The best old school MMORPGs you can still play

The classics still running

• Ultima Online (1997). The sandbox that started it: classless skills, player crafters and housing, and dangerous roads. Still running, with its own downloaded client.
• Tibia (1997). Top-down, unforgiving and still busy, with open PvP worlds and deaths that cost real progress.
• EverQuest (1999). Group-based dungeon crawling at its most demanding. Special servers replay its early years. Our EverQuest guide goes deeper.
• RuneScape and Old School RuneScape. Point-and-click skilling, and in Old School a copy of the game as it stood in 2007, still updated. See games like OSRS.
• Ragnarok Online (2002). Sprite characters, job classes and a card for every monster. See games like Ragnarok Online.
• Dark Age of Camelot (2001). Three realms at war over keeps and relics, the root of much of today's large-scale PvP.

All of them need a download, and several ask for a subscription or membership for the full game.

What made them feel old school

• Death had a cost: lost experience, a walk back, or gear left on the ground.
• You grew by doing, not by spending points from a menu.
• Other players were the danger and the economy. Open PvP, and goods made and sold by players.
• Groups were needed for the best places, so you met people.

A new game on the same ideas

Averse Lands is a free 3D MMORPG that runs in a browser tab, made by people who grew up on these games. Here is how it measures up, honestly:

• Death costs something. Revive where you fell for a share of your progress, or go back to town and maybe leave one worn piece and one bag slot behind for anyone to pick up.
• You grow by doing. Weapon blows raise Strength, Dexterity and Constitution, and every weapon family and school of magic has its own skill. Each monster trains you only up to its own mark, so you move on to tougher ones; the monster database shows each one's.
• Open PvP with a standing that remembers. From level 8, outside towns. Killing protected players drags your standing towards Devil, and then anyone may hunt you.
• A player economy: smiths and alchemists, a world market called the Exchange, and trade face to face.
• Groups for the best places: three dungeons for parties of two to five, each with a boss and a two-hour lockout.

Where it is not old school: there are quest markers on the minimap, a task tracker and short lessons for new players, and you can switch the graphics down to Low but not to sprites. It is also young: fewer places and fewer players than the classics, and no guild wars or housing yet.

If that mix sounds right, it costs nothing to try, and you can look through its items, monsters and skills first.