Discord dropped the Clyde chatbot into our Team Spode channel yesterday, and we had a lot of fun playing with it, forcing it to write songs and roll up D&D characters for us. It eventually responded with a meme before it finally refused to say anything more.
I think it doesn’t like us anymore. Before it sulked off, it told us what it thought the ten most popular MMOs were, and it had Lord of the Rings Online high on the list. Which seemed surprising to me. I guess with the new Amazon Lord of the Rings MMO trashtalking it, it might be more in the news, but I was still skeptical.
Every now and again, I go to Google Trends and type in a bunch of MMO names and see how they compare to each other. This is the scientific part. I last did this back when New World, Crowfall, and a bunch of other MMOs were tearing up the charts, a couple of years ago.
I’ve separated the MMOs on this list roughly in tiers. I tried to add in all the MMOs I could think of offhand, but of course, there will be omissions. Some popular games that are considered by many to be MMOs, such as Destiny 2 and Path of Exile I left off. Sometimes games that were like an MMO in some ways but unlike in others, such as Realm of the Mad Gods, I included. My partner and I debated that one for awhile, while I was playing it.
The Best of the Best — World of Warcraft, Old School RuneScape, Final Fantasy XIV
These three MMOs are far and away the most popular MMOs in the USA, according to Google Trends, and they have been that way for years. Sometimes one is on top, sometimes another one is, but it’s always one of these three.
World of Warcraft needs no introduction. Players new to the hobby might think it was the first one, and who could blame them? Its influence is immense. Old School RuneScape is the re-release of the original RuneScape, except now as a standalone client instead of a web game. It has now grown to become an entirely different animal with a different development plan than the current iteration of the game, RuneScape 3. Final Fantasy XIV was the followup MMO to Square Enix’s Final Fantasy XI. They followed up a disastrous launch with a new version of the game, A Realm Reborn, and its deep story and gorgeous graphics bring a very different flavor to the genre matched by no other game.
The Best of the Rest — The Elder Scrolls Online, RuneScape 3
These two games are always on the verge of breaking through, but a huge gap still separates them from the front runners. TESO ties into the stories of the Elder Scrolls franchise, extending the various settings into a new age. RuneScape 3 is a modern re-imagining of the original RuneScape that still preserves the innovative skill-based leveling.
Tier 3 — Guild Wars 2, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Star Citizen, New World, Lost Ark
This tier consists of games that are still very popular and well-supported. GW2’s buy once, play free forever model delivers an innovative blend of PvE, PvP, and individualized stories. SW:TOR can be played free from beginning to end, with a wide variety of individual class stories on both sides of the rebel and imperial sides that have something for everyone. Star Citizen, while officially unreleased, has an active and open alpha where thousands spend their playtime in a dangerous galaxy. Amazon’s MMO New World brings a little more gritty realism to the fantasy MMO genre with a targeting system little seen outside ARPGs. Lost Ark is a free to play ARPG that is reminiscent of the Diablo series. I wonder how it will do once Diablo IV’s more MMO-flavored gameplay goes live in a couple of weeks?
Tier 4 — Wizard101, Black Desert Online, Final Fantasy XI, MapleStory, Elite: Dangerous
W101 is a children’s MMO, the only one on the list. It’s fun and easy to play with an innovative deck building combat system. BDO is an open PvP game with a fair amount of PvE content and a fun combat combo mechanic. FFXI is Square Enix’s first MMO known for its deep group focus and epic raids. MapleStory is the only side-scrolling 2D MMO on this list (I believe) that sparked hundreds of imitators. Elite: Dangerous is the space sim that puts you behind the controls of a lone space ship in a galaxy that is as dangerous as you want it to be.
Tier 5 — EverQuest, Guild Wars, EVE Online, Albion Online, Neverwinter
Those people more familiar with the history of the MMO might say that World of Warcraft only exists because EverQuest showed it the way. That would also be wrong — the 2000s were a boiling pot of MMOs with a diversity mostly forgotten today — but it would also be a little correct, as WoW certainly took inspiration from EQ. Guild Wars isn’t technically an MMO, but I put it here because it precedes GW2, which most definitely is. EVE Online, the space trading and empire building game, should be higher on this list, if only due to the impact its stories of betrayal and intrigue make. Albion Online is a sandbox ARPG MMO with very little plot to get in the way of your own personal adventure. Neverwinter is an MMO set against the D&D 5th edition ruleset that takes place in the titular city and the surrounding environs.
Tier 6 — Star Trek Online, Lord of the Rings Online, DC Universe Online, Dungeons & Dragons Online, Realm of the Mad God
Three of these games — LotRO, DCUO and DDO — are all owned by the same company. They also own the EverQuest games. Intersting! Star Trek Online remains probably the best multiplayer Star Trek game. Its starship designs have made it from the game into the actual live action television series, and I believe one of the ones that made it to the third season of Star Trek: Picard was designed by a player. LotRO is set in the time of the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings, where you play as one of the adventurers who is secretly helping the fellowship defeat Sauron. DDO is a lobby based MMO which probably shouldn’t be on the list, but it is because I get to decide that. It is based on the 3rd edition rules, I think? Realm of the Mad God is the only roguelike MMO. You play until you die, and then you start a new character, hopefully unlocking something new during the previous run. Parts of the world are persistent. That’ll be the part with all the bots. See the header picture.
