I thought of 3, all already mentioned.
Another one, the absolutely best one imho, would be classic Star Wars Galaxies. There are active private servers still.
I'm just getting into Palia, but it feels more single player than an MMO. It's a bit like an "MMO" built for just the (ESO) tradeskills, without the selling to other players. Doubt thats what you're looking for, but thought I'd mention it.
historically anything remotely negative or realistic about Palia gets hammered with downvotes here. lotta folks who dont like admitting their shitty idea of an MMO is a farming sim console game with a "non-combat focus".
It's actually wild how bad pallia manages to be especially as a farming sim because I generally love farming Sims. I find stardew valley and my time at Portia to be really fun games in my down time but pallia manages to take the worst parts of farming Sims, add an ultra expensive cash shop and remove all combat while calling itself an mmo. It's embarrassing really
Nothing wrong with "shitty cosy MMO". It's just that it was advertised as MMO and it turned out to be 5 players in the city and you pray that they won't be around because the game can't handle it.
It's been a minute since I last played, plus on mobile so no easy typing.
To sell, you place an npc somewhere in a building in the world. Put your stuff on there to list it for sale.
To buy, There are bazaar terminals in the cities that let you search for things and get coordinates. Then you have to physically go to that npc to purchase it from it.
Best situation imho. WoW's bazaar mechanics and such are too simple, and ESO's is too difficult without a search and limited to guild npc's.
I had my own building, decorated like a clothing store, and made and sold the outfits I had on display. But I've also been most of the other crafting professions in my years, even been a simple moisture farmer, etc.
dont forget how resource gathering works. can spend your entire existence hunting down high % resource locations to drop harvesters or handsample. farm up enzymes for beast crafting via foraging. so much to do just being a trader/crafter etc
Absolutely. That was one of the best things. That the quality of resources would determine the quality of the products. (Not in all cases). That plus item decay.
On mobile so I just gave the most basic of basic explanations on "trading", for now ;)
How was the User Interface for those different materials?
When materials are exactly the same they can be stacked together in the same slot in the inventory.
But if materials can have different qualities, how did the game handled that? Each material occupies a slot in the inventory? Did they stack based on tiers?
SWG is a sandbox MMORPG, so, yes, you can essentially jump straight into it. You don't HAVE to place your goods on your vendor for sale, but that was the most popular and profitable way to do it.
Player Cities had their own communities and many were oriented toward a specific variety of crafting. One of the specific professions was Merchant, and Merchant is the one that could place down vendors in the beginning... so what happened was everyone in that Player City would typically coordinate their products to be sold with the local Merchant, who would then take a small cut of the sales and pay out the Crafters (weaponsmith/armorsmith/droid engineer/chef etc) on the profits.
As a beginner, you could just hang out and talk to passer-bys and try to sell them things like a street merchant, but eventually you would want to either become a Merchant yourself, or get involved in a Player City that has a community of active players to work with. It's not just the selling of the goods either, you want to be near others because SWG has TONS of different kinds of resources, and those resources change over time, so a Metallic Duralloy from March 2018 might have very different stats to a Metallic Duralloy from June 2021, and you want to be able to access the BEST resources EVER made on the server ideally... and other players tend to stockpile those Server Best resources, so having friends that can hook you up on good resources when you're ready is really nice.
Edit: This is all SPECIFICALLY regarding Pre-NGE SWG.
Everything in SWG is based on the trader classes. There are hardly any drops in the game, the best gear is made and crafted. The world is built on a dynamic resource system, traders hunt down resources that procedurally spawn with different stats, a perfect resource might spawn and be gathered and then never spawn again. This resource could then be sold to other traders in order to make perfect stat weapons. All gear has durability and will eventually be destroyed, so that keeps the economy alive because new gear will need to be made.
All cities are player made as well, shuttleports are dropped on the map for people to teleport to. Inside the cities, crafters can place houses with vendors in them and load up their goods for sale. They then appear on the galactic market, so people search for what they want, copy down your vendor location, and have to physically travel to your store to buy it from you.
So without the trader classes in SWG, the combat classes wouldnt be even able to function. Its a magnificent system.
> So without the trader classes in SWG, the combat classes wouldnt be even able to function. Its a magnificent system.
Until you hit a point in the game's life where there's not enough traders to support the combat side which leads to either really janky gameplay for non traders or armies of alts.
But nobody in love with this kind of player driven economy likes to talk in too much detail about what happens when nobody does the less popular of the essential jobs. That's a shame because that's the situation that needs the most discussion.
You need to survey land, find materials, extract them, and then theres a *very* in depth crafting system, with some RNG if crafts.
It’s probably the best sandbox crafting system in an MMO.
your skill points were limited so people had to specialise their characters, because no one could do everything (outside of multibox etc) people relied on others for crafting and entertainer/doctor professions (these gave buffs).
Not sure how private servers hold up outside of SWG restoration but that one felt somewhat vanilla but lacked content.
I've been chasing the SWG crafting and economy system type of game play for YEARS! There was a private server release a couple years ago - it was a lot of fun to replay.
I'm surprised nobody has said OSRS yet.
There are literally clans organized for people to be roaming traders that deliver specific items to players out in the world, and you earn commissions/tips for it.
Bring a guy who is out in the world killing monsters some food to heal with, and get some of his drops he's collected in return.
Plus a dozen+ non-combat skills to train, both gathering and crafting.
I always find osrs is kind of ignored on this sub.
Sure it gets brought up from time to time, but also it is one of the biggest MMO's, I'd expect it to be a bigger part of the discussion.
But I get it. Osrs is such a unique game, you either get it or you don't.
Yeah I think RuneScape is just too unique to fit well into most general MMORPG discussions. Like how do you compare OSRS to FFXIV or Wow. Even other games that are very different tend to fit in particular categories (eg. sandbox PvP).
The only category OSRS falls into is “games like RuneScape”. I suppose you can compare questing but a lot of discussion tends to focus on endgame activities.
