The Best Free To Play MMORPGs To Play RIGHT NOW In 2017!

Now this list will go over Free to Play MMORPGs that are playable right now, not Upcoming MMORPGs, The Best MMORPGs Right Now, or Buy to Play or Pay to Play MMORPGs.

This list will be completely unordered.
I cannot stress enough how important it is for you’s to understand that just because I list an MMORPG as the final MMORPG, it does not mean it is the “Number 1 Free to Play MMORPG”.

Blade and Soul is a huge MMORPG with large zones, fast action combat, and great graphics.
The world in Blade and Soul is pretty large, however, the zones themselves are instanced off meaning you can’t just run around a huge open world.
Instead, you have to go through loading screens to reach each area. Which is a problem for some and immersion breaking for others.
This creates some great zones though – with each zone having a general theme, hub and story focusing on the zone itself. Something many MMORPGs actually lack.
Speaking of something many MMORPGs lack – Blade and Soul has an amazing character creator giving you an immense amount of freedom over the character you create.
Even so, when running around I still end up seeing the same characters created – have people given up on creating a character unique to them?
The combat in Blade and Soul is action oriented with a little targeting added in. Not full action combat like TERA but not a traditional tab target MMORPG either.
Blade and Soul looks and plays like a very high quality MMORPG. It has a fun PvE and PvP scene, although be warned that there are people that claim certain aspects of PvP is Pay to Win.
I’m not saying it is personally but before everyone jumps in trashing it – I thought it a good idea to include the little warning.

Star Trek Online is one of the few popular Free to Play Scifi MMORPGs available.
Star Trek Online originally launched under a Pay to Play model, but years later relaunched under a Free to Play model where it found a huge following of loyal players.
Fans of the Star Trek TV series and movies will likely feel right at home in Star Trek Online as the game does a fantastic job of explaining everything and setting a true Star Wars feel for the game.
Now, you have 2 ways of playing Star Trek Online – the traditional way which features you running around on foot, exploring and fighting everying – and the other way that lets you play as the ship itself.
Which, to clarify, I mean you get to control the actual ship from the engineering department, to science, to tactical systems, making for some fun engaging gameplay mechanics.
Combat in Star Trek Online is pretty traditional – select your targets – cycle through your skills until they die.
Graphically, Star Trek Online does a fantastic job of capturing the essence of the Star Trek series and movies (being a fan of multiple of the series myself).
What makes the game truly a great Free to Play title though is the fact that it feels like a Pay to Play title – and that’s because at one point it was.
Well, that and the fact that the story in Star Trek Online is one of its key selling points.

Vindictus is the first MMORPG in this list that doesn’t give you the freedom to run around and explore at your leisure, instead opting for instanced dungeon crawling.
Which I might add is thoroughly enjoyable.
I’ve been playing Vindictus for the last month and the combat in Vindictus is truly fantastic. It’s fast, it’s fluid, and you can fucking pick up monsters and smash ’em into each other.
It makes for a good laugh. Or.. maybe that’s just me. Iunno.
Either way, since you’ll likely spend most the time you’re not fap-I mean, looking at how amazing you look in combat, it’d have to be good, right?
Graphically, Vindictus looks great. Each zone you go into has its own theme and they’re crafted really well. The character models.. are some of the best I’ve ever seen in an MMORPG.
Even though the game is how many years old again? 7? The character models are still able to compete with MMORPGs released now.
Another warning though, there have been people claiming that the game can be made significantly easier through the use of cash shop items and therefore real money.
This is largely in reference to the fact that you can pay to guarantee your gear enchantments don’t fail, where not paying leaves you with a significant amount of time wasted if they do fail.

What kinda list would this be if I didn’t include TERA, right?
TERA is a key part of every Free to Play MMORPG list. Not only does it have top tier action combat, but the game is aesthetically beautiful.
TERA launched as a Pay to Play MMORPG (yes, another one.) Since then, it, like others, relaunched under a Free to Play model and achieved a lot of success in doing so.
It became one of the most popular Free to Play MMORPGs for a while. However, it has recently been in decline as many people point out, but – at least on the NA servers, the game is still plenty active.
Now TERA, as it was a Pay to Play MMORPG, has some fantastically fast, fluid, engaging true action combat. Some of the best you’ll find in a Free to Play MMORPG outside of maybe Blade and Soul.
Unfortunately, similarly to Blade and Soul, TERA doesn’t offer a traditional open world, instead offering very large zones for you to run around questing in and exploring.
Which isn’t a bad thing as TERA’s world is huge and full of unique looking areas to run around and enjoy playing in.
I would also like to point out that TERA is one of the few MMORPGs on the market that is pretty much completely Free to Play.
There are literally no Pay to Win elements in the game other than the “Elite Status” membership – but the only thing that offers is, more or less, the ability to enter dungeons more often.
This is one of the reasons TERA has remained relevant for so long a time.

