MMORPG

Release timeline

Nov 12, 2026
MMORPG opens Latest Vi.ki Vi.ki opens MMORPG with 14 games, each scored out of 10 in six categories and ranked on one table.
Nov 4, 2026
World of Warcraft: Forever Blizzard Blizzard launches World of Warcraft: Forever.
Oct 5, 2026
Aion 2 global launch Inven Global NC's Aion 2 goes live worldwide and peaks at 397,905 players on Steam that day, the largest measured MMORPG launch of 2026.

This viki has one page per MMORPG. Each page opens with our verdict and tier, gives the game a score out of 10 in six categories by one rule used for every game (PvP, PvE, solo play, combat, fair pricing and population), says why each score is what it is, lists the pros and cons, and plays what TheLazyPeon and other established MMO creators said about it at the second they say it. The rankings on the home page sort by any score.

We rank World of Warcraft the best MMORPG you can play today: S tier, 8.5 out of 10, with 10/10 for PvE and 6/10 for fair pricing. It is the only S on this list, and it gets there by a hair: one point off any score would make it an A. Where Winds Meet (8.2) and Guild Wars 2 (8.0) follow, and we think both are better value, since neither charges a subscription. The sharpest thing on this page is at the other end: Lost Ark has 10/10 combat and still lands in C tier, because we rate its PvP 2/10 and its pricing 3/10. All 14 games were read at their sources and scored on Nov 12, 2026.

2:27 What is live this week: World of Warcraft: Forever launched on Nov 4, 2026, and TheLazyPeon, whose channel is the starting point for the games covered here, called it the smoothest day one of any MMO launch he has played in his Nov 10, 2026 video. Aion 2 is five weeks past a Steam peak of 397,905, ArcheAge Chronicles is nine days into paid Early Access, and New World closes for good on Jan 31, 2027.

The rankings

Best first. Every score is out of 10, and every column sorts: click PvP to rank the games by PvP alone, PvE for PvE, and so on.

Rank	Game	Tier	Overall	PvP	PvE	Solo play	Combat	Fair pricing	Population	Our verdict in a line
1	World of Warcraft	S	8.5	8	10	9	8	6	10	Forever's record launch makes one subscription three games, but modern WoW still sells expansions, gold and boosts
2	Where Winds Meet	A	8.2	6	7	9	9	8	10	A superb free solo Wuxia action RPG that is only about one third MMO
3	Guild Wars 2	A	8.0	8	8	9	9	7	7	A level cap that has never moved makes it the easiest MMORPG to return to, though expansions have paused
4	Old School RuneScape	A	7.7	6	9	10	5	6	10	The best solo and long-term MMO there is, held back by click-and-wait combat and a rising fee
5	Final Fantasy XIV	A	7.5	4	9	9	6	8	9	The best MMORPG to play alone or raid in, held back by slow combat and PvP kept as a side mode
6	Black Desert Online	A	7.5	7	6	9	10	4	9	The best action combat in any MMORPG, held back by a cash shop that still sells enhancement help
7	ArcheAge Chronicles	B	7.0	4	6	8	6	10	8	A fair $29.99 solo adventure with no shop, wearing the name of a PvP sandbox it does not yet resemble
8	Aion 2	B	6.8	6	7	8	7	3	10	The year's biggest MMORPG crowd plays a good game whose player Market is rented for $14.99 a month
9	Lost Ark	C	6.3	2	9	7	10	3	7	The best top-down combat in the genre, in a game that deleted its arena, sells gold and is shrinking
10	Eve Online	C	6.0	9	5	7	4	3	8	The genre's biggest player wars, fought by clicking menus, in a store that sells skill points
11	RuneScape	C	6.0	2	7	9	6	6	6	The best solo questing and skilling in the genre, with dead opt-in PvP and a small Steam crowd
12	Throne and Liberty	C	5.5	6	7	5	5	4	6	Good six-player dungeons and guild wars, but daily chores, a paid currency and a falling count
13	New World	D	5.0	4	5	8	7	5	1	A fine solo adventure that Amazon delisted in January 2026 and switches off on Jan 31, 2027
14	Ashes of Creation	D	1.0	1	1	1	1	1	1	Nobody can play it: the studio laid off everyone in January 2026 and the servers are gone

Ties in Overall go to the game with the higher measured player figure: Final Fantasy XIV (36,882 on Steam) sits above Black Desert Online (29,271), and Eve Online (27,805 on its maker's own counter) above RuneScape (5,092 on Steam), all read Nov 12, 2026.

