This is a general discussion about your favorite Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games, or simply Massive Multiplayer Online Games without the role-playing part. Feel free to post the pros, cons, and in-betweens as well as your favorite features and professional opinions.

For example:

My favorite MMORPG is, and probably always will be, RuneScape.

It's probably the most-played MMO in the world, with over 8 MILLION user accounts.

RuneScape Pros:

• Easy to learn - When I got my first account, I already knew a bit about how to play from my bro, but I still think the user controls are very nicely built and good for beginners and experts alike. If you can read, then you will be through the tutorial in no time at all and on your way to a major city where you can ask other players or friendly NPCs for help if you get stuck.
• Written in Java = Runs on any computer - The entire game it written in Java, meaning it runs inside your web browser. No downloads! It also runs on any computer. I have run Runescape on 3 or 4 windows machines, 2 Linux boxes and 2 Macs. It ran flawlessly on every one. Can't say that about World of Warcraft!
  
• Built-in, real-life, interactive, community-driven ECONOMY! - The absolute BEST feature in this game. It is a real, living, breathing, flowing economy driven by the community's actions, just like in real life. You can learn a LOT about money and economy just by playing this game. For example: There's a cool item, a Santa Hat. It's a Rare item, which means it's not being put into the game anymore. ( as in, no monster drops, no NPC selling it, no regeneration spots, etc ) This Santa Hat came out around Christmas several years ago. It was a reward for a quest or minigame or something. Well, since it is a Christmas item, people buy them around Christmas. Christmas is when everybody is buying Santa Hats. This is the best time to sell them. Because they are Rare, there are only a few hundred in the game anymore, so they are quite expensive any time of the year. When everyone is buying, the price goes UP and you can bet that one will sell for a few million Gold Pieces more than it is worth. So if you have a Santa Hat, you want to sell it around Christmas, preferably on or right before before Christmas Day. Christmas Day is the peak of the Santa Hat market; those who do not have one are frantic to get one and those few wise players who do are selling happily. I say happily because on Christmas Day the price for a Santa Hat goes up by about 10 Milllion. That's a LOT! And it's not coded into the game. The shops only sell them if a player sold one to the shop first. But after Christmas Day, in the happy jubilant aftermath, is the absolute BEST time to buy a Santa Hat. Because nobody wants them anymore. Christmas is come and gone, and they're thinking "Why on Earth did I buy a silly little hat for TWENTY MILLION?!?!?!" They can't possible sell it for that until next year, so they just try to get rid of the thing. You can get them for a very good price around New Year's Day because thats when most people are tired of them already. That's when everyone is selling, and nobody's buying (except for the experienced, observant people), so the price goes DOWN.
  That probably didn't make much sense, you really need to play the game and see for yourself before you can truly understand me. It doesn't always work the same every year, but the basics stay there. And the thing is, all of this is driven by the actions of the community!!! The Santa Hat is actually not worth anything to the game itself, eg. an NPC. A shop will but it for about 5 GP ( Gold Pieces ) and sell it for about 15 GP. ( In RuneScape, that's quite literally Dirt Cheap ) But to a player, the Santa Hat, being a Rare Item, is worth approximately 10,000,000 (Ten Million) GP. That's a lot! It's a quite impressive economy system, but you really need to see it in action to understand me fully. I could keep on giving live examples until Microsoft goes broke, but I think I need to stop now. :D ( This info is out-of-date!! See "RuneScape Cons" below. )
  
• It's Free - When you create an account, it's a 100% free account. No payments, ever. But if you get tired of limited space and activities, you can optionally "upgrade" your account to a Member for only US $7 per month and gain access to most of the world in general.
• It's Big - The world of RuneScape is really huge, but only a Member can go everywhere. The F2P ( Free To Play ) territory is large in itself, but only covers a small portion of the world.
• The Wilderness( or The Wild for short ) - A unique PvP combat area in the far north. If you go into the Wilderness, you are either very brave or very foolish. Thankfully, there's a ditch separating it from the rest of the world. When you try to cross over, a warning pops up that basically tells you that you can expect to be pounded( or owned / pwned, whichever you prefer ) by a PK-er ( Player Killer ). You have to be very careful in the Wild, or you will be PK lunch meat. ( No, you can't actually EAT other players, thank goodness! :P ) There are "Levels" to the Wilderness. If you decide to cross over, you start  on "the other side" of the ditch, in level 0 Wilderness. Nobody can attack you there. A few steps north and you're in Level 1 Wild. Only people within 1 combat level of you can attack you and vice versa. As you progress into the wilder parts of the Wilderness, the Level of Wilderness goes up and with it the range of combat levels that can ( and will! ) attack you. In the farthest reaches of the north, in Level 50 Wild, is most dangerous place to be in F2P territory. Anyone within 50 combat levels of you can attack you.  No one is safe here. There are also big hulking monsters, so you have to be extremely careful. ( This information is outdated!! See "RuneScape Cons" below. )
  
• Combat Types - There are three basic combat types in RuneScape: Ranged ( Bow and Arrows, Throwing Knives, Throwing Axes ), Mage (  Magic ), and Melee ( Hand-to-Hand [Fists, Swords, Axes, etc.] ). There are special rules that apply to each combat type. A Melee ( Known as "tanks" in some games like WoW ) fighter works best with a one-handed weapon, a shield, and body armor. However, metal armor will actually "conduct" magic just like electricity, so Melee is vulnerable to Mage. The typical Mage usually wears cloth robes, which allow for free movement and better XP for casting a spell such as Fire Blast, and carry a staff and sometimes a shield too. They attack from a distance, because most attack spells will fly through the air until the hit the target. But cloth is easily pierced by arrows and swords alike. Against a Melee, a Mage stands a better chance than against a Ranger. The Melee has to get close to the Mage, but the Ranger can stand at a distance and fire arrows as calmly as can be. So, the Mage's weakness is Ranged attacks. The Ranger wears leather armor, which unlike metal will actually repel magic. But they are vulnerable to the Melee, because arrows aren't much good against metal plate armor and swords easily stab through leather. So what we have is a "combat triangle": Mage owns Melee, Melee owns Ranger, and Ranger owns Mage. My personal favorite is the Mage. What's yours?
• All in all, it's a very well-written game.
  

