Well, depends on what "best" means in context, and is probably subjective. I think the most interesting one is EVE online, since it actually takes advantage of the fact that humans are playing it to set up a player driven universe and economy, which very few if nay other mmos do, and is really the best thing you can get out of that kind of massive player base. Otherwise its just people doing small group coop or pvp and wanking. I don't know of any others were the fact that the world/universe is persistent is significant, most, for most only personal/character persistence matters. Don't need an mmo for that. A sp + coop + pvp game does all that just as well.
That said, and as someone who played EVE for at least a year, that shit gets pretty boring. So really, there isn't much place for an MMO in my mind, until someone makes a completely dybamic player driven world. Because if humans can't permanently change the persistent world, why even have one?
Well, depends on what "best" means in context, and is probably subjective. I think the most interesting one is EVE online, since it actually takes advantage of the fact that humans are playing it to set up a player driven universe and economy, which very few if nay other mmos do, and is really the best thing you can get out of that kind of massive player base. Otherwise its just people doing small group coop or pvp and wanking. I don't know of any others were the fact that the world/universe is persistent is significant, most, for most only personal/character persistence matters. Don't need an mmo for that. A sp + coop + pvp game does all that just as well.
That said, and as someone who played EVE for at least a year, that shit gets pretty boring. So really, there isn't much place for an MMO in my mind, until someone makes a completely dybamic player driven world. Because if humans can't permanently change the persistent world, why even have one?
I played EVE from beta until about... 2010? I'll say it does get boring, but when you have lagfest fleet battles where it's all a lottery you really learn that the game is just about the people. At least that's how I felt. Just to clarify, this is in contrast to being about the gameplay itself. Although it does get better and better.
I used to like MMORPGs because I thought I was a great "community person" and that your character's growth in the game world is comparable to your own growth in reality, in the sense that everybody can grow differently and there's always someone stronger, or someone who has more than you do. Well, then I realized that the community aspect sort of sucks because people come and go like the wind in MMOs and within four years of MMO experience, I've made like two long-standing friendships. I used to consider myself a decent guild leader, as someone who chose to get to know his members personally to make a tight-knit community, but then I realized the tragedy of it all: All I did was find new friends to replace those who had quit playing the game.
So, if you look at MMORPGs without the "making friends" aspect, you get a static world, lots of competition, and repetitive, time-consuming gameplay. Sure, some MMOs might seem fun, but it usually won't take long for most players to get sick of things.
So I can't really answer your question, I can only tell you that I think MMORPGs aren't really worth it.
Everquest? It was amazing enough for Blizzard to switch their Warcraft universe from an RTS to an MMORPG. From there, I guess it depends on your threshold for tolerating ancient polygonal graphics, the current popularity of the game, and your love for the lore of Azeroth.
And maybe "role playing" with female night elves? That's a thing, right? I haven't played WoW since ye olde beta days.
I think the quality of MMO's is decided by many things outside of the game's control, and so based on that it's hard to say that any of them are better than others. I've only played Warcraft and Runescape, Warcraft had lots of customization elements for each character, a pretty cool world to explore, and much better combat than Runescape, though RS's quests were cooler (I never saw one that told me to slay x number of creatures or return x number of pelts or something), it's gameplay had a lot of cool ideas that made me get more invested in it, and it had some fun british humor. Honestly though they both kind of suck as games, have bad graphics, took way more of my money than any other games did, required unnecessary investments of time, were less stable than any other games I played, and neither of them have spectacular narratives either. So the best MMO, is no MMO.
I don't exactly have experience with a whole lot of them, but I have to give props to FFXI. I devoted a better part of a decade to that game.
A lot of people give it flak for being an MMO in the first place, but it's honestly the most "Final Fantasy" game than any Final Fantasy made in the last 15 years. For the first many years of its life, it was a tried and true story and cooperative focused MMO in the way that most still aren't. There are many aspects of it that sucked, but the suffering made all your achievements feel all the more sweeter. Nobody just coasted to max level, you had to make friends and trust others and actually work your ass off to get things done. Not a single mundane fetch quest either; just about every single quest had meaning and story value to it. It even had a proper overarching plot (Chains of Promathia) that could be argued to rival your average FF story, and some of the best characters and personalities of all of Final Fantasy can be found throughout the entire game and its expansions (Shantotto, Prishe, Naja Salaheem + Abquhbah, and many others are almost more memorable to me than any other character in the franchise).
At least until the last few years. The game has thrown out a lot of the old ways in favor of turning the experience into WoW, which is subsequently what has made me turn from the game. Not entirely unexpected for an MMO that old though. They just don't have the people working on it to write all that story anymore (though they did just announce a new expansion for it out of the blue just a month back. No idea what to think about that)
I know what WAS the best MMO: Ultima Online. That is, before they fucked the whole thing up. Also, Meridian 59, as someone mentioned, was quite the blast even if it's rather crappy by todays standards.
For "present day" MMO's I'd say WoW is the best. Still playing it from time to time, which is more than I can say for the countless MMO's I've abandoned over the years. There's just something about the WoW world I find charming, but I'll be damned if I can explain what it is...
At its best, PlanetSide offered the most fun I've ever had in an MMO. At its worst, it was quite frustrating. If PlanetSide 2 proves to be an actual improvement over its predecessor, I'd say it's going to be the best MMO out there.
Ultima Online's epic freedom and flexibitiy was amazing and something that will never be duplicated and Dark Age of Camelot's PvP is still the best I've ever played by a ridiculously wide margin but yeah... World of Warcraft is still king by a country mile and probably always will be for me.
I must say though Guild Wars 2 is tickling my fancy pretty aggressively right now. Time will tell.
Ultima Online especially during its launch and the few months after were amazing, I had never played anything like it. No other mmo I've played allowed the freedom to customize your characters anyway you wanted and the freedom players had to do things is probably only beaten by EVE. Sure there were tons of thieves, griefers, and pks but it made the world seen dangerous and alive. I remember one server had an entire player made city in a desert called Oasis it was epic.
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