What MMO Should you play?

the most common question i get asked as an mmo content creator is what mmo should i play and it's a strange question because it implies that you can only play one at a time and there's an objective best choice which are both incorrect so in this video i'd like to go through the well-known major options you've got some lesser-known more niche options the pros and cons of any choice and why you should probably stop asking the internet what you should spend your time doing because you're only going to get emotionally driven answers and most importantly i'm going to look at why approaching the mmorpg genre with the pre-established desire to like a certain game without playing it or to defend a game beyond all critique just because it's your favorite game is a terrible position to be in as a genuine fan of the game and also why new players of the genre are finding it so hard to find a game they like i'd also like to thank the extremely brave guild wars 2 for sponsoring this video which was convenient for me because i've already made the video and i was going to put them in anyway before they asked about a sponsorship so i haven't had to actually change anything so which mmos are actually worth playing what is the best attitude to approach playing them with and why you might actually find the games more fun if you play them in a more casual way let's begin ladies and gentlemen welcome i'm josh dryface i love mmorpgs i've built an entire youtube channel around them i love the idea that you can go on an online adventure with your friends journeying through fantastical places having that experience with other people that's a brilliant idea to me and it's why i love every mmo game i've played i always try and find something to like about all of them no matter how bad other people may think they are but the mmo genre does demand a lot of your time and sometimes a lot of your money and people are hesitant to spend both of these things so which mmo game should you play which ones are worth your time or your money first of all let's dispel some myths about world firsts grinding to end game treating the game as a second job because if you treat any mmo like that you won't have fun so let's look at the mindset we need to approach the mmo genre with first and then some of the games you could enjoy before we dive into this a big thank you to the supporters on patreon and twitch who keep the channel alive more on how you can support at the end for now let's begin when someone asks which mmo should i play it's similar to asking which sport should i play or which tv show should i watch or which band should i listen to it's a question which seems to imply you're only going to want to play one and i think this mindset comes from the wrong place a place imagining you're going to be world class at the game if you want to become a world-class football player yes you're going to have to dedicate all your time to playing football same for any sport really and if you want to become an expert on a tv show you're going to have to watch the show multiple times read the cast's biographies watch the behind the scenes documentaries you'll become an obsessed super fan but most people don't aim for top tier professional levels or superfan status most people can play five aside football with their mates then watch a few episodes of one tv show then go rock climbing on another day watch a different show then go swimming and watch another show variety is the spice of life and this is equally true in the world of mmorpgs if you approach the genre with the attitude of i'm going to dominate a single mmo you're going to turn your hobby into your obsession your job and your entire personality this isn't the best way to keep your passion for it alive if you only want to play one mmorpg for the rest of your life that's absolutely fine but you do need to accept the risks that are inherent with doing this the game may die all mmorpg games may eventually end you may finish the game people have messaged me and saying i spent 5000 hours on this game it gets boring what do i do after spending 5000 hours you've probably got your money's worth of this game if you're going to make a single game your thing you need to make sure it doesn't become your entire personality because then you'll see any critique of the game as a critique of you personally and that's not a great place to be to provide meaningful feedback to a game so we're going to approach this as attempting to find a casual hobby not a serious 24 7 job so now let's talk about the cost because this is probably the biggest issues new players face when deciding what mmo to play all games companies want your money that's easy to understand so all mmo games are going to cost you something you just have to decide what you're willing to pay and the monetization you want to accept some games are completely free with a cash shop they'll push you toward once you're a higher level these games are often referred to as pay to win because you're encouraged to spend money to gain power at the end game kind of like neverwinter some games are free to play with an optional monthly membership which grants you access to more content meaning you don't need to pay to enjoy a balanced game but paying gets you more like runescape some games are pay once at the start and then you own the game and