The Most Popular MMORPGs in 2017 You Should Be Playing!

What are the most popular MMORPGs in 2017? I did a list like this for MMORPGs in 2016 but since it’s still asked so often I figured it’d be a good idea to do one for 2017 as well.

Therefore, I’m going to go ahead and list the most popular MMORPGs – in no specific order – to hopefully assist those of you that are looking for a well populated MMORPG to settle into.

If you think I missed an MMORPG – let me know in the comments. Remember though that this list isn’t comprised of the best MMORPGs, just the most popular ones.

Also a quick question before jumping into this list: What, in your opinion, is the best MMORPG right this moment?

Alright, with that outta the way, let’s jump right in.

Blade and Soul is a Korean Action MMORPG set in a large, beautiful fantasy world.
Not only does it have some of the most entertaining combat in an MMORPG – but it is also one of the most popular free to play MMORPG titles available right now.
When it launched in early 2016, the game had millions of players.
Although NCSoft was forced to merge some of Blade and Soul’s servers, the game has managed to retain a fairly active audience partly due to not being able to find an MMORPG with better combat, and partly due to the fact that they likely don’t enjoy TERA – the only real viable competitor for a free to play Action MMORPG.
A lot of players have been at endgame for quite a while now, therefore lower zones, like most MMORPGs, are often rather empty.
That doesn’t mean you don’t see anyone though as we’ve encountered groups of people questing and running dungeons many times while playing.
All that being said, Blade and Soul is free to play – therefore until a better free to play MMORPG comes along, the game will likely remain well populated.

Final Fantasy XIV is a traditional Japanese fantasy MMORPG set in a magical fantasy world.
One of the only large pay to play MMORPGs still available – Final Fantasy XIV combines what people love about traditional MMORPGs and manages to craft a compelling story with beautiful graphics.
Especially when you get to later content.
Now, Final Fantasy XIV is one of the most populated MMORPGs currently available – having hundreds of thousands of players still currently playing while waiting for the upcoming Stormblood expansion in June.
Which with the amount of pre-orders the expansion has gotten.. will likely provide an even larger boost to the game than Heavensward did.
Unlike most MMORPGs, Final Fantasy XIV has fairly well populated leveling zones, having people of all races and classes populating each zone due to all the different classes and professions people are often leveling.
This definitely makes the world feel more alive – even though a much larger amount of people sit around waiting for dungeon queues or Palace of the Dead runs now as opposed to doing open world content.

RuneScape is actually one of the very few Western-made MMORPGs still popular.
RuneScape throws you into a magical medieval world filled with knights, mages, thieves, bandits, and monsters.
Although classified as a fantasy MMORPG it is much more grounded in my opinion than many of the other fantasy MMORPGs out there.
RuneScape has a massive world to explore, a detailed, engaging story and a shit ton of lore.. excuse my French.
There is a huge grind in the game which may turn people off but the fact that everywhere we’ve journeyed has people around it really isn’t difficult finding someone to party with.
Seeing so many people around is refreshing, especially for an older MMORPG like RuneScape, where games currently out that’ve been out for only a couple years are void of population in many non-endgame zones.

Alright, so I may get a lotta hate for this one but every video I do I get asked “Why didn’t you include Path of Exile?”
My reasoning up until now has been that Path of Exile isn’t really an MMORPG – but a lot of people classify it as such since areas or zones are instanced with your party only.
However, in towns you can see tons of players around. The game itself is also marketed as an “online action role-playing”. Therefore, I’m going ahead and finally listing it in a video.
Path of Exile is hugely popular – and for good reason. The game is beautiful.
The combat is top tier and is likely one of the only good games of its genre until Lost Ark or Lineage Eternal come out.
Whenever I logged in to the game the chat was filled with people talking, there were people around the towns. The game is very healthy.

Some people may have a problem with me listing this MMORPG here as it received a fairly substantial amount of hate after it launched, but the fact is Revelation Online is a recently released free to play MMORPG.
Therefore it’s still well populated. My.com doesn’t give specifics, however, the fact that there are 2-3 North American and 2-3 European servers that are constantly packed is a good sign.
Revelation Online’s combat, while not being up to TERA or Blade and Soul’s quality is still fairly good, and the graphics, although some people might claim ripped off Blade and Soul are actually very pleasing.
On a side note though, I feel more like Revelation Online is a mixture of Perfect World and Aion, if you’ve ever had the opportunity to play either of them.
Add on to that the fact that Revelation Online is generally praised for how well optimized it is in comparison to other recently released MMORPGs.
Another thing Revelation Online does, and does very well? Its large open world. No instanced zones. A large, open world to run or even fly around exploring. Kinda what Aion was supposed to be.

