When I first started playing free MMORPGs a few years ago – I started out my MMO journey with games like Ragnarok Online and Maple Story. Ragnarok Online started out as a pay to play game – but I managed to play it for free on one of the many private servers. Back when these MMORPGs first came out gamers didn’t have many choices – as there were only a handful of genuinely free ‘high quality’ MMORPGs out there. On the browser game front – the only games that existed back in the day were RuneScape and Neopets. This was RuneScape back before the major graphics overhaul – so the game looked terrible. Really up until the last year or so – there were very few genuinely ‘good’ browser games – but luckily that has changed.
High quality 3D browser games like Earth Eternal, Free Realms and Adventure Quest Worlds have really changed the game though. Earth Eternal is one of the newer browser games out there and it’s absolutely gorgeous – graphically speaking that is. How the developers managed to make that game run on a browser is beyond me. The graphics closely resemble those of Runes of Magic and World of Warcraft – which is fabulous for a browser game. That’s right – I said fabulous! And I meant it! It’s crazy because Earth Eternal has better graphics than MANY client based games. Free Realms is a lot like Earth Eternal as well – the graphics are great. The only real difference is that Free Realms is more of a social game than an MMORPG. Adventure Quest Worlds plays almost exactly like AdventureQuest – except with MMO elements.
I guess what I’m getting at is that these browser MMORPGs are getting much more advanced. There are easily well over a hundred browser based games out there now – so gamers have a boat load of choices. There are a lot of ‘mid tier’ games as well – which are fun for a while. Games like Travian, Deepolis, Dark Orbit and Seafight are pretty fun. Honestly though – these browser games are a nice little distraction because they can be played for a few minutes a day and still be fun while more traditional MMORPGs like Shaiya and Last Chaos need to be played for hours at a time for maximum enjoyment.
MMORPGFan - Adventures in MMOs and MMORPGs 