The best MMOs on PC

Hey, are you someone who yearns for a second life? One devoid of Fairy Liquid and putting out the bins, where you instead learn fairy magic and bin off fantasy baddies? Well, this page you've clicked on and the following words you're about to read will be of huge help. Below we've but together a list of the best MMOs on PC (that's massively multiplayer online games to you), which make up a gamut of fantasy, sci-fi, and other worlds you can lose yourself in. Whether that's managing your cooldowns, collecting boar hides for the wizard over the hill, or trading lobsters at the local bank, you're covered. Just remember that some of our picks require a contribution of zero pounds per month, to like, £8. Being massive and multiplayer in this economy? Sheesh.

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The best MMOs on PC

Alright so, the list below has been updated to reflect the changing times. You'll only see one new entry below in the form of Warframe, having replaced our good friend Destiny 2. It may not come as a surprise given Destiny 2's slow ebb out of the FPS-MMO sphere thanks to Sony's butchering of Bungie's workforce among other things. And the recent announcement that Bungie will no longer add new content to their long-running shooter. To us, Warframe has more of a future as we eagerly await the concept of a Destiny 3... let us dream.

The remaining entries haven't budged and that comes down to a couple of things: 1) They are still good; 2) The MMO-verse has stagnated over the years. So, the MMO stalwarts keep marching on with expansions and rejigs we've done our best to reflect in the words you'll read below. No, the MMO space hasn't seen a major shake up in a long, long time. But that doesn't mean what you're left to chat to your massively online friends on a server gradually encasing itself in amber. There's still life in the old level 10 dogs yet.

• Warframe
• The Lord Of The Rings Online
• Black Desert Online
• The Elder Scrolls Online
• Star Wars: The Old Republic
• Guild Wars 2
• Runescape
• EVE Online
• World Of Warcraft
• Final Fantasy XIV

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Warframe

Sci-fi ninja-shooter Warframe has evolved a significant amount since Jim Rossignol's Warframe review that backflipped onto our screens 12 (12!) years ago. That isn't to say the game has dropped its electric combination of "What if you commanded an armoured ninja... in space?". Instead, it's built on the athleticism of its cyborgs and wrapped it in a free-to-play model that's surprisingly generous, if a bit overly grindy at times.

To play Warframe is to delight in movement that'll make your eyeballs fizz. Slide. Double-jump. Wall-run. Do a little barrel roll in the air. It marries lightning fast with a bombardment of metallic nonsense that should overwhelm yet accelerates into expansive fun. (Though, new players will almost certainly feel a touch at sea, despite a bit of streamlining from developer Digital Extremes). Expect enormous open worlds to shred aliens in, hoverbikes to whizz on, minigame, and giant mechs to pilot.

As we've touched on above, the new player experience can be a bit of sensory overload. But stick with it and you've got a free-to-play MMO that's bursting with things to collect, which in turn upgrade things you own, until you throw those away to collect the thing you wanted all along. All because battling feels so damn smooth.

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The Lord Of The Rings Online

As you might expect, The Lord Of The Rings Online is worth considering if you're after a new MMO and you're a Tolkien lover. The game plops you into the familiar fantasy world, where you can play as a lil' hobbit, fight alongside Gimli, take on the Witch King in Angmar and other Rings-related 'fantasies' (like the Great Hobbit Run). Sure, it's an ageing MMO now and you can certainly see the wrinkles, that doesn't mean Standing Stone Games have abandoned it. Far from it.

In 2024 the devs dropped one of the biggest expansions to date, Kingdoms Of Harad, which added new quests and endgame shenanigans. Premium player housing arrived in Imladris, giving fans an iconic place to plant some roots and decorate. And all of this comes amidst UI scaling improvements and ongoing story updates, events and 64-bit servers to reduce long-standing lag issues that gives those larger battles more stability. All in all, there genuinely hasn't been a better time to sign up for some Tolkien Times.

Oh and err, forget Amazon's canned Lord Of The Rings MMO that was previously thought dead but is now officially deceased. Just go play Lord of the Rings Online.

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Black Desert Online

Black Desert Online might be one of the nicest looking MMOs out there, with a vast, gorgeous world that puts a lot of others in the genre to shame. It's worth downloading just to play around with its sumptuous character creator and in our Black Desert Online review, Steven Messner felt it was a "truly memorable MMORPG".

