, smoother for the large scale pvp/pve, and easier to add new weapons to the game
This was good, but you forgot Everquest 2. They have even released a new expansion. So it is small but active still. Plus if you get a membership you get full access to DCU and Everquest 1.
There is one more title worth mentioning and it's Ragnarok Online Yes it's still alive at some private servers like Shining Moon and it's not only nostalgia, but also a well updated free to play project with a lot of people playing it. Highly recommend
Watched the video to update myself on the latest going MMOs. Seems like you are huge Blizzard fanboi however. While i disagree with you placements of WOWc and retail, GW2, ESO and NW i can respect that the placements are entirely your opinion. Enjoyed the video. Thanks for taking the time to make it.
Honestly, ESO is very enjoyable as a MMO, i played ESO almost solo for the past 4-5 years, i am not keen on the hardcore stuff like the Vet dungeon or the Trials, i only do the open world PVE story and daily dungeons and mostly Cyrodiil. The social aspect is just a small plus to know that the world is alive with players and it felt good. but ESO is one of those MMO where doing the side quest and main quest alone is very enjoyable and it has enough content to last you many many years
A game that I feel like deserves a spot on this list is EQOA, otherwise known as EverQuest Online Adventures. It was a full-fledged subscription based MMORPG in the Equest universe for PlayStation 2. Obviously cross play was not a thing yet so it had its own servers and had its own storyline and timeline compared to the mainline series on PC. They had a pretty solid number of subscribers at its peak and even got a expansion which added another class and a whole new continent. It was Equest response to the success of Final Fantasy 11. 🙏🏽😆
the only reason I played RIFT for so long was the dimension player housing, by the time I left the game for good, I had maybe 12 dimension project ongoing, 10 near completion. The game will forever hold a special place in my heart as the most player freedom housing system ever, I made myself a treehouse and I handmade for someone a stairway going around a massive tree trunk XD
I actually really miss the OG FFXI days... No MMO gives me the same sense of accomplishment and weight that XI did. I get why that type of game isn't for everyone, but I just miss things meaning more. No fast travels everywhere (this made you explore and plan), no soloable content past level 10 (this forced you to network and make friends - my best friend of over 20 years I met on XI), Super hard mob fights (this made killing them so exhilarating), and one of my favorites, super rare and REALLY HARD to get gear (this made gear actually F'ing cool and awesome - there was this Paladin set that was super rare and just remember everyone aweing at you walking through main cities). Idk if I'll ever get that in an MMO again.
From the perspective of a vet, Guild Wars 2 is easily s+, BUT when you first get into it, its hard to figure out what your doing, where to get gold so you dont use the cashshop and so on, but MightyTeapot has a long running series on his channel in which he spends absolutly no money and is able to get all the good gear, legendary items, mounts, and even cosmetics/account upgrades from the shop (using in game gold) and all mounts, I think the only thing he bought was the expansions but you cant buy those using gems anyways. I have been trying to get my friends into this game for over 2 years, and since the base game is dated they think the entire game is like that but all the expansions even the fist one is alwaus populated, plus when you get the best in slot gear you dont need to craft or grind for better gear but there is other grinds in the game that make it more fun. Please try it! and I know Elementalist sounds like the coolest class ever, but for begineers its impossible and will make you quit! Best starting classes are Necromancer, Ranger, Guardian, Mesmer (Mesmer is alittle more complex but rewarding), but again pick whatever you like the look of. Soulbeast Ranger is awesome tho (i'm bisased lol)
Glad to hear that Guild Wars 2 is good. I've thought of getting it. I used to like Guild Wars and played it for quite a while before moving on. Glad to hear that GW 2 has a good solo mode because I very seldom play MMOs with other people. I'm almost as antisocial in games as I am in real life. :) What's bad about offline play? I love it. It's nice to be able to play a game without having to be online these days. Very helpful video!
@@DrGuyPHD you can buy wow tokens, that enables you to buy BoE:s, crafting gears, consumables, even boosting, you can basicly get anything just using irl money, i'd consider that p2w
if wow is p2w, EVERY mmo is pay 2 win. but i'll wait for you to name one that isnt so I cant tell you how it is. and yeah, I'm with ya, I despise the wow token, and its equivalent in nearly every other major mmo
@@LuckyGhost Well ffxiv for example isnt, yes you can technically buy money and boosts from black market, but thats against the rules and will result in a ban. wow lets you buy gold directly from them and doesnt give a crap about all the boosting, if i remember correctly lotro didnt have option to sell its premium currency for gold and item shop was mainly pay-for-convenience stuff and expansions, but not 100% sure on that, gw2 is bit on the borderline, yes you can buy gold, but the gold doesnt allow you to buy really that much of player power, wow is by far on the top-end of the p2w scale on mmo:s
FFXIV is so damn good recently started playing as it came onto Xbox. The community is honestly the nicest of any MMORPG I’ve ever experienced. Maybe except early runescape 2005ish
- Wait, it's all C-tier nostalgia bait that will never feel nearly as good as when you were a kid? - Always has been Great video! I got a couple good recommendations to try out
Imo Albion would've been one of the best MMOs out there if PvP wasn't forced on you. I get it, it's made this way, but not being able to enjoy it in end-game because you either have to go in red and black zones, in which case, you're ambushed by 5-6 people at once and you lose hours of grinding, or you simply have to buy the tier 7-8 items if you don't want to get into PvP at all. Game's wonderful, played it for about 100 hours with friends, up until we had everything at tier 6, but all 3 of us stopped playing because we were forced into PvP.
Yeah its true,, Albion is definitely rough if you're looking for a more relaxing pve experience, but tons of fun if your itching for some high stakes pvp. Not a lot of middle ground haha
Solo PVP doesn’t work. You have to slave for a guild with mandatory raids and pick your gear you have to wear. Not enough being some ones bitch at work? Play Albion. So much fun. lol. no.
Something to note, BDO seems to be putting a lot more focus on trying to implement group content without having an impact on the current structure of the game. It’s had pretty mixed results so far but it does show that the new devs are actually listening to the playerbase and trying to release what is lacking. That said the game is still far from S tier imo but it’s defo making steps in the right direction. Also in regard to OSRS, there is an official HD client been released. Personally the graphics aren’t for me, idm the simplicity of the original game, but it does give options for people who find the original graphic design a turnoff.
BDO is my all time fav, even if it’s not the most popular. It’s polished the combat gives me a surge of adrenaline that others don’t and the graphics are beautiful. That’s just scratching the surface.
I loved playin Tera, and miss the ability to go back in an enjoy the great combat. Sad it just never got fixed properly. Personally, I'd GW2 in S tier, but cant argue the A tier rating too much. GW2 has just been one of my main side mmo's because of the b2p, and it is just fun combat wise, and pretty solid story content.
I agree with the positioning of SWTOR. However, they did recently announce newer upcoming story update which is not something you'd get with a mmo in maintenance mode, so can't agree that its there yet. That could change in the near future, though. Not to mention that Bioware handed off a bunch of its staff to Broadsword to continue working on the game.
They've also just opened the Shae Vizla Server (APAC). A game in (or going into) maintenance mode isn't going to put resources into opening a brand new server.
Definitely disagree with placing STO ( Star Trek Online) in the B column, as a underrepresented space MMO it stands worlds apart from many other MMO's especially with its ongoing updated player campaigns, content both free and paid and continuous updates to the game to keep players involved considering its based off RL sci fi culture. I think any MMO game designers that keep their players this engaged like STO does deserves too have the game rated much higher. Not many MMO's also have so many storylines in addition to allowing players to go to planets play there and then go to space and team up for huge space battles.
As an mmo gamer who has played all these MMOs, I find FF11 so much fun, and retail continues to get more monthly content more than FF14. Yes, very surprisingly. I still play FF14, and lately, since their is not much to do, I find myself content with FF11 and master leveling is super hard, much more harder than the leveling in the lv 75 era. I retried WoW classic, but I couldn't find that mmo as an mmo or fun, sadly, and SWTOR has gotten a bit better in UI, but not as great as how it was. New World is super fun, may go back someday. But I would put FF11 on B tier or A tier and old school runescape to C tier. That is just my opinion.
W101 is really underrated as a story from start to finish. I remember starting it with my friend, the pvp system was fun. Games not complicated and you can always find friendly people willing to help. whether your a solo player or not. Having a Different worlds to explore with their own story is refreshing. Last time I played max level cap was like 50 or 60 but I know they upped it and I had this lightning wizard that could one shot the other players or myself 😂 that was one of my funnest memories in that game.
I had a myth with max achievable damage 6 months ago. The game is awful in it's current state. They ruined the gameplay and loot boxes are running rampant in a P2W fashion
Old School Runescape with RuneLite plugins is actually pretty good. Modern rendering with real time lighting, greater draw distance, brings new life to the nostalgic models and textures.