RuneScape Cons:

• I Can't think of any. 
  
• Jagex LTD, the game company who owns RuneScape, has recently modified the way that player-to-player trading works, in an effort to exterminate all real-world item trading attempts. Apparently, it worked, but it has left the economy spinning... See the following links for more info:
• http://news.runescape.com/newsitem.ws?id=1007 - Economy changes
  
• http://news.runescape.com/newsitem.ws?id=1006 - PvP combat changes
  
• http://news.runescape.com/newsitem.ws?id=1036 - Economy changes
• Although the effect this new system has on the economy is drastic, it will soon settle out and players will still be happy - because there will be a whole new Skill ( to be released in 1 week, as of this Edit ) to distract them!
  

There is a chat filter, but you will find a lot of spamming players and people who just don't get it. Thankfully, the Report Abuse feature lets you report a player that is being disruptive, cheating, scamming, swearing - or just plain old mean - to the guys that run the game. Also, the Player Moderators are very good at their job. Occasionally, a J-Mod will log on, to see how things are going. ( a J-Mod is a Jagex Moderator: The people who run the game. If you meet one, consider yourself lucky. )

The way that they distinguish P-Mods and J-Mods from normal players is worth mentioning. In the chat box, a normal player is simply the player name followed be a ":" and what they said ( playername : Hi! whats up? ). A P-Mod has a silver crown before the playername, and a J-Mod has a gold crown.

Also, World Of Warcraft is pretty good, but the whole game is combat-based so some people may not like it ( due to "lack of activities" ), although if you get bored there are hundreds of quests to do. There is a large monthly fee too.

 Ok, I think I've rambled on for long enough. Feel free to fill in any gaps and points that I may have missed, and please tell us about YOUR favorite MMORPG!
 

Hmm. This place seems to be very quiet for some reason.

Uhm... I think Ragnarok On-line is very funny ^^

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DevP Development: Games for all and from all
Actual project: dTALK
Status: Pre-Alpha

RUNESCAPE IS THE BEST! 

I have a lvl 75, a lvl 50, 5 pures and my brother plays too, but were not allowed to play anymore, cause I got too addicted 

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I'm the son of a master programmer. And my name is Nick.
(\ _/)
(- . -) This is bunneh. Copy and paste him to
(")-(") your signature, so that he may gain popularity and eventually rule the world

(By the way), The wildy doesn't work anymore. You have to do this bounty thing, And that sucks too, cause if a lvl 3er goes in, a lvl 49 can kill him.

(just to let you know)...

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I'm the son of a master programmer. And my name is Nick.
(\ _/)
(- . -) This is bunneh. Copy and paste him to
(")-(") your signature, so that he may gain popularity and eventually rule the world

Yeah, I'm really disappointed about what they did to the Wilderness. Those Revants are nasty!

I think that runescape is the most decient game for MMORPG. Sure there are other games, but you dont have to download other stuff to get the game working, all you have to do is just create an account and you are entered to the game. (Easy as that)

runescape

Jon Coppock:

I think that runescape is the most decient game for MMORPG. Sure there are other games, but you dont have to download other stuff to get the game working, all you have to do is just create an account and you are entered to the game. (Easy as that)

Aye. I really like the user-friendly attitude of the Jagex staff and the actual game content. The chat filters are superb, and the overall ease of use is magnificent. I'm telling you, an 8-year-old could play this game with no worries at all.

On a different note...

Runescape is going to receive a gigantically awesome new update! Check out this Runescape news post for more info.

Jj9595:

runescape

i like games!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Dragon Rider:

Runescape is going to receive a gigantically awesome new update! Check out this Runescape news post for more info.

 

I don't know, they still need to make the bounty hunter so that you can only attack your level, one level higher, or one level lower.

thats what I'm hoping for, but I'm not a member, so I can't really post any suggestions in the forums... oh well

 

-nick 

P.S. you got the santa hat, and party hats from these little toys, so you use them with another player, they both pull on it, and one of them gets a special item 

 

 

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I'm the son of a master programmer. And my name is Nick.
(\ _/)
(- . -) This is bunneh. Copy and paste him to
(")-(") your signature, so that he may gain popularity and eventually rule the world

Nick:

P.S. you got the santa hat, and party hats from these little toys, so you use them with another player, they both pull on it, and one of them gets a special item.

That wasn't very clear, but I think the item you are referring to is a Christmas Cracker. When you use the Christmas Cracker on another player, then it "cracks" and somebody gets a rare item. The other gets cash ( I think - not sure ). The Christmas Cracker is the most expensive item in the game, topping 725 MILLION GP! It's also the rarest of trade-able items, hence the price. If you ever find one of these, sell it. It's actually worth a lot more than whatever is inside.

Sorry, this is a really old post but i just found it. Dragon Rider I like Runescape too!!! Pwns most other mmorpg's out there.

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I wonder... do phrogs eat phlies????

helloooo??? anybody home??? :p

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I wonder... do phrogs eat phlies????

I'm home, but this place has never been very active..