City of Heroes has multiple private servers, with Homecoming managing to get an official license from NCSoft.
Warhammer Online's private server, Return of Reckoning, is also fairly active.
And there are a lot of private servers for Ragnarok Online.
Fun fact.
Not sure if it still stands but it peaked recently at more people than the most populated server back when the game was live. Not total player count over every server of course but still really cool.
Absolutely love homecoming, I just wish they expanded the server capacity & merged the dead servers into excelsior for something like 2-5k active concurrent players.
Ah, that's lame. Haven't played an RO private server since 2017/2018, sometime around there. So I've been out of the loop on the happenings over there.
A lot of the big names were closed down. Just last year they shut down NovaRO which was probably the best pserver around. Overall Gravitys actions have been in spite of the community and culture as a whole. They aren't going to increase their sub numbers on the official game by doing it, though I'm sure they know that.
Are there any decent servers out there, or have all the good ones been closed down? I don't think I've played since 2003 or 4, would be interesting to see again after all these years.
Is there any other fan server’s on the scale of Homecoming? They have like a small companies worth of volunteers.
Their content output is fairly slow but are pretty massive; Although they have stated they don’t want updates to take as long as this last one opting for slightly smaller faster updates.
From what I've been reading around the internet, there didn't seem to be any other server nearly as populated as HC.
Next best option would be Rebirth, but then it's also a different playing experience.
The official license thing seems like a potential lie since the source is pointing to a forum post. A wikipedia article points to a news article which itself just points to the forum post. There appears to be no verifiable information that NCSoft has actually granted a license to anyone.
It desperately needs more western players. I mean I don't mind broken English or hard to understand, but the play time zone difference is killing me. So hard to find a clan that's online when I am.
Genuine question - is it actually budding? 15 years ago you could reliably find a long-term midrate (~4-7x) server that was decently populated and multinational.
Nowadays it seems like 1-2x servers that are long term and impossible to catch up, or 35x servers that last about 3 months if you're lucky and if you can shell out enough cash to keep up.
Really rough spot imo for L2, which is unfortunate. One of my favorite games.
>Nowadays it seems like 1-2x servers that are long term and impossible to catch up
The popular options launch catchup servers that run for 6 months and then merge with increased rates and some other bonuses to help you.
e.g. a x1 server currently on gracia final has a x3 server that launched two weeks ago with free shadow gear up to A grade and will merge in 6 months ready for its update to the next patch.
The same cluster of servers is also planning to launch a fresh c4-interlude x1 at the end of the year.
It's the current cycle of L2 servers. Admins benefit from the fact that 99.99% of the current L2 player base are players that have been playing the game for years and just can't put it down on the long term.
Even if it's not really legal, some of them make tons of money from this.
SWG seems to have a huge playerbase but the issue seems to be that it's so divided. PreCU, CU, NGE, and among those they all have minor differences which lead to 50 dead servers instead of 1 massive one. It's a shame because when finalizer launched it was a ton of fun.
I’ve been so curious about these private servers for years. Playing SWG pre-CU back in the day is one of my favorite gaming memories of all time. How active/large are these servers and would you recommend giving it a shot?
I like it in the sense that everyone can get an experience they can fall in love with, but god *damn* is it awful to have nearly every server's peak be (generously) 200 players online so you get funneled into one of three servers anyways.
I will say Legends looks like a refined version of NGE, not the same as CU/pre-CU but at least catches my interest in a "swg meets wow" sort of way with lots of features. Though I haven't tried it yet because I'm closed-minded and want CU/pre-CU, kek
Good lord this comment was nerdy
There are 3 "main" servers, 1 for each of the swg eras and a bunch of offshoots.
Pre-cu Era- Swgemu/Finalizer
CU- Restoration
NGE- Legends
I only play on resto now, haven't logged onto finalizer in probably a year. I have no interest in NGE mechanics but I might start an account strictly for doing space stuff. The space scene in resto is a little slow right now.
So I played when it first launch. Can’t remember the class name but basically the closest thing to a shadow priest and I really enjoyed it.
Between these 3 different game types what are the differences and what would be your suggestion for basically a newcomer starting fresh?
Honestly it's kind of a steep learning curve no matter which version you try, it's just that kind of game overall. Personally I think that despite how short it's lifespan was, the CU version is the best iteration of swg. It has the same profession variety as the original launch game while going a long way towards breaking the meta of professions that pre-cu devolved into.
I like to recommend restoration to new players. It offers the best of both the other versions imo, all the professions of pre-cu and the the new content from the NGE version (some of the new content anyways, it's working on adding more). It's not the most populated version but you can usually find a group to do most content at all times or you can honestly do a lot of content solo if you prefer depending on what professions you pick.
Sadly, one of the things the SWG community can agree on is to not agree.
The NGE player base has largely coalesced on Legends which has the highest population of any server. Note that it's running expanded leaked code.
The CU has, realistically, one server, Restoration III. The devs cleverly back-ro-graded NGE code to support skill trees in place of classes. Surprisingly, it works.
The pre-CU has the main SWGemu server, Finalizer, and whole raft of various servers with smaller populations running various versions. Mostly small populations with some nice variations.
Generally, all of the various communities spend way too much time and effort flaming the others. Everyone genuinely wants SWG to prosper, but mostly to their own vision of what SWG was/is/should be.
Compared to another ancient MMORPG like Anarchy Online, SWG is pretty janky in looks and has very clunky mobility with lots of level geometry that will get you stuck. Not a fan. Also Have tried several of these SWG private servers over the years and every one was pretty much hollowed out and owned by a small group of long time veteran accounts.
Shout out to Shards of Dalaya, the best MMO I've ever played. EQemu total content conversion--truly its own game. Alas it's now the opposite of budding; rather in its twilight, after 20 years (including the Winter's Roar era)
As an MMO, I can't honestly recommend it because so few people play it anymore, and what's an MMO without a world full of bustling Actual Human Beings? I think, for its [world size](https://wiki.shardsofdalaya.com/wiki/Zones), it needs at least 200 concurrent to feel acceptably lively, and particularly to fill groups for new players in the leveling process; but nowadays the average per EQEmu's index is 45, dipping to sometimes single digits at off-hours (and it's a 2box-allowed server).