Alright, before you jump down my throat here I would like to point out that the game is in English on the South East Asian servers, and although we play with an unofficial English patch on the Japanese servers, the South East Asian Phantasy Star Online 2 version is just as worth playing. It’s just a little.. further behind in updates.
Now, Phantasy Star Online 2 plays similarly to.. Vindictus, I guess, would be the closest comparison.
Featuring an instanced world that you take missions in, eradicating monsters and impressing potential waifu.
Now don’t get me wrong – I play Phantasy Star Online 2 actively and it’s one of the most fun MMORPGs I play.
The combat is great – plenty of combos and customization between weapon types, the graphics look really fantastic and very Anime-inspired, and there’s so much voice acting.
I also love the fact that the story in the game is so well thought out – if a little upsetting for some people. The game itself reminds me a lot of Star Ocean: Till The End of Time – one of my favorite JRPGs.
I’m surprised, honestly, that nobody has brought Phantasy Star Online 2 over to the West still considering how fun the game actually is and how many people from Western countries play on the Asian servers.

Let me preface this one by saying that the population in WildStar is very low these days.
NCSoft released an event last month that allowed players to receive an instant-level-50 character to jump right into endgame that boosted the population but not back to healthy levels.
Nevertheless, even though WildStar’s population is lower than most of the MMORPGs in this list it is still one of the better Free to Play MMORPGs.
It was originally created as a Pay to Play MMORPG that ended up taking on a Free to Play model to survive – which seems to be the popular thing to do these days.
As it was made with every intention of being Pay to Play everything about Wildstar stands out above most Free to Play MMORPGs.
Some people may not like its graphical style, but regardless, the game itself looks great.
It’s a Scifi Action MMORPG that handles the Scifi elements very comically while having huge areas to explore and very satisfying combat.
Combat in WildStar is actually one of the best things about the game – that’s coming from an MMORPG with tons of good quality voice acting, entertaining story, and an immersive housing system.
Although not as popular as it could be, WildStar is still a damn good Free to Play MMORPG, population issues aside.

Again, let me preface by saying that the entirity of Guild Wars 2’s base game is completely free to play. You only have to buy the expansion, Heart of Thorns, if you want to experience the expansion content.
Now Guild Wars 2 is yet again another zone-instanced action MMORPG but this is one of the better ones. One of the MMORPGs most people are either playing, or have at least played.
So if you’re just seeing this now – and have yet to try it out, then you’re likely going to at one point.
Guild Wars 2 has amazingly crafted zones. This makes up for the fact that they’re instanced. Each zone has a theme, each zone has a story.
You can spend hours and hours slowly making your way through each zone learning all about the lore behind the area you’re in.
You can run around doing all the objectives of each map to level. You can skip objectives and just explore to level.
You can do so many things in Guild Wars 2 and that’s part of the fun.
To top it off the combat is fantastic – filled with fast engaging gameplay that forces you to combo your skills and learn how to swap between weapon types to fully utilize your toolkit.
This also leaves you open to some large class customization as you’re able to choose the skills you want based off of your weapon, alongside setting up traits that help build your own unique character.

I’d honestly be surprised if you guys didn’t see this one coming!
Now, RuneScape is a strange title. It currently runs 2 separate versions of the game: Old School RuneScape and RuneScape 3.
RuneScape 3 is updated to be more friendly to new-age gamers whereas Old School RuneScape is much more difficult and soul-destroying.
But that’s where the fun of the game comes into it.
People that enjoyed the difficulty of Old School RuneScape can still play it whereas people wanting to play an easier, more up to date version of game can easily choose RuneScape 3.
This has divided the playerbase, but honestly, both versions are highly populated making RuneScape overall one of the most played MMORPGs to this day.
Many people claim that all you do is grind in RuneScape, and grinding may be necessary to level, to get skills, y’know, but in the end the world is huge and full of things to explore and see.
The combat is slow for today’s standards and the graphics may not be.. overly impressive for some of today’s gamers. Nevertheless, the game is one of the gems of the MMORPG genre.

Before we finish this list up, I would like to quickly go over a couple MMORPGs that didn’t make the list but are still worth mentioning. These are by no means bad MMORPGs, just not as good as the rest!

A fun, beautiful very PvP oriented MMORPG that has a very similar feel to World of Warcraft. Didn’t make the list because of how many Pay to Win complaints the PvP receives.

A very fun open world MMORPG. Fantastic graphics, great character creator, fun PvP, in-depth housing system, but generally considered the most Pay to Win MMORPG on the market.

Almost made the list due to its fun combat, its good graphics, and its story. However, I just didn’t feel it was as good as the others!