RIFT and Age of Conan.
Wildstar for me. I really enjoyed the combat in that game. I thought the humor was pretty good as well. It also had really fun dungeons that were challenging, but fun.
Swtor, Itās still around but itās a ghost town and all my friends/family stopped playing. Itās more of a play the new story content then log off until the expansion. As an mmo it didnāt make it, but for me itās still worth playing as a single player game. I really enjoy Bioware story telling.
Can I say SW:TOR? Itās not technically dead but given the half billion investment from EA (a record at the time), the Star Wars franchise, the Bioware and Old Republic names and the ridiculous marketing campaign, it was certainly not destined to become a niche free-to-play āsingle-player MMOā after less than a year. It was built to go head-to-head with World of Warcraft.
It utterly failed.
Sw:tor is the most tragic waste of potential that gaming has ever seen. Truly sad.
It could have been incredible.
Age of Empires Online
Swtorās still around unlike Wild Star, which I miss
I loved PSO. I had level 200 characters on dreamcast, gamecube, and xbox versions. Didnāt like PSO2 at all though.
I think their desire to have it go head-to-head with WoW was not met with actual design.
-Inconsistent/archaic UI
-Janky animations [and in some cases, a lack of actual animations]
-Inconsistencies of gameplay
-Relatively unclear pathing past a certain point
-Initial launch hiccups, as is to be expected
-Factions, in a time and era where other games were casting aside factions, so another playerbase split
SWTOR was never destined to suceed, though that does not make it a terrible game. In fact, I love SWTOR. But the problem with it is that the āMMOā part of the game is seriously lacking which cannot keep players around. Therefore, the game attracts players who are only interested in playing the story and becomes dormant once no new story content is to be had. Hopefully 6.2 will deliver after long silence!
I also got my start in MMOās with asherons call and did some of the beta for 2. To me 2 just didnt feel right, It almost felt like a step backwards in some ways.
The sidescrolling monkey based gameplay mmo - Monkey Quest
Yeah there was a lot of flaws and the game completely tanked; the community even memed the game as āSW:TORtanicā for a while.
In terms of investment, big names and advertisement though, it was definitely intended to go face to face with WoW. Even in 2020 Iām pretty sure that nobody else has ever put as much resources and time on a pre-launch MMO as EA/ware spent on SW:TOR.
I think SW:TOR was also a lesson to the industry because I think it was the last āWoW cloneā; subsequent MMOs like GW2, TERA, BDO, FF14 and ESO tried to be their own games instead of looking at WoW as a checklist of things to have.
- Cities of Heroes/Villains
- Wildstar
- Phantasy Star Ep 1&2 and Universe
- Rusty Hearts
- Legend of Martial Arts
- Ether Saga Odyssey
Have you heard of Runes of Magic? I remember reading an article some years ago that the developer admitted it was meant to be a ācloneā of WoW - everything from gameplay to even an uncanny resemblance to the lore - but with additional features that players been asking for here like housing and deeper customization.
Thereās one that was free-to-play called Aura or something like it. I got pretty far in and liked it a lot, but I never redownloaded it after I upgraded my computer.
Iām still disappointed that Ultima Online 2 got cancelled before release. Was so hyped for that back in the day. Loved the original Ultima games and even the first UO, but the sequel looked like it was gonna be even better.
Love DCUO, itās a great game, not my choice of a favorite MMO that didnāt make it but I guess itās up there. The character creation was great, hundreds of costumes you get for free and more you unlock later as you get more Combat Power. The choices of powers and weapons were amazing, I kinda wish they kept making more, but lately they havenāt made any new powers, and definitely no new weapons. The movement powers are an awesome bonus as well, flying/skidding/super speed/acrobaticsā¦ canāt tell you my favorite powersā¦ played a little of that time/space power it was pretty bad azz, loved mind powers, my main strongest char had gadgets but itās not a favorite, fire was decent, celestial healing is bad azzā¦ looove lightning that was goodā¦ wanted to try more munitions, but yāknow, too many alts gets a little repetitiveā¦ and as for weapons, I loved dual pistols the most probably, staff was pretty good and so was othersā¦
You could customize your characters appearance and powers like no other gameā¦ but itās far from perfect, you have a point there, the game is too damn shortā¦ for someone who has too much time in their hands, they can reach nearly max power level 250-280+ within a month of constant playing more lessā¦ I donāt find the game very rewarding for someone whoās reached end-game content eitherā¦ what else is there to do? Help noobs as they leech off your strength? Thatās about all I can think of, and thatās boring and not so greatā¦ I donāt like the PVP in here eitherā¦ I do suck at it and most pvp gamesā¦ but idk, Iām just not a fan of it, prefer the PVE content.