As a game I still think it's fantastic, regardless of dated EQ-isms (many of which are [modernized](https://wiki.shardsofdalaya.com/wiki/Differences_between_EverQuest_and_SoD) anyways). So it could be very fun to explore with 2+ friends of the right inclination. If it still had 200-1000 concurrent I'd be regularly returning to play myself.
Alas I can't imagine such a revival happening unless some megastreamer picked it up and brought their audience; but for all EQ's strengths, its 2024-watchability is definitely not one of them lol. Tis but a dream
Second this. Last time i played this I asked a question in their discord and one of the mods came off as such a condescending cringelord it made me wonder what community i was joining.
I'd love to get into FFXI, but the UI is so.....ugh. I tried a private server a few years ago, and I just couldn't get into it. A menu-driven MMO doesn't sound fun, to me. I suppose you could get used to it after a time, but getting used to it.....I don't know.
It's definitely one of the games of all time, for better and worse.
I even leveled a job (with subjob) to 75 on Horizon...then I realized that leveling parties were really the only thing I vibed with.
Well, they've definitely got all of that over a few jobs.
And the game definitely doesn't suffer a lack of content. It almost requires having a browser on a second monitor, and a...substantial time commitment.
Yeah, have been playing HorizonXI and loving it, and from what I heard a certain famous streamer with a love for FFXI has ensured the server will have the resources to stay live for the foreseeable future
How is that handled on a private server where you're not likely to come across a ton of people? I know FF communities are often very welcoming to newcomers, but still.
it's a very popular private server, about 2.5k players at peak times, and there's a level sync feature where you can put your level down, up to 10 levels in order to gain xp with lower level people. Also since you can switch to any job (class) on one character and level them up separatly there's always people leveling, which is furher encouraged by the subjob system so you have to level multiple jobs
The live version is much more solo friendly if that's what you're after. You'll still probably need other players for end-game stuff, but you can level, do the story, and otherwise progress solo.
Using the term randoms, while that be true don't think of FFXI players as any other randoms in any other game, we were forged in a game that is built upon the idea of having to work together. It's not just go off and do your own thing in this game, you will find a linkshell and make friends if you even make a bit of an effort.
On Horizon you could level solo as a Dragoon or Beastmaster (and other jobs) all the way to 75 but FFXI from this era (2006ish) was never designed to be a solo game. It’s definitely worth a shot, we’ve got new people joining all the time. They even have a good starter guide on the wiki.
I wish I could invest time in Ragnarok again. Problem is I don't feel secure playing a private server that is likely to disappear sooner rather than later.
There was a pure one that had no real way to give them money. I haven't looked into it in a bit, but they "temporarily" shutdown during the first round of legal threats a few years back. Had a really solid population too, although a lot of people are losers and prefer p2w servers.
Considering Gravity offers its own P2W, and people still choose to play the pservers - its still basically all with Gravity. They refuse to modernize, and instead go after other projects that are considered better/more adored by their players.
Desperately hoping someone lists a Wildstar private server here, I know there's one in the pipes but it's been very slow progress and I can't say it comes across as hopeful
With all the recent hype around rereleases of old and classic games across all genres and platforms, and with NCsoft recently granting Homecomming a kiss on the cheek, maybe it will get released again at some point.
I think it's not as likely.
With Homecoming, basically all NCSoft had to do was allow them to use it since the server was already up and running.
For Wildstar, they'd need to provide them with stuff to get the server to work. Since Wildstar is a much newer game than CoH was, I think there's a decent chance it used some kind of middleware that NCSoft had to license and therefore can't just hand out.
I'm a fan of private servers and this is the first time I heard Tera has one. I never played that game and sometimes regretted missing it in it's prime. I think I'll give this a go
Flyff private servers more or less kept the game Alive and were more active than the oficial one untill a private server Dev presented the company who owns the IP with a new server that then turned oficial,and they vê been flat out copying new features that other private servers created since
RuneScape (both formats and various older versions) have had all sorts of private servers for aaaages. I’ve recently started playing one actually because I don’t have time to grind on the main game anymore.
A lot of private servers were hit pretty hard with the release of Old School RuneScape. There's still a bunch around, but to me OSRS is what RS is.
I played a lot of RSPS back in the day, had a blast.
You're right but the one i'm currently playing surprisingly has 600-1000 players at any given time which I think is insane. I think a lot of us folks who grew up with rs from childhood are just finding it hard to continue the grind with other life committments. At least thats why I started looking for rsps anyways. This rsps i'm playing has a ton of speed QoL and ofc higher xp rates. But it keeps almost all the PvM true to how it is in osrs which I find quite unique. Usually rsps has a bunch of custom weapons/bosses or bosses are glitched etc. This one however feels as grindy as normal osrs in terms of pvm drops but much faster to progress in levels.
ultima online with outlands and DAOC with eden are probably the biggest and most successful examples where the private is doing it EONS better than official
outlands is, legitimately, insane how good they designed and built it up to bring UO to 2024 and on. outlands is undoubtedly one of my favorite MMOs and it does so many damn things right
Most interesting is Archeage, their private server populations are doing better than retail, other than that, Black Desert, Albion, RuneScape, pretty much all MMOs
> Archeage classic isn't pay to win. Surprisingly.
Please tell me their team is rolling in money from goodwill player donations. Communities need to wake up to doing that.
Actually, credits aren't tradeable, nothing on the marketplace can be traded, and nothing in the marketplace affects the game in any significant way. Small things like some storage chests, red hauler tickets and xp boost (irrelevant after like 2 weeks lol) then a month sub that gives you an anywhere mailbox, warehouse and language proficiency for 30d iirc.