Eso is the one of the best games, but definitely the best MMO I've ever played after installing some QOL addons. Maybe elder scrolls is just nostalgic, but I clocked 500 hours in 4 months and I'm completely addicted
ESO is so creative and it keeps growing and there is just so much fun to be had in so many ways! I've been playing it since BETA and it just keeps getting better and more and more fun! 🥰
Final fantasy 14 is the only mmo I’ve tried this year where I am always feeling like I have lots to do and feels like a connection to the world. I really wanted to like lost ark but quit after couple weeks when I waited 20 plus minutes just to get 3 other players to que up for one of the early dungeons and I don’t have that kind of patience and lost ark has a few good things but starts getting big money walls and micro transactions
I feel like people love to say FF14 is good, but the slog of the main quest just to run dungeons is freaking lame, I'd take GW2 over it any day and I don't even play either atm :P
Same here I prefer GW 2 or ESO, never couldn't connect to FF XIV story or combat. It also has a weird community if you don't agree with them or do as they do you will considered a toxic player, it's positively toxic behavior.
@@Ninja40K same. I tried it for 2 days but I felt miserable in FFXIV. Didn't helped that in two days I only witnessed one small talk in entire map. It made me feel desolate. Combat was weird, and story .. all I learned was that initial game was disaster that got nuked. Wherever story was it was probably buried under so many fetch quests. That's all I did for two days - fetch quests.
GW 2 should be S tier easy. best mount, Open world exploration/ events, large scale PvP, achivement scaling and now it has one of the best fashion + player houssing system.
DDO has been on my list of games to go back to for some time. Feels bad not seeing it on the list. Too bad that they can't seem to capture the BG3 euphoria. I really liked the 3.5 rule set. Good times.
None of these deserve to be above B tier, MMO genre has been in such a sad state for so long, the only games trying to innovate end up being completely niche because everyone is still playing the same game for 20 years or a defective clone of it.
really disappointed that Mabinogi, Published by Nexon and made by devcat never made the list based on several other entries listed here. Its a classless based mmo that isnt centered around pvp at all. all of its content is exclusively pve. Its an older game but its been steadily getting updates, and events are constantly rotating so that there is always one active. Please if you havent tried it before, give it a go. Its a really good game. But it doesnt hold your hand for very long. You pick your characters race, age, and starting talent. Then you are shipped off into the world to basically go wherever you want and do wahtever you want. Want to level up by fighting monsters? go for it! want to level up by making food or wine? go crazy! wanna level up by doing quests? sure! level up by cutting wood and making weapons like bows? sure thing! you can even level up by shearing sheep or collecting eggs from chickens! It's an amazingly open ended story driven mmo that is outrageously underrated in my opinion. And its getting an update eventually inroducing it to UE5 and the concept arts that have been shown are very promising! if you are looking for an mmo you have never experienced and just want something new please give it a try. I promise it wont be disappointing!
Great tier list. I put in 25+ hours per week of ESO and I wouldn't put it in S tier. The over monetization holds it back. I have the ESO plus just for the crafting bag.
For me GW2 defiantly an S tier. You also have a little mistake, the premium currency in the game can be purchased by in-game currency, and many player does that.
I just started eve and its fun and relaxing but definitely is a “second screen while you work” sort of game. Gw2 was my jam since launch and eso is really really good too, its like $6 for base game and thats a banger deal for a super friendly to casuals mmo. Ff14 was a slog. Got my samurai to 60 and called it a day. That game is overrated as f to me
I'm not disputing this list itself, but honestly, it's really sad that any tier list of MMO's to play in 2024 would have 3 out of its 4 best recommendations come from games that were originally released 2+ decades ago (and the 4th being released over a decade ago). It says a lot about how poorly the genre has evolved, as a whole.
I have played WoW classic back from the launch, it was really enjoyable and I loved it, honestly. But cmon, putting an old, outdated game because of the nostalgia (and for some new content for cash grab) to S tier and GW2 which is constantly growing, getting better and bigger to A tier...? I doubt this whole video isn't just a promotion to that game...
I played WOW about 15 years, but started falling out of love as the writing became increasingly WOKE. That became intolerable during Shadowlands when the writers had the male NPC awaiting rescue like damsels in distress and swamped the storyline with female NPC god powers. They carried that to such an extreme that they retconned the lore. It was like playing Season 8 of GOT when you cheer for all the wrong reasons and laugh in all the wrong places. Anyway, I tucked in all my 100 toons and cancelled both my subs. I tried WOW Classic but found the player inventory limits too confining. Plus I could not find other players who actually wanted to do group content. Seemed like most wanted to carry or be carried and there is too much group content to progress as a solo. When Blizzard rolled out the next expansion for Classic, they wanted a transfer fee per toon. Your only other option was to level a new toon from scratch. I've been playing Kingdom Come: Deliverance and hoping for a sequel announcement. It is a wonderful game, everything I used to love about WOW. For the present, I recently installed Elder Scrolls Online, created a bunch of alts, and today I am installing Lucky Ghost's recommended ESO addons. I think I am going to enjoy this.
@@vadim6656 had same though playing it early but after a month of discovering, it destroyed wow and FF14 in my head. The game had some of the best system i wish they were in the other games mostly open world.
I started playing DDO with a small static group three months ago. It's been fun to revisit it from level 1. We've actually added two new players to the group recently. Their Hardcore server (not always online, special event only) is a fun yet terrifying way to play.
Ultima was not fun to play when it came out. I beta tested it and when it went gold, it was plagued with lag since everyone was on dial up back in the day. What usually happened was you tried to zone into a dungeon and when you finished loading, you'd be dead and looted since every entrance was camped by griefers. We were so happy to leave it behind for Everquest, which I also beta'ed. Developer meetings with UO developers got us ridiculed for complaining about the non stop pvp. I remember selling all our stuff in UO and getting so many questions when they found we'd been in Everquest. Everquest got the concept that not everyone wants to pvp everywhere, all the time.
Final Fantasy was great because the game had so much content that they didn’t need to raise the level cap for over 5 years. Having your armor keep its relevancy for half a decade made grinding feel worth it more than any other game. I had a BLM with an earring that gave massive massive attack bonus and I was basically able to max out all my merits on BLM. Having a subjob was so cool. You could build your character sooo many ways compared to most MMOs. I liked being able to sign items you craft, so when you craft a +1 of the best item in the game and your name is on it, that makes you feel like such a bad ass. I used to get in really good parties and would be killing mobs for hours, but the chow hall would be about to close so I’d say I need 5 minute break, would sprint to the chow hall, and then eat with my mouth as both my hands were on my keyboard. Alllllllll I did was play FFXI until they raised the level cap from 75. Grinding a Matt’s cap was an almost unattainable feat in the game. It was brutal
SWTOR hurts me so much. It's an amazing game with no P2W or gambling, a really solid tab target MMO that easily rivals FFXIV and WoW, but the devs just never put enough effort into making new content when the game was still hot and simply let it atrophy to the point where the only people actively playing are RPers and PvPers.
Zenless Zone Zero Closed Second Beta is coming to PC, Consoles, and Mobile! Register here: hoyo.link/0nNfFJAL
MMO Players NEED to Watch This! ua-cam.com/video/Cn1s1O6jXRk/v-deo.html
▼MMO Reviews▼
World of Warcraft: ua-cam.com/video/uSNgEE7jYc4/v-deo.html
Final Fantasy 14: ua-cam.com/video/LsGkNgdvIPg/v-deo.html
Albion Online: ua-cam.com/video/7dDdZeWUn2M/v-deo.html
New World: ua-cam.com/video/tPokng_z0TY/v-deo.html
Warframe: ua-cam.com/video/qG0KYektGB8/v-deo.html
Wayfinder: ua-cam.com/video/shion1DiVAs/v-deo.html
Black Desert Online: ua-cam.com/video/KA0a4ZwYVrg/v-deo.html
Elder Scrolls Online: ua-cam.com/video/RSpGPH5MLr0/v-deo.html
Maplestory: ua-cam.com/video/9RuXxirzTUY/v-deo.html
Even Online: ua-cam.com/video/CLP9xfHtpYA/v-deo.html
Guild Wars 2: ua-cam.com/video/Xi8xtmnngkI/v-deo.html
Star Citizen: ua-cam.com/video/06mZyHx1Q5c/v-deo.html
▼TIMESTAMPS▼
0:00 MMO Tier List
0:13 WoW Classic
1:26 Aion
2:13 Albion Online
2:57 Zenless Zone Zero (ZZZ)
4:08 Archage
4:55 Black Desert Online (BDO)
5:34 Bless Unleashed
5:59 Dark Age of Camelot (DAOC)
6:40 DC Universe Online (DCUO)
7:11 Elyon
8:09 Elder Scrolls Online (ESO)
9:16 Eve Online
10:02 Everquest
10:51 Final Fantasy 11 (FF11)
12:22 Final Fantasy 14 (FF14)
13:45 Guild Wars 1
14:22 Guild Wars 2
15:26 Lineage 2
16:00 Lord of the Rings Online (LOTR)
16:41 Lost Ark
17:16 Mortal Online 2
17:58 Neverwinter
18:25 New World
19:27 Old School RuneScape (OSRS)
20:43 Rift
21:08 RuneScape 3
21:43 Star Trek Online
22:14 Star Wars The Old Republic (SWTOR)
23:15 Skyforge
23:53 Tera
24:41 Ultima Online
25:25 WarHammer Online
26:05 World of Warcraft (WoW)
27:08 Wizard 101
27:42 Wayfinder
28:30 Blade & Soul
28:57 Throne & Liberty (TL)
Hello, how can I contact you? Your email is not specified
@@ReignofGuilds hi there, you can find my contact info on my Twitter profile. Looks like youtube removed the about page and my email on there was lost in the process. Thanks for the heads up!
