15 oldest MMORPGs that are still alive

MMORPGs, or massively multiplayer online role-playing games, are perhaps the most “tenacious” in comparison to representatives of other genres that require constant support. If an MMORPG developer has done everything right and created a game world in which players are interested in spending their free time, such a game can exist for years… or even decades! Players become so accustomed to their favorite universe that the game turns into just one of their hobbies, which they do not want to change without a very good reason.

In this article, we have collected the oldest MMORPGs that can still be played today, in 2024, despite the fact that they are all at least 20 years old.

 

Meridian 59 (1996)

The oldest MMORPG alive and one of the first ever, Meridian 59 was commercially released in late 1996 (and first appeared online a year earlier).

Meridian 59 had basic 3D graphics with sprites, was made in a typical fantasy genre with medieval weapons and magic, and supported several hundred players on the server. The then publisher The 3DO Company closed the game in 2000, but 2 years later it was re-released by Near Death Studios, Inc.

The new publisher kept the game until 2010, during which time Meridian 59 received a new engine and other improvements. After its closure, Near Death Studios, Inc. handed the game over to the original developers and released the source code. Currently, Meridian 59 is available for free on Steam, where it has a fairly high rating, although there are few reviews.

 

Furcadia (1996)

Technically, Furcadia was released later than Meridian 59 (albeit only by a couple of months), but in fact the game had been around under a different name, DragonSpires, since 1994. The game was free-to-play and focused on social relationships and peaceful community existence rather than battles against monsters or other players.

The game was also distinguished by its focus on user-generated content: together with Furcadia, the developer offered a set of tools for creating your own virtual worlds, which are called Dreams here. So over time, the gaming community created a large number of different worlds, including those based on popular books, TV shows, etc.

Nowadays, Furcadia’s user base has shrunk significantly (to about half a thousand players, according to a discussion on the subreddit earlier this year), but the game still exists – 30 years after the release of its previous version, DragonSpires.

 

Tibia (1997)

Another MMORPG vying for the title of “oldest”, Tibia was released in the early days of 1997, a few months after the first two, and was developed by German students as a hobby.

Tibia has pixelated 2D graphics with a top view and a typical fantasy setting. In the game, you need to kill monsters to get loot and level up your character, there is PvP, quests, guilds, etc. You interact with NPCs by entering text commands.

The game has free access and paid premium accounts, and it was most popular in 2007, when the number of active players was a quarter of a million, and the peak online time exceeded 60 thousand simultaneous players. Tibia is still actively supported by the developer, which releases regular content updates.

 

Ultima Online (1997)

The most famous MMORPG, the legendary game that popularized the genre and at the same time gave it its modern name: it was its developer Richard Heriot who proposed this abbreviation, which comes from MMOG. Before the release of Ultima Online (and for several years after, until the early 2000s), games in this genre were called “graphical MUDs” (Multi User Dungeon, later Multi-User Domain), meaning that they were considered a kind of text-based multiplayer role-playing games that were common in the 1980s.

Ultima Online continued the tradition of the previous games in the Ultima series, but in a persistent world, and received many new mechanics that experimented with social functions and the economy. Unlike the first MMORPGs, which were designed for the simultaneous presence of several hundred players on the server, Ultima Online supported up to several thousand.

Thanks to these factors, as well as a great deal of freedom of action, the game featured large-scale activities and the ability to play an “alternative life,” which contributed to its enormous popularity at the time.

For example, Ultima Online became the first MMORPG to reach a circulation of 100 thousand copies (which was much higher than the competitors), and in the early 2000s, the game had a quarter of a million active subscribers, which brought the publisher more than $1.5 million in monthly subscription fees (while the developer itself focused on much more modest figures of 15 thousand subscribers before the release).

Currently, the rights to Ultima Online are owned by Electronic Arts, which switched it to a free-to-play distribution model in 2018 and continues to support it to this day. Thus, you can buy various add-ons on the official website, and later this year it is even planned to launch a new server with the “classic” version of the game – Ultima Online: New Legacy.

 

EverQuest (1999)

EverQuest was released in early 1999 and is considered the first commercially successful MMORPG to use a 3D engine. Like other early games of this genre, it was inspired by text-based role-playing games (in particular, DikuMUD) and had a traditional fantasy medieval setting.

The development of EverQuest began in 1996, after Sony saw the success of Meridian 59 and realized the potential of the genre. In the first year after its release, the game surpassed Ultima Online in terms of subscribers, and the subsequent success was so significant that Sony even turned the studio that supported EverQuest into a division of Sony Online Entertainment.

EverQuest is still actively supported and operates on a free-to-play basis. Throughout its existence, the game has received as many as 30 expansions, the last of which was released at the end of last year, and the next one is already scheduled for December 2024.

