The Players and Joining a Guild

Free MMOs are filled to the brim with the following types of people:

Those who are too young to pay a monthly subscription

Those who are too cheap to pay for a monthly subscription.

As such, the community in free MMOs is, on average, horrible. This is why I advice you play these sort of games together with friends or people you've played other games with. These games can get boring very fast when you play alone, you need others to have someone fun to talk to and do stuff together with.

Now there are plenty of decent human beings around. People like you who want to know if a game is enjoyable before jumping in and people who are invested in the game and want to have a good time with other people. If you want to find more of those you should join a guild, nearly any guild will do. It often takes serious effort or a bit of cash to start a guild in a free MMO, so there is that bit of investment in the game that makes people behave better. There certainly are a lot of shitty guilds in MMOs in general and it's no difference in free ones, but on average you will at least get to talk to or play with actual humans.

Picking a good guild is tough and shopping around is not shameful. Here are a few tactics I employ:

• Read that guild name: mature guild names include proper spelling.
• Check the official forums: what guilds have threads on there? What are they talking about?
• Pay attention to who you are grouping with. Notice anyone you think you might like (either because of what they write or how they play)? Shoot them a whisper asking about their guild.
• Get in touch with an officer or guild leader and ask if you would fit in. Most guild leaders are desperate to get more members, but a decent one will answer your questions while a bad one will just dodge them or spam you with invites without replying.

Once you are in a guild you might not get the welcome you were expecting. Some guilds are very social and you will get a "welcome!" from everyone currently online, other guilds you won't get a reaction This might be because the guild leader has been spam inviting people. In general it pays off to strike up conversation in the guild chat. Ask about where people are from or how long they have been playing. I always ask if the guild has a Ventrilo or Teamspeak server, talking to people in person might be scary, but it's a great way to get to know them. If the guild has a forum or a thread somewhere, introduce yourself there as well, it's your way to say "this is who I am".

If a guild sucks you will find out soon enough. If no one is talking or people are constantly arguing or new people join and leave your guild all the time you know you are in a bad place. Leave and find another one, provided you still enjoy the game in the first place.

Anti-cheating software

Big developers put their anti-cheating software in the game software itself. Small developers usually do not have the resources for this and buy a license on existing software. It's par of the course for most games and it can be quite annoying as this software can take a long time to load, can soak up more resources than strictly needed and can sometimes block perfectly legal actions. Sometimes the software does not get deleted when you uninstall the game, it can lay dormant on your hard drive for ages and god knows what it's up to.

However, what are you going to do about it? Not much, eh? Keep in mind that with the way free games are becoming more respectable, this side of the industry is on the up and up as well. A few years ago I was warning people against games that use it, but since then I haven't heard many complaints about it.

Still, it is something to always be wary of. There aren't many ways to completely protect yourself against the dangers of the internet, but here's three tips:

1. Trust your gut: if something looks fishy: cancel. More fish in the sea.
2. Trust your virus scan. Unlike your news feed, virus scans get updated all the time and will have some form of protection against new security threats before you read one of those "millions of computers infected with..." articles.
3. Do not play games I give the "avoid" or "AVOID AVOID AVOID" tag. They are most likely not worth your time in the first place, but they are usually also run by people/companies I do not trust. Don't worry, I only apply these tags if stuff is really bad and I will always explain myself somewhere in a news post. Normally a quick glance on their homepage is enough to understand my reasoning.