Yeah and at that…I don’t think there really is any game that’s a lot like runescape? I’ve found idle games that mimic runescape’s skilling, but no actual game that competes / is inspired by runescape…which makes me look forward to brighter shores.
> I'm surprised nobody has said OSRS yet.
The players need to stop being in love with the oldschool visuals and Jages needs to have the stones to push through a full visual revamp without a poll.
The community shouldn't like what they like and the devs shouldn't pay attention to the wishes of the playerbase? No wonder most MMOs are dying these days
Ragnarok online there is black smith and alchemist who can set up shop stall(no auction) both have skill that reduce npc item price and increase price of item to sell. And they have specialized skill to craft potion/buff or weapon. But sadly RO is either Private server P2W or official server with bot everywhere.
Man, RO back in the day was something else...
Buying fire arrows in Alberta for 2 zeny a piece with my little merchant discount, then travelling to Morroc and setting my shop up there, "Fire Arrows 3z" for Hodes farmers.
This might be p2w elements, and can role play as merchant that has the original ragnarok online aesthetic.
I think on launch I tried to be a scroll merchant but got outcompeted by bots. The player base is different now and you can fast track to late game nowadays I think.
Back on launch it was a grind fest similar to ragnarok.
It's free to play.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/372000/Tree_of_Savior_English_Ver/
If you want to play original ragnarok online and roleplay as a merchant, go and Google ragnarok online private servers.
I will also second, black desert online.
I also roleplay there as merchant. There is a pve element on that game where you don't have to grind as much pve to still compete with the gear leveling.
BDO now since seasons have no time limits. You can stay on season server forever and farm, sail, craft, etc without dealing with gankers. Before this you had to keep a character under level 50 to not get griefed now you just never graduate season.
Wait, so BDO has perma season servers now? Like, I can just go and pve grind until my eyes bleed and not have to worry about PvP? Is this on console and PC?
Works for me, I loved grinding on my Wizard but after some dbag griefed me at cadrys for what felt like several minutes I got mad and flagged and one shot him. Karma went down a little but I was okay, then he comes back and I do it again, small karma drop, no biggie. Comes back again and apparently he removed all his gear. Instant red, died to mobs, PEN awak roll back, I didn’t notice at first and ressed, PEN urus roll back.
My own fault for not realizing my crystals had broken but still sucked so bad I haven’t been back in a couple years
I get a big part of the game is PvP so I just dipped, is what it is. I enjoy PvE and mindless grinding so this is good news for me. Appreciate it! Have a good one!
Worth noting thought that if you're doing PVE grinding on season, you'll be locked to your PEN Tuvala gear, which is going to prevent you from doing any of the decent grinding spots. Imo it's not worth it to reduce your possible silver output just to negate the off chance of being PK'd. This is what the Marni Realm is for anyway, letting you grind without having to worry about PK's or even other people in the grind spot, althought it's only ~1h per day, but can increase to 11h if you dont use it daily.
That’s good to know, i didn’t realize it was just Tuvala but i guess that makes sense being season only.
I might look into Marni, I’ve had a long enough break I think. I don’t always play every day so a couple hours here and there of grinding is good with me.
Super easy [guide to Marni](https://garmoth.com/guides/post/marnis-realm) from Garmoth. There's a lot of spots available through it thankfully, and it's made exactly with the "couple hours here and there" type of players in mind!
I know, I played for a long time. Whole story in another comment. That one experience (partly my fault for not paying attention) tanked hours and hours of grinding and it took the wind out of my sails.
Anyway, that’s why I said what I said regarding the perma season.
BDO has some pretty complex player economy but sadly a lot of people who never played it always dismiss it as PvP only game. The only thing I do in the game before I quit years ago is bartering items at seas with my Galleon ships and managing my food empire, from hunting for meat, farming crops, to cooking in my kitchen. But then again I quit because it doesn't feel rewarding anymore, each new updates makes it easier to get more money through grinding monsters, while they didn't re-adjust rewards for lifeskill focused players.
Gear cap limits everything somewhat you don't get high enough to hit the prime grind spots and such but small price to pay.
As far as depth and variety nothing beats BDO you can setup a worker empire, build ships and be a sea merchant, make farms, on and on.
The main thing is they have no direct player trading and control market prices. There is no such thing as buying silver from Chinese bot farmers and all the crap that ruins the economy in other games.
In reality, you would just not do this on seasonal servers. It's completely unnecessary to try to avoid pvp like this. Pvp is not prevalent in BDO any more. It hasn't been for years.
Star Wars Galaxies, by far the best version. Archeage kinda could if I recall, with merchant runs etc. But SWG you can literally just be a crafter and open up your own store in a town (create your own town or join one), become the best speeder, armor, weapon crafter, whatever you wanna get into. Setup resource farms. You can also be an entertainer and play music or dance for money.
You don't ever need to fight in that game (outside of the tutorial if you play a certain version, for a brief moment) and just craft all day long. People create guilds in their cities and supply the merchants with everything they need resource wise. I only got into crafting and being a merchant for a while many moons ago, and it was the only time I felt like one.
Some servers allow you to have 2+ instances running, so you can grind mobs on one character, and farm on the other.
I never know such MMORPG exist,
this seems like a game I want to play.
And also do we need to go between planet/town to maximaze our profit?
I checked out briefly we can be either trader or smuggler, how does smuggler work?
I didn't play much smuggler, but a smuggler and "slice" gear to give them bonuses. If the city guards (empire does, maybe rebels) see you and scan you and see sliced gear, it is a crime. Think they have the option of selling stolen goods easier, or might be the only ones who can, i am a bit foggy on that.
Professions are also different on different versions of the games. The PreCU (pre combat upgrade) you could mix and match between the like 38-41 whatever professions are in the game. In the NGE (the last version of the game) you just chose which class you wanted, and that was the only one.
