Talk:List of free massively multiplayer online games

Team Fortress 2
With the latest "Uber Update", this game has been announced as such. They even have an FAQ. Gonna need veterans to handle this though. --Addict 2006 01:53, 24 June 2011 (UTC)


 * TF2 is free, yes, but it is not an MMO. It is deathmatch-style and does not have a persistent world that hundreds of players simultaneously interact in. AzureShadow (talk) 02:04, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

A LOT of incorrect entries on this list.
I was directed here from some people complaining about the definition of an MMO, and decided to take a read through it. Quite a lot of entries on here are quite simply not MMOs, in that there is not a large persistent world. I've noticed MOBAs, team-based FPS, and a few other categories that do not belong here whatsoever. I'm going to start making adjustments, starting by removing S4 League, Battlefield Heroes, and Heroes of Newerth, along with any similar games I see here. AzureShadow (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 01:54, 11 September 2011 (UTC).
 * Thanks. I've been thinking this needs to be done but didn't feel like inciting argument with those who feel that a matchmaking lobby makes a game an MMO. Let me draw your attention to GunZ and PangYa, which I'm pretty sure are other not-so-massive titles. -Seventh Holy Scripture (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 10:17, 11 September 2011 (UTC).
 * Not to mention that Gaia Online isn't a game at all; it's a social networking site. It has quite a few games – but not nearly as many as facebook and no one's claiming that fb's a game. Yet I've heard people say "I used to play Gaia." I just don't get it. --Kitsunegami (talk) 07:54, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

After more than five years, we still absolutely adore Kingdom of Loathing and play it for hours every day. In fact, other than Final Fantasy Tactics and the Pokémon series, it is the only video game we still play regularly. But even we aren't sure if it counts as an MMOG.

While it can support thousands of users at the same time, the only interactions between them are chat and clan forums. In MMO speak, each player stays in his own instance. Even in the clan dungeons, which require the players to work together towards common goals (sort of like raids in MMOs), players still adventure separately while staying in contact via chat and forums; they don't even have to be logged in at the same time to work together.

So my question is: does KoL actually count as an MMOG for the purposes of this list? --Kitsunegami (talk) 05:19, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
 * You're correct. I removed it. Cheers! Wyatt Riot (talk) 05:35, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Our clan is made up almost entirely of people we actually know so we discuss the game a lot and we still debate whether it's an MMO so I was a bit undecided. --Kitsunegami (talk) 06:15, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

If Kingdom of Loathing isn't listed, should Urban Dead be? --84.165.165.37 (talk) 22:01, 4 June 2013 (UTC)
 * According to reliable sources and the definition as it appears at Massively multiplayer online game or even MMORPG, it certainly qualifies. Woodroar (talk) 23:10, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Age of Empires Online
AoEO's page states that it's an MMORPG. Why isn't it on this list? I think it would fix under the microtrans category.Dukeofwulf (talk) 03:57, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Warhammer Online & APB Reloaded
When someone has time, Warhammer Online (up to level 10) is F2P and don't forget about APB Reloaded which is FP2 now. --Vertinox2 (talk) 17:01, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
 * APB Reloaded should totally be on this list!!! D: --88.19.147.193 (talk) 08:51, 10 October 2013 (UTC)
 * APB isn't a massively multiplayer game. Woodroar (talk) 15:21, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Closed MMOGs
Despite the usage of present tense in the lead section ("[MMOGs] which are free to play"), I've noticed that there are a few games on the list that were shut down in the past. How do you handle these? Are they kept or deleted from the list? Primarily, I find it difficult to integrate some of the games from the Free play in open or closed beta section – which have already been released and closed thereafter – into other sections. Moritz37 (talk) 18:59, 5 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Editors often come along and remove closed games. But it's not like we're here to serve as a directory or only talk about what's current, so they should probably remain. A new category for them may be appropriate. Woodroar (talk) 12:42, 9 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Considering the length of the list, I have removed the games that never went out of beta. However, creating a new section (for the games that "existed") sounds like a good idea. Nevertheless, there'd still be an issue with the page's length. Seems like it's going to take some time to think about it :) Thank you very much for your input! Moritz37 (talk) 14:06, 13 June 2013 (UTC)
 * What is the consideration for games that are Free to Play after the initial box purchase? Guild Wars, Guild Wars 2, and Defiance are three MMOs that should qualify for this list as F2P with microtransactions. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.80.62.93 (talk) 01:32, 17 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Many, if not most, MMORPGs are moving towards that business model. You'll find the games which aren't entirely free at the general article List of massively multiplayer online role-playing games. Woodroar (talk) 01:57, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Warframe is an MMO
All of the following comes from personal experience in MMOs including World of WarCraft, Final Fantasy XIV, Lord of the Rings Online, Dungeons and Dragons Online, Star Trek Online, Star Wars: The Old Republic, and Warframe (yes, it is an MMO). As an FYI, I will be referencing the Warframe Wikia page heavily, as that's the primary knowledge repository for Warframe.

