I'm sure a lot of you are very sick of this question. Like me, you've probably remained on the hunt for that perfect mmo experience for 10+ years. I'm not sure if there's anything else for me to find I haven't looked into, but I still really want to hear from the lemmy community on this. I'm not just looking for reccomendations for me, but also just wanting to know what you like. I'm expecting this to go about the same as the reddit threads asking the same thing, but I think the conversation is still worth having!
As for what I like, I was a classic runescape player before moving onto guid wars 2, but my all time favorite is dungeons and dragons online. I value character expression above almost everything else, and ddo is pretty good about giving you the same freedoms you would have in pen and paper did. Despite its shortcomings, this alone is why I keep going back to ddo over things like gw2 or elder scrolls online. With eso, and most others, I feel like my character is the same as everyone else's. Ddo makes my roll as a Rouge or cleric feel much more rewarding, and I still feel like I'm playing an individual custom character.
Honorable mentions would go to Black desert online for its amazing graphics and game play, and Albion online for being one of the most unique and interesting mmo experiences I've had in a while.
I don't think there is currently anything out that will be 100% what I like, but anything new to explore is welcome. Of course the goal here isn't really to find anything new, I just want to hear your thoughts on some of your favorites.
I'm bad with acronyms so I would appreciate it if you said the games real name at least once. Throw whatever you want at me even if it's way off topic. Upcoming or in development games are fine too!
As an ex-Turbinite, nice to hear DDO praise these days. LOTRO is still around too.
I've been playing Star Citizen lately: actually a game now, and not a scam. Obviously sci-fi and not fantasy, but it's pretty great, especially with non-combat activities.
I've been avoiding everything with star as the first word because I can't remember which is which anymore. I usually skip on the sci-fi ones, but I'll look into star citizen tonight just because of your reccomendation.
Ddo is still very active and surprisingly social. I love my guild. Every now and then you can grab all the dlc and most of the other stuff for free or extremely cheap, so I'm playing the expansions I always wanted but couldn't afford. I'm close to unlocking artificer and I can't wait for that to be my first reincarnation. Combat feels familiar and functional, dare I say fun at times. The challenge is there, and so is the need for a good party. Easy enough to solo, but you'll want to take on those more challenging quests eventually. Exploration is still a 10/10 in this game, in my humble opinion. Korthos island still feels like home. The dragon in the tutorial is still just as awesome. Love love love this game and love that it's still so great.
I wouldn't count Star Citizen as an MMO game just yet. It is mostly sim, with barely any story based content. In its current state, it is more of a chatroom with mostly rudimentary gameplay loops that let you earn cash to buy ships.
The missions and profession loops are pretty barebones still. The events are too janky to properly enjoy yet. The armor sets are detailed yet entirely forgettable. The ships are customizable with basically just a handful of weapon archetypes, that don't really have any visual impact externally.
The ships themselves are awesome though, and it will take you hours just to tour around in all of them. The landing zones are jaw dropping, and their public transit transitions are cool without getting tedious, but the only real gameplay there is shopping.
It has come together in a pretty fun loop lately, by hunting NPCs criminals to steal some drugs, physically loading them into your own ship in a sort of 3d Tetris with tractor beams, selling the drugs at sketchy PvP hotspots, sometimes unintentionally committing other crimes in the process and getting hunted by bounty hunting players, and being sent to and then breaking out of jail.
Aside from that, the game is mostly spectacle right now, which your can experience vicariously from their most recent demo reel:
https://youtu.be/nWm_OhIKms8