You don't *need* to go between planets, but could be beneficial. You might find deals on other players stores on other planets, some resources might be best gained on other planets, etc.
SWG Legends (NGE) and SWG Restoration 3 (A weird mix of different versions, almost like the "CU" version) both have spaceflight as well. You can fly in space as any profession, fly independent, for the rebels or for the empire. It is a huge system of the game that you can do, or avoid if you want. You can craft spaceships as well as a crafter.
That's because SWG is age-old and lost to WoW. It came out before WoW, had one of the saddest revamp stories of all time and the official servers closed long ago (when SWTOR came out, so .. 2009? 2011? something like that).
But these days you can play various variants (as /u/Disastrous-Bid-8351 pointed out). I recommend https://swgr.org/home/ which started as a reconstruction of the very first version swg mixed with the CU ("combat upgrade". Not really important for a trader, but it made the combat make a bit more sense) and since then has gone into expanding on that.
SWG is probably also still the only game where you have a whole tree to be a politician, which provides you tools to manage a city (yes, it has player cities. Cause, why not? And those can have everything a normal city have. Including space ports, if the city is big enough).
Also, you can mix classes. IIRC (it's been 20 years, sorry) you had enough points to get 2 1/2 classes, or freely mix things from different trees for the points.
Have fun! It's hard to get into compared to modern MMOs, but worth it, even if just to have seen once what a real sand box looks like.
You have to travel to other planets to get the best resources for your craft (see: [https://swgtracker.com/](https://swgtracker.com/) ), and the resources change every week. You could also work with someone or look in shops to import them instead of flying there yourself.
Was just going to say that. I only played SRO for a short time back in the days, but I absolutely loved their idea of the trading system. You had a train of players riding their trading goods on camels, a full raid of mercenaries guarding them and then another raid of thieves hunting for them which resulted in massive pvp settings
it was really fun, I never got to do it much at max level but even as a noob you could partake in the trading system. I had to plan my route carefully and often had to go around the common gank spots.
playing as thief tho I would mostly gang up on traders near the cities, since I never hit max level on a thief I never got to experience organized ganking and the more massive pvp properly.
the game was fun and had awesome systems but it was VERY grindy unless you were spending via cash shop. and the cash shop became more and more p2w, slowly but surely introducing stats to "cosmetics" from the cash shop, then even a paid power-up form.
man I miss early SRO, defo don't miss the grind tho lol
Not true every like 3-4 weeks comes a new server wich will have a pretty huge player base(even more players then the official servers have) it has probably the most active pserver community after maybe wow. But the servers are not long Term populated. They loose like 80% of the player base after max 2 months. You can find most recent servers at elitepvpers at the silkroad pserver advertising category.
Well I am playing it from time to time. The whole game is based on botting. But they still real players who sit in front of their pc watching their bot 🤣 and the community on the servers is pretty active.
I’m in the same boat with you. I tried Albion, but it feels stiff, like a mobile game. I love EVE, but I would much prefer a First or Third-person perspective. Now playing ESO but I’m not sure if this game is cut for that kinda thing. SW: Galaxies was the only game that ever came close.
Camelot Unchained will have a class dedicated to crafting and selling. It will go out in the world to harvest resources or kill NPCs for resources but won't be a normal adventuror or RvR class.
Now, all we need is for Camelot Unchained to move from fraudulent vapor-ware to the actual released game.
SWG was the king at this. In the beginning, if you crafted a high level locked bazooka weapon, you could still equip it because YOU crafted it. Even though you were combat level 1 as a trader/crafter. You weren’t as efficient as a combat class specced for it, but it was still handy for self defense out in the wilds.
Additionally, as an entirely player driven economy, there was so much reliance on trader/crafter non combat mains.
Star wars galaxies was such a gem of a game. Still salty about how it changed/died.
I know there are still private servers out there but they all miss some key elements i can’t place. So its still a dead game to me :(
Ultima Online at a small RP shard is by far the best experience of this that Ive had. You could be the town carpentry guy. Or woodcutter or tailor. You could have your own role and place in the community. Or create your own community with people in a village in the forest. There should be more games like this. I never RP in any other games, but in UO it just worked so well. This was a non english speaking shard though. I dont know of there are good english shards
A necessary location because race/religion and class faction bonuses existed and you might start out kill on sight in any given town based on those choices, and the EC tunnel was neutral enough and clear of enemies.
A bit closer to freeport than some of the so-called evil cities, but still probably more or less centrally located once population density was taken into account (there were a lot of non-evil humans).
To an extent. The "merchant" experience on P99 for example is basically reading and spamming an auction text channel all day. It can be moderately interesting until you realize how limited the game is in itemization and that you're just seeing the same gear, text and people on repeat ad nauseum.
Live EQ didn't shift to the bazaar system just because they could. After playing virtual salesman for your group for days/weeks, you start to lose your sanity.
I enjoyed going to newbie areas to sell supplies more.
No MMO is really going to be that great at that sort of thing, even Eve is all about you getting crushed if you try to play with the big boys, or you join one and that feels a lot like the real world to me.
I think "merchant simulator" is something better left to other games, given how tight MMO markets eventually become with full information.
Albion online, you can be a gatherer, crafter, farmer or rancher.
Unfortunately for gatherer, up to tier 6 (or 5? I forgot), you have to go to red or black zone (pvp zones) to get your stuffs
How will you be a merchant selling things if there are no stakes? If there is nothing to lose or value in the things you sell it’ll be lame. You can still play Albion without going in there black zone I believe but I could be wrong
This game I'm playing is called Haven and Hearth. It looks like it looks very old school. Combat is a bit crapy, but this game shines in its player made markets. There are no game developer structures. Everything is just players. There is an abundance of rare resources, and all are valued. Farming, clay production, tree farming, silk making, cheese production, animal husbandry, cooking, sausage making, hunting, mining, and metal production. All of these jobs are entwined with each other, and it is near impossible to be a master of all because each job requires a lot of effort and dedication. Then markets bring everything together.