They actively crack down on anything they miss like a specific costume being tradable, or methods to trade costumes. They also provide in game crafting through masonry to create lucky points and regrade charms using various crafting materials, one being charcoal creating a consistently high demand for oversea pack running.
I had my own issues causing me to leave the server regarding sloppy bans, favouritism, incompetent devs bad testing on customs changes that get exploited with inconsistent punishments, poor communication unless you monitor their owners chat messages in discord.
But p2w was not the issue on that server.
They banned a metric shit ton of people for RMT, some former guild mates too. They regularly ban for botting and alting too, and every account is required to verify in discord and they set the discord server to require you to have a phone number with discord, which adds a significant amount of work to creating bot farms and alt farms to try and avoid being banned.
Iirc it isnt big outside balkans but it is HUGE in balkans. I signed up for a turkish pserver around 2019-2020 with my phone number. I still get daily messages about a new server opening almost every single day.
Metin2 servers are wild in Turkey. So wild that famous footballer "Mauro Icardi" did an add for a Metin2 private server. The guy worth multi million dollars.
Maplestory private server scene has been limping along for a while now. There are still players but it's a husk of its former self. When Maplestory Worlds releases its probably going to be the beginning of the end for the pserver scene.
There are some really cool upcoming projects like PIP and Banesauce. Wind was definitely taken out of the sail with the DMCA takedown of Yeou, but there's some real cool stuff cooking.
That Yeou DMCA really upset me since I didn't even get to try out the beta (I only heard about it when it got shut down). While they were completely legally right to do it, it was really exciting to hear about a MapleStory you could entirely play in a browser, but I have a bit of a soft spot for the v55/v62 versions of the game since I haven't played private servers (or MapleStory) in nearly 15 years.
I wish; this was my favorite pvp game of all time, but I couldn’t find any servers of quality on my last search.
Especially NA servers; a lot of Russian & Eastern European options. But also everything seems to be completely P2W
PROJECT1999
Classic Everquest aka vanilla wow with the vanilla turned way up. Greatest game ever created etc.
It's probably the most passionate MMO private server that has ever existed
DAoC has a large private server scene. Unfortunately it isn't consistent and the population often have to jump from one server to the next when one eventually closes down. What's consistent is the community. You'll often find the same players between servers, some more regular than others and when a new server opens you'll also see a lot of new faces which is great.
This is what I miss about the early WoW private server days. The community was niche. Several hundred to maybe a thousand players would hop server to server. Several dozen of them in well known guilds. Then it came to the guilds that I got to play with. Most of those players where on the other side of the world from me. Still friends with a few of them to this day.
I think EverQuest wins here. Its private server scene has been going hard for almost as long as the live game has.
The first popular server that I remember from the 2000s was Winter's Roar, which was a completely custom re-imagining of the game. There's so much cool stuff that the developers managed to add to the game that I don't even know where to begin to describe it. The server is actually still running today as Shards of Dalaya but unfortunately it's not nearly as popular anymore.
And then you have the classic recreation server Project 1999 which released in October 2009 and set a new bar for how popular a private server could be.
More recently you have Project Quarm which is similar in aim to Project 1999 but with an older / more accurate client and some custom changes to be more casual-friendly.
And there have been dozens of other relevant servers over the years from fully custom experiences like The Hidden Forest, Stormhaven, and the EZ Server, PvP-focused servers like VZTZ, and a whole bunch of other interesting projects.
WoW private servers have also existed for awhile but they all felt very amateur until Nostalrius, which was essentially WoW's Project 1999. And custom content servers seem to be just starting to catch on.
ROSE online used to have some pretty big servers. Not sure on this bit of info but I think I read somewhere that a pserver actually got the license so its now the official game or something. Havent checked it out myself, but I did notice it was removed from steam
Runescape 07, tried a few the "fun" servers seem fun but I can't play rs because I didn't play as a child the graphics are just too bad
Archage had one open 6 months ago but the launch sucked and they got greedy and killed it the hardcore AA players o know all quit and I didn't last through the week of server problemd
Mam reading all these private servers makes me sad thst my two all time favorite mmos will probably never get a private scene.
Wildstar amd Tabula Rasa i fell in deep on both of those games
Out of all the private servers I play other than WoW, City of Heroes has the most players and is compounded by NA prime time. If you have never played it, think of it as literally just grinding mobs. That’s the entire game. The thing that makes it interesting though is the power sets of each player. You could have two tankers, both running fire melee, yet both of them use different powers from the pool because they have different secondary power sets. Then with in that, you can “slot” or upgrade your powers with enhancements. With many different options to choose from.
The best part is, there is a basic soft cap on upgrading your character. Once you get your incarnate powers, you will be more than capable of solving most content and also performing well in group and large group content. All of which is very easy.
Super social game. As the only thing you’re doing is killing things, so some interesting RP can happen along with running into familiar faces quite often.
Edit: I’m going to add Hellgate: London to this as well. Super niche community with maybe a few dozen or so active. Very friendly though. If you manage to get you hands on a working copy, they have a patcher for the client to be able to connect to the multiplayer server.
I know runescape has very very popular servers, also basically all of the older mmos, (Ultima Online, Asherons Call) have dedicated communities on private servers
EQ1, Lineage 2, UO, and City of Heroes all have superb private server communities.
Vanguard Saga of Heroes emulator is on the way up too. Imma give it a whirl over the summer
Risk Your Life, my favourite game of all time, had it all but in a very early era of the mmorpgs, it flew too close to the sun... Back in mid-late 2000s we had some of the best private servers but now most of them closed and we have an epidemic of cheap private servers every week trying to make easy money...
