Best Free MMORPGs

Dungeons & Dragons Online began as a pay to play MMORPG and recently relaunched as a free to play. After all the games online that try in some way to be pale shades of the original multiplayer role playing game, it was fantastic to play the real thing. Online. Massively multiplayer.

It's not easy to play solo, though they do have some allowances for it. You're able to hire non-player character hirelings in the essential classes, or you can choose a solo setting on your dungeon (at least, in the beginning areas where I've been so far). This is really a game best enjoyed with a friend or group of friends, though. Just like D & D.

It was an odd and refreshing change to spend hours in the game and not level. I'd almost forgotten what that felt like. It's one of those flags that lets old school D & D players know they're playing a real D & D game. Another such flag can be found in the dungeons, where you run into actual puzzles. I would imagine, though, that for those without the patience or background to really enjoy the role play and the things that D & D players love about the game, it will just frustrate them and they'll soon bounce to another game.

Kingdom Heroes is the most recent good free MMORPG I've played. Based on the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, players choose to serve one of the historical generals from the book. There are scheduled Kingdom Wars in which factions and guilds battle for territory, and the map can change greatly from week to week as a result of the last Kingdom War.

Otherwise, PVP is primarily in the Arena, and the PVE gives you a lot to do not only in quests but daily tasks that can be done for guild favor and XP. The official forums are full of great information so if you check it out, don't miss those.

Each class can command a number of soldiers, who can be set to auto attack. Botting will get you banned, but AFK leveling by setting your soldiers to auto attack in a safe place was acceptable at the time I played.

What do I mean by safe place? The game has frequent boss spawns, who can be farmed for better gear, but it's not a good idea to afk where they may spawn unless your soldiers are very high level and very capable.

Each faction has a safe training ground where no bosses spawn, which can be used to level quickly from level 1 to about level 70. Players are sent there in their early quests so watch for it. It makes leveling up much faster.