It’s difficult finding an MMORPG to devote time to. Games either don’t live up to the unrealistic hype that other people create for them, or you happen across one you genuinely enjoy and it turns out nobody else does. The game’s empty.
And with so many MMOs having come out this year: PSO2 New Genesis, Swords of Legends Online, Bless Unleashed, Crowfall, Elyon, New World. Have the top 10 most played MMOs shifted? Is there something better out there that everyone is devoting their time to? Let’s find out. Together.
Especially given next month is the beginning of 2022, and you’re going to want something big to play, right?

Let’s start this off with the only Anime MMORPG in this list: MapleStory.
MapleStory released all the way back in 2003. This game has spawned a plethora of other titles under the same intellectual property: MapleStory M which was received with.. moderate enthusiasm, and a sequel, MapleStory 2, that shut down a year after launching.
Neither title truly managed to capture the quirky style that MapleStory employs. This is the only MMO in this list to utilize a horizontal graphical style – you move your character horizontally, left to right, across the screen. You can jump and climb, but the bulk of the game takes place on one level.
You take quests, you venture out, you group with other players, fight for control of the area, and… grind. This game is a grind. An unbelievable grind. Almost grindier than any other MMO I’ve played in the last decade. Thankfully it employs an incredibly fast, often chaotic action combat system to make up for the time you spend engaged in combat.
It’s got an adorable Anime-ish graphical style, and gets updated repeatedly over the course of the year, with new areas, new events and new classes. This brings players coming back to the game, and is what makes it one of Nexon’s highest grossing, most profitable franchises, averaging hundreds of thousands of players across all regions per month.
Yes, this list isn’t including specifically English-speaking countries.

Star Wars The Old Republic released back in 2011 as part of the greater “Star Wars” franchise. Movies, TV series, video games. And while The Old Republic – The MMO, never truly lived up to the potential of the IP, it still eventually found its footing, and allowed for Star Wars fans to channel their inner fan.
Now The Old Republic has had its highs, and its lows. With its low points lasting significantly longer than its high points, but that’s partly due to how the game has been handled up until this point.
This is an open-world MMO, with plenty of different regions – and as you’d expect, plenty of different, highly diverse worlds to explore at your leisure. The Old Republic has one of the deepest, most compelling narratives of any MMO.
And while that’s 2 for 2 thus far, its combat is much less impressive. It utilizes a fairly basic tab-target combat system that definitely looks and feels older than a 2011 MMO should, given RIFT, Aion and TERA.
Star Wars The Old Republic just released their latest expansion – which has garnered quite a bit of attention, and shot the game up to hundreds of thousands of players over the course of the last month. How long this lasts however is another question all together.

The Elder Scrolls Online released in 2014, a mere 7 years ago. It feels like it’s been out longer though, right? Much like Star Wars The Old Republic, The Elder Scrolls Online is set within an already existing franchise: The Elder Scrolls. You know. Morrowind. Oblivion. Skyrim. Yes, I listed the 3 best in order of best to most overrated.
ESO has been pretty steady for the last couple years. It’s never really had any large peaks in terms of growth, but at the same time, it hasn’t sunk very far beneath what it had already established itself as.
The game has a fantastic narrative, a large open world to explore, action combat, a fairly extensive class system allowing you to more or less equip what you want in terms of weapons and armor, while giving you freedom to craft your class – in terms of skills, however you like.
Graphically, the game holds up well. It’s one of the better looking Western MMOs out there, with Guild Wars 2 being the only real competition.
ESO averages a couple hundred thousand unique players per month, and has been averaging roughly a similar amount all year.