If DDO (Dungeons & Dragons Online) is considered an MMO, Warframe should be considered one as well, depsite the former being a MMORPG and the later being an MMO Third Person Shooter. The same world structure that DDO uses is what Warframe uses.

Like FFXIV, where one character is many classes, the warframes themselves act as the classes in Warframe, with the account gaining XP noted as Mastery Rank from leveling up the individual warframes, weapons, and other gear - which is akin to the overall level of the player. The warframes and weapons can be further improved with mods and the building out of the warframes, weapons, gear, and also acruing Master Rank provide the vertical progression.

Like DDO, Warframe is basically public cities (the relays and Cetus - with another planetside city on Venus coming soon). While the relays and Cetus are layered (like how WoW and FFXIV are) as Warframe tends to have a lot of concurrent users.

The missions are basically rogue like instances where the terrain is generated randomly with random enemy placement for the specific faction and following a given objective. There are also quests and a storyline within the game (all of them completely voice acted).

The player housing (orbiter ), acts as the primary launch point for most missions, allowing the player to gear as necessary for the mission tyep, and also a clan housing (the dojo ) that with the former serving as a personal mobile base while the later offers several services centered around clan projects with rewards for said projects in addition to the dojos acting as trading hubs.

And, like many of the other MMOs out there, there's factions to gain rep with, the Syndicates, and each syndicate has different offerings, with some being mutually exclusive (like the Aldors and Scryers from WoW:Burning Crusade ).

While there are many different currencies and resources, the player-to-player trade currency is platinum, which can also be bought directly from Digital Extremes (although it can't be converted back to cash without violating TOS). There's also an ingame market that uses platinum for gear, cosmetics, and boosters. There's a thriving trade economy. both at the trade relay, through the trade chat channel, and also through trading sites. The latter two use the clan dojo as the actual trade location.

While it is very true that Warframe started out as a horde third person shooter, it has since evolved into an MMO and should be considered as such.

Following this, I am reverting the revert as Warframe is an MMO.

Nahoward (talk) 20:52, 14 July 2018 (UTC)