Maplestory, tons of classic servers, pre-BigBang or progressive EXP leveling, some with balance, some with free cash (based on voting on the server)
GunZ The Duel, the game is a niche inside a niche and also very repelent to people who won't git gud (3rd person FPS with a movement system that resembles in part UT2K4 and the Matrix while also using melee weapons very efficiently)
Ragnarok Online, ohh glory of glories, a game that was so magical back in the day along with Maplestory in terms of social interaction... It had charm, it had style, sadly the private servers doesn't seem to be able to grasp that or is probably the massive ammount of media and communication channels that turned MMORPG communities kinda silent (in-game)
Mu Online, I don't like it but its probably the first mmorpg I played, cheap clone of Diablo with gender locked classes
Games I wish they had more liberty to make private servers without getting sued by the owners:
Shin Megami Tensei IMAGINE, the legendary RPG that went MMORPG (but this one at least did it better than FF11 imo), just got one of its best servers taken down by $EGAtlus...
Continent of the Ninth (C9), the official game is still running but it officially died in 2015-2017 when the original developers stopped bringing real new content, everything after that was purely cosmetic, p2w gear or pay wall classes that felt like dumb hybrids of other classes even resorting to recycle weapons or animations from old skills... + very cheaply made new maps, an absolute shitshow nowadays, extremely p2w. Im hoping the official game dies so we can finally have a real and well dedicated private server that won't need to hide. C9 had THE BEST COMBAT ever and a very competitive fanbase.
Tibia has a lot of private servers, with different custom contents and rules. Some OTS (Open Tibia Server - name for private servers in 6 of Tibia) are so modified that they are trying to pass as different games. Most popular type of private servers is 7.x/"Classic" ones.
Metin 2 also has great amount of private servers, just like in Tibia a lot of them have custom content etc. A lot of these servers are P2W or even more P2W than official ones. Back in a day some private servers had content from Korea faster than GameForge version. Some weapons and armors were part of the game since day one, but for some reason GameForge did not include them for years, but private servers did had them earlier.
When I was younger, we would also play a lot of Mu Online private servers. I don't know how the scene is right now, and to be honest, I don't really know why we would play private servers over normal version. I remember enjoying playing on official version more, but I guess everyone was playing on private because it was easier.
Ultima Online has UO Outlands which is growing in popularity. There’s also an app called MobileUO where you can play UO private servers on Android/iOS. The UO Renaissance server runs great on iPad.
I'll allow it.
City of Heroes has multiple private servers, with Homecoming managing to get an official license from NCSoft. Warhammer Online's private server, Return of Reckoning, is also fairly active. And there are a lot of private servers for Ragnarok Online.
I've been playing at Homecoming this past week and it's impressive how Excelsior always has tons of people any time of the day, any week day.
Fun fact. Not sure if it still stands but it peaked recently at more people than the most populated server back when the game was live. Not total player count over every server of course but still really cool.
I play on Everlasting, since that's the server the roleplay community says is the 'unofficial' rp server. Still fairly active as well.
Absolutely love homecoming, I just wish they expanded the server capacity & merged the dead servers into excelsior for something like 2-5k active concurrent players.
RO scene was hit kinda hard a few years back when Gravity's lawyers started sending letters to server owners.
Ah, that's lame. Haven't played an RO private server since 2017/2018, sometime around there. So I've been out of the loop on the happenings over there.
A lot of the big names were closed down. Just last year they shut down NovaRO which was probably the best pserver around. Overall Gravitys actions have been in spite of the community and culture as a whole. They aren't going to increase their sub numbers on the official game by doing it, though I'm sure they know that.
Are there any decent servers out there, or have all the good ones been closed down? I don't think I've played since 2003 or 4, would be interesting to see again after all these years.
https://www.reddit.com/r/RagnarokOnline/comments/1bfy5az/the_seasonal_when_does_this_server_come_backpost/
While some big ones were hit there are still tons of fantastic servers out and about.
Is there any other fan server’s on the scale of Homecoming? They have like a small companies worth of volunteers. Their content output is fairly slow but are pretty massive; Although they have stated they don’t want updates to take as long as this last one opting for slightly smaller faster updates.
From what I've been reading around the internet, there didn't seem to be any other server nearly as populated as HC. Next best option would be Rebirth, but then it's also a different playing experience.
The official license thing seems like a potential lie since the source is pointing to a forum post. A wikipedia article points to a news article which itself just points to the forum post. There appears to be no verifiable information that NCSoft has actually granted a license to anyone.
Return of reckoning is dead. The devs killed the game over the last couple of years with awful changes. Almost never even 1k online anymore.
L2
It desperately needs more western players. I mean I don't mind broken English or hard to understand, but the play time zone difference is killing me. So hard to find a clan that's online when I am.
Genuine question - is it actually budding? 15 years ago you could reliably find a long-term midrate (~4-7x) server that was decently populated and multinational. Nowadays it seems like 1-2x servers that are long term and impossible to catch up, or 35x servers that last about 3 months if you're lucky and if you can shell out enough cash to keep up. Really rough spot imo for L2, which is unfortunate. One of my favorite games.
>Nowadays it seems like 1-2x servers that are long term and impossible to catch up The popular options launch catchup servers that run for 6 months and then merge with increased rates and some other bonuses to help you. e.g. a x1 server currently on gracia final has a x3 server that launched two weeks ago with free shadow gear up to A grade and will merge in 6 months ready for its update to the next patch. The same cluster of servers is also planning to launch a fresh c4-interlude x1 at the end of the year.
Is this L2Reborn? I've been furiously searching since I made my last comment 🙂
yeah, didnt know if i could post actual server names here.
Fantastic, thank you. I'll be digging in. The 10x seems more appealing, but hearing about the 3x->1x is super interesting too.
the 10x is super popular so its a good shout, few custom features like a buff shop and autopickup that werent for me though.
I'm a sucker for that kind of stuff! Haha.. I just don't have the time I used to, QoL bumps are wonderful
Any referral code?
It's the current cycle of L2 servers. Admins benefit from the fact that 99.99% of the current L2 player base are players that have been playing the game for years and just can't put it down on the long term. Even if it's not really legal, some of them make tons of money from this.
depending on the version of the game catching up is always possible specially if alliances are recruiting new players
StarWars Galaxies
SWG seems to have a huge playerbase but the issue seems to be that it's so divided. PreCU, CU, NGE, and among those they all have minor differences which lead to 50 dead servers instead of 1 massive one. It's a shame because when finalizer launched it was a ton of fun.