Guild Wars 2 was released back in 2012, and has since gone on to become one of the most played free MMOs. More than that, it’s generally considered to have the friendliest community of any MMO online.
The main issue with Guild Wars 2 is that for the last several years, content has been released fairly slowly. This is due to NCSoft being incompetent, and inhibiting ArenaNet from truly making Guild Wars 2 one of the greatest MMORPGs of this generation.
And with slow releases, comes an expected decline in terms of player population. Although with the recent announcement of its latest expansion, “End of Dragons” looming on the horizon, players have come back in droves to play catch-up, and new players are jumping in to see what all the hype is about.
Guild Wars 2 is a gorgeous game with an incredibly large world. It has plenty of class customization, an active PvP community and one of the better narratives out there.
The game utilizes a very high quality hybrid action combat system, allowing for players to change their entire playstyle by merely altering the weapon they have equipped.

Now this one is a little different. See, on the one hand, Star Citizen hasn’t launched yet. It’s an indie MMO that has been in development for years, and has, over the course of its time spent in development, acquired hundreds of millions of dollars worth of funding.
More funding than Final Fantasy XIV. More than World of Warcraft. And we’re still years – perhaps decades off from being capable of playing a fully realized game. However, that hasn’t stopped players from playing it in the form it’s available in.
This is a very incomplete game, with very few fully implemented features. Yet last year they reported that they had – at their peak, hundreds of thousands of active players. Which is some of the most ridiculous numbers I’ve ever seen for an unreleased title that is still so far off from being ready.

RuneScape is the oldest title in this list, releasing back in 2001. I’m not entirely certain how this game has retained the playerbase that it has, but I guess this is a testament to how good the game must be, right?
Now I’ve never dedicated much time to the game. I’ll be the first to admit that – not every person will enjoy every MMO, right? It’s asinine to believe that anyone would enjoy every single title in this list.
RuneScape is an enormous game, with more content than you can realistically dream of partaking of if you’re a new player. Sure, it’s very dated – both in terms of how it looks and how it plays. But that’s part of its appeal.
Even though it’s 2 decades old at this juncture, this game – these developers push out more updates than almost any of its competitors, paid or free.
Thankfully player numbers are public, so we can see that there are hundreds of thousands of active players at almost any point in the day. Even if some people claim that half of them are bots.

Black Desert Online released way back in 2014. Yeah, almost 8 years ago. Eight. Years. In all that time, not a single MMORPG released has come close to competing with the game’s dominance over the market in terms of graphics or combat.
To date, BDO is considered to be the “pinnacle of the MMORPG genre,” that one game that every MMO has to live up to. And I can honestly understand why.
Not only is this game absolutely stunning – the world itself, which is completely open, no loading screens at all. Entirely explorable without limitations, whether on land or sea.
But the depth of the character customization is unrivaled. Name one MMO with as good of a creator as BDO. You won’t find one. Couple that with some of the best action combat, and you have what should be the best MMORPG available, yet due to its horrendous pay to win, RNG and grind, falls short.
Pearl Abyss have confirmed hundreds of thousands of active players – on the higher end of the spectrum – which sets it above almost every other MMO in this list.

While New World is less than 2 months old at this moment, it is definitely worth noting that even with all of its issues, all of the exploits, the hacks, the duplication of items, of gold, the lack of endgame, Amazon’s poor handling of all of this, their choice to make the grind even longer in a recent update.. there are still hundreds of thousands of people playing this.
At the time of writing, there was still a peak of 132,000 players concurrently logged in, with likely over a million players still playing over the course of the last month – minimum.
New World features a large, open world – albeit the world itself seems to lack much in diversity – both with regards to the environment, and the monsters found within it.
It utilizes an action combat system that honestly isn’t bad but felt too limiting to me when I played it. There’s an extensive crafting system, a territory system and so much more that is completely overshadowed by how often new exploits are taken advantage of, repeatedly ruining the experience for everyone playing.

