For me its:
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Ultima Online
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Final Fantasy XI
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Ragnarok Online
UO was a game I just recently discovered and it's fantastic, best sandbox experience I've ever had in a game.
FFXI was another recent discovery. It took the formula from Everquest and made it better. The game is even less grindy today with the QOL changes.
RO was a big part of my teenage years. I love the look of the game, it reminds me of Final Fantasy Tactics. It's a great casual game to just pop into and grind out some levels or explore.
Yeah, the overworld is meant to be roamed around in casually. Like many MMOs, the challenging areas are contained experiences.
Yeah MMOs seem to have just evolved over the years to make the leveling process extremely fast and extremely easy. I always just end up back on a classic WOW private server.
I suppose the difference there for me is I never liked leveling up and mostly saw it as a way of learning how to play the class for the actually challenging endgame content, a sort of extended tutorial with story beats.
The older games that outright took away level progress on death, I played those too before. I don't want to go back.
It's definitely subjective preference, because for me returning to "classic" WOW (yes, I was there) would feel more like a punishment.
I started MMOs back in Everquest 1 and I don't want to return to day one vanilla there, either. Like I said, personal difference.
It's the opposite for me, the whole experience has always been the leveling journey for me. Exploring the world, doing the quests, meeting cool monsters and killing them. Even Guild Wars 1 that was the part I enjoyed the most. I find raiding just excruciatingly boring.
Yeah, we're definitely different there. I played Guild Wars one a bit when it was brand new and had just come out, and I tried to like the experience, but it was sort of a crawl to me, a chore, and I felt especially fucked over by the story by the time "the Charr have devastated your land and you must guide the refugees somewhere where they can be safe, and honor the sacrifice of their prince who was killed while also trying to protect his people" turned to "oh oops forget all of that, you're a GOD now and it's time to PVP with other GODS! EPIC(tm)(r)!"
The plot seemed to get dropped like a hot rock and I was seriously asking "what the hell? What happened to the people I was trying to protect? Even the 'ascending' thing was supposed to be for their sake, right?" And all I got back from that was ultra sweaty esports teams obliterating me in what little content there was to do at the end game.
Oh, side rant: I used to call that game "NEED MONK ONLINE" because that's what zone chats were all like, and that was my least favorite character class to play, even as secondary.