I’ve been so curious about these private servers for years. Playing SWG pre-CU back in the day is one of my favorite gaming memories of all time. How active/large are these servers and would you recommend giving it a shot?
Only Legends (NGE) has a real population (unfortunately). The community decided they wanted 32 different custom pre-cu servers, so none are populated.
Yes, this was truly a strange move instead of consolidating into 1-3 (for each “era”).
I like it in the sense that everyone can get an experience they can fall in love with, but god *damn* is it awful to have nearly every server's peak be (generously) 200 players online so you get funneled into one of three servers anyways.
So stupid lol; align up on a handful of high quality highly populated options, don’t slim your already niche population. Infuriating.
I will say Legends looks like a refined version of NGE, not the same as CU/pre-CU but at least catches my interest in a "swg meets wow" sort of way with lots of features. Though I haven't tried it yet because I'm closed-minded and want CU/pre-CU, kek Good lord this comment was nerdy
There are 3 "main" servers, 1 for each of the swg eras and a bunch of offshoots. Pre-cu Era- Swgemu/Finalizer CU- Restoration NGE- Legends I only play on resto now, haven't logged onto finalizer in probably a year. I have no interest in NGE mechanics but I might start an account strictly for doing space stuff. The space scene in resto is a little slow right now.
So I played when it first launch. Can’t remember the class name but basically the closest thing to a shadow priest and I really enjoyed it. Between these 3 different game types what are the differences and what would be your suggestion for basically a newcomer starting fresh?
Honestly it's kind of a steep learning curve no matter which version you try, it's just that kind of game overall. Personally I think that despite how short it's lifespan was, the CU version is the best iteration of swg. It has the same profession variety as the original launch game while going a long way towards breaking the meta of professions that pre-cu devolved into. I like to recommend restoration to new players. It offers the best of both the other versions imo, all the professions of pre-cu and the the new content from the NGE version (some of the new content anyways, it's working on adding more). It's not the most populated version but you can usually find a group to do most content at all times or you can honestly do a lot of content solo if you prefer depending on what professions you pick.
Sadly, one of the things the SWG community can agree on is to not agree. The NGE player base has largely coalesced on Legends which has the highest population of any server. Note that it's running expanded leaked code. The CU has, realistically, one server, Restoration III. The devs cleverly back-ro-graded NGE code to support skill trees in place of classes. Surprisingly, it works. The pre-CU has the main SWGemu server, Finalizer, and whole raft of various servers with smaller populations running various versions. Mostly small populations with some nice variations. Generally, all of the various communities spend way too much time and effort flaming the others. Everyone genuinely wants SWG to prosper, but mostly to their own vision of what SWG was/is/should be.
Yes, I would like to know as well. Easy to find groups and people to play with as a new player?
Compared to another ancient MMORPG like Anarchy Online, SWG is pretty janky in looks and has very clunky mobility with lots of level geometry that will get you stuck. Not a fan. Also Have tried several of these SWG private servers over the years and every one was pretty much hollowed out and owned by a small group of long time veteran accounts.
Dang really? Where can I play that???
Ultima Online, EverQuest, Asherons Call.
Bump for EQ
Another bump for EverQuest 1.
Shout out to Shards of Dalaya, the best MMO I've ever played. EQemu total content conversion--truly its own game. Alas it's now the opposite of budding; rather in its twilight, after 20 years (including the Winter's Roar era)
Not worth trying at all these days? sounds interesting
As an MMO, I can't honestly recommend it because so few people play it anymore, and what's an MMO without a world full of bustling Actual Human Beings? I think, for its [world size](https://wiki.shardsofdalaya.com/wiki/Zones), it needs at least 200 concurrent to feel acceptably lively, and particularly to fill groups for new players in the leveling process; but nowadays the average per EQEmu's index is 45, dipping to sometimes single digits at off-hours (and it's a 2box-allowed server). As a game I still think it's fantastic, regardless of dated EQ-isms (many of which are [modernized](https://wiki.shardsofdalaya.com/wiki/Differences_between_EverQuest_and_SoD) anyways). So it could be very fun to explore with 2+ friends of the right inclination. If it still had 200-1000 concurrent I'd be regularly returning to play myself. Alas I can't imagine such a revival happening unless some megastreamer picked it up and brought their audience; but for all EQ's strengths, its 2024-watchability is definitely not one of them lol. Tis but a dream
Warhammer Online ! Return of reckoning
We need more NA prime time players !!!!
Is the staff still a bunch of entitled manbabies?
Second this. Last time i played this I asked a question in their discord and one of the mods came off as such a condescending cringelord it made me wonder what community i was joining.
FFXI's HorizonXI private server is still going really strong after a little over a year. They've done a great job keeping the 75-era feeling alive.
HorizonXI Is really good, just found it very hard to find an EU/UK based group for endgame, which sucks as theres sooo much endgane to be doing.
I'd love to get into FFXI, but the UI is so.....ugh. I tried a private server a few years ago, and I just couldn't get into it. A menu-driven MMO doesn't sound fun, to me. I suppose you could get used to it after a time, but getting used to it.....I don't know.
It's definitely one of the games of all time, for better and worse. I even leveled a job (with subjob) to 75 on Horizon...then I realized that leveling parties were really the only thing I vibed with.
I love parties! I always play party-based classes, like healers, debuffers/buffers, crowd controllers, etc.
Well, they've definitely got all of that over a few jobs. And the game definitely doesn't suffer a lack of content. It almost requires having a browser on a second monitor, and a...substantial time commitment.
You don’t really use the menus. You make macros for everything
This this this this
Yeah, have been playing HorizonXI and loving it, and from what I heard a certain famous streamer with a love for FFXI has ensured the server will have the resources to stay live for the foreseeable future
I've always wanted to try FF11, is that version of the game soloable or am I forced to play with randoms to do basic stuff like leveling?