can play whenever with no additional fees and you can buy major expansions if and when you want to like guild wars 1. and some games combine these by having a free trial and an initial purchase price and then a required monthly subscription like final fantasy 14. if you want to make an mmorpg game your hobby you have to accept that like many hobbies it will come with a price tag now i still believe that the mmorpg genre is remarkably cheap when you compare the hours of entertainment you can get from a game to the money that you put in for the original purchase price or the monthly subscription so now we're approaching this genre with a bit of a casual mindset and the willingness to spend money if we enjoy the game let's have a look at the games that are actually worth trying the first mmo i recommend to literally everyone new player or long-time genre veteran is guild wars 2. and this is super convenient because a few days ago i got an email from guild wars 2 asking to sponsor a video they just wanted a 60 second shout out to kind of remind people they exist and plug the final expansion end of dragons coming in february and i was happy to accept this sponsorship for one main reason guild wars 2 launched in 2012 when i was in university at the time so i went and bought a day one boxed copy of the game this game came out nine almost 10 years ago and i think i paid about 40 quid for this i've installed it on multiple computers and i've got thousands of hours of gameplay out of it this genuinely might be the best value for money video game i ever bought so why do i recommend guild wars 2 so strongly guild 2 is made up of the core game multiple living story chapters which are in-game story expansions and two major expansions path of fire and heart of thorns with the third major expansion pack end of dragons coming next year and the core game has a free trial there are limitations like any free trial but it is essentially the entire core game and then when you do buy an expansion you keep it with no monthly sub forever it is the least stressful game to own because you never think i'm paying a sub i need to log on i have gone six months without playing installed this on multiple computers and all my characters are still there still waiting still playable and still powerful because of the horizontal progression character creation is great with varied classes and races which all play through different starting stories before meeting up in the main cities and because the game focuses on horizontal progression instead of vertical once you've got the best item you don't need to worry about it becoming obsolete anytime soon horizontal progression means it's not always about chasing the next best thing it's about chasing something equal but different guild wars 2 does have raids and fractals and they're not easy but the focus is on a variety of gameplay jumping puzzles mount collection area exploration a pvp mode which levels everyone to maximum and gives everyone access to the same skills so it's not grind based and a crafting system which lets you make some of the coolest looking weapons in the game but send you all over the world to find the ingredients and because the entire art style is based on watercolor paintings it's stylistic not necessarily realistic and the style has aged like a fine wine the main downside is a lot of older more entrenched mmo players can find guild wars 2's varied gameplay focus a bit strange certain players are used to constant raiding or endless repetitive dungeons and they often don't see the point in map exploration when the reward is a title not an item or recipe collecting or jumping puzzles that rewards you with unique cosmetics but nothing powerful but i feel that's a symptom of how vertical progression has taken over the genre the constant drive for more power instead of more gameplay guild wars 2 is what i would recommend to anyone because it's free to try and then when you do buy it there is no stress to keep playing it it has such a massive variation of gameplay you can find what you like and then focus on doing that there's a download link in the description if you want to give guild wars 2 a go it lets you know you came from this video it is one of the few mmos i would highly recommend you try out first also nolan north voices the male human so to me it's basically fantasyland adventures with nathan drake next up did you know the critically acclaimed mmorpg final fantasy 14 has a free trial and includes the entirety of a realm reborn and the award-winning heavensward expansion pack up to a level 60 with no restrictions on playtime okay memes aside the long successful eastern mmo final fantasy 14 which has seen a massive surge in popularity thanks to the downfall of blizzard and the uptake by popular streamers is one of the highest quality mmo experiences available and more importantly the free trial is actually really good final fantasy 14 released many many years ago and it sucked and the developers knew they could do better so they apologized blew up the entire world by having a massive dragon come and destroy everything in an actual playable in-game event took a few years to fix it and then released final fantasy xiv a realm reborn which was absolutely fantastic in fact when you finish a realm reborn's storyline all the names of players that scroll in the credits are the people