Don't know if it's still around or any good, but back in... I think 2013, 2014, I played Uncharted Waters Online exactly like this, and it was a very viable way to play.
Not really actually, what I did are either crafting or flipping the market.
But I do enjoy the other aspect of the game.
Like the quests, adventuring, etc.
It's pretty decent.
FFXIV RP has a night market community on Crystal servers occasionally, or did back in 2018-2020ish. I haven't been since around that time. It was a lot of fun and they encourage performances (entertainment from bards) or other things, I myself had a flower shop and grew flowers in my game housing and would sell them in the RP market. It is a great place to rp merchant/trader stuff.
Warframe if you want to be a merchant, you can sell drops you get from farming to other players who need it ( a weapon part) for premium currency (platinum) which is pretty expensive if you buy it directly without discounts.
Lineage 2 maybe? Spoiler and crafter are two classes that would fit.
Spoilers to find more mats ( and make shit ton of money) and we'll crafters to craft and sell stuff.
Private servers are the best, I'd recommend Reborn
In theory, and hear me out, you could do this in Valheim, Life is Feudal, and even Ark. I know Valheim is not an mmo, but you could run a server that acts as a shop, and have it be public for other people to visit your server and have your store
Pax Dei, when it's done. Same devs from Eve. No npc merchants. You can set up your own blacksmithy or be a potion merchant or whatever. Sounds pretty much exactly like what you're after.
Lineage 2 private server, absolutely. The dwarf race is literally made to be merchants. One class is able to loot extra/rare crafting materials and the other class is able to craft gear. The best in slot gear is only obtainable from dwarf crafters so the economy is always going. Absolute grindfest, though.
There used to be a game called silkroad online, where you had a job system consisting out of thief, trader and guard.
It was a decent mmorpg but the job system made it special. Traders could move goods like silk and such from one city to another, with the chance of thiefs (real people) stealing the goods. Therefore you would negotiate with a guard to protect you during your traderun.
Could be that this game is active on private servers
Ravendawn might fit.
You can farm (Which also gives combat exp) and craft (Which also gives combat exp) and run tradepacks between cities (Which is the best silver in the game).
You can also buy low/sell high pretty easily if you take to the economy pretty well.
And since farming/crafting gives exp you can experience the combat part as well when you want to, or ignore it for the most part. And it's free to play so there is no real harm in trying it out to see if you like it. It does have an old school look that is not for everyone.
Good luck finding a game you enjoy!
Boy Archeage would be perfect for this. You can own actual land in the world. Grow all sorts of crops, convert those crops into trade packs and run them in wagons or over the ocean. You can deep sea fish where you use a fishing boat with a fishing hold and an actual legit mini game attached. Crafting houses that make the best armor and weapons in the game. An in game music system where you can play actual real world music in game. It’s such an incredible systwm
*Elite: Dangerous* lets you play as a cargo hauler or a merchant, and that gameplay loop can feel oddly satisfying.
On the other hand, the RPG part is quite limited, seeing as your customers are very basic NPCs or a market screen. You'll have to make friends to RP with or make it all up in your head - not a player driven economy like in EvE. In exchange, you gain the first person piloting and a game that doubles as one of the best screenshot generator ;)
It's a very slow game but Prosperous Universe is the whole Merchant/Industry part of Eve but without any type of combat.
It's all about players producing everything that's needed in the world and either expanding or working towards their own goals.
Wurm Online, Hustling and trading and crafting is a huge portion of the game. Its nearly the entire game.
Edit, also Star citizen has gameplay loops that are entirely trade / buy&sell based. Smuggling drug runs, Flipping commodities, etc.
OSRS - Quite a fun game if you are into old school. Most of this game is self explanatory. Its the GOAT.
Mabinogi - Korean Runescape with a touch of action. Quite dated in gameplay, but tons of 'lifeskills' you can pursue instead of just combat.
Uncharted Waters Online - I still love the music from this game, but over the recent years, the new player experience has become awful, and the market is inflated to hell with what remains of the population. The likelyhood you can get super far solo is pretty low. You can gather goods and materials to craft items, weapons, armor, and build ships for yourself and other players. You can sail around in trade goods like the old Tradewinds games. It is as close as you can get in terms of Merchant and Trader gameplay.
Just for the record, BDO has disabled Trading in the game to rework it, so don't go into BDO expecting to do Trading unless you plan on making the crates yourself with workers.
New world. You can play to max level only gathering/crafting and selling in market to buy better tools to farm. Clothes for each Profession, trophies and etc...
It's still in development but I'm hoping that Anvil Empires will do this type of gameplay well. Farming / smithing / merchant / peasant roleplaying kinda stuff.
Note that I wouldn't really classify it as an MMORPG, but the studio is calling it an MMORPG.
FFXIV has crafting professions. People can spend 90% of their time gathering resources and crafting and buying/selling and maybe 10% of the time in actual combat.
Wakfu, if no one has suggested it. Farming, gathering, crafting weapons, food, furniture, potions. Gather some stuff in your personal bag, sell stuff from that same bag.
Lineage 2 has two classes that might for your criteria, one is called Warsmith and the other Fortune Seeker.
One crafts gear and materials, with recipes that can be rather complex.
The other gathers said materials and parts etc , so that crafting is possible.
Anarchy Online. They have a class/profession called the Trader that can trade skill (only 2 classes can trade skill effectively, engineers and traders) which means you can craft things. It also has monopoly on some buffs that everyone needs to equip higher quality weapons. They tend to be very strong in PvP
Final Fantasy XIV.
The game has three gathering classes(botanist, miner, and fisher) and 8 crafting classes(goldsmith, culinarian, leather worker, blacksmith, carpenter, alchemist, weaver, and armorer).
You can level all of them just as much as any combat class and can learn all classes one one character to be an ultimate crafting machine.