Zenless Zero is RPG not MMO
@@rpmusic6402 it doesn't say it is MMO anywhere
Where would you place ...or How would you rank Warframe?
I still miss the low level, queued "battlegrounds" of Warhammer online.
Basically sub level 20, grouped with randoms. The way PvP worked with tanks being able to taunt and having actual physical presence so you couldn't just run through them was amazing.
Still haven't found a class as fun to play as their melee healers - Disciple of Khaine and Warrior Priest
Return of Reckoning, still lives and is really active
Same here brother. I was one of da big boiz keepin da squishies nice an safe
@@yaroslavlobanov1728 I tried it and its just too static and full of bugs for my liking
WAR Online was legendary
surprised to see wizard101 make it on a gaming list, first time that's happened for me and the game has a near and dear spot to my heart, it was my first MMO and I still have my account which I use to game every now and then with my childhood friend from 15+ years ago. game is pretty simple, storyline isn't anything to have you on your seats but if you are a big nerd as you quest through the worlds you'll notice all the references from sci-fi books, mythology, even some history references. I'd say check it out if you have free time, they usually do the entire first arc for free during december-january
He added Wizard101 but no Mu Online or Cabal Online
Honestly I miss Tera. No other game, BDO, BnS, Vindictus, etc, has captured the same feel of combat for me. I wish they made a single player offline version. Private servers are just a hassle to setup.
There is a private one that's still going strong with how TERA left off, called Menma's Tera. I played on it for a long while when I was feeling nostalgia. it's imo the best and closest thing to what TERA was before it shut down. Literal same game files and all. Hassle? yeah. Annoying that we have to use private servers? hell yeah. But it's TERA.
Dragon nest is the best game with that combat system, no game is close
But tera is still playable on xbox. If you want if for computer just get the xbox pass.
I probably spent hundreds of hours playing Rift and GW2 with my brother. I'm glad to see that GW2 is still going strong because I feel like we really bonded over exploring and completing these massive zones together. The newer zones felt a little bit too convoluted and different from the rest but I think we might actually get back into it at some point if the new ones are really that good. As for Rift, I feel a lot of nostalgia for the game but by the time the later expansions released, the game had already lost a lot of players and we kind of felt like we were running around by ourselves in a completely abandoned game. The only place you saw other players was in dungeons or during holiday events. It was so different from when we first started playing and the world felt really vibrant and alive. It's sad to see something like that happen to a game you loved and spent so much time in and have such fond memories of.
I still miss the soul system of Rift. It was such a pain to balance, but such a unique experience. I've tried going back but maintenance mode is not treating it well at all.
@@aerix2000 The soul system was genius and is still by far the best MMO skill concept. Being able play as a tank mage by covering yourself with stone magic was just too smart. The perfect mix between being able to have huge variety while still feeling like you're playing your individual class, not being some jack of all trades like New World with low variety or being tightly boxed and cookie cut into your class and abilities like asian MMOs. I'm surprised no other MMORPG has adapted the system to this degree as far as I know.
@@DevlVergil 100%! I loved we could eventually play any role on any class. I think Bard was my absolute favorite, it was so well done
THANK YOU! I figured wife and I were the only people who didnt like GW2 other than its base game. The newer zones are a convoluted sweaty tryhard mess
I had a love story with GW2, I used to play with my ex a lot. I still have some fond memories of it
Tibia is an MMO that always seems to be overlooked. Going on 30 years old now, they just recently introduced sound to the game. Updates twice a year to add more monsters, zones, or other features it seems like a game that should make these lists.
Ultima is on the list, Tibia is just a rip off.
@robznarnii If that's true then there's no sense listing a majority of the games since they all take elements from each other. I'm pretty sure Ultima hasn't seen yearly updates in quite some time, yet somehow Tibia is seeing 2 every year and has a sizeable player base to boot.
@@gantiri CIPSoft stole thousands of 2d assets (sprites) from Ultima and regardless of the fan base shouldn't be on any list whatsoever.
just added sound? wtf
I sub to LOTRO a couple times a year for a month or two. It's a weirdly relaxing MMO because the world is just amazing, despite the grahpics being a bit dated. They did such a great job with Middle Earth it's worth checking out for that alone for anyone who likes the books or the movies.
I grew up with LOTRO being the first MMO I really got into and still have so many wonderful memories of spending time in that world and appreciating how the developers interpreted Tolkien's works into an MMO form. I still go back at least once a year to experience it all over again :)
Just came back after about four or five years. Surprised it was still expanding and some the changes made are great, especially the LI system.
lotro and swtor are games that I will be sad when they go offline.
I really wish they'd develop some way to convert them to single player, offline at that point.
I'd even pay "new game" prices of $59.99+ for such a version when they do finally go dark
and they went super woke so pass
Anyone else waiting for Echoes of Angmar (vanilla LOTRO server)
Star Wars Galaxies was revolutionary back in the day. I started on DAoC and moved to SWG as a kid-the open-world PvP, player-built cities, multi-planet travel, and insane class quests like the smuggler’s “get put on every bounty hunter in the game’s bounty list” still seem unmatched to this day.
SWG was my first MMO. The game launched right in the middle of when the prequel movies were coming out, and I was a teenager that just loved Star Wars. I will probably always regard it as my favorite game ever. Initially for me, the vastness of each of the planets was insane, all with their own personalities and lore. As the years went by the standout of the game was the community. You didn't need to be in a top guild with BiS stuff to be a respected or admired player. There was dancers and musicians that were fun to chat with while they buffed your stats, respected and reputable crafters that could utilize player housing to open up their own shops, the player cities like you mentioned and they actually held elections for mayor, a roleplaying community (most notably around Jedi players), and of course the PvE'rs and PvP'rs--and that is just glossing over it. There was multiple ways to succeed in that game and feel like you were getting something out of it. I made real friends on that game.
These days MMO gameplay is logging in for dailies or staying on later if its a raid night. Are PvP queues popping tonight anyone? who knows.
You are a real one, thanks@@matthewreynolds558
@@matthewreynolds558 There is a nice SWG private server, you should take a look. I cant play it anymore sadly, I get severe motion sickness on that engine
Swg Legends and Emu have revived it
There's some private servers that run SWG, I still play once in a while.
great updated list. I hope you never shy away from doing this annually. Its nice to get the whole spectrum of well known MMOs ranked and talked about
I think MMO tier list needs to be split between subscription and non-subscription categories. It is easier for subscription games like FFIV to not offer cash shop P2W items and so, it is even more admirable for non-sub games like Guild Wars 2 to refrain from selling any P2W item. Also, you don't own anything in subscription games: You only rent your character until you no longer pay the sub fee and are locked out of using it again.
Not really. I’ve let my subscription lapse for a decade at times, and when I renew the subscription, my character is right where I left them!
@@majorgear1021 it is exactly what I have written: you are locked out of your character (along with all the time and effort you invested in it) until you PAY the sub again. You do not own anything. It is called renting.
I overall agree with most of these. I personally did enjoy GW2 a lot more than FFIV though. It felt less dated and more compelling to me. The story in FFIV is pretty good, but it moves terribly slow if you are a new player and having to work your way through all of the expansions.
True. I can't take FF14 as a beginner. Boring and group play is weak.
@@SergePriem 100% Gw2 should be above FF14
I would love to see Asheron’s Call on the list. It was a sad day when it ended, but the fan base resurrected their old data and brought back their own emulators to play and it is still going today.
Best mmo i ever played
I was gonna comment that he didn't mention this. I believe if AC would have not been delayed and released before eq1 it would have been bigger than eq.
Was my first MMO and still one of the best skill and magic systems to this day.
I played it in BETA. I remember the demo download before BETA that was sent out for people to try out. I still have it on my old Windows 98 machine. I played strictly in DARKTIDE. Cerberus was my character name. I play ESO now. I would give up every game I play just to go back to play Asheron's Call even with the simple graphics.