World of Warcraft released back in 2004, and up until 2020 was the most populated MMORPG. It was completely unrivaled. Nothing came close to competing with it, especially after WoW Classic launched.
Yet like everything, eventually things fall into obscurity. And while WoW is far from falling into obscurity, with the game still having over a million active players across both Retail and WoW Classic, it’s a far cry from what it once was.
This is evident by the premature end of Shadowlands, in their mad rush to push out something new to re-ignite the playerbase’ passion to play through something new and potentially exciting.
WoW is definitely a dated looking game – for most of it anyway. Newer zones are absolutely gorgeous, and the game features what is arguably the best tab-target combat in the genre. With the exception being maybe Aion or ArcheAge.
It also features more lore than almost any other game I’ve ever seen, but its story has become so disconnected, such a convoluted mess that it’s almost funny trying to keep track of what’s going on.

And finally, Final Fantasy XIV. Final Fantasy XIV released initially back in 2010, and was such a critical failure that they overhauled the game from the ground-up costing hundreds of millions of dollars.
This was the largest undertaking in the entire MMO genre, and has paid off, given it is now the most played, most popular MMORPG. And with Endwalker having just launched into Early Access, and both Mrs Stix and I playing through it, this is probably going to be the largest year for the game to date.
Final Fantasy XIV already confirmed they had hit their highest concurrent player numbers before the mass exodus of WoW players, and the combination of the those additions to the game with fans are going to make queue times unbearable.
Final Fantasy XIV features a large open world, with each expansion introducing even larger areas than the last. It’s a gorgeous game with an incredible narrative. Shadowbringers was by far the best storytelling I’ve seen in an MMO. And I’ve played almost all of them.
Its combat isn’t the best, but it’s good enough that it doesn’t bring the game down – doesn’t hinder it.
The amalgamation of everything that Final Fantasy XIV does right has shown continued success, with the game once being rivaled by Guild Wars 2, and now tripling, maybe quadrupling it in terms of active player numbers.
Nobody ever thought Final Fantasy XIV would dethrone WoW. They thought WoW would to that to itself, and Final Fantasy XIV would continue on the route it was. Boy were we wrong.

And that’s everything. They’re the 10 most played MMORPGs in 2021, moving into 2022. Were they what you expected?

According to both Reddit and the official Elder Scrolls Online forums, a veteran group of raiders were reportedly banned recently after they reported an exploit to Zenimax.

Interestingly enough, there was.. an omission of certain information pertaining to the events that lead to their ban – And that is that according to Customer Support, the group in question were taking advantage of or utilizing that exploit for an undisclosed period of time before reporting it.
While it’s impossible to ascertain which of the two groups was truly in the wrong – with some players attempting to crucify Zenimax, claiming “so we can’t report bugs or exploits now?” and others noting how Zenimax typically only bans players when they are warranted.

One of Zenimax’s staff even came forward and replied to the Reddit thread stating “In general, if you come across a major bug in ESO, the best course of action is to not take advantage of it (doing so is considered exploiting).
Please stop whatever you’re doing and report it to us via /bug in-game, or messaging a ZOS team member on our forums or even here on reddit.”

This alludes to the fact that the group that reported the exploit may have done a little more than merely report it and move on. A user on Reddit, (eunit250) even went on to claim “They were exploiting it before they reported it and were caught streaming the exploit on twitch.”

How much of all of this is true remains to be seen, however, it’s definitely concerning should the reports of unwarranted bans be true.

Mrs Stix and I have been streaming The Elder Scrolls Online on Twitch over the last month or so, after having made it all the way through TERA and Blade & Soul last month.
I’ve never invested much time into it, and she’s never even played it, so this is a new adventure for both of us. Especially considering we’re beginning with the Greymoor DLC.
We’ve been having an absolute blast in the game so far, and would like to share some of our experience so far with you guys. Do note: This is NOT an official review of the game, this is a multi-part look at the game for fun.

With that out of the way….