As for the game’s performance: by the end of 2004, more than 3 million copies had been sold, and the player base included 550 thousand active subscribers. As of 2020, EverQuest had 66 thousand subscribers and 82 thousand monthly active players.

At the end of 2004, Sony released a sequel, EverQuest II, set 500 years after the first part, but the game could not compete with World of Warcraft, which was released almost simultaneously.

 

RuneScape (2001)

RuneScape, an MMORPG played by almost all players interested in this genre, was released in the early days of 2001 as a browser-based free-to-play game that could be run on any PC, making it much more affordable than other MMORPGs of the time with monthly subscription fees and “heavier” graphics.

RuneScape featured a mixture of 2D and 3D graphics and, again, a fantasy world. However, unlike other games, it didn’t have different races – players could only create human avatars. Over time, the game received new versions with a new engine, honest 3D graphics, an updated combat system, etc. – RuneScape 2 in 2004, RuneScape 3 in 2013. All of them were subsequently called RuneScape, and at the same time in 2013, the “classic” version of the game, Old School RuneScape, was launched, and now they exist in parallel, both available on Steam.

According to the statistics of the MMO Populations website, the daily number of players is just over 40 thousand, and over 300 million people have played RuneScape over the 23 years of its existence.

 

Anarchy Online (2001)

Anarchy Online was the world’s first MMORPG in the sci-fi genre: a sci-fi future instead of a fantasy past, blasters instead of swords, and nanotechnology instead of magic. The game has a global plot, but in general, it has the gameplay of a multiplayer sandbox, where players mostly invent their own entertainment.

For its time, Anarchy Online had a fairly large world and very high-quality graphics, which also contributed to its popularity. Since 2004, the developer has switched to a free-to-play model: the basic version of the game is completely free, while the add-ons released later require a monthly subscription fee. In total, Anarchy Online has received 5 major add-ons, an updated engine, a new monetization system, etc.

Before the transition to the f2p model, the maximum number of active subscribers was 700 thousand, and the maximum number of players, both paid and free, reached 2 million in 2008. Today, although the game continues to exist (and is also available on Steam, among other things ), according to MMO Populations, it can be considered almost “dead”: currently, Anarchy Online has about one thousand daily players.

 

Dark Age of Camelot (2001)

Unlike Anarchy Online, Dark Age of Camelot, which was released six months later, has a traditional high fantasy setting. The game was based on the text-based Darkness Falls: The Crusade (1999), and its game lore is a mixture of Celtic and Scandinavian mythologies with the Arthurian mythos, the so-called “Brittany Mythos” based on the legends of King Arthur.

The plot of Dark Age of Camelot tells the story of the events that take place after the death of King Arthur, which led to the collapse of his former kingdom into three warring factions: the main theme of this MMORPG is the game mechanics of Realm versus Realm (RvR), in which the three newly formed kingdoms are constantly at war with each other and fight for control of fortresses, towers, powerful relics, etc.

In its early years, the game was more commercially successful than Anarchy Online, and it still remains more popular: currently, Dark Age of Camelot has an estimated user base of almost half a million players, and online play during one day is at 2-3 thousand. Dark Age of Camelot can be played for free with certain restrictions or full access for a monthly subscription fee.

 

Final Fantasy XI (2002)

The eleventh installment in the main Final Fantasy series, unlike the previous games, which were traditional single-player jRPGs, became an MMORPG. Initially, the game was released on the PlayStation 2 console, later it appeared on the PC and became the first MMORPG to offer cross-platform play between these gaming systems. A few years later, Final Fantasy XI was also ported to Xbox 360, but after 2016, the console versions of the game were closed and now it is only available on PC.

Unlike the previous installments, Final Fantasy XI featured a fully three-dimensional world, real-time battles with monsters visible in the location (without the usual random encounters for jRPGs), and the ability to personalize game avatars. The game has almost no PvP (“player versus player”) mode, instead focusing on PvE (“player versus environment”) activities.

Now you can get acquainted with the game using a trial version (limited to 14 days), for a full game you need to purchase a client worth $30, and then pay a monthly subscription fee. Rumors about the closure have been circulating for several years (especially since its successor, the second MMORPG in this universe, Final Fantasy XIV, has been around for more than 10 years), but Eleven is still not going to give up (the user base is now estimated at more than one and a half million players, with 3-4 thousand online daily).

 

A Tale in the Desert (2003)

The year 2003 was a very fruitful one for MMORPGs that have stood the test of time: as many as five of the games in this article, or every third one, were released this year.

A Tale in the Desert is an unusual social MMORPG set in ancient Egypt that focuses on crafts and trade, with social and political features, and has absolutely no combat system.