@@rikmuao4699 There is a community project that did a complete reverse engineer of the client to restore the game. There are a few tricks to get the emulator and game up and running, but not terribly complicated. I think there are a couple of servers to choose from. Yes, there are buff bots in the starter towns and when you get back in, it brings a tear to your eye. The environmental sounds are all there. Graphics are horrible, but exactly what we had back in the day. It was my first MMO and the experience was so magical.
@@rikmuao4699 Darktide was the most fun i had on Asherons call
Tera had the best tank class mechanics in my opinion. Trying to level a tank class or play the campaign solo of a game as the tank is a horrible or impossible experience. Tera's tanks were actually tanky and could block even the hardest of attacks from dungeon bosses making it the best tank class I've ever played.
Yeah, it was the only mmo that I actually mained tank
Still remember the good old Tera, I mained the High elf tank and was once called the best tank on my server ahh playing tank was so rewarding, I really miss those times. The game went to shit after becoming F2P... such a waste of potential :/
Nah for real though, tanking in terra you really felt like a badass tank eating up hits from BAMs
Terra or Tera?
God this takes me back.
I couldn't afford WoW back in the day, so i started to play Runes of Magic, my first real MMORPG and i had such a blast playing it.
The only game that sparked this joy again, was the reveal trailer of Blade and Soul, i played it on the Korean Server with insane lag and it was still fun.
When it finally released in EU i grinded that game soo much and didnt hate a second of it.
Still waiting for a 3rd MMO that can spark that joy again.
About GW2 : I don't understand what are the lacks that prevents you from placing it at "S" tier.
For me, is S tier and better than WoW.
No vertical progression, content drought, god awful class balance, pvp is left in the dust, so many paywall for older contents, almost no earnable mount in game, time gated legendary grind.
Gw2 is a good game, but don't pretend like it doesn't have a lot of flaws.
Dude no vertical progression is a huge win. Horizontal is superior by far. Some people need a carrot on a stick, the vertical progression is just padding some extra hours and makes you play more to reach the same numbers as everybody else, to me it's pointless because once you reach the point, you stop playing the game. On the other hand in gw2, there are so many other things to focus on. Plus, you can stop playing stress free and come back after a couple of months or even years, and your character is still mostly relevant.
Pvp is left in the dust for sure, but then again I don't know any other mmo that support the same large scale organized pvp i.e. 50vs50
You mean no earnable mouns skins ? Sure, but probably just farm the gold "in game" then unlock the skin ? Does that count as "in game"? It's not perfect but what do you expect in a non-subscription model ? In wow, there is sub fee and earnable mount skins for sure, but the best mounts are in the store anyway.
Some legendaries are time gated, what do you expect they just hand you all legendaries at once ? Do you think you can farm all them in a week if it's not time gated ? That's a ridiculous statement.
It has its flaws sure, but overall I think it's a better designed mmo compared to others in general, definitely S tier. Best combat, best theorycrafting, most detailed maps, best mounts system, best large scale pvp, all voice acted decent story.
@@triple1 bruh, "horizontal progression" is something every single mmorpg have at this point. Basically chasing cosmetic, housing, map completion, collecting other trinkets, etc. Those are not special to GW2, not anymore.
Also, you don't know any other mmorpg with large scale PVP? Have you been living under a rock? ESO and BDO don't exist? ESO has 3 factions war PvP zone with hundreds of players at the same time.
And bruh, all that talk about "you can leave the game then come back later", but the things that most player would want requires months to complete, and you think that's fine? You can easily get 20+ mounts in FF14 in just couple of days. GW2 is a time sink for the sake of player engagement, and very much disrespect player's time.
And once again, ESO with no sub required, with farmable mounts, large scale PvP, all voice acted, actual theorycrafting and not copying build on 1 website, no content drought, does not sunset story content just to sell it back to the players years later. If that ain't S tier, then GW2 ain't either. Love both games, but they ain't S tier.
@@lamsauce4266 Vertical prog. only makes sense if you have some infinite Korean grinding mechanics like BDO etc., otherwise it's just a meaningless timesink that doesn't affect your gameplay or anything, just to catch up, buy subscription out of fear of missing out. It's just a hook. The fact that most mmo's have it doesn't make it right. Gw2 is ahead on this one. The most important thing is old content is not invalidated and even old maps stay relevant to this day and full of people. Currrently that's even something wow players complain about and I think it originates from the lack of horizontal prog.
Have you really played the game and still talking about the game not respecting your time? Are you kidding me ? It's one of the mmo's that respects your time the most, lol. Most things are account shared, achivements, materials, ascended and above gear... switching between alts is soo easy... You have tons of leveling tomes given you by playing the game, so you don't even have to level again on alts.
You obviusly don't know what I'm talking about since you're comparing bdo and eso pvp with gw2 :) Can you wrap your head around 50vs50? It's not just about people hitting each other as hard as they can, it's about the collaboration, the synergy that each class have with each other, the party compositions matter, the gear stats compositions matter, the build (talent tree) matters and affect each one in the party potentially, each party member has their duty. I'd say they feel really different almost like a different genre from what you can do in BDO pvp.
"The things that most player would want requires months to complete" That's false. What do you want ? If it's the legendaries you want but you want it now ? Then what's the point of playing an mmo, you want to be spoon fed gear ? If it's gear to do content, it's unbelievably easy. Just go to the wvw vendors and buy all the exotic gear, or just go to trading post and buy the gear you want for really cheap instantly. Now you can play any content you want, except the latest tier fractals, but other than that you're ready. I don't really understand the complaint on this one.
Let's not get into ffxiv mounts. Gw2 has the superior mount system and it's deeply tied to exploring, not even a contest. Since open world content in ffxiv is non existent at this point, it's more of a cosmetic fluff rather than a functioning part of the game that's used for gearing up faster, doing jumping puzzles, give advantage in pvx, progress through the story etc. If you're talking about the skyscale grind, they just give it to you in the latest expansion.
If you like ESO, who am I to judge you. Keep on enjoying, and I didn't say anything negative about it. There are tons of comparison videos of its strenghts and weaknesses on YT, and I chose gw2 in the end. My point is this game definitely doesn't deserve to be lower tier than ffxiv and wow while being superior in most aspects.
I feel Anarchy online is so forgotten about. It was such a an amazing game and kinda still is
agreed
I probably have around 7,000 hours in gw1 and gw2. It has casual elements and hardcore (takes alot of time) elements too. I wish gw2 had more weapon drops versus crafting component drops like gw1 but gw2 is still a great game and its only gotten way better over the years. Id pay big money for a gw1 remake however.
gw1 was epic in its own way
Gw2 has a cash store, pay 2 win elements, so meh nooo thank you.
Also dont want to go for there predatory marketing practices like paying for all 9 character slots after buying the game and all expansions, buying bank slots, build storage???( Lmfao u can copy and paste it onto a text file btw), built templates... i could go on but yeah you get my point.
If they made the game good, and not force you to pay to skip the bad parts, then maybe i wouldnt have dropped it as soon as i found the pay to win elements and grind skips late game.
@@flailmail7069 first of all, this system is called "pay for convenience". Since there is no gear score and no gear enhancing, you can only "win" against other players with your skill. Second, GW2 also doesn't have any sub fee and has to run between releasing their expansions too: keeping their servers alive, do maintenance, fix stuff that's broken and, ofc, develop new content. Moreover, ANYTHING in the gemstore can be easily bought for ingame currency after gold-to-gem conversion. Sure, it will be a hell of a lot if you try to get all the unlocks at once, but there is literally no point in doing it. If you're a new-ish player - you DON'T need 9 char slots for all the classes in limited time span, you can create a few, try them out, delete the ones you don't like or dive deeper into ones you do like. That alone will give you tons of hours of gameplay, during which you WILL earn gold (and therefore can convert it to gems). If you're an experienced player - you can farm that gold, and not just in brainded open-pve way, but also with doing raids, high-tier fractals, or PVP tournaments. And, after crafting legendary gear, you'll be able to change your build on the fly for whatever content you want to run.
There are tons of ways to earn those gems, if you like the game and want to play it. But if you wanna whine and spread negativity about a non-sub game's cash shop instead, nobody can stop you :)
I'm curious, what is pay to win about it? What do you pay for that gives you the edge over other players and the game itself???
@@flailmail7069
@@flailmail7069pay 2 win elements? How? I don’t think you’ve played the game. There are things in the cash shop that make playing the game easier but not to the point that gets you ahead of everyone else because it has horizontal progression. So why would you say that?
I wish wildstar and Firefall was still around 😞
Also, New World has massive potential. I think it’s gonna be one of those MMOs like ESO or FFXIV where it started really bad, but needed some time before it gets really appreciated. I say the next 2 to 5 years it will be up there with the tops
I played New World for a while and really had a good first impression but over time I started to notice how similar everything felt. Same mobs, same types of quests, same town layout, etc. One day I realized I couldn't name a single NPC from the game even after playing it for over two months, and that made me realize I wasn't really immersed in the world, I was just enjoying the gameplay. I quickly started to lose interest after that because I didn't see any future in the game. I think the game would be great if they spent more time on making the story and setting more interesting but unfortunately they seem to have moved more towards catering to the PvP group.