The Elder Scrolls Online is a lot of fun. We’ve played for around 12 hours as of this moment, and have played through a variety of different dungeons, have been attacked by guards, vampires, werewolves, met tons of NPCs, done quite a bit of the new Greymoor DLC story, and partied up with plenty of you guys in-game.
We have a long way to go before we can adequately and accurately give our official impressions of the game, let alone score it against other games we’ve invested hundreds if not thousands of hours into like Final Fantasy XIV or World of Warcraft.
But so far? We’re enjoying ourselves. We’re enjoying exploring Skyrim. We’re enjoying what the game has to offer as new players – without the concern of rushing, without caring about hitting endgame or what it has to offer. We’re just having fun.
I feel like this is how people should tackle new MMOs. Instead of this obsession with rushing to endgame, they should take their time, enjoy what the game has to offer on the way to endgame, and then when you finally get there.. look back at everything you’ve experienced.

Coming off of the popular success of its Morrowind expansion, The Elder Scrolls Online is receiving a brand new expansion titled Summerset!

Summerset Isle is an island off of Cyrodiil (the main continent in ESO), the island is home to both the Altmer and Bosmer races, more formally known as High Elves and Wood Elves. The Summerset Isle is a place many an Elder Scrolls fan has wanted to visit, however fans have been left disappointed after never being given the opportunity to. There has been a single game that has allowed you to reach this “forbidden island” but that was all the way back in the 1990’s.

So it’s exciting to know that we will finally be able to visit this majestic island of Summerset.

This expansion will be made available on May 21st for PC players, with it later becoming available for consoles on June 5th. Now, here’s a summary of various things you can look forward to in the upcoming Summerset expansion:

• The ability to travel to the previously recluse island of the High Elves that is a larger world mass Than ESO’s previous expansion Morrowind.
• A brand new order called the Psijic order. Joining this new order will allow you to travel to their mysterious home of Artaeum.
• There is a new skill line added with this expansion that is related to the order of Psijic. This new skill line gives you power over time magic.
• A new crafting profession was also added, called Jewelry Crafting. You create accessories for either oneself – or other players.
• There will be new PVE content added – such as a new 12-man instance called Cloudrest and the Abyssal Geysers.

If you’ve played The Elder Scrolls Online before or have any knowledge regarding ESO’s previous expansion, you’ll know that the content of the expansion will not be gated behind a level-lock, instead, you can access and partake in everything the expansion has to offer right from level 1. Something I believe other MMOs should take note of.

Unfortunately, that is pretty much all we know currently about Summerset isle and the new upcoming expansion! Stay tuned as we keep you updated with additional information as we get closer to its release.

The team behind the incredibly popular Elder Scrolls Online MMORPG have announced their next large DLC Game Pack, titled “Dragon Bones”.
Like previously released DLCs, Dragon Bones will release all game improvements and base-game additions for free, while the DLC pack itself, along with all content it brings will be free for ESO Plus members. The DLC itself, for players that aren’t active ESO Plus Members, is purchasable through the in-game Crown Store.

New content is being added in the form of two new dungeons: Fang Lair, and Scalecaller Peak.
Additionally, for players that are owners of the recent Morrowind expansion, two new Battlegrounds have been added for you to duke it out in: Deeping Drome, and Mor Khazgur.

Now, addressing the free updates accompanying the Update 17 – The Elder Scrolls Online is actually getting an Outfit system! Similar to Glamor in Final Fantasy XIV and Transmog in World of Warcraft, ESO will henceforth allow players to customize their overall appearance-gear wise, at least, regardless of the gear they have equipped.
Players will have access to a single, unique outfit that they are able to customize using in-game Gold. However, additional Outfit Change Tokens and Outfit Slots require you purchase them from the Crown Store.

Finally – Home Storage is now available to all players that wish to store items within their homes, freeing up additional space in your bank and inventory.

Then you have something being referred to as a Level Up Advisor, a feature that will reward players every time they level-up in game.

More features can be found by visiting the official ESO news post for Dragon Bones.

The Elder Scrolls Online is fantasy MMORPG developed by Zenimax Online that was released back in 2014.