You've also got fast-paced combat with an emphasis on aiming, dodging, and blocking in real time, but what really sets Black Desert Online apart is its focus on building empires and civilisations. Yes, you can play this as an action-RPG or MMO, but there's a huge amount of depth if you want to go a bit Age of Empires. You can hire workers, set up production chains, and even set up full-on businesses, like this one centered around brewing beer.

If you're a bit intimidated by the prospect of a black desert, I'd say you could pare it down a touch. Pear Abyss have made the route a bit easier to the catch up when it comes to gear, upgrade paths and the like. Otherwise it's still receiving updates, like new Wild-West-inspired classes, a Hardcore server (a PvPvE survival mode), as well as the Land Of The Morning Light expansion that drizzled more cinema on top what's already a pretty dramatic combat-heavy MMO.

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The Elder Scrolls Online

If you can't get enough of Skyrim or Oblivion, then I reckon you might just like The Elder Scrolls Online. It combines multiple settings from the various iterations of Bethesda's singleplayer RPGs, allowing you to explore from Tamriel, to the High Elf realm of Summerset and the Khajit homeland Elsweyr.

In 2025 the Seasons Of The Worm Cult expansion came along and introduced a seasonal structure, tearing up the former "here's a big chapter lads" formula. Not to mention it's received Subclassing, that lets you mix and match skill lines from different classes and seasonal events like the, err, Writhing Wall (what is up with the Bethesda's fascination with things that slither?) that saw folks band together to unlock new parts of the map and story.

The Elder Scrolls Online still remains one of the most welcoming MMOs around, doing a fine job of balancing being an MMO and a decent singleplayer experience. Promised and ongoing updates have also helped make it easier to new players to jump in and lapsed players to dust off their Khajit fur and get back to rifling through shopkeepers' pockets.

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Star Wars: The Old Republic

One of Star Wars: The Old Republic's biggest selling points is its storytelling. This is one of the few MMOs where your character development isn't all about making numbers go up, but in the relationships you form with others. You can befriend and betray, murder or confess your undying love to NPCs who aren't just static quest-givers.

Like Elder Scrolls Online above, The Old Republic's developers know a lot of people are coming to it from their love of single-player predecessor Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic, and once you've reached the expansions, you're hit with this episodic structure that's frankly more like a singleplayer game than an MMO. You're thrown into your own instance and free to make plenty of tough decisions that'll affect your story alone, no one else's.

And that story keeps on shuffling forwards with 7.0 era updates extending the conflict around characters like Darth Malgus while keeping BioWare's story-telling chops front and centre. The devs have also simplified gear making it a bit easier for intergalactic newbies and decoupled classes from the story. For instance, you can pair any class story with a combat discipline: Jedi Knights can tustle like a Shadow, or a Trooper can tango like a Bounty Hunter. Sure, the game isn't young by any stretch, but are any in this list? The crucial thing is the wars among the stars still keep motoring on, making it easily on the best Star Wars games out there.

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Guild Wars 2

Guild Wars 2 isn't a traditional MMO, in the sense that it replaces a lot of boringly structured fetch quests with more emphasis on live events you can stumble across while exploring the world. These are dynamically generated by the game's systems, and allow you to hop into fights alongside swarms of other players. The fighting is more dynamic than most MMOs too, as you dodge out the way of enemy attacks and aim your own, as opposed to being locked into an animation.

In 2024 the Janthir Wilds expansion grabbed Guild Wars 2 by the scruff and said, "We're going to a mysterious region and we're going to enter a new era". And it did, slotting new raids, story chapters and more into the mix. Arenanet are also keeping that momentum up with smaller, more frequent expansions. It's easily one of the most easygoing MMOs out there, with a lack of grind, no subscription, and experience points rewarded for basically anything you do. Some players think the story can drag a touch, but hey, just skip out on that stuff and you're in for a delightful morning, noon, and night of cooldown management.

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Runescape

Not only is Runescape free-to-play, it's an MMO with a wealth of skills to get stuck into. I'm talking about everything from fishing and farming, to divination and dungeoneering. There's a huge amount of depth to each class, with money to be made on the marketplace, or by standing in banks and yelling "Iron bars for sale!!!" over and over again.

