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Looking for FTP mmo with good crafting
I'd really like to find a free to play mmorpg where crafting and trading plays a big role. It would also be a very big plus if you could focus entirely on crafting/harvesting/manufacturing/trading and wouldn't be forced into combat. Even so, I'd prefer the game to have some manner of pvp and pve as well, and it shouldn't be pay to win.
A game that I've played before and is closest to what I'm looking for would be EVE online, but since it isn't free to play I will have to pass. I know that you can pay the monthly fee with in game currency but I can't play the game enough to afford that. I'm a very casual player and it might sound silly but if I pay a monthly fee for a game I feel that I should play it a lot and I just end up getting stressed out, that's why the free to pay model is an absolute must for me.
Is there any game on the market that fits my description?
Comments
Ryzom is exactly what you are looking for
A Tale in the Desert is the best crafting game there is, and doesn't even have combat. But it does have a monthly fee (though it doesn't require you to buy a box), so it may not be what you're looking for.
Puzzle Pirates is free on the doubloon servers and will let you focus mostly on crafting and trading. You will get attacked by NPCs while shipping goods around, but you can mostly run away.
Uncharted Waters Online is free to play, and will let you focus mostly on crafting and trading. You'll occasionally get attacked, but can mostly run away. The crafting is of the "click to create an item" variety, as opposed to the more involved crafting processes of ATITD or Puzzle Pirates. But Koei still managed to make crafting tremendously complex, to the degree that there are a lot of items that are known to be in the game, but good luck figuring out how to make or otherwise acquire them.
The oft overlooked Istaria also fits your requirements. The FTP version limits you to one human race character, but outside of that the only other limitation is not being able to own a plot, which is something that you'd do way down the line anyway. Play on Chaos for population. Nice community, helpful players.
Thank you for the replies. The problem I see with all of these games (the ones that interest me anyway), is that they have a premium mode that you still have to pay for in order to get access to all the content. I know this isn't exactly the same as pay to win so I should have stated it separately, but this is a deal breaker for me as well. I'm starting to think that I'll either have give up my hopes of finding a FTP mmo of my liking and be forced to pay to play EVE online, or the much more likely alternative that I'll just stop playing mmo's altogether. SC2 pretty much meets all my pvp needs anyway and I really don't feel like paying for a monthly fee or a premium mode to get access to all the content of an mmo I might like, when I play so little in the first place.
As a kid I used to dump a lot of money into the arcade machines. I look at it this way. I can play a great game all day long for $.50. Sure beats the old days.
"I am not in a server with Gankers...THEY ARE IN A SERVER WITH ME!!!"
Can drop an other real crafting title to the list: Fallen Earth. You have to scavenge materials and try to make useful items. Basicaly, crating is a way (the only way) to survive the apocalypse there
I am a casual multiplayer game crafter too, the best crafting games for me atm are SWG EMU, and Mount and blade warband Perstant world mod. Both require to buy game, but no subscription cost.
I could try to explain why they are the best, but I think that would be pointless as most of reasoning why you craft in the first place would go over peoples heads, anyway just to say if you like crafting with a market dynamic as function of world effects or your own knowledge these are the best.
Thanks again for the suggestions. I'm starting to realize that I don't really have many options when it comes to (completely) FTP crafting mmo's with all content available without extra payments. I'm also completely aware of how cheap monthly subscriptions of mmorpg's generally are, and I know that I'd be hard pressed to find a cheaper hobby short of jogging etc. The thing is, however, that it's not about not being able to afford it.
I can't really explain it in a way that makes sense, since I suppose it doesn't, but every time I've payed for an mmo subscription I've been playing the specific game a lot, and that's why I haven't had a problem with it, but I can't stand the idea of paying 15 euros per month and then playing 5 hours that month even if the price still isn't that high. I'm just in the mindset that there are so many better things that I could spend that money on now that I only plan to play very casually, so the idea of not playing an mmo sounds better to me than paying for one and only playing very little, especially considering that I'm a poor student. :P
Well of course you're not going to find a game that gives away everything completely free. Commercial games exist to make money. But there are many different sorts of free to play. Puzzle Pirates and Uncharted Waters Online are about as close to completely free as you'll find for your purposes.
In Puzzle Pirates, on a doubloon server, buying a lot of things costs both PoE (the in-game currency) and doubloons (the currency bought for real-life money). However, you can exchange PoE for doubloons in game, by buying doubloons from other players. This means that you'll never have to pay a dime to play the game, and can still have access to everything. However, a large fraction of the money you make will be spent on buying doubloons from other players.
Uncharted Waters Online takes a very different approach. They take what was originally a subscription game, give away everything (possibly almost but not quite everything) in the subscription game for free, and then tack on various bonuses in an item mall. So you can buy stuff like experience boosters to level faster.
The only place that you'll be somewhat crippled if you never pay anything is that you'll be unable to upgrade your ship. However, buying special shipbuilding permits is cheap. Doing the upgrades you want will cost tens of millions of ducats (the in-game currency), so there wouldn't be much of a point in that even without the item mall until your level is at least in the 20s.
The minimum purchase amount to get the item mall currency is $10. For that $10, I was able to upgrade one ship as far as I cared to, have started but not finished upgrading another, will be able to finish upgrading the ship I'm using now, and will be able to upgrade two future ships that I haven't bought yet as far as I care to. And I'll still have enough left over to upgrade a fifth ship as far as I want to in the future, but not a sixth. Note that once you pay to upgrade a ship, you can keep that ship forever, though you'll probably eventually level past it and want to replace it.
UWO seems to try mainly to get money from the combat-oriented players. They sell versions of high level ships that you can use at lower levels in the item mall. For a comparison, imagine being able to equip level 70 greens while at level 20 in WoW. That would give you a huge advantage over other level 20 players, but wouldn't make you nearly as strong as a real level 70, as you'd still have your level 20 skills. The item mall ships are nearly always combat-oriented. As an adventurer, there is only one item mall ship (modified tea clipper) that I'd regard as an upgrade over my level 45 large schooner (the level cap is 65), and the clipper that I get at level 52 will almost but not quite entirely close that gap. If you're a crafter and trader, the modified tea clipper will probably be a little more tempting to you, but the combat ships won't be.
The problem is that even if you can buy anything with in game currency, as long as there's an item mall that provides players with any items that provide any kind of in-game benefits then it's a pay to win mmo in my eyes, even though there obviously are mmo's where the items available on the item malls aren't overly overpowered, but these games still don't really appeal to me.
Also, I'd just like to point out that there are some pretty decent mmo's out there with item shops that only sell aesthetic upgrades (path of exile for instance) that provide no game play advantage and only gives your characters a unique look. Having said that, I haven't been able to find an mmo with decent crafting where the item shop would be limited to aesthetic upgrades, and by now I'm fairly certain that there are none.
Puzzle Pirates is fun. I don't play it much anymore but the entire production, resource, and shop/stall sort of deal is very in-depth.
You could also try Haven and Hearth or Wurm.
One does not simply telnet into Mordor.
There is also Eternal Lands. Its completely free. They accept donations and also sell cosmetic things. You can also buy items, but those same items can be bought with gold. You can learn all of the crafting or harvesting professions and I think, save for a few items, eveything is player made.