The Elder Scrolls Online, or ESO henceforth, is set in the same fictional world of Tamriel that all other Elder Scrolls games also occupy.
Featuring impressive graphics, large, open zones to explore, and action combat reminiscent of its console counterparts, it’s no wonder ESO is one of the most played MMORPGs on the market currently.

The Elder Scrolls Online, after 7 years in development, released to incredibly mixed reviews, to the surprise of the general MMO community.
People expected a game like Skyrim that could be played online – something people had been anticipating ever since its announcement.
People were initially turned away by ESO’s poor optimization, game-breaking bugs, inferior graphical stylem and surprisingly average combat system.
Many of these were overhauled and improved upon quite significantly with its re-release and rebranding under The Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited, which met with much more critical praise.
Initially beginning as a Pay to Play MMORPG, ESO transitioned over to a Buy to Play model, following their desire to go in a new direction.
Being one of the most densely populated MMORPGs – housing over half a million active players in a given month, you’re bound to find many differing opinions on the game.
Therefore, in this video I plan on going over what I’ve experienced, talked about with people that actively play, and witnessed in The Elder Scrolls Online and whether I believe it’s worth playing going into 2018.

Graphically speaking, The Elder Scrolls Online looks and feels great. It isn’t up to the quality of Black Desert Online or Blade and Soul, but those are games built around their graphics.
Whereas ESO is built around the game itself.
That doesn’t in any way mean that the game looks bad – quite the opposite. It looks like better optimized, yet less resource intense version of an official Elder Scrolls title.
They manage to keep the feeling of the core Elder Scrolls game intact, but for a game with the funding ESO had – they definitely could have gone a step further to really push the limits of their engine.
At least, with regards to character models. Which is what I based the former part of this section on.
The overworld itself though – the world you run around in – that is beautiful. The varied environments, the sheer size of the world you explore, it’s all crafted so, so beautifully.

This is the part of the game I actually didn’t enjoy.
Sure, The Elder Scrolls Online has a good character creator, with a fair amount of character customizability options. That isn’t where the problem lies for me.
The problem lies behind the locked Imperial race.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying the character creator is poor or that it is in any way affected by the locked race, it is merely that I believe it should come unlocked by default.
Back to character creation however – you’re given quite a lot of freedom to customize your character.
Not only do you choose your base “class”, but you’re given access over the general build of your character, tattoos, facial hairs, scars and more.
Which is a fairly redundant thing to point out, sure, but facial hair, tattoos.. they assist in crafting the perfect character.
The only problem I have with ESO’s character creator is the fact that I can’t have my traditional “pretty” female characters. Which is a little sad.

Combat is fairly straight forward as far as action MMORPGs go.
If you’ve ever played an Elder Scrolls game before, then the look and feel of the combat should come as no surprise to you.
I’ve put hundreds of hours into Skyrim and ESO feels so reminiscent of it that it’s almost unbelievable.
So, while the combat isn’t fast, fluid and flashy like Black Desert Online, the combat is still entertaining to take part in.
Add on to that the fact that you can do so much with your class.. like being a heavy armor wearing mage, or a warrior that shoots fireballs with a stave.. mmm. God, I love ESO.

The Elder Scrolls Online occupies a mostly large, sandbox world.
However; at least with regards to the beginning of the game, ESO feels a lot more instanced than it really is.
As you progress through the game you’re given access to larger more open areas, allowing for more exploration and more collaboration with other players.
The game world that ESO inhabits is absolutely astounding. It is beautiful – absolutely beautiful. Couple that with the lush, varied environments, and you have one of the most beautiful game worlds in an MMORPG.

In The Elder Scrolls Online, there is a main story that you partake in that leads the player along through the game.
While traversing through each of the large zones, you’re given the option to follow through the zones storyline – something I believe really helps ESO stand out as an MMORPG.
I’ve played through a fair amount of the game so far on three separate characters so far, and I’ve enjoyed playing through multiple of the zones’ storylines, meeting characters specific to the zones you’re in, and making choices that affect the zone you’re in.
Occasionally you’re given the option to make choices in the game that affect the people you’re traveling with – I strongly feel that that is something missing in MMORPGs of this generation.
Something Guild Wars 2 did as well, although in a different way.