The best MMORPG for each thing

The overall rank hides what each game is for. Sorted by a single score, the list looks different:

Best PvP: Eve Online, 9/10. No other game here lets thousands of players fight over space they own and lose what they bring. World of Warcraft and Guild Wars 2 follow at 8. We rate Final Fantasy XIV 4 and Lost Ark and RuneScape 2: if you play to fight people, three of the most famous MMORPGs are the wrong ones.
Best PvE: World of Warcraft, 10/10. Final Fantasy XIV, Old School RuneScape and Lost Ark are at 9. Lost Ark is the one to notice: raid design as good as anything here, in the ninth-ranked game.
Best solo play: Old School RuneScape, 10/10. Six games score 9. We think solo play is where the genre is strongest in 2026, and where a game ranked eleventh (RuneScape) is nearly as good as the game ranked first.
Best combat: Black Desert Online and Lost Ark, 10/10. Both are Korean action games, and both lose their rank to their stores. Eve Online (4) and Old School RuneScape (5) have the worst combat on the list and loyal players anyway.
Fairest pricing: ArcheAge Chronicles, 10/10. One price of $29.99 and no shop in Early Access. Aion 2, Eve Online and Lost Ark share the worst score that a playable game gets here, 3.
Biggest population: World of Warcraft, Aion 2, Old School RuneScape and Where Winds Meet, 10/10. World of Warcraft's 10 is our judgment, because Blizzard publishes no figure; the other three are measured.

How we score

One rule for every game, so the numbers can be compared.

Category	What it measures
PvP	Fighting other players: open world, battlegrounds, arenas, sieges, ranked play, how fair and how alive it is. A game with little PvP scores low, even where that is by design.
PvE	Group content against the game: dungeons, raids and world bosses, how much there is and how good.
Solo play	What one player can do alone: leveling, questing, story, crafting, gathering, exploring.
Combat	How fighting feels in the hands: response, animation, depth of the kit.
Fair pricing	What it costs and what money buys. 10 is one price or a subscription with nothing sold for power, or free with a cosmetic shop. 7 is convenience sold. 4 is power sold but capped or slow. 1 is power sold with no ceiling.
Population	Measured, by the rule below.

Population is the one score that is not our opinion. We take the highest number of players online at once that was measured or published for the game in 2026 (Steam Charts' best month, SteamDB's peak, or the maker's own live counter): 100,000 or more is 10; 50,000 is 9; 25,000 is 8; 15,000 is 7; 10,000 is 6; 5,000 is 5; 2,000 is 4; 1,000 is 3; under 1,000 is 2; servers closed, or a closing date announced, is 1. Where the only figure is Steam's and the game is mostly played off Steam, we add 1 and say so on the game's page. Each page links its figure. Our list of the most played MMORPGs of 2026 ranks the genre by that figure alone.

The other five scores are ours. Each has a section on the game's page that says what it rests on: what an established creator's recorded play shows at a given second, a dated fact from the maker, or a measured figure. A score changes only when a fact does (an expansion, a pricing change, a new player figure, a shutdown notice), and the page says what moved it.

Overall is the mean of the six scores to one decimal. S is 8.5 or more, A 7.5 to 8.4, B 6.5 to 7.4, C 5.5 to 6.4, D under 5.5.

What the rule cannot see. Every category counts the same, so a player who never touches PvP should ignore that column and sort by the ones they care about. Ashes of Creation and New World are scored as a player finds them today, closed and closing, not as the games they were. And a game that is one third MMO (Where Winds Meet) can outrank games that are all MMO, because nothing here measures how massively multiplayer a game is.

Where we disagree with TheLazyPeon

TheLazyPeon's MMORPG Tier List 2026, published Dec 11, 2025, rates over 100 MMOs by how he feels about them, and he says so at the start: it is his preference, not a scoring system. Ours is a scoring system, and the two differ in useful ways. He puts Old School RuneScape straight in S tier as his main game; we rate it A, because 5/10 combat and a fee that keeps rising count against it under our rule. He called New World a high B; we rate it D, because since his list Amazon delisted it and set the day it closes. He hoped Ashes of Creation could climb to A or S when finished; the studio closed seven weeks later. And he has returned to World of Warcraft with Forever, which is where our list and his recent videos agree. Each game's page plays what he said at the second he says it, beside what other creators said.

What we think

We think World of Warcraft: Forever gets no WoW Token before November 2027, which would keep its economy the fairest part of the game.
We think ArenaNet releases no Guild Wars 2 expansion in 2027, with Guild Wars 3's first beta set for fall 2027.
We think Aion 2's 10/10 population is the score on this page most likely to fall, and its 3/10 pricing the reason. More of our predictions

Sources

Moments

WoW Forever Launch Was INSANE!