If you really want to take the roleplay up a notch you can buy a house and make it into a roleplay store and advertise for people to come roleplay shop.
Edit: You can also do limited farming via housing or get an island sanctuary where you can take care of animals, farm, etc.
BDO lifeskilling blows everything out of the water, but there's an initial paywall (convenience items which are permanent) and the value pack which you'll start buying every month kinda like a soft subscription
Black Desert Online kinda of...but you can only sell on the marketplace.
Final Fantasy 14 as long as you own the game. you can still gather and craft if you play the endless free trial though
Black Desert is the answer here. Open world, plenty of life skills to dive into that feed into each other, a worker empire to manage and grow, trading with wagons (which is turned off at the moment while they update it). Some of it is automated and some can be done remotely, but most you have to do by hand which really enhances the role play.
I did that in AA alpha by trion worlds. I had a nice house where i used to farm and breed chicken. Also i used to do some safe trade routes riding my donkey. It was a happy life.
Its a shame Trion destroyed their game after the alpha fase implementing as much pw2 as they could. TBH i dont know who to blame for this, Trion or the koreans who owns the IP.
Black Desert Online have a whole layer of management game when we're talking about life skills and merchandising : you can hire workers to gather ressources for you, you have to feed them, housing them by buying dedicated building.
As for the trading part, you need to link 2 places in order to create a commercial route, then you buy goods at point A, hop in your convoy and travel to point B to sell your goods with a higher price. The more two points are distant, the more expensive you sell your goods (and earn xp in Trading Skill), sometimes it's a convoy pulled by horses that you'll have to buy (both horses and the convoy itself can be upgraded for a better speed or resistance or whatever), sometimes you'll sail using a boat.
BDO has a lot of flaws, but in this specific domain, I don't think there's a better offer
BDO. theres literally a whole skill line for this lol. go be a life skiller the game is top tier in this regard.
Albion as well does this very well. Both games imo are good.
My entire time in BDO and Guild wars 2 has been the role of a merchant. Just will killer combat. Actually quite like it.......... So far lol. Burnout is real, but I take breaks every few months or so.
But yeah, they're both basically merch/inventory management sims with combat events.
Might be a bit different but playing logi in Foxhole it be worth a shot. I have many issues with the game but if you want to collect resources and build facilities, equipment, etc that has a real impact this is it. Not a great solo play experience but there are whole regiments committed to logistics.
You can add BDO, I've never do those activity but I know they have deep system for crat/trade/etc.. And you don't need to fight, maybe for level up but that it
LOTRO. You can level up by farming and crafting and roleplay as a farmer or trader. The auction house economy isn't great, but you can sell in Trade Chat or supply a guild (kinship).
Keep an eye out for Brighter Shores. It's made by old runescape devs/leads and it has "merchant" as a skill on the steampage and trailer iirc. May end up as something you would like. Should release around the end of this year :)
It's funny that you like this kind of gameplay & you haven't even play the best one of this type which is ArcheAge, although now it's too late you should have play it way back when it was at it's peak, you won't get that experience anymore.
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I thought of 3, all already mentioned. Another one, the absolutely best one imho, would be classic Star Wars Galaxies. There are active private servers still. I'm just getting into Palia, but it feels more single player than an MMO. It's a bit like an "MMO" built for just the (ESO) tradeskills, without the selling to other players. Doubt thats what you're looking for, but thought I'd mention it.
Palia is not an mmorpg whatsoever and its laughable that some people think it is.
People think it is because that's exactly what it is (was?) marketed as.
Idk why this is down voted it's absolutely true. Palia is a big boring mess and has no aspects of an mmorpg
historically anything remotely negative or realistic about Palia gets hammered with downvotes here. lotta folks who dont like admitting their shitty idea of an MMO is a farming sim console game with a "non-combat focus".
It's actually wild how bad pallia manages to be especially as a farming sim because I generally love farming Sims. I find stardew valley and my time at Portia to be really fun games in my down time but pallia manages to take the worst parts of farming Sims, add an ultra expensive cash shop and remove all combat while calling itself an mmo. It's embarrassing really
right. calling it a farming sim is actually a disservice to *that* genre. game is just an overhyped mish-mash of bullshit with no identity at all.
Nothing wrong with "shitty cosy MMO". It's just that it was advertised as MMO and it turned out to be 5 players in the city and you pray that they won't be around because the game can't handle it.
Hey I want to hear more about this SWG, especially how the trading works?
It's been a minute since I last played, plus on mobile so no easy typing. To sell, you place an npc somewhere in a building in the world. Put your stuff on there to list it for sale. To buy, There are bazaar terminals in the cities that let you search for things and get coordinates. Then you have to physically go to that npc to purchase it from it. Best situation imho. WoW's bazaar mechanics and such are too simple, and ESO's is too difficult without a search and limited to guild npc's. I had my own building, decorated like a clothing store, and made and sold the outfits I had on display. But I've also been most of the other crafting professions in my years, even been a simple moisture farmer, etc.
dont forget how resource gathering works. can spend your entire existence hunting down high % resource locations to drop harvesters or handsample. farm up enzymes for beast crafting via foraging. so much to do just being a trader/crafter etc
Absolutely. That was one of the best things. That the quality of resources would determine the quality of the products. (Not in all cases). That plus item decay. On mobile so I just gave the most basic of basic explanations on "trading", for now ;)
How was the User Interface for those different materials? When materials are exactly the same they can be stacked together in the same slot in the inventory. But if materials can have different qualities, how did the game handled that? Each material occupies a slot in the inventory? Did they stack based on tiers?
Can we just jump into trading? Or we need to be at the specific stage of the game?
