FTP mmo recommendations?Follow

I need a new toy. and figured i'd poll the community for ideas.

some background: been mmoing since ffxi launch

ffxi until 09, ddo until current(vip for all but the most recent), couple months of dungeon fighter online(completely free)

from those 3 titles you can glean a bit about my likes: strong high concepts, prefer a more active combat structure(the reason i eventually gave up on ffxi). pro-grind, anti-pvp

don't let the short time with DFO confuse you, of the 3 dfo would be the one i would most likely go back to, except I've lost the ability to tolerate nexon as a company/game manager--I'm still getting automated, "all gm's are busy" emails for a ticket I put in 2 months ago.
so nexon's games are non-staters

been interested in COH/champions(and dcuo once it actually goes ftp) but there ftp-premium-vip seem incredibly restrictive on the ftp/premium side vs the vip, and i'm not in a position atm to launch a subscription.

tl;dr: any good ftp mmos out there?

Edited, Oct 11th 2011 11:53pm by sscearcev

As mentioned, Dragon Nest is actually quite fun, especially if you like active combat in instanced dungeons. Of course, you don't like Nexon, so that's a big strike against it.

Rusty Hearts by Perfect World Entertainment is basically the same game as Dragon Nest, except it's more 2D with an anime feel.

Fallen Earth goes free-to-play tomorrow (Oct. 12). It's a post-apocalyptic MMO. I personally never got into it, but I might give it another look once it's free.

Glitch is unique and addictive if you're into exploration/crafting/community with no combat whatsoever. It's also the most free-to-play game I've ever played. The only thing you can really spend money on is clothing for your character and transportation tokens. The free aspect isn't a restriction at all.

You can also head over to the free-to-play section of Steam. Spiral Knights is fun if you're a Legend of Zelda fan.

Basically every MMO out there is either free-to-play now or will soon be going free-to-play. Or adding a cash shop. Or allowing their players to somehow buy gold. Ah, the MMO circle of life.

Edited, Oct 12th 2011 12:12am by Togikagi

that's actually been the problem when i've done my own research. When I first found DFO(back when the english version was so new the launcher didn't work for 30% of people), it was a simple matter of punching "FTP MMO" into google, going to a review site, looking at images and going, "crap, potential, crap, crap, crap, potential, crap, ooooh." now that no longer works due to an extreme amount of choices, its hard to tell what real people are playing and enjoying.

I'll echo Togikagi on Glitch and Rusty Hearts; both of them are F2P and lots of fun. Rusty Hearts just came out with a new content patch (it's still in Beta). It's like an old arcade side-scroller like Double Dragon, with better effects, anime graphics, and amazing music. A lot of people who've tried it also liked Dragon's Nest, but I never played it myself.

I'd recommend staying away from LEGO Universe; the F2P parts are quite limited, and the building aspect is fun, but not really enough to draw me in. If I wanted a true sandbox I'd go with Minecraft over LEGO Universe

Some games from Perfect World Entertainment have been ok; Forsaken World was one of the ones I actually ended up enjoying a lot more than I thought I would. I did hear it becomes quite grindy later on, but there seems to be a ton of things to do and almost everything gives you experience.