TheLazyPeon

2:27 What is live this week: World of Warcraft: Forever launched on Nov 4, 2026, and TheLazyPeon, whose channel is the…

Pages

MMORPGs

Aion 2
We rate Aion 2 B tier, 6.8 out of 10: 10/10 in population and 8/10 in solo play but only 3/10 in fair pricing, because the busiest MMORPG of 2026 puts its player market behind a US$14.99 monthly Membership and lets bought Quna turn into the Kina that gear runs on.
ArcheAge Chronicles
We rate ArcheAge Chronicles B tier, 7.0 out of 10, in Early Access: 10/10 in fair pricing but only 4/10 in PvP, because a $29.99 game with no shop carries the name of a PvP sandbox and ships with no arena, no sieges and no reward for a kill. Its Steam launch peaked at 26,244 players at once.
Ashes of Creation
We rate Ashes of Creation D tier, 1.0 out of 10. Every score is 1/10 because nobody can play it today. Intrepid Studios laid off its whole staff on Jan 31, 2026, Steam stopped selling the game two days later, and the official servers and website are gone. The last playable build was a 7/10 for combat and a 4/10 for group content.
Black Desert Online
We rate Black Desert Online A tier, 7.5 out of 10, by the narrowest margin. It is 10/10 in combat but only 4/10 in fair pricing, because the best action combat in the genre sits on top of a cash shop that still sells enhancement help and experience boosts.
Eve Online
We rate Eve Online C tier, 6.0 out of 10: 9/10 in PvP but only 4/10 in combat and 3/10 in fair pricing, because the largest player wars in any MMO are fought by clicking menus, in a store that sells skill points and tradable PLEX for cash.
Final Fantasy XIV
We rate Final Fantasy XIV A tier, 7.5 out of 10. It is 9/10 in PvE and solo play but only 4/10 in PvP, because its raids and its free story are the best in the genre while PvP is a side mode the free trial does not even include.
Guild Wars 2
We rate Guild Wars 2 A tier, 8.0 out of 10. It is 9/10 in solo play and 9/10 in combat but only 7/10 in fair pricing and 7/10 in population, because a level cap that has never moved makes it the easiest MMORPG to return to, while six expansions and a gem shop full of storage upgrades make it less cheap than "no subscription" sounds.
Lost Ark
We rate Lost Ark C tier, 6.3 out of 10: 10/10 in Combat but only 2/10 in PvP and 3/10 in Fair pricing, because the best top-down fighting in the genre sits in a game that removed its arena in Feb 2026, sells gold, and lost half its Steam peak during the year.
New World
We rate New World D tier, 5.0 out of 10: 8/10 for solo play but 1/10 for population, because Amazon closes every server on Jan 31, 2027, the game left sale on Jan 15, 2026 and Steam's October 2026 peak was 659 players. Owners still have a fine solo adventure to finish; nobody else can get in.
Old School RuneScape
We rate Old School RuneScape A tier, 7.7 out of 10. It is 10/10 for solo play and 10/10 for population but only 5/10 for combat, because the best long game in the genre is still played by clicking and waiting on a 2007 engine, and its membership has risen 20% since 2022.
RuneScape
We rate RuneScape (the modern game players call RuneScape 3) C tier, 6.0 out of 10. It is 9/10 for solo play but only 2/10 in PvP, because its quests and skills are among the best in the genre while its Wilderness is opt-in and empty. Jagex removed Treasure Hunter in January 2026 and announced a fourth RuneScape MMO in October 2026 that will not replace it.
Throne and Liberty
We rate Throne and Liberty C tier, 5.5 out of 10. It is 7/10 in PvE but only 4/10 in fair pricing, and the guild PvP it was built for is down to 6/10 because too few people are left to fill it. Its best Steam month of 2026 peaked at 12,984 players, and NC took the game back from Amazon on Nov 10, 2026.
Where Winds Meet
We rate Where Winds Meet A tier, 8.2 out of 10: 9/10 in solo play and combat but only 6/10 in PvP, because it is a single-player Wuxia RPG first and an MMO second. It is free, sells almost nothing but looks, and peaked at 98,239 players on Steam in 2026.
World of Warcraft
We rate World of Warcraft S tier, 8.5 out of 10: 10/10 in PvE but only 6/10 in fair pricing, because one subscription now opens three live games and the biggest launch in WoW's history, while modern WoW still sells an expansion, gold tokens and level boosts on top.

Overview

MMORPG Rankings
World of Warcraft is our number 1 MMORPG, the only S tier, at 8.5 out of 10 a week after Forever launched. We score 14 MMORPGs out of 10 for PvP, PvE, solo play, combat, fair pricing and population by one rule, and say why each score is what it is.
Predictions
We think World of Warcraft Forever gets no WoW Token before November 2027 and Guild Wars 2 gets no expansion in 2027. Vi.ki's own predictions about 12 MMORPGs, each with the date it can be checked, and five calls creators made on video.