I've been wanting to play New World for so long now, my potato cant run it but im upgrading in just a couple weeks and im excited to play it. It looks like it has the most potential of anything upcoming aside from Ashes of Creation and will most likely be my main MMO.
New world is awesome now. It really has a solid core currently. All it needs is more PvP maps and the dungeon finder fully added. The rest can be just content added the core is really set now.
The absolute only thing that could ever save New World is Amazon literally selling it to an actual development studio.
I miss wildstar so bad, I was just looking at the Nexus Forever project- but it's no where near complete and more like a tourist visit of what the MMO was. I will never play an NCSoft MMO again because of it.
Pour one out for City of Heroes. The best superhero MMO by a long shot. Glad you gave some love to DAOC :)
I second this!
I haven't had the time to play recently, but last time I checked the overall experience on the Homecoming server was quite good. (With everything that was a paid service or item in the shut-down retail version now being free stuff on Homecoming and overall a healthy population.)
Eve Online has plenty of dungeons! Some of them spawn in space and you have to scan them down. They also update the story lore as they go, often introducing new tech, new factions, mechanics and a lot of stuff. They also have a Council of Stellar Management (CSM) which is a stakeholder status group of elected players that provide feedback to the developers. I would argue it has a scope that is unmatched, though due to this it is difficult to polish everything to suit a mainstream audience. The offline meta experience keeps many players of high corp and alliance ranks up at night to say the least...
somewhat agreed but CCP still can do a better job in dungeon systems, the biggest difference of Eve is that when you die, you lost tons of in game money and probably the time invested in the game, which makes it unique in terms of attacking and defending. Its not an easy game to start for sure.
You need to factor in cost as well. Do you make an up front purchase, pay a subscription, or keep getting gatcha boxes you have to pay to open? Is the cash store pay to win or does it only offer cosmetics?
RIP Asheron's Call - Darktide. Some good times on that server, the political pvp map the players divided the world up into with almost no interference from the Devs was absolutely fantastic
I’m so happy someone brought AC up, the best MMO I’ve played. So many good memories and it’s such a shame ac2 was a flop
@@hoopoop239 The most fun I ever had was during the Ayan Baqur war, when the town was first put into the game, as that was the only place to get level 7 spell components, and all the PK and anti-PK guilds fought over it for like a week solid. The bodies strewn across the landscape was a sight to see.
I also laughed my ass off when I ganked Zunk Sun of Blood/KoC in Lytelthorpe on my noob axer because he was wearing acid stone GSA and thus had zero protection against my lightning atlan axe, got him in one shot, looted his pre-patch olthoi helm (which you could NOT get anymore), and he sent me tells for hours begging me to give it back, sell it back, etc. etc. Anyone who played on Darktide knew that Bloods were absolute dickholes (even more so than back in the Ultima Online days), so I told him I'd meet him at the Dryreach lifestone to trade it back, and as he showed up I dropped it into the lifestone; it was now irretrievable and would decay after a while. He got SO mad.
No town guards meant guilds had to hold territory by strength of arms, and the political map that developed was a one-of a kind thing in an MMO. It wasn't dev created, it just grew organically; everyone knew you didn't go to the southern Lugian Citadel to level because that was where various PK guilds leveled, and you kept your nose clean around Kara due to BRN's influence in the region, etc. Sawato was a haven for noobs thanks to the Professionals under Ronan keeping it safe for them, and if you saw a Smurf anywhere, you RAN :D
Such a shame that the MMORPG market became a revolving door. Too bad they weren't able to be ahead of their time in the changes that they made, and "bots" and eBay forced reality into it's innocent situation.
Definitely should have a mention for Everquest II which launched when WoW Classic came out in 2004, and seems to be doing well still with a new expansion this year. As well as Runes of Magic (probably C Tier) that was very interesting. As well as Anarchy Online from 2001 that was my first first MMORPG.
Is Runes of Magic even alive still?
Oh I remember Anarchy Online, I was trying to remember the name so thanks for that. It was really different for its time and gave me such a strange feeling when I first played it. But I remember it was not too bad or at least I thought it was good enough to play for a while.
EQ2 definitely had way better graphics at the time than WoW did.
Strangely enough WoW seems to have aged better graphically.
Anarchy Online ❤ Imagine having it with Unreal grahics
Ultima online from 1997 was/is a great mmorpg. Some of the best magic systems ever!
Might not be a huge MMO, but I think Vindictus deserves a spot in there, even though it might be nostalgia tier 🥲
Vindictus was peak mmo
It has a very instanced based gameplay, so it off puts the people who like fully fledged open world games. But the gameplay was fun and the gear Crafting was cool that it was from parts of bosses
Eve player for over 2 years here, the game definitely has "equivalents" to raids and dungeons. abyssals/exploration/combat sites are very dungeon-esque while doing incursions with a 10+ man fleet can itch that need for a raid. there are a LOT of things to do in eve so I don't fault you for not knowing about them, especially at a surface. To me, it's really a game where you can find anything that interests you and there's always something fun to do for everyone.
i am personally REALLY enjoying Lotro after watching alot of people play WoW classic. It feels like WoW except with the lore of The Lord of The Rings. It stays on the main story along with soooo much extra stuff and places.
Solid tier list but personally I think GW2 should've been S tier. Tbf I haven't gotten around to playing it but I have been just buying all the expansions lol. Man I haven't played some of these games in so long (R.I.P Tera). I tried out some but couldn't get behind them long term like FFXIV mostly cause of the monthly sub AND having to buy each expansion, still a pretty good game.
S tier? The game only has servers in America and EU. That automatically brings it down compared to other MMOs. Maybe if your in either of those regions it's an S tier but because I am not it's significantly lower for me.
A tier is good enough for Gw2
@@bank869 yeah and after making it to endgame it doesn't have the greatest endgame content either but it's more than enough content if your a new player. I highly recommend you don't touch it if your in Asia or Oceania like myself because the ping is atrocious even with exitlag.
if the game's good its good not because of the ping for me i still play wow with 130ping from SEA and i still enjoy WOW more than Gw2 @@UnifiedMatrix
Lord of the Rings Online is a hidden gem. It follows the lore and is a relaxed game. It is formatted around the journey to max level. But man..... what an awesome journey with a storyline that competes with FF14. Best part is, it follows the lore of Tolkein so well.. they didnt sell out and stuck to their roots.
no DEI, ESG Bs ? Damn might be interested
I kinda like what you're saying. Idk the lotr lore though. I watch the main three movies but I didn't read anything. Be worth it to try even if idk the lore?
@@didisaythat4230 Yes. Whats funny is that alot of the storyline is formulated around the movie. But at the same time. For example, while the fellowship is working with Strider to get the ring to Mt. Doom, you are working at teh same time to fight off obstacles to make that happen. Its quite ingenioius.
@Thatcrazyearth No they fixed that with the monitization rework like a year ago.
It was kind of dumb though, but its fixed.
@Thatcrazyearth It's free now up to level 95 plus you can build up LOTRO points while playing the game and probably by lvl 95 you'll have enough points to purchase the next bit of content ☺️
Loved RIFT. I've played many ftp MMOs and a few months of WOW but never find any addictive features & Rift managed to make me in love with MMOs.
My most favorite memories include:
- Swimming from one island to another just to save a couple of gold.
- Getting many server first items from loot bosses and had my names being announced.
- Finding rare artifacts on some random corner while doing quests.
- The ability to 1v4 enemies in battlegrounds long enough so my teammates can do objectives.
- Raiding. I was close to each and every one of the 20 men raid. I would say Wow raids are a little too big and FF14 are a little too small. 20 people are just perfect.
It's sad that the game died down too quick as I think SWTOR and Guild Wars 2 came out after RIFT and the community split into 3 and it didn't take off.
My next fave is definitely FF14. So many things to do. But at the same time, the sad part is if we take a month break, there's too much to catch up, I ended up stopping due to IRL commitment.
when i hear 25 is too big lol. used to raid with 72 in EQ back in the day, felt absolutely epic.
I absolutely loved rift and still log in for nostalgia once in a while. I loved it so much that i took their world and made it my homebrew dnd campaign❤🎉
I'm sorry, but putting "Wizard101" and "reasonably monetized" in the same sentence is an insult to every single other MMO in this list.
I've never played a game with more predatory monetization tactics, it's especially awful because it's a game build towards children first.
Dungeons & Dragons online I think should be mentioned in this list. Have been playing mmos since Everquest and hands down it has about the best pve content of all mmos I have played. Despite its dated graphics, its def worth a try. It launched a year before Lotro did and is my two go to mmorpgs even to this day, FFXIV on occasion.