who were present when the original world was destroyed set in the realm of aorzia you are a wandering hero who happens to be in the right place at the right time and you play through the expansive story to rise from lowly rookie to literal savior of the world classic jrpg style and that is probably the biggest challenge new players face final fantasy 14 is as many youtubers have said not so much an mmorpg as it is an rpg mmo the focus of the game is the player's journey the rpg bit building your character defeating the story bosses reading the dialogue it's not just about endless dungeons or zerging around with a mass of players it's very much an rpg first and an online adventure game second and for fans of the rpg genre which includes me this works very well the character creator is great and choosing a class isn't limiting because you can level up every single class on one character you do not need alts you switch classes by switching weapons each class can have an armor set saved and ready to go and you can level every skill and finish every guild quest line with only one character final fantasy 14 is a game about the story the journey the adventure and the great thing is the community brings the adventure out of the game as well whenever you go to the fan meetups you'll always get merchandise or if you happen to take down some of the harder bosses you'll get proof of that as well when the servers were full when the recent influx of players happened the company apologized the director said i'm sorry i'll put more servers up and they did if you want to sit in the limsa la minsa plaza and simply chat to people there are always people there final fantasy 14 is very much a community driven rpg it just happens to be an online game as well final fantasy 14 is a subscription game meaning once you stop playing the free trial and start paying monthly to unlock the full game and additional expansions you will need to keep paying monthly personally i feel the cost of the game is worth it if you're going to play more than 10 to 12 hours a month that would mean there's easily enough content to last you for a few years but you do get to experience the main story within a few weeks from east to west now with the elder scrolls online morrowind was a great rpg oblivion was a classic high fantasy adventure and skyrim was apparently todd howard's horcrux based on how many times he's re-releasing it but they all take place in the fantasy world of tamriel and the elder scrolls online lets you explore tamriel with friends even going back to the locations from morrowind and oblivion that you remember now there's ongoing discussion about when exactly the elder scrolls online fits with the timeline of the elder scrolls universe or even if it is canon at all but it's generally accepted to take place several hundred years before the events of the main games the elder scrolls franchise has always focused on deep lore and immersive storytelling and the elder scrolls online continues that with its incredible questing system every single quest in the elder scrolls online is an actual story from the simple act of looking for a missing dwarf and finding a brainwashing facility built on ancient magics ii fighting the daedric invasion within cold harbor itself and saving the high king the elder scrolls online is a fantasy adventure now it's got dungeons and raids and pve bosses and world bosses and pvp it's got all the standard mmo design choices but it is first and foremost a classic fantasy journey this is my day one boxed copy of the elder scrolls online soon as it came out in stores again this release while i was in university so i'm pretty sure i lost hundreds of hours of lessons to that game and continuing the law this is the book of tamriel all about the land the people the places the elder scrolls has always been about the law it's been about the history it's been about the rich fantastical beauty of the fictional land of tamriel and all of the universes beyond that and the elder scrolls online continues that exceptionally well and best of all that journey that fantasy that adventure it's fully voiced by some of the best voice actors in the world queen ehren that's kate beckinsale molag baal malcolm mcdowell the prophet michael gambon hiking emrick bill nye the english one not the science guy sir cadwell john cleese oh and nolan north is there too because of course he is the elder scrolls online is a buy to play game meaning a one-time purchase gets you the base game and the morrowind expansion to keep and play forever and then you've got options on how you want to pay for the rest because there is a lot more you can just buy all the extra contents like the smaller dlcs like the thieves guild adventure line or the major chapters like greymore set in the frozen lands of skyrim and buying them once means you've unlocked them forever once you own them there's no time limit or you can join the optional monthly subscription service called eso plus which gives you access to almost all of the smaller dlc straight away and a monthly allowance of crowns which are the game's premium currency and if you do decide to stop your monthly eso plus membership you keep the crowns you've earned and then you can use the crowns to unlock the dlc or the chapters permanently so you're basically able to buy membership for a month experience it all