 * Hi an MMO isn't really defined by its classes, cities, missions, or anything you mentioned. As our article on massively multiplayer online games says, MMOs are "online game[s] with large numbers of players, typically from hundreds to thousands, on the same server". So it's more about the number of simultaneous, interacting players and server architecture. MMOs with those elements you mentioned are usually considered MMORPGs, but they still need the players and servers to qualify as either.
 * That's all besides the point, though, because how we as editors define the game doesn't matter. We're here to summarize what reliable, third-party published sources say and we don't write articles based on our own knowledge or experience. When we talk about reliable sources, especially in the context of video games, that usually means games journalism and not open wikis like Wikia. (You can get more information about evaluating the quality of video game-specific sources at WP:GAMESOURCES.)
 * So when I looked at how reliable sources define Warframe, I see it has an "MMO-like" area and is "closer to a traditional MMO than it's ever been", it "feels closer than ever to an MMO", it's "MMO-ish" and has "some MMO elements". Add another "MMO elements" to the pile of descriptions, which really seems to be the common theme here. Sure, a handful of sources do call Warframe an MMO. VG247 says it in a roundup of games but not in two more recentstandalone articles, which says a lot about how that source views the game. All things considered, most sources fall short of considering the game an MMO and they tend to belabor the point so our policy on weighing contrasting viewpoints says we should follow suit. I'm guessing that's why the Warframe article doesn't use the term, either. Woodroar (talk) 22:52, 14 July 2018 (UTC)
 * There's exactly three servers for Warframe: PC, Xbox, and PS3. There are no other shards for the platforms as everyone is on the same shard - similar to Eve_Online.  For a rough estimate of PC players (which is Steam + non-Steam client), check the Steam stats as it shows 100k concurrent users at peak time and is the fourth highest concurrent player count of all games currently on Steam at the time of writing.
 * The Warframe article contains several errors, as it implies that the first named update was Plains of Eidolon, rather than the one in 2013 called "Rise of the Warlords". There's also no single player mode (like what you'd see in Bioshock, for example), but the only way to play solo is to join the same game world as everyone else and solo queuing into missions - which can also happen with the public queuing if you queue into an unpopular mission node, although others may join you until you hit a progress threshold that locks the mission from additional players joining.  Like most other MMOs, there's always going to be a segment of the player population that just wants to play by themselves.
 * More specifically on the single-player miscategorization, from the Single-player_video_game it states that "A single-player game is usually a game that can only be played by one person, while 'single-player mode' is usually a game mode designed to be played by a single-player, though the game also contains multi-player modes.". The former is definitely not true for Warframe, and the latter is achieved through locking a mission to only that player - similar to what's possible in major MMOs like FFXIV and WoW by setting the correct settings.
 * At what point does something cross over from a non-MMO to an MMO?
 * Nahoward (talk) 05:41, 15 July 2018 (UTC)
 * when reliable, third-party published sources consistently say that Warframe does. I linked them above, but see WP:V, WP:OR, and WP:NPOV for more details on our core content policies. Woodroar (talk) 13:14, 15 July 2018 (UTC)
 * IMO WP:OR isn't applicable to a video games because you need to play the video game to write the article about it, otherwise the article is going to riddled with inaccuracies - kinda like how Warframe is classified as a single player game which is a blatant error and something that can be disproved by playing the game. It's very much like saying that the article on Moby-Dick can't reference the text itself, but only third party arctiles on the text.  I get why WP:OR makes sense in the scientific arena (as that ensures peer review), but how do you properly cite a primary source for a video game?
 * Also, isn't aren't these three sources credible enough to qualify Warframe as an MMO?
 * Nahoward (talk) 23:42, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
 * if you read WP:OR, you'll see that it covers plot: For example, an article about a novel may cite passages to describe the plot, but any interpretation needs a secondary source. So the basic plot of a game is fine because the game itself is the source. For contentious plots or analysis of meaning, we'd look at secondary sources. In addition, if secondary sources contradict the plot, then we'll summarize what those sources say instead. And beyond that, we have a very basic policy called WP:BURDEN: "[t]he burden to demonstrate verifiability lies with the editor who adds or restores material, and is satisfied by providing an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports the contribution". So even if you add a plot that you think is plain as day but another editor disagrees, then you need a source or sources no matter what.
