i was going to try to get into classic pso but... it's too clunky and i have no clue what's going on. also i thought the models would be more appealing but i don't really like how they look.
i was kinda hoping i could get into a little mmorpg community and one that isn't pay-to-win whatsoever - so ideally a privately owned server of a retro rpg with cute/stylish graphics. anyone have any recommendations?
@snoid thank you for all of the recommendations! i'll definitely be looking into these in the future. in the meantime, i actually found an open world mmo where i really did not expect to.
i have been addicted... to neopets.
specifically, a friend of mine got me into grundo's cafe, a fan recreation of the early 2000s version of the site. and i'll explain but i mean by this, but this is the first game in a while to give me that sense of wonder and freedom you can only really get from an open world game.
the thing about neopets is, to keep it simple, neopets is a game where you create your own experience. you make your own html code for your own userlookup, you decide what items you want to search for to fill your gallery, how you want to organize it, what you want to sell on the market, what your pet goals are... and as i learned more and more about how to play neopets and what all i could do, i naturally and without thinking about it developed these goals for myself, only to then realize that i am probably the only player with those exact goals. what i consider a complete game will be different than the next player who started. and that was a very cool feeling for me.
i played neopets back when i was a kid, but by "played" i mean that i was always poor, the only thing my pets ever ate was omelette, and i just went around the site playing a couple minigames. in other words, i did not understand the "game" at all. in reality, neopets is a lot more about economy. one of the best ways to make money is to scalp every bit of a cheap resource you can find when it comes into an npc shop's stock and then to sell it on the market for ABSURD markups to people who need it at a specific time - this specific time referring to when a quest npc gives it to them, or when their neopets are sick, etc. actually, the medicine market of neopets is pretty fucked up, because that's exactly what people will do. the price of medicine on the market is RIDICULOUS, and one of my primary goals is to make enough money to be able to buy up and hoard a ton of the medicine shop's resources to the point where i have a huge backup, then create my own shop with my shopkeeper NPC: "Cybernie Sanders", where i sell the medicine at below market price for as long as i'm able. i want to destabilize the for-profit medical care industry within neopets. and the fact that that can be a goal of mine in this silly web-based game is really cool to me.
Here's my userlookup right now, using assets from Digimon Dawn and Dusk, haha. Shoukei and Yrva are just training right now hence their poses, I want to make Qinglan pink and Caitriss into an alien because the alien Kougras are pink and very cool.
I also have a couple names that aren't taken that I have planned out but I have a limit of 6 pets right now and I don't want to be hasty... I'm just going to have to hope they don't get taken in the meantime.

















