I'd suggest Guild Wars 2. It's an MMO that can be played quite casually and doesn't require massive time investment or grinding. It has a fun gameplay loop that encourages free exploration. Collaboration with other players arises freely from gameplay.

Old school runescape free to play is a great introduction but you should go into it knowing that its not a free to play game and you'll likely be paying a subscription fee.

Guild wars 1 is a old but its good and its like $10 one time payment. It can be done solo or with other players.

If you like Lord of the Rings: Lord of the Rings Online is extremely nice story wise. It's an old school MMO, but that shouldn't shock you when you only know old school ones anyway.

If a low initial fee is fine, wait for Elder Scrolls Online sale. You can regularly get the base game for $5 or so. It has no forced monthly cost so those $5 are worth hundreds of hours or quest content.

Warframe is an unconventional mmo, and there's actually a bit of rpg in there too, moreso than I would've expected coming in. It's great fun though.

I will say the mandatory trading for weapon and frame slots is kinda annoying, but gets less annoying as you progress and get more access to better grinds.

Guild wars 2, it's free to start and B2P for every season and expansion with no FOMO or P2W mechanics, only convenience. I see a lot of recommendations for FF14, but one thing most people don't tell you is that the vanilla game is absolutely terrible. The main story quest (MSQ) for vanilla is just bad and boring, to the point where they actually cut some content out of it because that content was unnecessary. It's still long and boring though, and I really wish they would just give people the option to freely skip the vanilla game with a recap video and go straight into Heavensward because that's when the game gets really good. If you can power through the vanilla story of FF14, then I guess try it out, but my vote is GW2.

Old School Runescape i've had a decent bit of fun with and i'd recommend it. It takes a lot of reading, but there's a free option for you to try if you're unsure and it runs on damn near anything. Granted i'm not the target audience for MMOs. I usually hop in and dick around a little bit then pop out

Guild wars 2 maybe ? Beware, it’s chonky.

I found Final Fantasy XIV easy to get into. The full game requires a monthly payment but there is a "free trial", which contains the entire base game and the first expansion for free and can last you at least a few hundred hours.

I tried old school runescape a while ago again but did not enjoy it. It's a very grindy game, and unless you like clicking on a tree for 30 minutes then you aren't going to like it either.

If you enjoy the old school vibe, City of Heroes has been revived through a community effort, and is free with all of the original content plus some new stuff. This has been given official blessing so it's not going to disappear suddenly.

Warframe.

Pirated old WoW on pirate servers is quite nice imo. Vanilla, The Burning Crusade and The Wrath of the Lich King. Never give Microsoft-ActivisionBlizzard a single cent btw. OSRS seems nice, but I never played it myself. It's not free at all though.

Old School RuneScape (OSRS) membership prices in USD as of June 2025 are: 1‑month plan: $13.99/month 6‑month plan: $11.99/month (total $71.94) 12‑month Premier plan: $8.29/month (total $99.48)-

Final Fantasy 14. It's base game and first couple expansions are free to play. No subscription needed unless you keep playing after that

Depends what you like, but I'm still nostalgic for old school WoW and find myself wanting to play every now and again but don't want to subscribe for a whole month. My recommendation for that would be Turtle WoW, it's an expanded vanilla private server that has it's own launcher and everything so it's pretty simple to get started with.

I used to love Mabinogi. It's a bit different then most MMORPGs but it had some real cool features. My favorite is any character could learn any skill in the game. It also has a coherent story with some surprising plot twists. On to of that, you character ages and will even get fat if they eat too much. Haven't played it in years, as well as any MMORPG for that matter, but this is one of the ones I have the fondest memories of.

Ffxiv has a lot of content available in the free trial but it is not really a "free mmorpg" since if you want to do content that released less than 6 years ago, or join/use FC guilds or linkshell chats, or trade, have any significant quantity of gil, get housing, or use player markets, then you have to buy the game and pay a subscription. Mahjong is free though and it's quite a good mahjong client.