Note about ffxi and eve.
Ffxi still has multiple hundreds of hours of gameplay pre 100 and post 100. Sad about maintenance mode but still worth trying out. There's also an HD pack you can setup via UA-cam.
Eve technically doesn't have dungeons but there is a ton of group content. Abyssal dead space, high level missions, rat complexes, forward operating bases, etc. There's a ton you can do as a group in pve.
You're right about both, Lucky Ghost is a PvE player. He put EVE there only because incompetence. He literally knows nothing about EVE. He played it for a short while, and I watched the aftermath upload, and he did really nothing. The stuff you're explaining he has no idea what even is.
These tier lists are dumb as hell, and this one specifically if from a PvE player, who doesn't even play all these games. It's a blind tier list.
EVE belongs much higher than the list goes in some ways and at least in top level in others. But it is NOT like other mmos at all, it is far more player driven and reliant on player cooperation, as well as still having an INSANE learning curve.
@zeehero7280 much higher?? it already got tier B.. what do you expect? Tier S besides wow and ffixiv? Very objective.. B tier is high enough 😆
@@SpaceMarshal Eve should be slightly below BDO atm, they are definitely trying to help newer players just like what BDO has been doing lol
In EVE Online, I compare the different kinds of filaments as passages to dungeons with different levels of difficulty, whether solo or in a group.
Gw2 is definitely S tier. It’s been shaping the future of mmo for years. Dynamic mount momentum and abilities, account-wide features and many more features were inspiration to world of Warcraft which they had no choice other than following the same. I tried many AAA mmos, none of them respects your time and your pocket more than gw2. Its horizontal progression is hard to get used to it at first but once you get the concept you also understand that it’s way better than grinding for items at each expansions.
I hear you, its always a tough choice for me on these lists. I'm always torn between giving it S tier or A tier. I think the lack of holy trinity is what really held it back for me. I always miss having your stereo typical tank healer and dps roles when I'm playing it. its like organized chaos in group content lol. Super subjective, so I can easily see why someone else would place it S tier. it does so much right
@@LuckyGhost It might be confusing at first but actually I love it doesn’t follow typical holy trinity. Because every class has self sustainability until a certain point. There are still roles more focused on healing, tanking but it doesn’t limit or force you to play a certain class for that. You can do anything by swapping weapons and builds. Once you get familiar, it’s not that chaotic actually. A smart formation should follow some criterias such as having alacrity quickness buffers inside the squad while maintaining the flexibility especially for open world contents. But yeah, as you said it’s S tier for some, F tier for others. All subjective
@@LuckyGhost I agree with @josephcw. Lack of holy trinity also means you aren't waiting around in queue for the missing role to show up. There's also the ability to freely change your build outside of combat so if there was something specific people want brought (like the alacrity boon), they can change to it quickly, particularly if they have the equipment and build tabs set up ahead of time. It's as convenient as FFXIV's class changing without the hassle of leveling up completely different classes for the role.
And with all the Support builds in the game, really the only thing missing is a dedicated Tank role. You are free to play what you want with the class kit you want in GW2.
To me, GW2 deserves to be S Tier, it is that good.
Might be somewhat controversial but I think a mmo with no console presence has no right being in S tier.
@@-_-DatDudeno mmos should never cater to, or compromise for, consoles.
@@christianna4404 I respect your opinion but I have to disagree. Its 2023, nearly 2024... MMOs need to adapt with the times and accommodate console or else the MMO genre will quickly be a relic of the past like other genres such as RTS and FMV.
From a developmental point of view, MMOs are a terrible ROI. It makes no sense for devs to not put their MMOs on console.
@@christianna4404having played BDO on console, I can tell ya that shit was rough😂 mmos on pc is 10x better for sure just with button layouts and UI
@@-_-DatDudeBDO did this right and some others are starting the switch👏
For anyone wondering about Oldschool RuneScape’s graphics; with one simple plugin you can turn on HD graphics
I rember the old clasic Runescape, browser and basicly 2d, I was one of the first (later on called) pures. The update of grafic and combat system ruind so many hundred of hours of grinding I never went in again 😢
Listing WoW as "no p2W" when you can literally buy gold is a joke
buy as much gold you want, you will never pass 1300 rating, or enter on a mythic raid guild
Odd that none of the Everquest footage was from the Everquest game. The progression servers are well populated. The game is still supported and they are just launching their 30th expansion. Even without nostalgia, if you enjoy older style games, it's worth some time. But it may not hold your attention for 100s of hours like it did back in the day. I think C tier is the correct spot, even though I love the heck out of the game. It's unlike anything else when it comes to socialized group content.
I think it should be at least one tier higher based on the criteria he used on the choices.
I still play EQ. But I've been playing it off and on since 1999. As I've played almost all mmos, I always go back to EQ.
If you’re gonna talk about EverQuest, you gotta talk about EverQuest 2. It was the first to go down the “classic” business model, opening up TLE servers years before wow and still is fairly fun to play for a tab targeter
Everquest 1 had TLP servers before eq2, also Holly Longdale who was in charge of everquest for like 10 years moved onto WoW and is now lead for classic :)
Eve online is quite literally its own RPG genre. It is definitely A tier and most likely S tier in everything it has to offer. It is a hard game because the depth it has throughout.
I'm sorry but you said ESO doesnt have a subscription when 85% of the content is locked behind ESO Plus or outright having to buy all of the DLC to play any of the content
you're 100% right. I meant to say an mmo you can play without a sub if you want. not an mmo without a sub
@@LuckyGhostreasonable! the only part about ESO the turns me away a bit is the insane amount of content you “gotta pay for”, though still one of my favorite mmos :)
Asheron's Call came out in 1999 and was fun. Horizons: Empire of Istaria was also a fun mmo. Horizons allowed you to multiclass your classes. I had a healer/druid/blood mage which were level 80 each before I stopped playing the game. The problem was the game wasn't able to get enough subscribers to break even on its costs. It came out in 2003 and was completing with World of Warcraft.
Really appreciate the kind words about Wayfinder, we have no illusions about the bumps in the road we have faced. But the team is dedicated and we can't wait to show the world everything we are dreaming for the game. Love the videos!
its a game i am keeping my eye on and have high hopes for
its a tad boring, need some more content aside from dungeon grinding to unlock everything
@MadManDan-MMD working on our first entry level raid now and two more open world zones. We have plenty of content in the hopper, it'll just take time. Still just Early Acess ;😜
@@sir_snarfi purchased this and refunded after an hour, while it wasnt for me it wasnt actually that bad of a game. will take a closer look upon release.
Looks good, sounds good, but still waiting for the free access it promised.
I agree with pretty much everything except for New World being A tier. I think at best it should be B tier since they’re trying to make it better, but there’s still so many problems with the game from bugs, to bad game design.
the combat is insane
You obviously haven't played recently, also monetization is important and it's got done of the best right now
@@JROCThaGreat the game is good RN?
Ye getting better every patch. Still has issues and especially since their combat code is a bit spaghetti code. Each patch does tend to have some combat bugs with them. But they get fixed every time. They are rewriting the combat code and releasing that sometime soon to make it less buggy, smoother for the large scale pvp/pve, and easier to add new weapons to the game
Not putting GW 2 in S Tier should be a crime!
This was good, but you forgot Everquest 2. They have even released a new expansion. So it is small but active still. Plus if you get a membership you get full access to DCU and Everquest 1.
Ya can't believe I forgot eq2 haha
There is one more title worth mentioning and it's Ragnarok Online
Yes it's still alive at some private servers like Shining Moon and it's not only nostalgia, but also a well updated free to play project with a lot of people playing it. Highly recommend
Imagine putting GW2 on the same level as Lost Ark and New World...
imagine putting a mobile carbon copy game like lost ark in the list in general
@@ejokurirulezz XD
Yeah, plus the only S tier mmo that deserves the spot he didn't even include - CoH (resurrected on Homecoming). That is all.
When you said Tera, I felt my heart break all over again
Me too 😪
yup i missing my cute elin
It was a special game. Best combat ever
I thought it was still up?
@@majorgear1021 referring to how TERA pull an inverse-FFXIV, becoming trash over huge updates
Best MMOs of the year review I’ve watched. I do think Maplestory deserves a spot on this list though.
Watched the video to update myself on the latest going MMOs. Seems like you are huge Blizzard fanboi however. While i disagree with you placements of WOWc and retail, GW2, ESO and NW i can respect that the placements are entirely your opinion. Enjoyed the video. Thanks for taking the time to make it.
You forget Perfect world and Vindictus they were so popular, you should put them in the nostalgic list
Honestly, ESO is very enjoyable as a MMO, i played ESO almost solo for the past 4-5 years, i am not keen on the hardcore stuff like the Vet dungeon or the Trials, i only do the open world PVE story and daily dungeons and mostly Cyrodiil.
