Part of being frugal is to try to get something for free as much as possible. While this won’t work as well in our daily lives, it works wonderfully in gaming. Most massively multi player online role playing games, or MMORPGs, require subscriptions. There are also those that do not, called “F2P” (standing for “free to play”). These are good, but the experience is often ruined by their item malls, where you purchase significantly stronger items with real cash.
If you’re looking for a fun MMORPG that doesn’t rely on item malls, then this is the article for you. First, here’s a list of free MMO providers.
Aeria Games – www.aeriagames.com
GPotato – www.gpotato.com
Alaplaya – en.alaplaya.net
Ijji – www.ijji.com
Webzen – www.webzen.com
Netgame – www.netgame.com
T3Fun – www.t3fun.com
Those names are the biggest names in the free MMO world, and each of them usually offers a mixed variety of MMO games, and not just RPGs. The bottom line is that they are free, and are good for any gamer that wants to have legitimate fun without spending a single cent.
The Trouble With Free MMOs
Free MMOs are often bogged down by problems, so if you’re going to be a frugal gamer, don’t expect each and every one of the games to work for you. Here are a few problems I have encountered.
Web-Based Launchers
MMOs often have a launcher, which can receive patches to update your game. Most times in free games, however, the launchers aren’t tied to the game executable file. When you click on the game, for instance, it opens up a browser and directs you to the official website to login. From there, you click on a Start button somewhere and the game will launch.
This is fine. They are free, after all, so they need the page hits to make some money. However, some games just didn’t work for me.
Scions of Fate – by Netgame – for instance, never run for me because it seemed to dislike the fact that I’m not a Firefox user. One of the solutions offered by a forum user involved downloading a specific version of Firefox. Since Firefox also seemed to hate me, I wasn’t able to start the game.
This doesn’t mean web based launchers don’t work, since Soul of the Ultimate Nation and Archlord by Webzen worked nicely for me.
HD Monitor Support
Some games just don’t support the “lesser” HD. So if you have a 1280×720 resolution monitor instead of “true” HD of 1920×1080, you may want to watch out for some games. Florensia by Alaplaya, seemed like a very good game but wouldn’t run on my monitor. I edited configuration files to support my native resolution to no avail. Sought help in the forums, and the guys there did their best to help me out. I finally concluded that the client just didn’t support any minimum resolution below 1024×768 (not even 800×600), and while I had a native resolution of 1280×720, the height still fell below minimum and wouldn’t run the game. The game client is stubborn enough to look into my native resolution so it still wouldn’t run even if I change my screen resolution to 1024×768.
Fiesta is another example that wouldn’t support 720p resolution. Games like Soul of the Ultimate Nation and Aika, on the other hand, do not have them in the options, but you can edit configuration files to make them work fine.
Rare Tech Support
Seeing as these are free games, most of the tech support teams are unofficial – drawn from the player base that have had much experience with the games. On the upside, there are those who actually DO try to help and are quick in responding to technical issues. However, the fixes are rare and you can’t blame this on the tech supports, since most of them are not affiliated in any way with the developers.
So there you have it. You can be frugal with your online games, but you may just be unlucky enough to meet the above problems. Don’t sweat it, though. There are tons of MMOs out there that are quite good and won’t force you to fork over cash so you will enjoy them. Have fun!
Comments on this entry are closed.