The Daily Grind: What's your favorite indie MMO?

by Seraphina Brennan Oct 9th 2009 at 8:00AM

Filed under: Culture, Opinion, The Daily Grind

There's never enough credit given to the indie MMO developers. These are the teams that usually put it all on the line with the hope of making a darn good MMO for people to play in. They don't have the budgets that the big teams do, and sometimes they don't have the graphics, but what they always have is the soul and innovation to put out their title.

So today's Daily Grind is dedicated to the independent teams out there. And, in honor of them, we ask you what your favorite indie MMO is. You've got lots of choices, from Love to Face of Mankind to Neocron to Fallen Earth to Ryzom to Istaria to Darkfall to A Tale in the Desert to many others. We could keep going, but you'd probably get bored of us naming off all of these games.

So tell us of your favorite indie MMO! For good measure, tell us some stories about your indie MMO of choice! Go go go!

Tags: a-tale-in-the-desert, darkfall, face-of-mankind, fallen-earth, fom, indie-mmo, istaria, love, neocron, opinion, ryzom, the-daily-grind

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

murraykeele said on 8:15AM 10-09-2009

Fallen Earth for sure, great game.

phobic99 said on 8:45AM 10-09-2009

Agreed. It's a nice breath of fresh MMO air instead of being more of the same.

SpikeCS said on 12:11PM 10-09-2009

I gotta agree about Fallen Earth, haven't had this much fun in an MMO since Pre-CU SWG.

Vager said on 8:27AM 10-09-2009

Wurm Online. All around awesome and unique game.

AllenJB said on 8:52AM 10-09-2009

Still Neocron 1. The op fights and community were second to none.

Fallen Earth is interesting but just has too many issues for me. Beyond the bugs and server issues, which you get with any new MMO, there's some fundamental issues with the economy and tradeskilling as well as the fact that you can't really get into the faction/clan based PvP right off the bat like you could in Neocron (1).

Jaggins said on 9:39AM 10-09-2009

EVE Online is the indie that keeps thriving and growing deeper and more polished!

Mark said on 9:42AM 10-09-2009

Fallen Earth, it has restored my faith in the genre, it's post apocalyptic setting combined with it's 'old school' feel have been a definate winner for me. Non of this multiple zones with 16/32 players limit nonsense, if 500 people want to wander into a town then you see the 500 people and the lag that goes with it. It might not be perfect, but I'd take the gameplay of Fallen Earth over the graphics of Aion any day of the week. It doesn't hold your hand through everything and it gives you that great felling of being slightly helpless and lost when you first start, very similar to when I first played Eve.

Favourite moment in the game was the end of Beta testing, the devs and mods got their own back on all the players. The world was turned into open PvP, the mods and devs toons were 50 foot tall, and they went on a rampage spree killing everything insight. Not only did they take me out, but they took great pleasure in killing my poor horsey as well :( it was a marvelous night and shows that not only is the game great, but the people behind the game are fantastic, they get more involved with their playerbase than most other games.

Myria said on 11:29AM 10-09-2009

You are aware that such end-of-beta events have been commonplace in the industry for a long time now, right?

TylerK said on 10:21AM 10-09-2009

Darkfall is definitely my winner out of these. I love the every-man-for-himself mentality and play style of the game.

Irda said on 10:52AM 10-09-2009

Wurm online. Only game out here at the moment with free terraforming.

beqerel said on 11:10AM 10-09-2009

Istaria -best crafting game ever

Myria said on 11:28AM 10-09-2009

I've never understood why slapping the word "indie" on something -- especially given how subjective the term has become -- is supposed to grant it special consideration.

And, seriously "There's never enough credit given to the indie MMO developers"? You're kidding, right? On endless sites like this one "indie" games get column inches far, far in excess of their playerbase, likely longevity, impact, or contribution to the overall industry. No doubt that's strictly because there would otherwise not be enough column inches to keep things churning and get eyes on adverts, but, honestly, most of these "indie" MMOs get coverage far, far in excess of what they deserve.

Sniggab Odorf said on 11:41AM 10-09-2009

Nodiatis is a java F2P game written by, I believe, one person. If you can get past the 2-D graphics and the moronic public chat, you can see a lot of creative touches. The skill training system is a nice combination of passive off-line training and a style of active training that I haven't seen before: you sacrifice drops on altars, which altars you choose determines which skills you train.

mlehmansf said on 12:20PM 10-09-2009

Earth Eternal is looking interesting. I think we'll see it next week.

Kaamos said on 2:57PM 10-09-2009

Anarchy Online with Shadowlands expansion when it first came out.

Loved it

bartillo said on 3:01PM 10-09-2009

Wurm Online
and SWG pre cu/nge

Tyranor said on 3:11PM 10-09-2009

What counts as Indie? CCP? Funcom?

Ramon said on 3:49PM 10-09-2009

Shards of Dalaya for me. Although Istaria does sound intriguing.

Ninetytwo said on 3:03PM 10-20-2009

Kingdom of Loathing, yo.

The Claw said on 5:49PM 10-09-2009

A Tale In The Desert. It's not what I'm looking for in a game, but in a world where 99% of indie games are horribly poor clones of major-label titles, ATITD have never done anything other than doing their own thing.