Tier 7 — EverQuest II, Ultima Online, Temtem, Aion, Pirate101
EQII was Sony Online Entertainment’s follow-up to the original EverQuest. Like RuneScape, players ended up preferring the original game. Players very familiar with the history of the MMO might peg Ultima Online, the MMO version of the popular RPG series, to be the first popular MMO, but they would also be wrong. (Meridian 59 is considered to be the first MMO, but… that is also wrong. I’ve heard it described as the first MMO in 3D, which might narrow it down enough to be correct. The first MMOs used more abstract graphics, character graphics, or just text, but it was these early MMOs, MUDs, MUSHs and MOOs that gave rise to the genre).
Temtem is a Pokémon-inspired MMO, and if you want to battle other players with your cute pets, this is the game for you. Aion was distinguished at launch by a game between the forces of Heaven and Hell where you played an angel. You could even fly! I remember it as one of the post-WoW MMOs that did the most to distinguish itself from the more popular game. Pirate101 is another children’s MMO by the makers of Wizard101, which is the only one on this list that focuses on turn-based, tactical gameplay. Both W101 and P101 are perfect for people who enjoy a more relaxed MMO experience.
Tier 8 — Dark Age of Camelot, ArcheAge, Rift, The Secret World, Runes of Magic
With this tier, we’re deep into the back catalog of MMO games. DAoC transformed the genre with its three sided battles that would go on to influence such games as Warhammer Online, Guild Wars 2, and even Final Fantasy XIV. Anyone who has played both DAoC and one of those others will immediately see how much has been borrowed. ArcheAge is a Korean sandbox MMO that follows the template of such games as Lineage II and features fast-paced storylines and gorgeous graphics. The Secret World was based on the White Wolf games of supernatural conspiracy and featured puzzles that had you searching for clues on the internet or furiously writing down Morse code to later decipher. It also featured a three-way faction system. Runes of Magic has outgrown its roots as a WoW-clone to become something unique.
Tier 9 — Allods Online, Project: Gorgon, MapleStory 2
These last few games aren’t the bottom of the barrel. And there are hundreds more MMOs I could cover, but you have to stop somewhere.
Allods Online is a game I called a Russian WoW-clone back when it was released, but its Star Ocean-like setting sets it apart from its pure fantasy brethren. Project: Gorgon is the indie project developed by a married couple, and this is about as indie as it possible to get. Being a game in active development, new things are happening all the time. Like RuneScape, MapleStory 2 updates the setting of the original game, in this case from a 2D side scroller to a Minecraft-inspired 3D world. And, like RuneScape and EverQuest, the original is more successful than the sequel.
The MMO world has probably never been more vibrant. From 3D games to 2D sprites, PvP to PvE, fast paced to leisurely, people are seeking out games that are just right for them, and they are finding them.
There aren’t a lot of these I follow closely enough to know if concurrencies mirror these google trends patterns. Doing some digging recently convinced me that New World is in about the same range of players as LoTRO and DDO (concurrencies of around 15K for New World, vs. around 3800 for DDO based on DDO audit and something more than 3800 but almost certainly less than 15K for LoTRO). DAoC we also have accurate reads available on from Excidio, and the peak concurrencies there are around 4500 players, with Albion being more popular than the other two realms lately for some reason. So I would put all four of those MMOs in roughly the same order of magnitude tier.
I would be willing to bet that the majority of MMOs that aren’t smash hits but still doing well enough to put out new content every year are in roughly the same range (SWTOR, EQ, EQ II, Wizard 101, probably a bunch of others I don’t follow).
It’s amazing to me that Runescape is doing so well these days. I played it once for about an hour a decade ago, and even for me it was a bit too clunky (and I can put up with some serious clunk). But there seems to be a generation that grew up with it at really loves it. I should probably give it another chance at some point.
It’s true that Google Trends is nowhere near exact, but it’s the one measure that can cover a broad range of games. And I don’t think I pointed it out explicitly in the article, but there is a LARGE gap between the top three and the next three, and a LARGE gap leading to the lower tiers. Toward the bottom, you have to zoom in really far to distinguish between them — we’re talking orders of magnitudes less than the leaders. Multiple orders of magnitude.
I’m happy they’re there.
When my son was asking what MMOs to play, I told him about the leaders. He went for WoW first, but it was a lonely experience — the two of us and some other newbies, but mostly we had the goblin starter zone to ourselves on our server (Kirin Tor, my old server from release). FFXIV, by contrast, was hustle and bustle from the first, and he chose FFXIV to play after seeing both.
And then he went back to Call of Duty because… that’s who he is. We’ll see if he sticks with Diablo IV…
Anyway, thanks for the hard data on those games!