Black Desert is still alive and doing well enough to make it into this list!
While people may cite “pop in graphics” and “pay to win” as the reason to avoid BDO, the fact is that the game looks fantastic, is a ton of fun to explore, and the combat is some of the most fun action combat on the market.
Black Desert Online gives you so much freedom to do what you want (even if most of your time is spent grinding) and a lot of people take advantage of that.
There’s a lot to see and do in the game outside of grinding for people not interested in spending all your day killing the same monsters.
I’ve personally had some of the most fun in an MMORPG riding around BDO and finding interesting little areas filled with NPCs that I didn’t even know you could get to.
Pushing all of that aside though, the population in Black Desert is still pretty great. Most the areas I’ve gone have people either grinding or running around towns doing god knows what.

Guild Wars 2 is still in the 5 most populated MMORPGs on the market – having maybe slipped a position since my last video.
Having a huge world to explore, fun action combat that has you swapping between weapon types depending on the encounter, and a detailed, well thought out story, GW2 still manages to impress people to this day.
Guild Wars 2’s story is probably one of the most entertaining ones I’ve gotten to play through and it is fully voiced – adding a new layer to the game.
I cannot stress how much I enjoy good voice acting in games, and it is increasingly rare in MMORPGs.
Due to events that take place in every zone in the world, and the fact that your character gets synced down to the zone you’re in’s level, you’ll almost always find people around.
Regardless of when I play, I’ve found people around every area I’m in either doing the same things as me or trying to get to something on the other side of the zone.
Which is always refreshing to witness! GW2 is one of the only MMORPGs that *feel* this alive.

What most people hoped for from The Elder Scrolls Online was in essence, a multiplaer Skyrim.
However, that turned out to not be the case. Instead, they got a game so different than Skyrim that it ended up becoming its own entity.
Some people were upset with that but most people found a new love for the game, no longer needing to compare it to Skyrim.
The Elder Scrolls Online is an amazing game filled with beautifully detailed areas to explore, fully voiced NPCs to talk to and quests that don’t feel like cookie cutter fetch and kill quests often found in normal MMORPGs.
Because there aren’t any actual servers – The Elder Scrolls Online always feels much more alive than most other MMORPGs seeing tons of players in every town and players out in each zone.
While questing we’ve seen countless people ask to join our party and ask for help with quests and bosses. It is always a great feeling to see people seeking other people in open world content!

Now this one is a little stranger. It doesn’t have any official Western release – instead being available only in Japan and South East Asia (although I did hear it’s shutting down its SEA server soon.)
However, with the English patch out for it and the amount of English players playing the MMORPG I figured it’d be a good bet to list this here as well.
Phantasy Star Online 2 doesn’t give you the freedom to run around a huge open world, instead giving you different “planets” to explore through a personal ship.
You take missions from different NPCs ranging from collecting to killing inhabitants of the world you’re being sent off to.
Probably having one of the most bizarre but ultimately satisfying storylines in this list it should be noted that Phantasy Star Online 2 does an amazing job at storytelling.
Graphically, the game gives off a very Anime-feel and the combat is handled well enough for an action MMORPG.
Population-wise, every channel on each server is packed with people spread throughout the space station you spend a lot of your time in.
Ranging from people chilling in the cafe to people standing in the lobby talking. People are also capable of seeing and engaging with you on-world if you go down in “free exploration” mode.

I think World of Warcraft will be in every “Most Popular MMORPG” list for a very long time to come.
World of Warcraft is one of the most detailed, largest, open world MMORPGs to date and every year it continues to get larger and larger, throwing out expansion after expansion.
There’s a reason for its popularity though – its story, which people fell in love with from the original Warcraft games. Its graphical style that some people from this generation hate.
Its combat, which some people believe is too slow but is actually very well handled for a tab target game. And most notably, Chris Metzen. The legend. Long live the king!
Now World of Warcraft has been around and kicking for a very long time, and even so, whenever starting new characters you can find people leveling in the newbie zones.
Which is always refreshing to see as they’re either players leveling alts or new players trying the game out.
Mid-game however, the game-world is unfortunately empty like most MMORPGs and when you get to late-game, the zones are still fairly packed, even half a year after the most recent expansion’s launch.
Granted, the population will continue to decrease gradually for World of Warcraft like every expansion but each large update brings a handful of people back every time.
Which means that so long as you’re on a medium to large population server you are all but assured large amounts of activity regardless.

Now, 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 dead MMORPGs, just not as populated as the rest!

Literally the main competitor to Blade and Soul – large, open world filled with beautiful graphics and fantastic combat however with the EU servers dying it leaves the North American servers as the only real option if you want any activity while playing.

Literally one of the only Scifi MMORPGs left – huge, open space to explore filled with tons of PvP and things to find. After going free to play their population grew but most people left after trying it out due to how complicated it ended up being for them.

Still a popular MMORPG but its numbers continue to dwindle down due to having to pay being almost a requirement at end-game to enjoy it properly. Fun, large zones to explore and some entertaining combat make it a must-play MMORPG if you’re into Scifi!

An amazing MMORPG.. in theory. Huge open world. Fun combat. Great graphics. Awesome features.
Alas, how heavily pay to win people claim the game is caused it to die off very fast – with the 3.0 update bringing in both new and returning players temporarily to boost the population numbers, although ultimately a large number of players ended up leaving due to the same reasons as originally.