This page goes over the games I’ve had the chance to play over the years, with a focus on the MMO genre.  Of interesting note, I have been in the beta for nearly every MMO on this list and have written guides (either for free or for a fee) for the same amount.

Due to the guides, I haven’t really paid for a computer or a monthly access fee in over 10 years.

Ultima Online

1997-2001.  I made a few thousand dollars playing this game and selling players and houses through eBay.

Everquest

1999-2003. I played the heck out of this but left when more casual games came around.

Asheron’s Call

1999. I only played a few months of this game. It was fun but buggy back then.

Dark Age of Camelot

2001 – 2002.  I enjoyed the RvRvR portion.

FFXI

2002.  I played this for a few months with my friends.  The grind burned me out.

Earth and Beyond

2003.  Again with friends.  Problem with space games is that a) space is empty and b) 3d fighting games outside of an arena suck.

Asheron’s Call 2

2002.  I played the free month.  AC2 was a horrible game.

Star Wars Galaxies

2003-2005.  I played when Jedis were rare, the game was open and before NGE turned it into a different game.

EvE Online

2004.  I played a few hours.  One of the few games with a rather large barrier to entry and requires a significant time investment.  It was hard to find the right balance of research, actually playing, and waiting for things to happen.

Horizons

2003-2004.  I played a few months with some old EQ friends.  We built a town, it got bugged and we lost all progress, quit a few days after.

City of Heroes

2004.  Played a few months.  The idea was cool but once you hit max level, there was nothing to do.

Everquest 2

2004.  Honestly, the system requirements were just too much for me at the time.

World of Warcraft

2004 – .  I played beta, wrote a dozen guides, made a few thousand dollars, burned out, quit, came back multiple times.

Dungeons and Dragons Online

2010.  I came in during the F2P era from friend suggestions.  I put 50$ in the game, as I would a box game.  Was a lot of fun but friends moved on, so did I.

Lord of the Rings Online

2006, 2010.  I played at launch, which was cool for a bit but slow.  I then went back during F2P to see how it played, not much had changed.  You really need to love the lore to play this game.

Hellgate London

2007 – 2008.  I played about 3 months, which was near the amount of time it took for it to shut down.  I rather enjoyed it honestly.

Age of Conan

2008.  I maxed a couple characters but this game was so buggy and empty at max level, I quit.

Fallen Earth

2009-2010.  This game is/was awesome. A decent combination of sandbox and themepark with challenge.  Time was my enemy during this game though, and simply fell to the wayside.

Star Trek Online

2010.  This is an outlier as I played the beta more than the actual game.  Never in my entire Beta experience have I ever seen a more sorry excuse for a game.  It’s F2P and it does at time feel like you’re playing through TV series episodes.  Looks and plays horrible for the ground portion.  Space combat, that’s the real deal.

DC Online

2011.  In a month, I leveled 5 characters to max and the end game was bugged so we had nothing to do.  The gameplay was awesome, the reason to keep playing was not.

Rift

2011 – 2013.  Think a middle ground between WoW and FF14. Every class can play every role, it’s high fantasy, groups, raids, crafting.  When it started, it had a new kick with open world group play, with rifts all over the place.  Honestly, while leveling this was amazing.  This stopped being amazing when trying to leveling an off-spec.

The downside was the overall slowness of the game, the general visuals, and lack of small-group activities at max level.  A few expansions now, and it has it’s draws.  But it’s now too similar to WoW (and it’s multi-spec format) to truly compete.

Allods Online

2011.  Keen got me looking at this game and I played a lot in beta.  Cash stop fiasco made me leave.  An interesting study of a game that had such a huge fan base turn on them in a week’s time.

Star Wars The Old Republic

2011-2012.  I played the beta for 3 months, the game for 2.  Beta wipes meant people could only really test to the 20s, which is a bad sign for any MMO beta.  Launch showed there was no end game at all.  Turned into F2P after less than a year and is apparently doing well enough now.  It’s worth subbing for a month, getting to 50, then just playing the F2P version.  A really solid KOTOR3.  You can thank this game for making subscriptions a taboo topic due to the massive disappointment.  It also ended the careers of the Doctors – Muzyka and Zeschuk – which is a massive tragedy after all the good they brought to the table.  Mass Effect 3 + SWTOR have made me boycott every EA game since.

Neverwinter

2013-2014.  Open beta up until launch.  The first game I’ve ever played that was F2P from launch which had a rather interesting mechanic.  While extreme use of instances is jarring, it does make for a unified world without servers.  The actual mechanics are pretty awesome with an active battle mechanic and limited skill slots.  More arcade than strategic, until you reach the end-game.

Marvel Heroes

2013-2014.  Well, this is arguably an MMO but I did write a guide for it.  Essentially Diablo but with Marvel superheroes instead.  Good in small bites.  Lack customization from a visual sense but the actual character development and itemization is pretty solid.  In Sept 2013, I consider it to be feature ready for the masses.  Anyone who played it before then was playing beta.  Adds significant content patches on a regular basis, new heroes nearly every month, gives away a ton of stuff if you put in the hours. Unfortunate that it went tails up.

Final Fantasy 14

2013. This is the re-run of the original crap launch.  This is what a pure MMO looks like and I had a ton of fun playing it.  Social tools made sense, crafting was great, dungeons were extremely tactical, decent customization.  The housing patch turned me off completely and a lack of time over the holiday period (and work) kept me from playing very long.  The good/bad side of FF14 is that you have to complete ALL the content, including group/raids in order to progress.  The system is made to support that fairly well, but it’s a bit jarring.  Well worth it for people to play though, in the top 3 for sure.

Elder Scrolls Online

2014. I personally expected much more from this game.  It’s essentially a multiplayer elder scroll games where the multiplayer aspects don’t work.  More people actually makes the game worse, in that items don’t scale, phasing is everywhere (except crafting nodes), bots camp most dungeons and a whack of other things.  The game is fun if you play it like a single player game – but why pay a subscription fee? I know it was relaunched as a F2P, but I had my fill in the base game.

Wildstar

2014.  If you take WoW and remove the requirement to hold onto legacy decisions, you would probably end up with Wildstar.  A themepark through and through, with a penchant for the surreal art and complex systems, with an active combat system and limited action bar.

There are issues mind you, some class balance issues, item scaling/distribution, PvP balance and a very unhealthy penchant towards raiding.  Top level group content is also time intensive – adventures run for 40 minutes, dungeons for an hour or more.  It went F2P and has not had a content expansion.  It is certainly on life support, and this is nearly entirely due to the focus on “hardcore” raiders.  Too bad really, this was an amazingly fun game to play.