The quest variety is also on point in Runescape, as you won't find the usual barrage of fetch quests, but actual stories with engaging conversations, fights, and puzzles; there's even some longrunning quest lines and penguin conspiracies. Seriously, the game has some of the most inventive quests in MMOs that trade bombast and combat for brain-teasers and thinking on your feet.

As the game's evolved it respects players' time more, offering meaningful unlocks instead of pure repetition. Additions like Necromancy and Fort Forinthry over the years offered new ways to fight and a way to channel levelling into upgrading your own fortress. At its heart, this is an all-timer MMO where investing in any part of it can feel like spending some time with a side hustle you're truly passionate about.

Let's not forget Old School Runescape too, which allows you to experience the 2007 version of the game with ongoing updates based upon player voting.

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EVE Online

EVE Online has earned a name for itself as being a cold, callous universe filled with exploitative players - and that's justified. This is an MMO where war, betrayal and espionage between real players is the norm, with results that are engrossing for those involved and fascinating for everyone else to read about.

In the shallows of space, where you start out, you might be surprised by how generous people are. Player-run corporations need new players to join the fray, and strangers are often willing to hand over ships, blueprints and in-game currency to help you get started. Some players even started an in-game university to train you in how to survive. Play it long enough and EVE Online is one of the deepest games ever made. It's a space game with actual politics and council meetings driven by real people. That said, even with years of improvements, the experience for new players can still be a wall to climb.

And with EVE's Cradle Of War expansion, it's "Exordium" hub is a "truly safe space" for fresh mea- ahem, accounts. PVP is disabled and rookies can gradually learn the basics of trading, ship movement, and PvE combat. Ignoring the, uh, offline version of EVE that'll be used to train Google's AI model Gemini, it really does seem to be filling its sandbox with more metaphorical sand that bandits and rogues can commandeer for loot and heinous crimes.

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World Of Warcraft

I mean, you've heard of this one. World Of Warcraft is that MMO everyone thinks of when you say "MMO". World Of Warcraft took the model of the MMOs that came before it - EverQuest, for example - and applied a level of Blizzard polish which you'll be hard-pressed to find anywhere else. Today, it's a beautiful world to explore and almost frictionless to play - for better and for worse.

World Of Warcraft's latest expansion, Midnight, finally lets you customise your own cribs as well as tumble into new Delves, which are like bitesize alternatives to enormous Raids (really neat, that). Warbands have lightened the cross-account progression load by taking it off your shoulders entirely: your characters share unlocks, reputation, and moolah, making alts a lot easier to maintain. And Midnight's precursor, Dragonflight? It's stream continues to line, as quests as progression is faster and more respectful of your time.

Yearn to take time and rewind the clock? WoW's "Classic" component continues to evolve, letting you revisit old expansions and soak in that sweet, sweet nostalgia. But it's expanded considerably since it first arrived, where the Season Of Discovery added new class abilities, raids, and the like to a mode thought to be set in stone. Hardcore, a perma-death mode, remains a nerve-shredding treat and seasonal resets allow everyone a chance to slide into the time machine if the door shut the first time around. World Of Warcraft is, almost unimaginably, still going from strength to strength.

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Final Fantasy XIV

Final Fantasy XIV has an undeniably slow start and initially feels very similar to other MMOs, but over time you'll have an increasingly diverse range of activities to do. I think that's down to the fact it doesn't impose any limits. On one character you can bounce between different Jobs (classes) that'll evolve into more complex roles as you level them up. This extends to your secondary Jobs, like crafting, fishing, cooking and more. Again, you can pick up whatever you'd like and just give it a go.

Final Fantasy XIV's story is a high fantasy epic, and even within the free trial, you'll be doing stuff that doesn't just involve smacking things to right wrongs. Instead, you might need to help a 'beast tribe' reincarnate their god, with less time spent fighting and more time spent actually digging into the nitty gritty behind their need to do so. It's probably one of the biggest reasons why players struggle to pull themselves away from the game. Those elf lads? Gotta save 'em.

And as the story develops, so too does the other stuff expand, with each DLC only serving to make the game even better. It's latest, Dawntrail, spruced up the game's visuals and character models. The Viper and Pictomancer Jobs arrived, too, which are essentially a dual sword-wielding doolally and an artistic mage lad from Final Fantasy 6. If you're more of a solo player, dungeons are also completable with NPC pals. Again, just a really nice touch.

And last but not least, the game's community is - for the most part - an extremely lovely bunch. They restored my faith in humanity, after all.