FAQ: What is the Worst MMO You've Ever Played? .

When your job is to play MMOs and write about your experiences you end up playing some really terrible games. You learn that not every game released can be a multi-million dollar AAA saga. In fact, some can be downright awful. Which is why this week we asked our writers: What is the Worst MMO You’ve Ever Played?

Without a doubt, the worst MMO I have ever played, has got to be Aion. It is by no means a terribly unplayable game, and I do believe the game must have improved a whole deal if it’s still up and running and being updated. But when I first heard about Aion, I was stoked! I couldn’t wait to play it. The characters looked kind of cutesy anime-ish which did bother me a little. But yeah that’s all up to what your personal preference is really. I enjoy the vile and brutish cartoony characters more than the Japanese anime style crap. But besides from that, what appealed to me the most was the ability to fly with your own personal set of angel wings, and the classes looked pretty awesome as well.

So I thought, what the hell. I’ll give this game a try and take a break from WoW. But boy, once I started playing the starting area, it was rather ok. But after that, the game started to feel like a drag. An endless grind of killing monsters and handing in quests didn’t really give me the feeling like the leveling experience was going into a fast motion. I mean, it took me forever to get to level 20, and by that time I didn’t feel like all the skills I have acquired made an impact at all.

Once you get level 20, you can start flying with your wings, which was the sole reason I was still playing it at all. But that fun didn’t last for very long. The flying mechanic was very cool, but I got too hindered up by invisible walls. So in the end, I didn’t even make it past level 25. To top that off, PvP wasn’t all that spectacular either. Don’t get me wrong, the combat system was entertaining and had a lot of action to it, it just never really felt like I was making any impact at all with my spells. So yeah I decided to quit the game altogether.

Never did ask for that refund though.

If I must pick the worst MMO I’ve ever played, I would probably go with Wizardry Online. First of all, I just want to make it clear that I am a fan of difficult games, and considered downloading it via Steam on the account that it reminded me of Dark Souls. Marketed as a ‘hardcore’ MMORPG, the game has proven to be tremendously hard. Expect to die a lot in this game, and I mean A LOT. In addition to that, Wizardry Online also features a Perma-death system, with an open world PvP and corpse looting to boot.

Yes, that’s right! There’s a chance you’ll lose your character forever in this game if you die too much. The traps are perhaps my biggest problem in the game. There’s a fine line between having a hard game and a game that cheats you. Sadly, Wizardry Online falls in the latter category. Exploration has always been a treat when playing MMORPGs, but this game took the fun out of it. Each dungeon is crawling with traps, which are mostly unavoidable and could lead to death. It’s as though the developers want you to forget exploring and just go straight to the boss.

Once you die a certain number of times, you will be prompted to use in-game currency or burn loot from your adventures just to revive your character. Should you not carry any of the two, you will have the option to revive your character using REAL MONEY. Hard game, permadeath, trap central, real money… and that, ladies and gentlemen is how you milk wallets.

Screw this game.

Usually expectations shape your game experience, and it’s what happened to me when I played Granado Espada. Attracted by polished graphics and a quite unique setting, I decided to try out this Korean MMO. The first steps were intriguing: you could control three characters at the same time, all part of the same family, and, as I said, the idea of a Renaissance world, with muskets and pistols as opposed to ordinary sword&sorcery fantasy, was quite intriguing.

But I was not prepared to what happened as soon as I got out of the starting city and into the first area: mobs were swarming around, and I was forced to carve a path through them in order to go on. The three characters were fending for themselves, using automated skills, and needing a little or no intervention from my part. And when I stopped just for a moment, lo! The mobs were spawning right under my… feet  I tried to keep playing through the grinding, only to be beaten to a pulp by a kid in one of the first quests or facing an oversize bishop at the end of a dungeon.

I can’t say I didn’t try, but with Granado Espada I understood that Korean MMOs were not suited for me.

The worst MMO I ever played…. was so bad I can’t even clearly remember the title. Not that it matters. It was one of the worst things you could do to a game. Uproot it from an area where it makes sense, in this case it was definitely an Asian MMO, and shove it into another locality where it does not.

It wasn’t just the constantly weird setting, the overly kiddie approach… something sparks a memory there. Communal mounts? Children riding a giant crab thing…. It was awful.

It was just the whole approach. Ah who cares if the translation is this side of engrish? Who cares if between every different system on the screen that your little auto pathing avatar felt crushed. It was the whole experience.

In my defense, it was for a review. I didn’t enjoy it and I let the world know it. On the con side, this still happens. Bad localisation ruins games. It could have been fun, it wasn’t. Whatever it was. I know enough to know I don’t want those memories back, but hey if anyone recognizes it, drop me a comment so I can relive that much of the horror.

Not everyone will agree with what was said, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. But now we’re turning the question to you dear reader. What is the worst MMO you’ve ever played? Let us know in the comments below.