Lunia
Definitely Lunia no questions askedā¦ played a lot of MMOās but this game, it was very underrated and yet incredible. My playtime was 5+ years, 10,000+ hours, 12+ hours a day. I only didnāt play it more than that because it eventually shut down, so 2008-2013 for me.
Lunia was amazingā¦ I could go on about this game, and I always bring it up when it comes to a favorite/most played game. It changed a lot over the years with big patch updatesā¦ you basically logged in and chose a list of squares to get into, sort of like channels of this little tiny village-like placeā¦ Square 1 was usually where everyone set all their shops to buy/sell items, and squareās 2-30 a lot of players made certain squares their guild HQ/hangout areaā¦ pretty incredible community. To level up and play, you basically entered these stagesā¦ starting from 1-1, then 1-2ā¦ all the way to 1-10ā¦ then 2-1 for a whole new episodeā¦ I think the game started with only 3 episodes, so up to 3-10 stagesā¦ When I started in 08, there was 4 episodes, so 4-10 was the last oneā¦ game was so greatā¦ there was also History and Legend modesā¦ history was the basic default difficulty of the levelsā¦ but legend was the same stages with so much more difficult enemies with their taunts/HP/DMG increased. There was so many great raids up to 12 playersā¦ eventually they added episodes up to 5-10, and then 6-10ā¦ thatās when episodes sort of stopped coming. After 6-10, youād be level 70, and you would be the appropriate level to rebirthā¦ when you rebirth, you go back to level 1ā¦ you could rebirth at any level, but it was better at 70+ for extra skill points and accumulative levelā¦ Anyway, once youāre rebirthed and level 70, you would enter these āMythā stagesā¦ Myth was completely different from the regular stages that were 1-1 ~ 6-10 ā¦ in Myth, you used different equipment that only worked in Mythā¦ so your average strength in stages was 500 and below kinda sucky, 500-1000 decent, 1000+ strength really goodā¦ well in myth, your strength was bumped into 1500-2000 minimum requirement for Myth 1ā¦ there was 6 Myth stages that took months to a year to release overtimeā¦ Myth 2 had a 2000-3000 strength requirementā¦ Myth 3 had 3000-4000ā¦ Myth 4 4000-5000ā¦ Myth 5 5000-6000, and Myth 6 wellā¦ 6000 probably wasnāt enough, it was kinda hard to get into these stages sometimesā¦ because if you werenāt at the strength requirement, you were normally kicked out/stage wouldnāt work out as plannedā¦ in Myth 6 people I think wanted around 7000-10,000 strength characters for an average decent run, and 10,000-20,000+ strength for super fast speed runs in hereā¦
Myth introduced in Lunia changed for the better or worseā¦ it turned into a completely different game, I still stand by the older days being much better, but it was still great having the same skills/characters/gameplay/etcā¦ just idkā¦ these strength requirements were getting too overboardā¦ After Myth 6, they introduced a lot of other things, such as āTower of Ordealā, had around 1-70 floors, different enemies in each floor you had to defeat to climb up, getting harder and harderā¦ by myself I couldnāt really get higher than 40-50.