Another unusual approach to the game is the release of updates: the game “ends” every 18 months, players make suggestions for fixes, updates, and customizations, and then it “starts again.” For example, the 11th “version” of A Tale in the Desert, which was released in 2023, is currently in use.

A Tale in the Desert can be played for free for 24 hours, after which a monthly subscription fee will be required.

 

MapleStory (2003)

A Korean 2D MMORPG in the form of a side-scroller that works on a free-to-play basis. From the very beginning, MapleStory offered ample opportunities to personalize your avatars, which made it stand out from other games of the time.

MapleStory mainly focuses on dungeon crawling and monster battles – PvP in the game appeared only a few years after its release.

Over the years, the game has received several major updates and has been licensed to different regions of the world. As of 2020, 180 million accounts have been created in MapleStory, and the revenue worldwide has exceeded $3 billion. In 2015, the sequel with new 3D graphics, MapleStory 2, was released, but the servers of the original game are still working: the daily online presence, according to MMO Populations, is more than 50 thousand players.

 

EVE Online (2003)

The only space MMORPG of its kind, with an incredible scale of the game world and opportunities for interaction between players who create their own local economy, conduct complex political games and large-scale star wars.

EVE Online takes place in the distant future, and humanity is colonizing the Milky Way – the game contains thousands of star systems. Unlike other MMORPGs, where players are divided between numerous servers, EVE Online introduces the concept of a “single universe”: all players play on one main server (except for the Chinese market with its own server).

During its existence, the game has received both technical updates of the engine and content updates – more than two dozen of them have already been released. In 2016. EVE Online received a free-to-play version with certain limitations (in particular, skill upgrades), and a monthly subscription fee is required for full-featured play.

Before the launch of F2P accounts, the game had about 500 thousand active subscribers, and as of today, the total gaming audience is estimated at 10 million accounts, with a little less than 30 thousand daily online.

 

Second Life (2003)

In fact, Second Life is not an MMORPG in the traditional sense, and the developer himself does not even consider it a “game”. Second Life was conceived as a “second life” that people would spend online.

In fact, it is a virtual reality filled with “digital versions” of players who invent their own entertainment, rules of behavior, and even create worlds: Second Life has no defined goal, plot, traditional game mechanics, etc.

The key mechanic is the creation of user-generated content using built-in tools – Second Life has a 3D editor, its own procedural scripting language, etc. Moreover, players own all the rights to the objects they create and can sell them on the game market and withdraw game currency into real money via PayPal.

The game is free without any restrictions, with an optional premium access that provides extended technical support and a monthly “inflow” of game currency. At its peak, around 2013, Second Life had approximately 1 million active users. As of 2024, the daily online population is estimated at several tens of thousands of players.

 

Lineage II (2003)

The Korean MMORPG Lineage II was the most popular in the Asian market, although it also reached us. The game has a fairly typical fantasy world and game mechanics with both monster battles and PvP mode.

Unlike Lineage, which was made in 2D isometry, Lineage II (the prequel to the first part) received a full-fledged 3D engine. The game has storylines that were supplemented through periodic content updates.

In the Western market, the game received a rather restrained reaction from both players and critics, mainly due to the typical Korean “grind” and focus on hardcore players, which made the game uninteresting for the average casual gamer.

Nevertheless, the American version of Lineage II is still running, although it has a virtually dead online presence: while the total number of players in the mid-2000s was 14 million, the user base is now estimated by various resources at less than 300 thousand, with 200-300 players online daily.

 

World of Warcraft (2004)

To be sure, World of Warcraft doesn’t deserve to be mentioned in this article yet – it will turn 20 in just a few months. But it seemed symbolic to us to end the article about the oldest MMORPGs still alive with such an undisputed classic of the genre – which happens to be the youngest of all of them.

The game is set in the Warcraft universe: WoW is a sequel to the strategy game Warcraft III. Again, it is a typical fantasy role-playing game with a “magical Middle Ages” setting and corresponding attributes. However, it offered a more comfortable gameplay for casual players and refined mechanics, which is why it gained great popularity.

World of Warcraft has been a huge success, especially for an MMORPG with a paid client and a mandatory subscription fee: the maximum number of active subscribers was in 2010 and amounted to as much as 12 million, and as of 2014, the game had more than 100 million registered accounts.

Every two years, the developer releases major content updates that expand the game world and continue the global storyline – 9 of them have already been released, and the next, tenth, is expected in just a few weeks. In addition, the developer has launched a “classic” version of World of Warcraft Classic with minor gameplay updates, to which it is gradually adding the first additions.

A number of other MMORPGs mentioned in this article can now only be considered “conditionally alive” because of the servers that have not yet been shut down: their daily online presence remains at the level of literally a few hundred players, at best a few thousand. In contrast, World of Warcraft is still very popular: according to various estimates, WoW’s daily online presence is 200-250 thousand players.