 * In some respects, game genres work the same way. They're also a lot like music genres. I don't think you'll find much opposition to something basic like "is a first-person shooter" or "is a flight simulator". But if sources disagree, then we summarize what the sources say. If another editor disagrees, then you need to find sources. We generally don't see a whole lot of edit warring—editors repeatedly overriding each other's edits—about video games, but it's very common on music genres. Editors who change music genres without sources are sometimes called genre warriors and they do get blocked or banned from time to time. In short, if something is contentious—where does "multiplayer" become "massively multiplayer" or where does a "narrative game" become a "walking simulator"—we should probably look to sources from the start.
 * Also, just a note: our article on Warframe labels the game as single-player and multiplayer, not only single-player.
 * As to your question about those sources, our local project of video game editors has found both MMORPG.com and MMOS.com to be unreliable sources, so we would not use them. We haven't yet discussed MMOMMORPG.com, but that site has all the hallmarks of an unreliable site (they're not cited by other games media, there's no masthead or list of editorial staff, no author names or bios, no information about editorial policies or staff qualifications, they have an open request to join the staff, there are prominent download buttons, there are generic SEO headers, etc.) that I have no doubt that we'd find them unreliable as well. I already linked it above, but you might want to read WP:GAMESOURCES.
 * Because nearly all reliable sources that I surveyed specifically say that Warframe isn't an MMO, I've removed it from the list for now. If that changes or you're able to find quantitatively more sources that say it is, I'd be more than happy to revert myself. Woodroar (talk) 01:06, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Part of this entire thread is going back to what the definition of massive mulitplayer online actually is. The definition should be clear enough that any reasonable person should be able to look at a game, look at the definition, and then be able to answer state that it is (or isn't) an MMO.  If that definition is not clear enough to have that test, then the underlying issue with this thread is actually the MMO definition not being clear enough, so (theoretically) there could be an MMO that would need categorization, but just happens to fly under radar for the gaming news sites and thus gets ignored.
 * With respect to single player, the only way to engage single player is to use this menu, and that setting gets overridden in dojos and public spaces. The only way to get to this setting is after you have logged onto whichever platform you're using.  Following all of this, if that setting is to be considered flagging Warframe a single player game, then the single player tag also needs to be added to Final_Fantasy_XIV as there are instances within the Main Scenario where you are forced to play the quest as solo (ex) - and yet, the single player tag doesn't make sense for FFXIV.  The same is also true for The_Lord_of_the_Rings_Online with their skirmishes (which are somewhat mechanically closer to Warframe missions), as a solo queue option exists for the skirmishes, yet again, adding a solo player option to LotRO's article doesn't make sense.  In that respect, requiring a third party source for the removal of the solo player tag on Warframe is really a catch-22 especially when you can play the game and see that while solo is a consideration, it's not the default option for a new account and something you must engage after connecting to the game world.
 * Touching back on reliable gaming sources, who are they and why are some considered reliable and others not?
 * Nahoward (talk) 03:45, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
 * to be completely frank, we don't define anything here. Only the sources do, and we summarize them. There are plenty of places for us to discuss our own ideas about MMOs vs. non-MMOs, like blogs, forums, and Wikia. Wikipedia isn't that place. See WP:NOT, especially WP:FORUM. I'm not sure if I can stress that enough.
 * We have a list of reliable (as well as situational and unreliable) video game-specific sources at WP:GAMESOURCES which are discussed at WT:VGRS. The guidelines for identifying reliable sources in general (i.e., not specifically related to video games) are at WP:IRS and discussions are at WP:RSN. Reliable sources tend to be cited by other reliable sources, they employ qualified and reputable editors and journalists, they belong to (or follow the principles of) journalism associations, they issue retractions and updates, etc. Unreliable sources like the ones you mentioned rarely have or do any of that. And especially when it comes to video games, unreliable sources often act as affiliates for game publishers, driving users to play the game in return for (presumably) some kind of compensation. Woodroar (talk) 13:04, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Doesn't WP:DUCK rely on definitions? What's the duck test for MMOs?
 * Nahoward (talk) 15:14, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
 * uhhh, are you kidding? Did you read that page? DUCK is about sockpuppetry. It has nothing to do with sourcing. There is no "duck test" for content. Woodroar (talk) 23:12, 17 July 2018 (UTC)