And after Mythā¦ they introduced Devildomā¦ I personally barely played devildom ā¦ because things just werenāt the same at allā¦ itās probably what killed the game. You needed outstanding amounts of strength to be able to enter and do these stagesā¦ people had 20,000-30,000+ strength doing devildomā¦ think some people even had 35,000-40,000 strengthā¦ it was ridiculousā¦ and it turned out to be a pointless grind festā¦ They introduced achievements way late into the game, I really liked those except for how long it took to implement themā¦ level 99 was insanely hard to achieve, I think only around 1-5 people hit level 99 in the end of the games lifespanā¦ I personally only made it to level 90ā¦ basically, you had to rebirth more to have bigger wings, get more skill points, bonus stats, and more exp from everything. You could only rebirth 1-2 times a month (depending which book you had, the 1 month was much more expensive.) ā¦ I had around 13 rebirths on my main character before the game ended, without all those rebirths I probably wouldnāt have reached level 90ā¦ and rebirthing resets your level back to 1 every time you do it, but itās worth it cause getting to 85-90 at 1-5 rebirths was not an easy task, let alone 99ā¦
I just wanna rewind back to when I first started playingā¦ those days were so greatā¦ back then, when 4-10 was the final stage, the game was owned by Allm, but hosted by TFT (12 foot tall), very small companies with very little recognitionā¦ I really loved the TFT days, because the cash items were so cool, the game was at its prime by far the best days Iāve had playing it, andā¦ it was just great. the level cap was 65ā¦ only around 1-3 people had reached it I think before they increased itā¦ I was level 54 near the end of those days, everyone had their final level 60 skill which was super bad azz and overpowered. Eventually TFT died out, and allm passed the game Lunia to ijji, ijji was a company hosting tons of online games, many great ones such as GunZ, Soldier Front, Drift City, and a few othersā¦ some of you may recognize some of these games and the company ijji, they were kinda big back thenā¦ they got Lunia, and thatās when Lunia got the most recognition in its lifespanā¦ the game usually had around 1000-2000 players more less on average during its lifespan, but when it first got into ijji, it was like 3000+ players playingā¦ tons of noobs, tons of new people to meet, it was a lot of fun lol, updating with new content more than ever before when ijji was hosting it, weād get patches every few months with much new content, raids etcā¦ eventually sadly ijji died out, and allm was hosting the game themselves and they couldnāt do it and shut the game down I guess 
now they have another game theyāre working on called āKritika REBOOTā ā¦ I logged in it, itās kinda okay, but not for me. Really wish they could bring back Luniaā¦ theyāve been posting on their official facebook quite a bit, but itās not for sure if itās allm considering bringing the game back or someone hacked into their facebook and just screwing with old fansā¦ anywayā¦ last thing I wanna bring up with the game itself was the amazing bad azz ultimate every awesome character hadā¦ there was first around 4 classes you could play as (Knight, Wizard, Thief, Healer)ā¦ but that number expanded to I think 17 classesā¦ (Slime monster, puppeteer, ice wizard, dual swords, bard, archer, gunslinger my fav, spearman another fav, some girl with whip chains things, monk, fighter, dark healer, blacksmith) ā¦ that might be all, mightāve missed one but probably not. Anyway, so many amazing classesā¦ I wouldāve put so much more time in more of them if I couldā¦ I focused on my mains which were gunner, spear and knight. Wizard and many others were pretty dopeā¦ anyway, every character eventually got a level 85 ultimate skill, these were super bad azz and powerful skills that would destroy a raid boss with one ult attack if you had the right gearā¦ you could only use them like 20 times a weekā¦ Very fun stuffā¦ I had 3 of them before the game ended, they had some sick effects, and if you donāt believe me, hereās a video showing all of them + some 75 skills that are kinda meh. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8OmxS4IbyU&t=3s
Anyway, I think that summarizes my favorite MMO that didnāt make it. Sadly ended in 2013, and if I was a millionaire, Iād help fund this game probably more than anything elseā¦ itās a damn shame all my progress and experiences are forever gone, and such a great community that has spread away moving on to other thingsā¦ I think in the end, Myth changed the game for the better or worse, and it was probably never going to reach WoW popularity due to its excessive grind in very few stagesā¦ If they had more myth stages instead of 20 or less including myth raids, the game mightāve lived longer, but nopeā¦ the high strength requirements gave new players a huge disadvantage in the game tooā¦ hence why I believe the first days before myth were way betterā¦ PVP was more funā¦ heck, I totally forgot about PVPā¦ that was really fun and awesome, youād just have to see it for yourself searching Lunia PVP videos on YouTube.
Although the original game is gone, you can still play on private servers to see how the game was in its last days end-game contentā¦ Spirit Lunia and Arcade Lunia which is the better one, but neither are as good as the original that was much more populated and had a better community and better stuff going for it. Itās nice you can still sorta play it at least instead of having nothing, but I couldnāt get into those private servers much.
Doubt many or any will read all of this, but thank you if you did lol, Iāll probably never find a game that was as good as this one gameplay wise, it was rather unique.
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I was really hoping World of Warcraft would make it and finally be the āEQ killerā we had all hoped for.
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Iām another refugee of the island of Dereth on the world of Auberean. (Asherons Call 2)
It was a game ahead of its time.
Non typical races. Lugians, Tumeroks, Drudges, & Empyreans. (Instead of Elves and etc)
Tacs could build walls and drop turrets (like dropping cannons and watching the bombardment unfold)
Cutscenes revealing the story as youād complete its vaults.
The server gathering for CE runs. I think they couldāve been on to something with this, easing players into grouping with each other walking a more free path, but alas it wasnāt to be.
It died in 2005 and rose from the ashes to die its final death on Jan 31, 2017. I will always remember what once was.
We still talk about this game at work. I loved so much about that game. I played a Teras Kasi, Creature Handler, Dancer, Smuggler.