The social aspect is just a small plus to know that the world is alive with players and it felt good. but ESO is one of those MMO where doing the side quest and main quest alone is very enjoyable and it has enough content to last you many many years
A game that I feel like deserves a spot on this list is EQOA, otherwise known as EverQuest Online Adventures. It was a full-fledged subscription based MMORPG in the Equest universe for PlayStation 2. Obviously cross play was not a thing yet so it had its own servers and had its own storyline and timeline compared to the mainline series on PC. They had a pretty solid number of subscribers at its peak and even got a expansion which added another class and a whole new continent. It was Equest response to the success of Final Fantasy 11. 🙏🏽😆
It was the best MMO I ever played.
the only reason I played RIFT for so long was the dimension player housing, by the time I left the game for good, I had maybe 12 dimension project ongoing, 10 near completion. The game will forever hold a special place in my heart as the most player freedom housing system ever, I made myself a treehouse and I handmade for someone a stairway going around a massive tree trunk XD
Great points! 🤗 I'll have to check this out!
I actually really miss the OG FFXI days... No MMO gives me the same sense of accomplishment and weight that XI did. I get why that type of game isn't for everyone, but I just miss things meaning more. No fast travels everywhere (this made you explore and plan), no soloable content past level 10 (this forced you to network and make friends - my best friend of over 20 years I met on XI), Super hard mob fights (this made killing them so exhilarating), and one of my favorites, super rare and REALLY HARD to get gear (this made gear actually F'ing cool and awesome - there was this Paladin set that was super rare and just remember everyone aweing at you walking through main cities). Idk if I'll ever get that in an MMO again.
From the perspective of a vet, Guild Wars 2 is easily s+, BUT when you first get into it, its hard to figure out what your doing, where to get gold so you dont use the cashshop and so on, but MightyTeapot has a long running series on his channel in which he spends absolutly no money and is able to get all the good gear, legendary items, mounts, and even cosmetics/account upgrades from the shop (using in game gold) and all mounts, I think the only thing he bought was the expansions but you cant buy those using gems anyways. I have been trying to get my friends into this game for over 2 years, and since the base game is dated they think the entire game is like that but all the expansions even the fist one is alwaus populated, plus when you get the best in slot gear you dont need to craft or grind for better gear but there is other grinds in the game that make it more fun. Please try it! and I know Elementalist sounds like the coolest class ever, but for begineers its impossible and will make you quit! Best starting classes are Necromancer, Ranger, Guardian, Mesmer (Mesmer is alittle more complex but rewarding), but again pick whatever you like the look of. Soulbeast Ranger is awesome tho (i'm bisased lol)
Glad to hear that Guild Wars 2 is good. I've thought of getting it. I used to like Guild Wars and played it for quite a while before moving on. Glad to hear that GW 2 has a good solo mode because I very seldom play MMOs with other people. I'm almost as antisocial in games as I am in real life. :)
What's bad about offline play? I love it. It's nice to be able to play a game without having to be online these days.
Very helpful video!
Get it now, it's on discount :P
Guild wars 2 the players come to you don’t worry they every where
S-tier: "no P2W", proceeds to put wow on S-tier
Does wow really have p2w elements?
@@DrGuyPHD you can buy wow tokens, that enables you to buy BoE:s, crafting gears, consumables, even boosting, you can basicly get anything just using irl money, i'd consider that p2w
@@DrGuyPHD it does yeah
if wow is p2w, EVERY mmo is pay 2 win. but i'll wait for you to name one that isnt so I cant tell you how it is. and yeah, I'm with ya, I despise the wow token, and its equivalent in nearly every other major mmo
@@LuckyGhost Well ffxiv for example isnt, yes you can technically buy money and boosts from black market, but thats against the rules and will result in a ban. wow lets you buy gold directly from them and doesnt give a crap about all the boosting, if i remember correctly lotro didnt have option to sell its premium currency for gold and item shop was mainly pay-for-convenience stuff and expansions, but not 100% sure on that, gw2 is bit on the borderline, yes you can buy gold, but the gold doesnt allow you to buy really that much of player power, wow is by far on the top-end of the p2w scale on mmo:s
DAOC is the KING of MMOs. I am so glad it is still being remembered.
yeah, one of the if not THE best PvP experience I had in any MMO. I wish someone would remake the PvP, the PvE would clearly need updating
FFXIV is so damn good recently started playing as it came onto Xbox. The community is honestly the nicest of any MMORPG I’ve ever experienced. Maybe except early runescape 2005ish
- Wait, it's all C-tier nostalgia bait that will never feel nearly as good as when you were a kid?
- Always has been
Great video! I got a couple good recommendations to try out
You didn't talk about EQ 2 which is still getting expansions. I also think Dungeon and Dragons Online still exists.
I'll have to look into EQ2, I always forget it exists when it comes time to do these even though I played it for a short time at launch
D&D Online is still online.
Imo Albion would've been one of the best MMOs out there if PvP wasn't forced on you. I get it, it's made this way, but not being able to enjoy it in end-game because you either have to go in red and black zones, in which case, you're ambushed by 5-6 people at once and you lose hours of grinding, or you simply have to buy the tier 7-8 items if you don't want to get into PvP at all. Game's wonderful, played it for about 100 hours with friends, up until we had everything at tier 6, but all 3 of us stopped playing because we were forced into PvP.
Yeah its true,, Albion is definitely rough if you're looking for a more relaxing pve experience, but tons of fun if your itching for some high stakes pvp. Not a lot of middle ground haha
Pretty much the exact reason why me and my wife quit the game.
All these PVE cry baby car bear babies. Give me your loot weak sauce
Solo PVP doesn’t work. You have to slave for a guild with mandatory raids and pick your gear you have to wear. Not enough being some ones bitch at work? Play Albion. So much fun. lol. no.
@@PingWhisper I see that for some people it's impossible to simply be nice
New world is so fun right now. Graphics and combat are nice.
New World in A tier? The game that is basically dead and full of game breaking bugs? Come on...
Something to note, BDO seems to be putting a lot more focus on trying to implement group content without having an impact on the current structure of the game. It’s had pretty mixed results so far but it does show that the new devs are actually listening to the playerbase and trying to release what is lacking. That said the game is still far from S tier imo but it’s defo making steps in the right direction.
Also in regard to OSRS, there is an official HD client been released. Personally the graphics aren’t for me, idm the simplicity of the original game, but it does give options for people who find the original graphic design a turnoff.
BDO is my all time fav, even if it’s not the most popular. It’s polished the combat gives me a surge of adrenaline that others don’t and the graphics are beautiful. That’s just scratching the surface.
Does it need a good pc or like can i play with my friend?
@@RNiN-zt5ce theres no such thing as play with friends if its a Korean game. they all design the play to be solo able
I loved playin Tera, and miss the ability to go back in an enjoy the great combat. Sad it just never got fixed properly.
Personally, I'd GW2 in S tier, but cant argue the A tier rating too much. GW2 has just been one of my main side mmo's because of the b2p, and it is just fun combat wise, and pretty solid story content.
I agree with the positioning of SWTOR. However, they did recently announce newer upcoming story update which is not something you'd get with a mmo in maintenance mode, so can't agree that its there yet. That could change in the near future, though. Not to mention that Bioware handed off a bunch of its staff to Broadsword to continue working on the game.
They've also just opened the Shae Vizla Server (APAC). A game in (or going into) maintenance mode isn't going to put resources into opening a brand new server.
@@WraithReaper09 exactly.
Definitely disagree with placing STO ( Star Trek Online) in the B column, as a underrepresented space MMO it stands worlds apart from many other MMO's especially with its ongoing updated player campaigns, content both free and paid and continuous updates to the game to keep players involved considering its based off RL sci fi culture. I think any MMO game designers that keep their players this engaged like STO does deserves too have the game rated much higher. Not many MMO's also have so many storylines in addition to allowing players to go to planets play there and then go to space and team up for huge space battles.
As an mmo gamer who has played all these MMOs, I find FF11 so much fun, and retail continues to get more monthly content more than FF14. Yes, very surprisingly. I still play FF14, and lately, since their is not much to do, I find myself content with FF11 and master leveling is super hard, much more harder than the leveling in the lv 75 era.
I retried WoW classic, but I couldn't find that mmo as an mmo or fun, sadly, and SWTOR has gotten a bit better in UI, but not as great as how it was. New World is super fun, may go back someday. But I would put FF11 on B tier or A tier and old school runescape to C tier. That is just my opinion.
One that broke my heart was Wildstar.. i had so high hopes as i loved the theme and teasers but that didnt hold up sadly
No EverQuest 2? Good game, still getting regular new content, and most customizable housing in any MMO.
agreed total miss from this list
W101 is really underrated as a story from start to finish. I remember starting it with my friend, the pvp system was fun. Games not complicated and you can always find friendly people willing to help. whether your a solo player or not. Having a Different worlds to explore with their own story is refreshing. Last time I played max level cap was like 50 or 60 but I know they upped it and I had this lightning wizard that could one shot the other players or myself 😂 that was one of my funnest memories in that game.
