Looking for GOOD browser MMORPGs

Cant really think of to many besides Runescape and even then its fighting system is not the most fun in the world, but there is quite a few ways to spend some time on the free to play servers. I also knew a couple people who enjoyed Dofus but Im not to sure if that is still around.

Not an MMORPG but Quake Live is good fun for a browser game.

Requires downloading but MMORPG's I found fun but were not too graphically intense were Trickster Online, Wonderland Online they are 3d isometric MMO's and the former of which had quite a clever Trading Card mini-game. The cards were obtained via enemy drops.

Fiesta Online wasnt to bad, It is a bit of a paint by numbers 3D MMORPG but it had a nice 20 man siege mini-game, I remember the community being one of the better ones in the MMO world

 

It sounds old and all, but there is only one really good browser MMO and that is RuneScape. It has so much content! Even when you play f2p there is a lot to do and if you are dedicated you can make enough money to pay your subscription!

 

Quake Live is browser based? Since when?

And OP, how do you feel about text-based games? Kingdom of Loafing is a really popular, fun little text-based browser MMORPG that still has a pretty active user base.

 

Ah right sorry, I just found out that Quake Live has moved to Steam, Before when I used to play around two years ago, it was a free to play browser game. Shame its no longer F2P. Ill probably have to switch back to Cube 2 Sauerbraten if I need a Quake like fix

 

Quake Live is still F2P, I think. Just no longer browser-based. Unfortunately for OP it seems like the no-download-needed PC gaming scene is dying with the decline of Flash, Shockwave, Java, etc.

 

Yeah that is true. I reckon its going that way because Steam has risen to prominence so much in the last few years and that there are more open-source game engines available now to develop on Java, and Shockwave is no longer really needed.

Come to think of it the only other MMO Im aware that might still be accessible via browser is Puzzle Pirates and even then its also a downloadable on Steam.

 

Oh, yeah, Puzzle Pirates is a really good one. I've heard the community is majorly dying out. It's a shame, I played a lot of it when I was younger. Apparently, the economy fell off because features like jobbing and even just F2P pillaging fell off because of how easy it was to acquire currency through the card games. I think Runescape (both 2007 and new) is still and will continue to be the biggest browser-based MMOs out there.

 

Oh god is the community dying. They had done several Ocean merges a few years back and Steam accessibility brought the numbers back up ever so slightly. But there are only two oceans of worth now, and even then only on poker free days and weekend Blockades. Plus those two oceans are Microtransaction doubloon oceans. By the way when I say "worth" when there are 900 players online that could be considered as a busy day. The subscriber ocean is pretty much dead. When 80 people are online that is a good day for that ocean.

Puzzle Pirates is on its way out. Merging all the oceans together and go 100% on the micro transactions might keep it going for another 18 months maybe. But they will need to advertise more as well at the same time. Even with the semi-recent indie boom They are doing nothing to advertise Game Gardens even if it is comparably outdated it could still possess some use.

Puzzle Pirates is now a poker game with pirates. Honestly it is probably down to the moderate success of Spiral Knights that is stopping Sega from pulling the plug on Three Rings Design and Puzzle Pirates

Runescape has done a great job of revitalizing itself. Graphical updates helped but their Twitch Integration was a masterstroke

 

With a lot of things changing in browsers (Flash is losing support) you don't have a lot of good browser mmorpgs to choose from. I guess Runescape is an option if you never played it.

 

Wow, I had no idea it was that bad. That's really unfortunate. Puzzle Pirates has always been a really fun game, but I think the cracks definitely began to show when you looked at how difficult it was to make money from what the game was SUPPOSED to be (being an active pirate on a crew, doing jobs on islands, owning your own shops) versus how easy it was to make money doing things put into the game almost as an after-thought (all of those card games and other parlor games or whatever they were called). It really became an instance of getting tired of grinding all day and never getting anywhere playing the actual game OR "winning the game" by making millions over the course of a good night playing Spades. I also don't know how smart it was of them to delete unused accounts after a period of time. Made it very hard to drop the game for a long time and want to go back. User retention should be a bigger priority if you want to have any longevity as an MMO.

I think Runescape has done a pretty good job keeping themselves fresh. Jagex are really active developers, for the most part. Reviving OSRS and making it F2P is also a great move. I don't know if redoing Runescape's graphics alone would have been able to keep a player base -- I know I personally wasn't interested in returning to the game when I heard about that change. Capitalizing on the nostalgia of late-teens/young adults (reliable consumers) who have very nostalgic memories of playing Runescape in middle school. It even pulled me in for a few months, and I have to say that they've even made some pretty good improvements upon the original model.

 

Yeah Puzzle Pirates was great around 2006-2010, It had a pretty healthy player base it benefited hugely from being on miniclip and ranking high on miniclip to get onto the front page everyday. Runescape and Club Penguin took the same route as well. I know Runescape had fans from RS Classic but I think without miniclip they would never of gotten anywhere near as much attention from the child to young teen demographic around 2004-2008.

I also thought it was a bit of a boneheaded move to delete long inactive accounts, its quite a good way to lose potential players especially more so now that they are on Steam and so many older players would of been able to jump right back

The problem with Puzzle Pirates was that despite a pretty healthy in game economy (See Gaia Online on how not to manage a good one) the rewards for pillaging were to low for the time invested and there were too many money sinks when pillaging or stall owning. Whilst Poker and the other parlor games had none. Even adding a 2% house rake on all winnings in poker which would of removed that money from the game entirely after every hand in the long run would of eventually incentivise more pillages, which would use up more resources and made the stores selling those resources more likely to turn a profit

Thats a fair point on the RS graphics update but I think prior to it Runescape were losing a fair few players because games like WoW, Runes of Magic did not require particularly Hi-Specs and decent computers were becoming cheaper and cheaper. Not to mention F2P MMO's from countries such as South Korea were becoming more and more plentiful especially when Publishers such as Gamigo, Outspark, Aeria and IGG are willing to host EU and North American servers.

Jagex have been very clever, despite changing something as fundamental as the combat mechanics they are still going strong. The 20007 RS2 for the nostalgia fans, Legacy Mode Combat in RS3 which scales up the damage to be roughly on a par with those who use the new combat system to attract and keep a hold of players who want the newer features but dont want to change their play-style or awkwardly transition to the Evolution of Combat update .