and then buy the bits you liked specifically the main strengths of the elder scrolls online are the experiences of your adventures within tamriel the journeys the quests being actual voiced adventures and planned out storylines and the build variety with classes allowing any class to equip any weapon or any armor leveling up all the skill lines and then combining various skills from various disciplines and various guilds to work the way you want i ended up being a tanky necromancer which isn't really what you meant to do but i liked doing it the main weakness is the crafting bag it's an unlimited storage space bag for holding your crafting ingredients meaning if you're planning on playing a crafter you're kind of going to need it but to get it you need to have eso plus the monthly sub the good thing is if your eso plus sub ends you can still take items out of the crafting bag you don't lose them you just can't put them in from a powerful pc game to something you can literally play on your phone while lying in bed runescape both old school and runescape 3. you probably played runescape back in school it was the first mmo many people discovered on public computers because it ran directly from the browser and didn't need a download meaning it swept through schools all over the world and then over the years it grew evolving into runescape 2 around 2001 with updated graphics and now what we know as runescape 3 with updated pretty much everything it's changed a lot since it was young it now does need a download the graphics are much more advanced the combat system has been reworked and now has abilities cooldowns chains of skills stuns interrupts buffs and boosts it's a far cry from the click and wait game we knew but it is still one of the best mmo experiences as for the quests i think runescape has some of the best quests in the genre from baking a cake for the cook to stopping the return of the gods and the destruction of gilenore humble beginnings to global savior but it's always written with trademark dry british humor and monty python style wit runescape never took itself too seriously and that's what added to its charm one of its greatest selling points is its grind which i know sounds silly but people like it it takes a long time to level up all your skills to maximum in runescape it's not a game that begins at end game the end game is when you can sit back and say alright i'm done it's getting to the end game which will take you thousands if not tens of thousands of hours where the content is you unlock stuff as you go once you reach the maximum level in a skill you don't unlock a massive amount of content you simply get a cape to wear that says hey i maxed out this skill but what if you look at this game and think no i want the game to look how i remember well there's runescape old school built from a backup cached copy of the game based on the 2007 build old school runescape has been community driven for years with any new update being polled by jagex to the playerbase and if that idea doesn't pass 75 approval it doesn't happen this is a double-edged sword it keeps the game balanced and the community in control but it can also mean pushback against new ideas just because people don't like change vote yes for warding you cowards and best of all you can play both versions of the game on your phone both runescape 3 and old school runescape have really good mobile clients this is probably the best mobile mmo experience available right now i mean come on don't you guys have phones the base game of both runescape 3 and old school is free with an optional monthly membership but in a nice touch you can actually pay the monthly membership using in-game gold you can buy a bond using gold and redeem the bond for membership so once you're high level enough your membership becomes self-sustaining and a membership on a character gets you access to both runescape 3 and old school runescapes members worlds it's effectively two games for the price of one regular viewers will know that i love runescape this is one of my most prized possessions a mousemat signed by all of the original jagex team i got this at runefest back in 2010 and a few months ago i even wrote and directed and then narrated a runescape audio drama called trouble and strife which follows the plot line of the original old school game mod ash from the old school team even voiced the wise old man because he's just a decent guy like that subjectively i love runescape but removing my subjectivity objectively it's an incredibly high quality game it's stood the test of time it has changed it has evolved and now it's listening to the players and going where the players want it to go it's a high quality content packed mmo definitely worth your time the games i've just touched on guild wars 2 final fantasy 14 the elder scrolls online and runescape both versions are some of the biggest and i think any serious mmo fan should give them an honest go try to find what they do well look for the weaknesses look for how they handle those weaknesses how you'd improve them and then find the weaknesses that you can live with but that's not the full mmo roster not by a long shot just below the world dominating titans of the genre you've got a wealth of smaller but still extremely enjoyable and successful games and many people discount these mmos by simply saying dead game