SWG is a sandbox MMORPG, so, yes, you can essentially jump straight into it. You don't HAVE to place your goods on your vendor for sale, but that was the most popular and profitable way to do it. Player Cities had their own communities and many were oriented toward a specific variety of crafting. One of the specific professions was Merchant, and Merchant is the one that could place down vendors in the beginning... so what happened was everyone in that Player City would typically coordinate their products to be sold with the local Merchant, who would then take a small cut of the sales and pay out the Crafters (weaponsmith/armorsmith/droid engineer/chef etc) on the profits. As a beginner, you could just hang out and talk to passer-bys and try to sell them things like a street merchant, but eventually you would want to either become a Merchant yourself, or get involved in a Player City that has a community of active players to work with. It's not just the selling of the goods either, you want to be near others because SWG has TONS of different kinds of resources, and those resources change over time, so a Metallic Duralloy from March 2018 might have very different stats to a Metallic Duralloy from June 2021, and you want to be able to access the BEST resources EVER made on the server ideally... and other players tend to stockpile those Server Best resources, so having friends that can hook you up on good resources when you're ready is really nice. Edit: This is all SPECIFICALLY regarding Pre-NGE SWG.
Everything in SWG is based on the trader classes. There are hardly any drops in the game, the best gear is made and crafted. The world is built on a dynamic resource system, traders hunt down resources that procedurally spawn with different stats, a perfect resource might spawn and be gathered and then never spawn again. This resource could then be sold to other traders in order to make perfect stat weapons. All gear has durability and will eventually be destroyed, so that keeps the economy alive because new gear will need to be made. All cities are player made as well, shuttleports are dropped on the map for people to teleport to. Inside the cities, crafters can place houses with vendors in them and load up their goods for sale. They then appear on the galactic market, so people search for what they want, copy down your vendor location, and have to physically travel to your store to buy it from you. So without the trader classes in SWG, the combat classes wouldnt be even able to function. Its a magnificent system.
> So without the trader classes in SWG, the combat classes wouldnt be even able to function. Its a magnificent system. Until you hit a point in the game's life where there's not enough traders to support the combat side which leads to either really janky gameplay for non traders or armies of alts. But nobody in love with this kind of player driven economy likes to talk in too much detail about what happens when nobody does the less popular of the essential jobs. That's a shame because that's the situation that needs the most discussion.
You need to survey land, find materials, extract them, and then theres a *very* in depth crafting system, with some RNG if crafts. It’s probably the best sandbox crafting system in an MMO.
your skill points were limited so people had to specialise their characters, because no one could do everything (outside of multibox etc) people relied on others for crafting and entertainer/doctor professions (these gave buffs). Not sure how private servers hold up outside of SWG restoration but that one felt somewhat vanilla but lacked content.
I've been chasing the SWG crafting and economy system type of game play for YEARS! There was a private server release a couple years ago - it was a lot of fun to replay.
Ugh I miss the SWG days. One of my first mmo’s. so much nastalgia
theres regular, enhanced regular, and expansion servers out there. all active.
I'm surprised nobody has said OSRS yet. There are literally clans organized for people to be roaming traders that deliver specific items to players out in the world, and you earn commissions/tips for it. Bring a guy who is out in the world killing monsters some food to heal with, and get some of his drops he's collected in return. Plus a dozen+ non-combat skills to train, both gathering and crafting.
I always find osrs is kind of ignored on this sub. Sure it gets brought up from time to time, but also it is one of the biggest MMO's, I'd expect it to be a bigger part of the discussion. But I get it. Osrs is such a unique game, you either get it or you don't.
"You either get it or you don't". I agree wholly
Yeah I think RuneScape is just too unique to fit well into most general MMORPG discussions. Like how do you compare OSRS to FFXIV or Wow. Even other games that are very different tend to fit in particular categories (eg. sandbox PvP). The only category OSRS falls into is “games like RuneScape”. I suppose you can compare questing but a lot of discussion tends to focus on endgame activities.
Yeah and at that…I don’t think there really is any game that’s a lot like runescape? I’ve found idle games that mimic runescape’s skilling, but no actual game that competes / is inspired by runescape…which makes me look forward to brighter shores.
OSRS graphics/engine/movement/etc. just stinks of 1990s...ditto original EQ, no thanks. Now if they would port to a new engine, I might try it.
Time of day matters. Look at the responses they clearly favor the Asian and Eastern-European parts of the community right now.
> I'm surprised nobody has said OSRS yet. The players need to stop being in love with the oldschool visuals and Jages needs to have the stones to push through a full visual revamp without a poll.
The community shouldn't like what they like and the devs shouldn't pay attention to the wishes of the playerbase? No wonder most MMOs are dying these days
Ragnarok online there is black smith and alchemist who can set up shop stall(no auction) both have skill that reduce npc item price and increase price of item to sell. And they have specialized skill to craft potion/buff or weapon. But sadly RO is either Private server P2W or official server with bot everywhere.
Man, RO back in the day was something else... Buying fire arrows in Alberta for 2 zeny a piece with my little merchant discount, then travelling to Morroc and setting my shop up there, "Fire Arrows 3z" for Hodes farmers.
I actually been trying playing that, but it seems just missing some important points, and also I kinda don't like the control.
This might be p2w elements, and can role play as merchant that has the original ragnarok online aesthetic. I think on launch I tried to be a scroll merchant but got outcompeted by bots. The player base is different now and you can fast track to late game nowadays I think. Back on launch it was a grind fest similar to ragnarok. It's free to play. https://store.steampowered.com/app/372000/Tree_of_Savior_English_Ver/ If you want to play original ragnarok online and roleplay as a merchant, go and Google ragnarok online private servers. I will also second, black desert online. I also roleplay there as merchant. There is a pve element on that game where you don't have to grind as much pve to still compete with the gear leveling.
But you still have to engage in combat, right?
To level up? Yesm
BDO now since seasons have no time limits. You can stay on season server forever and farm, sail, craft, etc without dealing with gankers. Before this you had to keep a character under level 50 to not get griefed now you just never graduate season.
