It’s no secret that there’s a dearth of new MMOs these days, but sometimes you just feel like playing an MMO and even an old one will do. What are some your fallback MMOs? These are mine.
Star Wars: The Old Republic
Probably my most consistently played MMO over the past decade, SWTOR is a game I come back to over and over even when it feels like I’ve exhausted a lot of what it has to offer me. Embarrassingly enough, I still haven’t even finished all of the class stories, so it still does have some fresh content for me to play through, but I’ve been content mostly revisiting my existing characters or even pointlessly retreading old content with new characters.
Sure, most of the choices you make don’t matter in the grand scheme of things, but it can be fun to go through the stories with new ideas for characters I’ve cooked up in my head. Maybe this Imperial Agent is a double agent or a true believer, and so on.
I did some raiding early on and some PvP, but I’ve not done a whole lot of either since. I’m playing SWTOR right now and I’m thinking of exploring all of that again, if I can actually manage to finish out the Trooper and Consular class stories this time around.
Final Fantasy XIV
I don’t return to FFXIV as much as I’d like to. I actually enjoy the game’s “slow” but flashy combat quite a lot. I love the game’s atmosphere, visuals and music. But returning to FFXIV feels like such a commitment. Getting through a lot of the busy work to enjoy the good stuff is difficult for me to stomach. The game just doesn’t respect your time and it can often feel like you’ve logged on for a few hours and not made much progress at all because of it. And yet I do love it once I block out a couple of months to play through some of what I’ve missed and make a feeble attempt at catching up with the live game.
Private Servers
I’m going to lump all of these games together, but I do often return to private servers for some of my favorite and no longer active games. Warhammer Online, Star Wars Galaxies and now City of Heroes, making up the top of my list.
I return to WAR when I just need to scratch that RvR or PvP itch. Despite its many flaws, few games have recreated the enjoyment I get out of PvP in WAR.
Star Wars Galaxies at this point is more of a pure nostalgia play. The game just hasn’t aged well no matter how you look at it. It’s cumbersome to play, but the freedom it offers and all lovingly wrapped in the Star Wars IP, is difficult to let go of.
Finally, there's City of Heroes. I never thought I’d get to experience my favorite MMO ever again, but over the last year I’ve been able to return to the Rogue Isles and Paragon City and it’s been an absolute blast. The power creep at high levels is real and takes some of the wind out of my sails knowing that there isn’t much challenge left for me at the endgame, but half the fun is spinning up new characters and I’m never at a loss for ideas.
What are some of your favorite fallback MMOs? Share ‘em with us in the comments below!
