Yeah, so i've been wondering lately - which one is truly the best, out there? One might think there is not much competition there, but he would be wrong.

The ones i played are:

Anarchy Online - not a truly free MMORPG, if you want all the cool stuff from the expansions, 20 additional character levels, perks and tons of other stuff, you must still pay a monthly fee for it. It has, however, a "FROOB" program, you can play the basic game (and the notum wars expansion, if i remember correctly) completely free, and a lot of people do.

As for the game itself, it's pretty good. The community isn't bad (at least on Rubi-Ka 2, on which i played), there are many social events, places to explore.. unfortunately, after you get your char to around level 50, the game starts turning into heavy grinding. There's only few unique quests to do, and most are randomized clone quests you take from mission booths. The graphics are outdated, but not really all that bad, and the game does not tend to lag that much. The server uptime is very good, too, 95% of the downtimes are for maintenance and updates.

The character development is fun, there are many, many items to equip yourself with, a lot of unique items to obtain etc. There are really many professions to pick from, and only two are expansion restricted (and they're not really all that powerful either), so that's a big plus. Of course, some professions are maimed more than others if you're playing for free (no access to leet expansion items and nano's), like, for example, Martial Artist, who, after level 100, is getting virtually useless. A big minus is that many skills are unbalanced, and some are even bugged (must be core design bugs, you'd think they would fix them by now, yet they didn't).

Runescape - A browser-level MMORPG. I haven't played this one for too long, coz, to be honest, it's boring. If you want to unlock the leet features, you have to subscribe, graphics are crap (browser-level, doh), community is a little retarded, downtimes occur pretty regularly. You can play it if you're bored, but all in all this is totally meh.

Entropia Universe - I can't honestly make my mind up on this one. The biggest plus of this game is that you can actually make money just by playing it, as the in-game currency is exchangeable for the real life one. However, if you think you can just hop on in and start making cash, you're in for one hell of a disappointment - you start the game without nothing, except basic clothing, no cash, no weapons, NOTHING.

The only way you can start making money is gathering sweat off of mobs without any means of defending yourself. It takes literally days, or even weeks, to get to the point where you can buy your first weapon.... and another weeks before you train your character enough to make it of any use. If you can afford weapon maintenance and ammo costs, for which you must gather sweat again, etc etc

However, after a certain point, the game, supposedly, starts being actually fun. I didn't play it long enough to check. I can only say, the graphics are really neat, the community is decent (there are active in-game GM's, very friendly people), if you have cash there is a ton of things to do, too. People who don't want to pump cash in the game in the beginning, however, will probably get bored and discouraged by the extremely boring and long period of sweat gathering before they get anywhere.

Tibia - Oh Tibia, why i do not understand the beauty many people see in you. It's probably one of the most known and still very popular MMORPG's. My experience with Tibia was short and violent, and one thing needs to be said - 90% of people who form the basis of community in this game are assholes, that's especially true for PvP-Free servers. Before i get to the actual gameplay, a short summary of what Tibia is. Archaic, outdated, and utterly crappy graphics, very simplistic skill and character development system, a big world to explore inhabited with many monsters, towns, cities, dungeons, quests etc. Bad graphics and simple gameplay aside, the game really has one, but very major, minus, and it's the people that are playing it.

So, you start the game. You are in some town, you talk to NPC's, you see other players, you kill some monsters, do some quests, get some basic gear, level up, choose a profession, choose your home town, and wham, there you go, the real game starts. You walk out of the temple.... and there is a possibility you might get killed right now by players who wait outside. The only two safe places in this game are, banks, and temples. If you were not killed in that instance, or short after, believe me, you soon will. All it takes is a bored player who has more levels than you, and you're dead. He's faster than you (speed is determined by your level), so you can't run. He'll also probably wait by your body, in case you come back for your stuff (when you die, you lose - experience (you can lose levels), skill points, you drop your backpack and all stuff you had inside, and there is a chance your gear will drop too), to kill you again.

You might think, so what, i'll be smart, avoid higher level players, and level up in some secluded spot. Wrong. Leveling up is a terribly slow, boring grind, with the possibility that you will lose all the experience you grinded out in the past 3 hours, just because some bored guy will walk nearby and think it would be cool to kill you. Also, the game does not have a character level cap, so it's virtually impossible to gain up on people who started earlier than you.

The game is terribly newbie-unfriendly, and if you don't have friends "on the inside", ideally in some powerful guild, don't even start.

As usual, the coolest stuff and areas can be unlocked only if you pay.

Mu Online - I only played this one, because my friend recommended it to me. Dear me, what a bad mistake that was. There really isn't much to this game - no npc's to talk to, except vendors, very bad 3d graphics, silent, gloomy community, and... mob grinding. That's it. Really. Even Tibia, although i hate it, is like the perfect game compared to Mu.

World of Warcraft - He he. Yeah, you can play for free, on private servers. Probably everyone knows what WoW is, how it looks, and how it plays, so i'll spare you the in-depth analysis, and instead concentrate on how the game plays on private servers. There are many of them, and some even support the latest patches and the expansion. The private servers are divided into two different categories - BlizzLike (tries to emulate the retail servers as perfectly as possible), and FunServer (usually, first kill = level 70, tons of custom content and mods, insane drop rates etc).

BlizzLike servers differ in quality, of course, the main deciding factors being the amount of people playing, the amount of bugs, uptime, and quality of connection. I'll say it straight - most of them are crap. If they're not bugged like hell, there ain't anyone playing them, or they only support some ancient patches. There are, however, some really nice servers around, like WoWScape's WoWlegion, or BurningWoW.

FunServers offer a very different quality of gameplay. They're usually less buggy, there are more people playing them, but they're a different story completely. The difference between them is, what kind of custom content has been added, and how much the gameplay was changed by it's creators, so there cannot be any REAL comparison between one FunServer and another.

A solid gaming experience, if you like that kind of thing. I'm a little thrown off by, very sharp and good, but nevertheless, plagued by the cartoonish design, graphics. I could care less about the bugs, i know they will be eliminated sooner or later, and the community, at least on the servers i mentioned by name, above, is fairly nice. The fact you have to think before you connect to a private server filters out the most diehard retards.

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Well, those are all MMO's i gave more than a quick glance. I know there are much more (Guild Wars, UO with private shards, much like WoW etc), but can't be arsed to play them ALL. So, any thoughts? What are the MMORPS's you played?