In The Elder Scrolls Online, PvP takes a unique form, in that to PvP, you must partake in something referred to as an Alliance War.
Alliance Wars are huge zone-wide battles that take place between what seems like millions of enemy players. But more realistically.. about a hundred.
To access PvP, you must first hit level 10. Then, players between level 20 and 50 gain a temporary buff that temporarily boosts their attributes in PvP to assist with the disparity between levels.
This doesn’t change the fact that more or less, you end up useless until level 50, however, as you’re essentially a meat shield.

There are plenty of things to do with regards to PvE in The Elder Scrolls Online. So, allow me to go through them one by one:
Dark Anchors – If you’ve ever played RIFT or Final Fantasy XIV – these function the same way as invasions do in those games. In essence – your goal is to drive back the forces at the invasion.
World Bosses – These you should be familiar with, as they are ever present in every MMORPG. I actually had a run-in with a world boss with a group of two other people, and we were met with swift and utter defeat.
Dungeons – What would an MMORPG be without dungeons, amirite? Oh, wait. Black Desert Online is what it’d be.
Public Dungeons – Essentially.. dungeons with random party members that can enter said dungeon and help you push through. Actually a cool feature, until you run into that one idiot that is ruining the experience for everyone.
Trials – 12-player challenges that have multiple, scaling difficulties. These function a little more like a raid than a dungeon, as the difficulty is more like a raid would be.
Arenas – Don’t let this fool you. Arenas aren’t aimed at PvP in ESO. Instead, they’re aimed at smaller parties of players, or even solo players that pit you against wave after wave of monsters with rewards at the end.
And.. then traditional leveling. Which I’m sure you’re aware of how to do.

The Elder Scrolls Online has a fairly traditional crafting system.
There are 6 professions in total; to progress through each crafting tier, therefore making the profession more profitable, you are required to invest skill points into your chosen craft.
Crafted gear is very useful in the game, and is generally usable in both PvE and PvP if you’re not obsessed with having the Best in Slot gear, and instead just want to enjoy your playthrough.
Therefore investing time into crafting is almost a requirement! .. but not really.

Some people might argue that PvP is endgame, and for avid PvPers, that holds true, sure.
For people with a more PvE-centric mind, however, outside of running dungeons and trials, there isn’t much to sate your appetite with regards to having things to do.
Sure, you can re-run dungeons and trials over and over to get better gear, to learn the dungeons better. You can explore the world. You can PvP.
But outside of that – there isn’t anything to do.
So if you’re not into PvP, and you’ve completed all the dungeons and trials on veteran, then you’ve essentially completed the game and are left waiting until the next large content update.

The Elder Scrolls Online is definitely a viable choice for an MMORPG to play in 2017.
Yes, the combat may not be up to par with games like Black Desert Online or Blade and Soul.
The graphics may also be inferior to people that enjoy that specific style of animation.
But ESO offers a lot to the MMORPG genre.
Large scale PvP. Fun, engaging PvE. Huge, open environments to explore, a variety of fun quests and storylines to progress through. Full voice acting.
There is so much ESO does right, that it’s no surprise it’s in the three most popular MMORPGs on the market. It deserves to be, and deserves to continue growing and flourishing into the future.

Operating System: Windows XP 32 bit
CPU: Core 2 Duo E4400 2.0GHz or Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4600+
RAM: 2 GB GB RAM
Video Card: GeForce 8800 GT or HD i7 2600
Hard Disk Space: 60 GB Free Space

Operating System: Windows 7 64 bit
CPU: Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz or Phenom 9750 Quad-Core
RAM: 4 GB RAM
Video Card: GeForce GTX 560 Ti or Radeon HD 6950
Hard Disk Space: 80 GB Free Space