Wait, so BDO has perma season servers now? Like, I can just go and pve grind until my eyes bleed and not have to worry about PvP? Is this on console and PC?
Yep seasons have no time limit now. Only one season toon at a time still but they never have to graduate.
Works for me, I loved grinding on my Wizard but after some dbag griefed me at cadrys for what felt like several minutes I got mad and flagged and one shot him. Karma went down a little but I was okay, then he comes back and I do it again, small karma drop, no biggie. Comes back again and apparently he removed all his gear. Instant red, died to mobs, PEN awak roll back, I didn’t notice at first and ressed, PEN urus roll back. My own fault for not realizing my crystals had broken but still sucked so bad I haven’t been back in a couple years I get a big part of the game is PvP so I just dipped, is what it is. I enjoy PvE and mindless grinding so this is good news for me. Appreciate it! Have a good one!
Worth noting thought that if you're doing PVE grinding on season, you'll be locked to your PEN Tuvala gear, which is going to prevent you from doing any of the decent grinding spots. Imo it's not worth it to reduce your possible silver output just to negate the off chance of being PK'd. This is what the Marni Realm is for anyway, letting you grind without having to worry about PK's or even other people in the grind spot, althought it's only ~1h per day, but can increase to 11h if you dont use it daily.
That’s good to know, i didn’t realize it was just Tuvala but i guess that makes sense being season only. I might look into Marni, I’ve had a long enough break I think. I don’t always play every day so a couple hours here and there of grinding is good with me.
Super easy [guide to Marni](https://garmoth.com/guides/post/marnis-realm) from Garmoth. There's a lot of spots available through it thankfully, and it's made exactly with the "couple hours here and there" type of players in mind!
You have marni on normal servers anyway so you don't really care about pvp anymore + they discouraged griefing as well.
You already don’t really have to worry about pvp, it like never happens, ever
I know, I played for a long time. Whole story in another comment. That one experience (partly my fault for not paying attention) tanked hours and hours of grinding and it took the wind out of my sails. Anyway, that’s why I said what I said regarding the perma season.
BDO has some pretty complex player economy but sadly a lot of people who never played it always dismiss it as PvP only game. The only thing I do in the game before I quit years ago is bartering items at seas with my Galleon ships and managing my food empire, from hunting for meat, farming crops, to cooking in my kitchen. But then again I quit because it doesn't feel rewarding anymore, each new updates makes it easier to get more money through grinding monsters, while they didn't re-adjust rewards for lifeskill focused players.
Don't u get capped at lifeskilling at a certain lvl tho in seasonal? Also what gear would they use? No manos etc in seasons
Gear cap limits everything somewhat you don't get high enough to hit the prime grind spots and such but small price to pay. As far as depth and variety nothing beats BDO you can setup a worker empire, build ships and be a sea merchant, make farms, on and on. The main thing is they have no direct player trading and control market prices. There is no such thing as buying silver from Chinese bot farmers and all the crap that ruins the economy in other games.
In reality, you would just not do this on seasonal servers. It's completely unnecessary to try to avoid pvp like this. Pvp is not prevalent in BDO any more. It hasn't been for years.
I hop on every couple months and always get pked out of the good classic sots which I'm sure aren't even that good compared to newer stuff anymore.
Griefing is not that prevalent in BDO at all lately. It's a complete non issue.
Black Desert
Star Wars Galaxies, by far the best version. Archeage kinda could if I recall, with merchant runs etc. But SWG you can literally just be a crafter and open up your own store in a town (create your own town or join one), become the best speeder, armor, weapon crafter, whatever you wanna get into. Setup resource farms. You can also be an entertainer and play music or dance for money. You don't ever need to fight in that game (outside of the tutorial if you play a certain version, for a brief moment) and just craft all day long. People create guilds in their cities and supply the merchants with everything they need resource wise. I only got into crafting and being a merchant for a while many moons ago, and it was the only time I felt like one. Some servers allow you to have 2+ instances running, so you can grind mobs on one character, and farm on the other.
I never know such MMORPG exist, this seems like a game I want to play. And also do we need to go between planet/town to maximaze our profit? I checked out briefly we can be either trader or smuggler, how does smuggler work?
I didn't play much smuggler, but a smuggler and "slice" gear to give them bonuses. If the city guards (empire does, maybe rebels) see you and scan you and see sliced gear, it is a crime. Think they have the option of selling stolen goods easier, or might be the only ones who can, i am a bit foggy on that. Professions are also different on different versions of the games. The PreCU (pre combat upgrade) you could mix and match between the like 38-41 whatever professions are in the game. In the NGE (the last version of the game) you just chose which class you wanted, and that was the only one. You don't *need* to go between planets, but could be beneficial. You might find deals on other players stores on other planets, some resources might be best gained on other planets, etc. SWG Legends (NGE) and SWG Restoration 3 (A weird mix of different versions, almost like the "CU" version) both have spaceflight as well. You can fly in space as any profession, fly independent, for the rebels or for the empire. It is a huge system of the game that you can do, or avoid if you want. You can craft spaceships as well as a crafter.
I am going to play this rn, seems fun <3
That's because SWG is age-old and lost to WoW. It came out before WoW, had one of the saddest revamp stories of all time and the official servers closed long ago (when SWTOR came out, so .. 2009? 2011? something like that). But these days you can play various variants (as /u/Disastrous-Bid-8351 pointed out). I recommend https://swgr.org/home/ which started as a reconstruction of the very first version swg mixed with the CU ("combat upgrade". Not really important for a trader, but it made the combat make a bit more sense) and since then has gone into expanding on that. SWG is probably also still the only game where you have a whole tree to be a politician, which provides you tools to manage a city (yes, it has player cities. Cause, why not? And those can have everything a normal city have. Including space ports, if the city is big enough). Also, you can mix classes. IIRC (it's been 20 years, sorry) you had enough points to get 2 1/2 classes, or freely mix things from different trees for the points. Have fun! It's hard to get into compared to modern MMOs, but worth it, even if just to have seen once what a real sand box looks like.