That said, it is a good way to figure out if you like the basic gameplay systems: the UI and menus which are very customizable, controls (switch to legacy if using M&KB), tab target combat and global cooldown, main scenario questing, instanced dungeons and normal mode bosses, unlocking multiple jobs to try out.

All this with the caveat that basically all jobs at level 70 feel like an empty shell of the combat rotation of level 100, and high end content is only available and populated for the most recent patches + the 6 ultimate raids.

You may consider what it is you're looking to get out of an MMORPG before you just jump in. Speaking as someone who played MMOs for about a decade (mostly WOW, but several others as well), you would be surprised how insidiously that type of game can alter your habits. Also, MMORPGs could be absolutely mind numbing at the height of their popularity, modern MMOs are so heavily streamlined that I would argue many aren't even all that fun to play anymore.

I'm not saying MMOs are bad, or that you won't enjoy them, but maybe just think about what the fun you're seeking looks like.

City of heroes is still available for free and is a lot of fun. Pre-WOW but the graphics are decent. A great community too.

Star Wars Galaxies is still alive and well on emulated servers hilariously if you actually liked it.

https://swglegends.com/

I've enjoyed OSRS on and off since about 2004, but if you're wanting to avoid walking simulators, it is the worst offender. A big part of the game is calculating the best possible path to follow. You are making trips to the bank in between every activity and multiple times per quest. Many skills exist just to ease to burden of traveling around the world.

My personal favorite MMO is vanilla WoW. I'm obviously biased but it is just what I had the most fun with back when it came out and I think it still holds up incredibly well today. I play on a private server called TurtleWoW and it is 100% free. They have continuously added their own expansions over time and are currently working on a client that runs the game in Unreal Engine if you desire more modern graphics.

If it seems to old school, Guild Wars 2 is a really good choice as well. I played through the base game and first expansion of FF14 and ultimately wasn't impressed. It's great if you like to role play with other players, but everyone is so focused on playing the meta that it took all of the fun out of the game for me. People would kick me out of groups for trying to play with my own personalized set up.

Star Wars: The Old Republic

The base game has the best quests and dialogue of any MMORPG I've yet played. The later expansions (Knights of the Fallen Empire and Knights of the Fallen Throne) are awful and cost money, so you can just play the base game for free and never even have to spend a penny to get eight unique class storylines to play for free. It's honestly the last great game from Bioware.

If you don't like the back and forth type stuff, you're probably looking for a theme-park style MMORPG. You might try something like Warhammer: Return of Reckoning.

I played Albion for a bit, it's quite fun and its free to play. I just started WoW Classic a couple of weeks back and I have never played it before, not too difficult and like some have said its free until level 20.

If you want to check out some classics look up project 1999 for EverQuest or the classic world of warcraft servers. RuneScape isn't a bad choice if you're into the grind.

Modern I don't think there's much I can recommend, even the subscription based games have stores attached now & few or no in game events run by GMs

In contrast to the other commenters, fuck FFXIV. I tried it twice and it's just.. annoying. Maybe because I was already annoyed with MMOs in general by then.
You should still try it yourself eventually, but it's really bleh for me.

To be honest, most f2p MMOs don't work as a f2player. You have to end up paying or it becomes stressful.

Anyway, i don't recommend them, but they felt the least annoying the longest. Star Trek Online and Neverwinter (grindy as hell or expensive pay2unlock), Guild Wars 2 (needs buying the first two expansions to unlock permanent mounts and character specializations) and if you're brave enough to go the private servers route, try searching for private, yet somewhat reputable servers of games you think might've been nice like Wildstar..

I don't reaaly play MMOs, but I had a lot of fun with Star Wars: The Old Republic. I put over 300 hours in to do all the class stories.

Spiral Knights.

I recently started playing World of Warcraft, the current version, and my gosh it was way too easy and way too fast. I got to level 70 in 5 days, and gave up and started playing WoW classic instead, which is much more difficult. So I'd say WoW is probably your jam, just stay away from Classic.