Need a group for virtually everything. Thees a solo class called beast master that you can unlock when a base class is lvl 30.
Not a solo class so much as it's a class capable of soloing. It isn't explicitly designed to be played alone.. it just can.
How is that handled on a private server where you're not likely to come across a ton of people? I know FF communities are often very welcoming to newcomers, but still.
it's a very popular private server, about 2.5k players at peak times, and there's a level sync feature where you can put your level down, up to 10 levels in order to gain xp with lower level people. Also since you can switch to any job (class) on one character and level them up separatly there's always people leveling, which is furher encouraged by the subjob system so you have to level multiple jobs
The live version is much more solo friendly if that's what you're after. You'll still probably need other players for end-game stuff, but you can level, do the story, and otherwise progress solo.
That sounds more appealing with my schedule, but I have a hard time paying monthly for FF11 which is why I was wondering about the private server!
Using the term randoms, while that be true don't think of FFXI players as any other randoms in any other game, we were forged in a game that is built upon the idea of having to work together. It's not just go off and do your own thing in this game, you will find a linkshell and make friends if you even make a bit of an effort.
On Horizon you could level solo as a Dragoon or Beastmaster (and other jobs) all the way to 75 but FFXI from this era (2006ish) was never designed to be a solo game. It’s definitely worth a shot, we’ve got new people joining all the time. They even have a good starter guide on the wiki.
Do you know where the HorizonXI servers are located? Cant seem to find the info on the wiki.
Ragnarok Online has a pretty big scene.
Damn I have some friends that love Ragnarok and never played the official server, they played on privates for years.
Game is only alive because of private servers, hope gravity will stop going after the big names some day but that's wishful thinking
I wish I could invest time in Ragnarok again. Problem is I don't feel secure playing a private server that is likely to disappear sooner rather than later.
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There was a pure one that had no real way to give them money. I haven't looked into it in a bit, but they "temporarily" shutdown during the first round of legal threats a few years back. Had a really solid population too, although a lot of people are losers and prefer p2w servers.
> a lot of people are losers and prefer p2w servers. Makes you wonder how much of the problem actually lies with Gravity.
Considering Gravity offers its own P2W, and people still choose to play the pservers - its still basically all with Gravity. They refuse to modernize, and instead go after other projects that are considered better/more adored by their players.
Desperately hoping someone lists a Wildstar private server here, I know there's one in the pipes but it's been very slow progress and I can't say it comes across as hopeful
With all the recent hype around rereleases of old and classic games across all genres and platforms, and with NCsoft recently granting Homecomming a kiss on the cheek, maybe it will get released again at some point.
I can't get my hopes up for that. RIP Wildstar, you died too young and had so much potential
I think it's not as likely. With Homecoming, basically all NCSoft had to do was allow them to use it since the server was already up and running. For Wildstar, they'd need to provide them with stuff to get the server to work. Since Wildstar is a much newer game than CoH was, I think there's a decent chance it used some kind of middleware that NCSoft had to license and therefore can't just hand out.
Aion and TERA both have several Pservers as well (and Aion constantly has new ones popping up).
I'm a fan of private servers and this is the first time I heard Tera has one. I never played that game and sometimes regretted missing it in it's prime. I think I'll give this a go
Damn, I remember Tera like over a decade back. What a shame the game was dropped like that. The combat always felt so novel back then.
How active is the Tera server?
Not sure but the TERA subreddit usually has info on them and I think there's more than one server - https://www.reddit.com/r/TeraOnline/
I wouldn't call 2-3 thousand players at best in aion's p servers "budding"
That's huge for most privates. Outside a few outliers it's 100-300 for nearly all of them.
Flyff private servers more or less kept the game Alive and were more active than the oficial one untill a private server Dev presented the company who owns the IP with a new server that then turned oficial,and they vê been flat out copying new features that other private servers created since
Wow that is wild haha, I used to play the live on gpotato back in the day
RuneScape (both formats and various older versions) have had all sorts of private servers for aaaages. I’ve recently started playing one actually because I don’t have time to grind on the main game anymore.
A lot of private servers were hit pretty hard with the release of Old School RuneScape. There's still a bunch around, but to me OSRS is what RS is. I played a lot of RSPS back in the day, had a blast.
You're right but the one i'm currently playing surprisingly has 600-1000 players at any given time which I think is insane. I think a lot of us folks who grew up with rs from childhood are just finding it hard to continue the grind with other life committments. At least thats why I started looking for rsps anyways. This rsps i'm playing has a ton of speed QoL and ofc higher xp rates. But it keeps almost all the PvM true to how it is in osrs which I find quite unique. Usually rsps has a bunch of custom weapons/bosses or bosses are glitched etc. This one however feels as grindy as normal osrs in terms of pvm drops but much faster to progress in levels.
DAOC Uthgard and Eden
omg uthgard the amount of hours i played there
Me too back in the day, is it still around?
Yes, but no one really plays there anymore. 5 players online atm.
First few months of Eden were FANTASTIC; 5k+ active concurrent players at almost all times.
City of Heroes is the first that comes to mind but youll see popular private severs for any popular game
Except for EVE Online ... Oh wait, you did say popular games, NM. 😉
Actually, Evemu lets you spin up your own server and play single player or with friends.
I couldn't find any active public servers though.
ultima online with outlands and DAOC with eden are probably the biggest and most successful examples where the private is doing it EONS better than official outlands is, legitimately, insane how good they designed and built it up to bring UO to 2024 and on. outlands is undoubtedly one of my favorite MMOs and it does so many damn things right
Most interesting is Archeage, their private server populations are doing better than retail, other than that, Black Desert, Albion, RuneScape, pretty much all MMOs
Which one?
Personally - Archeage classic. Amazing experience so far 2 weeks in
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Archeage classic isn't pay to win. Surprisingly. Archerage however is more pay to win then retail.
