A good Free MMO for groups.

So, as of late a group of friends has taken interest in trying to find a good free mmo, but they're not really sure on where to start(Especially considering that they really only play simulators Arma, American truck sim, etc), seeing as I will most likely be drug along for the ride I would like to get some opinions on some good free to play MMOs that you guys have enjoyed, Anything helps! Thanks.

 

Well, there are a few that I occasionally play, but I tend to fall back to World of Warcraft (paid, although you can play free up to level 20 now) because the game has an easy-to-use control system.

Aion and Vindictus are the ones I've played on occasion, although I haven't visited Vindictus in quite a while. Aion I've played more than Vindictus, but its hard to get used to the controls once you've played WoW all because they have different mouse controls. Rift however has had more of my time than both of those games combined and the easiest one to get used to if you're used to WoW controls.

Rift has a lot more to the game than you typically see in a "free-to-play" likely because it used to be a subscription-based only when it launched. In Rift, you have four main callings (or classes), and your sub-classes are "souls," which you can customize or follow one of their presets until you're comfortable enough with the soul tree to customize your character. If you like detailed customization for your character, this is probably THE best free-to-play MMO currently available (and probably far better than even World of Warcraft now that the talent tree is so simplified, there is hardly any customization to it anymore).
All open world raids are called "rifts" and the levels are based on the zone they open in. When a rift is open and if you are soloing, you can join a group without "queuing" and multiple groups can form a raid without having to queue for more people.
Rift also has a "mentoring" system, which allows you to scale your character's level to match your groups level, something I haven't seen in any other MMO games I've played.
When you queue for a dungeon in Rift, you actually queue up along with enemy faction players as well. So you can do one dungeon with your faction's NPC's inside the dungeon one time, and the next time you might be in the enemy faction's version of the dungeon. No worries, though. When this happens, your faction changes to that of your enemy's while you're in that dungeon, so you can do the same dungeon quests if you haven't already done them before. This is true cooperative play across both factions and great for any PvE or RPPvE style, something WoW still struggles (or more like refuses) to implement even with the lore pointing out several occasions of cross-faction cooperation.

Rift is developed by Trion Worlds, in case you do an internet search for it.

 

I liked Rift and Blade and Soul a lot. Played B&S for about 4 months straight before my laptop told me no more please.

EDIT: How could I forget about Warframe? One of the best games I've played in a while. It's just a bit of a time sink though.

 

Thanks for the suggestions guys, I'll be sure to tell you guys if I like them!

 

World of Tanks is free to play. Really large download. Can platoon into a team of three in a 15 vs 15 pvp.

 

I've actually got three tier 10s Haha, I don't recommend it to them because half of the time you have to deal with a pretty crappy group of people who just hate on each other.

 

One of the reasons why I stopped playing actually

It's not even the crappy players either that do it, sometimes the try hard smurfs (in XVM that would be the blue and purple players) just get so pissed off they rage at everyone and think they're general Patton.

Then they get mad that arty picks on them. So I got a Russian arty and got tier 8 and load it with AP. The rage is real, it's like hitting a jackpot. Of course only 1\10 times but it's worth it just to one shot a high tier tank. I'm pretty evil.
Never got to tier 10, a couple 9's though with mostly heavies and meds. Not too hard to make a profit and stay afloat in credits if you have middle tier tanks to balance out the costs of running the high tiers.

 

Indeed, I've got the T92 tier 10 American arty so I love the anger that people show when I hit them.

 

I Play professional Warthunder!.... Does that count!? No, no tanks? awwwwww...

 

Hey hiezen! Wanna have a bad tem?

 

I try to play war thunder, but I don't have day after day to focus on it and really grind through the tiers.

 

If you support it a little and buy a premium account for a couple of days, it really helps.