Level cap is like 150-160 now I think. It has a pretty big player base still surprisingly. I would say 10k+ concurrent
I had a myth with max achievable damage 6 months ago. The game is awful in it's current state. They ruined the gameplay and loot boxes are running rampant in a P2W fashion
You forgot to mention Everquest 2 as its one of the everquest series which was very popular in its time but not so much now
Old School Runescape with RuneLite plugins is actually pretty good. Modern rendering with real time lighting, greater draw distance, brings new life to the nostalgic models and textures.
GW2 S-tier in my heart
Eso is the one of the best games, but definitely the best MMO I've ever played after installing some QOL addons.
Maybe elder scrolls is just nostalgic, but I clocked 500 hours in 4 months and I'm completely addicted
ESO is so creative and it keeps growing and there is just so much fun to be had in so many ways! I've been playing it since BETA and it just keeps getting better and more and more fun! 🥰
Final fantasy 14 is the only mmo I’ve tried this year where I am always feeling like I have lots to do and feels like a connection to the world. I really wanted to like lost ark but quit after couple weeks when I waited 20 plus minutes just to get 3 other players to que up for one of the early dungeons and I don’t have that kind of patience and lost ark has a few good things but starts getting big money walls and micro transactions
I feel like people love to say FF14 is good, but the slog of the main quest just to run dungeons is freaking lame, I'd take GW2 over it any day and I don't even play either atm :P
In a game like BDO where the Ui can be overwhelming , or wow where the quests are hard to find, how has ff14 shaped up?
Same here I prefer GW 2 or ESO, never couldn't connect to FF XIV story or combat. It also has a weird community if you don't agree with them or do as they do you will considered a toxic player, it's positively toxic behavior.
@@Ninja40K same. I tried it for 2 days but I felt miserable in FFXIV. Didn't helped that in two days I only witnessed one small talk in entire map. It made me feel desolate. Combat was weird, and story .. all I learned was that initial game was disaster that got nuked. Wherever story was it was probably buried under so many fetch quests. That's all I did for two days - fetch quests.
GW 2 should be S tier easy. best mount, Open world exploration/ events, large scale PvP, achivement scaling and now it has one of the best fashion + player houssing system.
Did anyone else get a proud tear to the eye when Oldschool Runescape got placed in S-tier?
I'm not crying, you're crying.
what about Ragnarok Online? The best of MMO's ever
It dead and the company keep making ragnarok mobile crash grab.
What about DDO and EQ2?
DDO has been on my list of games to go back to for some time. Feels bad not seeing it on the list. Too bad that they can't seem to capture the BG3 euphoria. I really liked the 3.5 rule set. Good times.
None of these deserve to be above B tier, MMO genre has been in such a sad state for so long, the only games trying to innovate end up being completely niche because everyone is still playing the same game for 20 years or a defective clone of it.
really disappointed that Mabinogi, Published by Nexon and made by devcat never made the list based on several other entries listed here. Its a classless based mmo that isnt centered around pvp at all. all of its content is exclusively pve. Its an older game but its been steadily getting updates, and events are constantly rotating so that there is always one active. Please if you havent tried it before, give it a go. Its a really good game. But it doesnt hold your hand for very long.
You pick your characters race, age, and starting talent. Then you are shipped off into the world to basically go wherever you want and do wahtever you want. Want to level up by fighting monsters? go for it! want to level up by making food or wine? go crazy! wanna level up by doing quests? sure! level up by cutting wood and making weapons like bows? sure thing! you can even level up by shearing sheep or collecting eggs from chickens!
It's an amazingly open ended story driven mmo that is outrageously underrated in my opinion. And its getting an update eventually inroducing it to UE5 and the concept arts that have been shown are very promising! if you are looking for an mmo you have never experienced and just want something new please give it a try. I promise it wont be disappointing!
Great tier list. I put in 25+ hours per week of ESO and I wouldn't put it in S tier. The over monetization holds it back. I have the ESO plus just for the crafting bag.
This was a fantastic list and video. Love your passion, depth of experience, analytics and presentation.
For me GW2 defiantly an S tier. You also have a little mistake, the premium currency in the game can be purchased by in-game currency, and many player does that.
I just started eve and its fun and relaxing but definitely is a “second screen while you work” sort of game. Gw2 was my jam since launch and eso is really really good too, its like $6 for base game and thats a banger deal for a super friendly to casuals mmo. Ff14 was a slog. Got my samurai to 60 and called it a day. That game is overrated as f to me
well, you gotta get to endgame to experience the best mmo of all time.
I miss my days on AA, was fun while it lasted. I wanna get into an mmo but ive been so far removed from it, idk which one to play anymore
I'm not disputing this list itself, but honestly, it's really sad that any tier list of MMO's to play in 2024 would have 3 out of its 4 best recommendations come from games that were originally released 2+ decades ago (and the 4th being released over a decade ago). It says a lot about how poorly the genre has evolved, as a whole.
I have played WoW classic back from the launch, it was really enjoyable and I loved it, honestly. But cmon, putting an old, outdated game because of the nostalgia (and for some new content for cash grab) to S tier and GW2 which is constantly growing, getting better and bigger to A tier...? I doubt this whole video isn't just a promotion to that game...
I played WOW about 15 years, but started falling out of love as the writing became increasingly WOKE. That became intolerable during Shadowlands when the writers had the male NPC awaiting rescue like damsels in distress and swamped the storyline with female NPC god powers. They carried that to such an extreme that they retconned the lore. It was like playing Season 8 of GOT when you cheer for all the wrong reasons and laugh in all the wrong places. Anyway, I tucked in all my 100 toons and cancelled both my subs.
I tried WOW Classic but found the player inventory limits too confining. Plus I could not find other players who actually wanted to do group content. Seemed like most wanted to carry or be carried and there is too much group content to progress as a solo. When Blizzard rolled out the next expansion for Classic, they wanted a transfer fee per toon. Your only other option was to level a new toon from scratch.
I've been playing Kingdom Come: Deliverance and hoping for a sequel announcement. It is a wonderful game, everything I used to love about WOW. For the present, I recently installed Elder Scrolls Online, created a bunch of alts, and today I am installing Lucky Ghost's recommended ESO addons. I think I am going to enjoy this.
This is the gayest comment I've ever read, which, ironically, is how most anti-woke comments end up.
GW2 definitely deserves at least S-Tier. Maybe even Top 3 S Tier and definitely higher than Wow retail and oldschool RuneScape.
what a joke. gw2 is so bad
@@vadim6656 had same though playing it early but after a month of discovering, it destroyed wow and FF14 in my head. The game had some of the best system i wish they were in the other games mostly open world.
Retail wow is not S tier tbh. Its at best A, with the way theyre not listening to the players, monetization. And lack of care...
I started playing DDO with a small static group three months ago. It's been fun to revisit it from level 1. We've actually added two new players to the group recently. Their Hardcore server (not always online, special event only) is a fun yet terrifying way to play.
Ultima was not fun to play when it came out. I beta tested it and when it went gold, it was plagued with lag since everyone was on dial up back in the day. What usually happened was you tried to zone into a dungeon and when you finished loading, you'd be dead and looted since every entrance was camped by griefers. We were so happy to leave it behind for Everquest, which I also beta'ed. Developer meetings with UO developers got us ridiculed for complaining about the non stop pvp. I remember selling all our stuff in UO and getting so many questions when they found we'd been in Everquest. Everquest got the concept that not everyone wants to pvp everywhere, all the time.
fascinating story, thank you for sharing!
Final Fantasy was great because the game had so much content that they didn’t need to raise the level cap for over 5 years. Having your armor keep its relevancy for half a decade made grinding feel worth it more than any other game. I had a BLM with an earring that gave massive massive attack bonus and I was basically able to max out all my merits on BLM. Having a subjob was so cool. You could build your character sooo many ways compared to most MMOs. I liked being able to sign items you craft, so when you craft a +1 of the best item in the game and your name is on it, that makes you feel like such a bad ass. I used to get in really good parties and would be killing mobs for hours, but the chow hall would be about to close so I’d say I need 5 minute break, would sprint to the chow hall, and then eat with my mouth as both my hands were on my keyboard. Alllllllll I did was play FFXI until they raised the level cap from 75. Grinding a Matt’s cap was an almost unattainable feat in the game. It was brutal
I'm playing BDO for pvp & FFXIV for the story & pve, both are great experiences in their respective subgenre.
Just might do this as well
SWTOR hurts me so much. It's an amazing game with no P2W or gambling, a really solid tab target MMO that easily rivals FFXIV and WoW, but the devs just never put enough effort into making new content when the game was still hot and simply let it atrophy to the point where the only people actively playing are RPers and PvPers.