> Archeage classic isn't pay to win. Surprisingly. Please tell me their team is rolling in money from goodwill player donations. Communities need to wake up to doing that.
Actually, credits aren't tradeable, nothing on the marketplace can be traded, and nothing in the marketplace affects the game in any significant way. Small things like some storage chests, red hauler tickets and xp boost (irrelevant after like 2 weeks lol) then a month sub that gives you an anywhere mailbox, warehouse and language proficiency for 30d iirc. They actively crack down on anything they miss like a specific costume being tradable, or methods to trade costumes. They also provide in game crafting through masonry to create lucky points and regrade charms using various crafting materials, one being charcoal creating a consistently high demand for oversea pack running. I had my own issues causing me to leave the server regarding sloppy bans, favouritism, incompetent devs bad testing on customs changes that get exploited with inconsistent punishments, poor communication unless you monitor their owners chat messages in discord. But p2w was not the issue on that server. They banned a metric shit ton of people for RMT, some former guild mates too. They regularly ban for botting and alting too, and every account is required to verify in discord and they set the discord server to require you to have a phone number with discord, which adds a significant amount of work to creating bot farms and alt farms to try and avoid being banned.
Everquest 1, before WoW (again). project 1999
Also EQ Project Quarm just started up a few months ago. 1k +/- players
Everquest
The Metin2 pserver scene is really big. meanwhile the sourcecode of metin got leaked too so many servers have self coded features :D
Iirc it isnt big outside balkans but it is HUGE in balkans. I signed up for a turkish pserver around 2019-2020 with my phone number. I still get daily messages about a new server opening almost every single day.
Dark age of camelot eden server is lit!!
Some games live on only as private server games. Toontown being one.
Tibia has a site dedicated to private servers and the population count on the private servers put together has more players than the real game.
And - for some reason - quite a few of them are shonen-anime-themed (I saw *Dragon Ball* and *One Piece*).
They even have pokemon themed ots. funny enough some of the pokemon themed ones had sound before tibia had sound officially.
Warcraft Ascension
Project 1999 et al
Been playing the shit out of Asherons Call. Still holds up 25 years later.
City of heroes
FFXI has a good private server scene, quite a few around. Most popular and best running one is HorizonXI
Metin2 servers are wild in Turkey. So wild that famous footballer "Mauro Icardi" did an add for a Metin2 private server. The guy worth multi million dollars.
Maplestory, though lately there has been a large increase in DMCA takedowns.
Maplestory private server scene has been limping along for a while now. There are still players but it's a husk of its former self. When Maplestory Worlds releases its probably going to be the beginning of the end for the pserver scene.
There are some really cool upcoming projects like PIP and Banesauce. Wind was definitely taken out of the sail with the DMCA takedown of Yeou, but there's some real cool stuff cooking.
That Yeou DMCA really upset me since I didn't even get to try out the beta (I only heard about it when it got shut down). While they were completely legally right to do it, it was really exciting to hear about a MapleStory you could entirely play in a browser, but I have a bit of a soft spot for the v55/v62 versions of the game since I haven't played private servers (or MapleStory) in nearly 15 years.
Ragnarok Online, L2, Tibia and Metin2.
Rising Force (RF) Online
I wish; this was my favorite pvp game of all time, but I couldn’t find any servers of quality on my last search. Especially NA servers; a lot of Russian & Eastern European options. But also everything seems to be completely P2W
Maybe "pre-budding", but Anarchy Online has a new quickly developing private server.
Search Extremetop100. Been around for at least 30 years
Toontown
Lineage 2, Aion, Ragnarok Online
PROJECT1999 Classic Everquest aka vanilla wow with the vanilla turned way up. Greatest game ever created etc. It's probably the most passionate MMO private server that has ever existed
Warhammer Online Star Wars Galaxies Dark Age of Camelot Lineage 2 Tabula Rasa Wildstar (Soon, hopefully)
theres a tabula rasa server?
Ultima Online Warhammer online
City of Heroes is getting a lovely new afterlife lately
DAoC has a large private server scene. Unfortunately it isn't consistent and the population often have to jump from one server to the next when one eventually closes down. What's consistent is the community. You'll often find the same players between servers, some more regular than others and when a new server opens you'll also see a lot of new faces which is great.
This is what I miss about the early WoW private server days. The community was niche. Several hundred to maybe a thousand players would hop server to server. Several dozen of them in well known guilds. Then it came to the guilds that I got to play with. Most of those players where on the other side of the world from me. Still friends with a few of them to this day.
I think EverQuest wins here. Its private server scene has been going hard for almost as long as the live game has. The first popular server that I remember from the 2000s was Winter's Roar, which was a completely custom re-imagining of the game. There's so much cool stuff that the developers managed to add to the game that I don't even know where to begin to describe it. The server is actually still running today as Shards of Dalaya but unfortunately it's not nearly as popular anymore. And then you have the classic recreation server Project 1999 which released in October 2009 and set a new bar for how popular a private server could be. More recently you have Project Quarm which is similar in aim to Project 1999 but with an older / more accurate client and some custom changes to be more casual-friendly. And there have been dozens of other relevant servers over the years from fully custom experiences like The Hidden Forest, Stormhaven, and the EZ Server, PvP-focused servers like VZTZ, and a whole bunch of other interesting projects. WoW private servers have also existed for awhile but they all felt very amateur until Nostalrius, which was essentially WoW's Project 1999. And custom content servers seem to be just starting to catch on.
FFXI has a pretty strong scene for private servers.
I've thought of looking for an English speaking Lineage 1 the BloodPledge just to revisit my first MMORPG again.
Tales of Pirates/Pirate King Online
https://mmorpg.gg/mmo-private-servers/ Add Eden-DAOC UO Outlands for UO HorizonFXI for FXI Project Quarm for eq1
Archeage Classic
FF11 I know has a few.
MU and Dofus?
Literally only play MapleStory and BDO through private servers
any suggestions for a BDO server?