just because they don't have a million players an mmo doesn't need a million active players to be successful it just needs to provide what enough people enjoy to keep them playing and be monetized fairly enough the player base feels respected it's much more important to have a connected community than just thousands of disconnected players if you're after a fast-paced third-person looter shooter with stunning boss fights and online elements like squad based missions then warframe is a great way to spend your time huge player base great community stunningly fun gameplay free to download right now if you want a more classic social focused mmo the original everquest is still going you can play one of the time locked progression servers like i did it's a monthly sub but it's an old game with a dedicated community where expansions get released every few months so you can experience the evolution of the game and enjoy it as it grows and then stop playing when planes of power comes out if you want to keep the old school vibe going guild wars 1 is still online i bought the game and all the expansions and i found one of my new favorite rpgs i played meridian 59 the first 3d mmo and it's surprisingly fun and still has a small but dedicated active player base even ultima online is still actually online and playable but if old school isn't your thing and you want graphics and flashy combat try black desert online grind some life skills do some pvp upgrade your items and hope they don't break enjoy the slick and fluid combat system and the gorgeous visuals if you want to take down some massive anime style bosses there's terror whose enemies are literally called bam which stands for big-ass monsters or you can jump into neverwinter and adventure through the dungeons and dragons forgotten realms and take down some classic d d enemies like the demogorgon if you're a fan of science fiction there's eve online i know it gets the old spreadsheets in space joke but we're not going for world class here we're not running a company we're not looking to dominate the universe we're just going to fly around mind some asteroids maybe spend 60 on a monocle but maybe you're all about forging an existence in a harsh unforgiving world and killing without remorse well mortal online 2 is coming out soon they even let me beta test the game for some reason which is strange because i don't like full loot pvp games but i can understand there is a demographic which does and for those players this is exactly what they want i want you to approach mmo games the same way you approach other cultures or books food tv shows film franchises sports hobbies i want you to give them all a go a fair try to approach with an open mind to admit they all have faults and find enjoyment in their strengths and to realize that you don't need to be involved with the biggest the most popular to find one that you enjoy the most if everyone just did whatever the popular thing was we would only ever get superhero films and only ever eat fast food that's not the way you want to live so which mmo should you play i know this is a non-answer but the honest answer is all of them try all of them look for the bits that you like accept the bits that you don't like and realize that there is no perfect mmo if you find a game you love great if someone else finds a game they love fantastic and if it's not the same game it doesn't matter when someone comes to you and says what mmo should i play they aren't asking what mmo do you play they're asking which game do you think i would enjoy and i know it's difficult to do but sometimes you need to recommend something that you personally won't like because you know they will and when you do commit to one game if it becomes a grind if it becomes boring if you realize that you don't want to log on but you're logging on out of habit because it feels like a job change play another game for a bit people always say to me oh my main mmo is boring i say great go and play another one for a bit wait until some new content releases go back to that one still going to be there you don't need to read the same book once you finish reading a book you don't need to watch the same film once you finish watching a film you don't need to eat the same food every single day and you definitely don't need to play the same mmo for the rest of your life approach the mmo genre the same way you approach the variety in the rest of your life and you'll discover there's a great deal of high quality mmos out there just waiting to be enjoyed i've played over 50 terrible mmos in my worst mmo ever series but i found something i like about each and every one of them so which mmos have you played which have you enjoyed which have you stuck with let me know in the comments below and maybe someone will see your comment and decide to come and join you in that game another big thank you to guild wars 2 for being brave enough to sponsor this video and to the patreon supporters and twitch subs who keep the channel alive check the video description for links to download guild wars 2 or join the patreon twitch twitter or discord and as always have a great day

Channel: Josh Strife Hayes

Views: 1,630,540

Keywords: mmo podcast, mmo discussion, mmo design, mmorpg youtuber, mmo news

Id: dfLHLrNq_fs

Length: 25min 25sec (1525 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 24 2021