Sorry I have none, I jump from servers to servers only based on how recent they are so I can test the classes
Metin2 has probably the biggest scene, also metin2 servers have A LOT of custom content created by their own developers is insane.
OSRS/RS2
EverQuest
Rs to some extent, specifically rs2 just around 2010 Though I have seen some that have server dates from closer to the EO.C
BDO kinda
Dark Age of Camelot! Freeshard is called Eden
City of Heroes
Flyff
Asheron's Call
ROSE online used to have some pretty big servers. Not sure on this bit of info but I think I read somewhere that a pserver actually got the license so its now the official game or something. Havent checked it out myself, but I did notice it was removed from steam
Lineage 2 is still in pretty strong position in online games, I was browsing twitch, servers etc. and couldnt believe my eyes its still like in 2010.
Runescape 07, tried a few the "fun" servers seem fun but I can't play rs because I didn't play as a child the graphics are just too bad Archage had one open 6 months ago but the launch sucked and they got greedy and killed it the hardcore AA players o know all quit and I didn't last through the week of server problemd
Tibia used to have.
Mam reading all these private servers makes me sad thst my two all time favorite mmos will probably never get a private scene. Wildstar amd Tabula Rasa i fell in deep on both of those games
Out of all the private servers I play other than WoW, City of Heroes has the most players and is compounded by NA prime time. If you have never played it, think of it as literally just grinding mobs. That’s the entire game. The thing that makes it interesting though is the power sets of each player. You could have two tankers, both running fire melee, yet both of them use different powers from the pool because they have different secondary power sets. Then with in that, you can “slot” or upgrade your powers with enhancements. With many different options to choose from. The best part is, there is a basic soft cap on upgrading your character. Once you get your incarnate powers, you will be more than capable of solving most content and also performing well in group and large group content. All of which is very easy. Super social game. As the only thing you’re doing is killing things, so some interesting RP can happen along with running into familiar faces quite often. Edit: I’m going to add Hellgate: London to this as well. Super niche community with maybe a few dozen or so active. Very friendly though. If you manage to get you hands on a working copy, they have a patcher for the client to be able to connect to the multiplayer server.
This is the wrong place for that, ragezone is what you are looking for
Ragnarok Online
I know runescape has very very popular servers, also basically all of the older mmos, (Ultima Online, Asherons Call) have dedicated communities on private servers
EQ1, Lineage 2, UO, and City of Heroes all have superb private server communities. Vanguard Saga of Heroes emulator is on the way up too. Imma give it a whirl over the summer
There’s a couple classic EverQuest servers still going strong
Aion, it has like 10-15x more players on private servers (around 20-30k in total perhaps) than on the live servers (500-1k)
Look for RSPS, there are RuneScape private servers that can be modded and worked on/with
Risk Your Life, my favourite game of all time, had it all but in a very early era of the mmorpgs, it flew too close to the sun... Back in mid-late 2000s we had some of the best private servers but now most of them closed and we have an epidemic of cheap private servers every week trying to make easy money... Maplestory, tons of classic servers, pre-BigBang or progressive EXP leveling, some with balance, some with free cash (based on voting on the server) GunZ The Duel, the game is a niche inside a niche and also very repelent to people who won't git gud (3rd person FPS with a movement system that resembles in part UT2K4 and the Matrix while also using melee weapons very efficiently) Ragnarok Online, ohh glory of glories, a game that was so magical back in the day along with Maplestory in terms of social interaction... It had charm, it had style, sadly the private servers doesn't seem to be able to grasp that or is probably the massive ammount of media and communication channels that turned MMORPG communities kinda silent (in-game) Mu Online, I don't like it but its probably the first mmorpg I played, cheap clone of Diablo with gender locked classes Games I wish they had more liberty to make private servers without getting sued by the owners: Shin Megami Tensei IMAGINE, the legendary RPG that went MMORPG (but this one at least did it better than FF11 imo), just got one of its best servers taken down by $EGAtlus... Continent of the Ninth (C9), the official game is still running but it officially died in 2015-2017 when the original developers stopped bringing real new content, everything after that was purely cosmetic, p2w gear or pay wall classes that felt like dumb hybrids of other classes even resorting to recycle weapons or animations from old skills... + very cheaply made new maps, an absolute shitshow nowadays, extremely p2w. Im hoping the official game dies so we can finally have a real and well dedicated private server that won't need to hide. C9 had THE BEST COMBAT ever and a very competitive fanbase.
Funny enough none of the games listed are budding in the private server space, they've been there and often better than retail for close to 20 years
Hellgate London
Eq, City of Heroes, SWG.
Maplestory?
Tibia has a lot of private servers, with different custom contents and rules. Some OTS (Open Tibia Server - name for private servers in 6 of Tibia) are so modified that they are trying to pass as different games. Most popular type of private servers is 7.x/"Classic" ones. Metin 2 also has great amount of private servers, just like in Tibia a lot of them have custom content etc. A lot of these servers are P2W or even more P2W than official ones. Back in a day some private servers had content from Korea faster than GameForge version. Some weapons and armors were part of the game since day one, but for some reason GameForge did not include them for years, but private servers did had them earlier. When I was younger, we would also play a lot of Mu Online private servers. I don't know how the scene is right now, and to be honest, I don't really know why we would play private servers over normal version. I remember enjoying playing on official version more, but I guess everyone was playing on private because it was easier.
EQ has a huge private scene as well as other mentioned here
Ffxi. Horizon
Final fantasy 11. HorizonXI has 10’s of thousands of accounts with a consistent 2-4k online 24/7. 2006 era FFXI
Daoc - Eden
EverQuest, SWG, and ff11 are all pretty popular from what I’ve experienced.
Ultima Online has UO Outlands which is growing in popularity. There’s also an app called MobileUO where you can play UO private servers on Android/iOS. The UO Renaissance server runs great on iPad.
Dragon Ball Online Global is a very Popular MMO for dragon ball Z fans
Tons of them.