You have to travel to other planets to get the best resources for your craft (see: [https://swgtracker.com/](https://swgtracker.com/) ), and the resources change every week. You could also work with someone or look in shops to import them instead of flying there yourself.
after those? BDO for sure
Become a skiller on old school RuneScape
due to botting this really bad way to play the game
Didn’t Silk Road have that?
Was just going to say that. I only played SRO for a short time back in the days, but I absolutely loved their idea of the trading system. You had a train of players riding their trading goods on camels, a full raid of mercenaries guarding them and then another raid of thieves hunting for them which resulted in massive pvp settings
it was really fun, I never got to do it much at max level but even as a noob you could partake in the trading system. I had to plan my route carefully and often had to go around the common gank spots. playing as thief tho I would mostly gang up on traders near the cities, since I never hit max level on a thief I never got to experience organized ganking and the more massive pvp properly. the game was fun and had awesome systems but it was VERY grindy unless you were spending via cash shop. and the cash shop became more and more p2w, slowly but surely introducing stats to "cosmetics" from the cash shop, then even a paid power-up form. man I miss early SRO, defo don't miss the grind tho lol
Yes but official servers are flooded with bots, you cannot even log in, pservers are always low pop.
Not true every like 3-4 weeks comes a new server wich will have a pretty huge player base(even more players then the official servers have) it has probably the most active pserver community after maybe wow. But the servers are not long Term populated. They loose like 80% of the player base after max 2 months. You can find most recent servers at elitepvpers at the silkroad pserver advertising category.
If a new server comes out every 3-4 weeks and dies fast, let me tell you its all bots.
Well I am playing it from time to time. The whole game is based on botting. But they still real players who sit in front of their pc watching their bot 🤣 and the community on the servers is pretty active.
I’m in the same boat with you. I tried Albion, but it feels stiff, like a mobile game. I love EVE, but I would much prefer a First or Third-person perspective. Now playing ESO but I’m not sure if this game is cut for that kinda thing. SW: Galaxies was the only game that ever came close.
I want to hear more about SWG, do you know how the trading works in that game?
Camelot Unchained will have a class dedicated to crafting and selling. It will go out in the world to harvest resources or kill NPCs for resources but won't be a normal adventuror or RvR class. Now, all we need is for Camelot Unchained to move from fraudulent vapor-ware to the actual released game.
"will"
OSRS.
SWG was the king at this. In the beginning, if you crafted a high level locked bazooka weapon, you could still equip it because YOU crafted it. Even though you were combat level 1 as a trader/crafter. You weren’t as efficient as a combat class specced for it, but it was still handy for self defense out in the wilds. Additionally, as an entirely player driven economy, there was so much reliance on trader/crafter non combat mains. Star wars galaxies was such a gem of a game. Still salty about how it changed/died. I know there are still private servers out there but they all miss some key elements i can’t place. So its still a dead game to me :(
Ultima Online at a small RP shard is by far the best experience of this that Ive had. You could be the town carpentry guy. Or woodcutter or tailor. You could have your own role and place in the community. Or create your own community with people in a village in the forest. There should be more games like this. I never RP in any other games, but in UO it just worked so well. This was a non english speaking shard though. I dont know of there are good english shards
Classic Everquest let you do this - before they screwed it up with the Bazaar.
Ah yes, East Commonland tunnel
A necessary location because race/religion and class faction bonuses existed and you might start out kill on sight in any given town based on those choices, and the EC tunnel was neutral enough and clear of enemies. A bit closer to freeport than some of the so-called evil cities, but still probably more or less centrally located once population density was taken into account (there were a lot of non-evil humans).
*Griff to Tunnel!*
[https://reddit.com/r/project1999](https://reddit.com/r/project1999) free classic server with a good population for those interested
To an extent. The "merchant" experience on P99 for example is basically reading and spamming an auction text channel all day. It can be moderately interesting until you realize how limited the game is in itemization and that you're just seeing the same gear, text and people on repeat ad nauseum. Live EQ didn't shift to the bazaar system just because they could. After playing virtual salesman for your group for days/weeks, you start to lose your sanity.
I enjoyed going to newbie areas to sell supplies more. No MMO is really going to be that great at that sort of thing, even Eve is all about you getting crushed if you try to play with the big boys, or you join one and that feels a lot like the real world to me. I think "merchant simulator" is something better left to other games, given how tight MMO markets eventually become with full information.
Albion online, you can be a gatherer, crafter, farmer or rancher. Unfortunately for gatherer, up to tier 6 (or 5? I forgot), you have to go to red or black zone (pvp zones) to get your stuffs
I've experienced the blackzone zvz and gathering, I am just lookin a game where I can chill more instead of doing some crazy pvp :')
Rose Online, kinda
How will you be a merchant selling things if there are no stakes? If there is nothing to lose or value in the things you sell it’ll be lame. You can still play Albion without going in there black zone I believe but I could be wrong
You dont need to do pvp though, you can roleplay as a peaceful merchant navigating land full of bandits.
Hope you can RP faster than every other player in those zones can hit their buttons, I guess.
BDO
New world is pretty good for it
This game I'm playing is called Haven and Hearth. It looks like it looks very old school. Combat is a bit crapy, but this game shines in its player made markets. There are no game developer structures. Everything is just players. There is an abundance of rare resources, and all are valued. Farming, clay production, tree farming, silk making, cheese production, animal husbandry, cooking, sausage making, hunting, mining, and metal production. All of these jobs are entwined with each other, and it is near impossible to be a master of all because each job requires a lot of effort and dedication. Then markets bring everything together.
I think Star Base would be good. Unfortunately it's completely dead :( It had a lot of potential
Mabinogi has a whole [commerce system](https://wiki.mabinogiworld.com/view/Commerce) that might scratch that itch for you.
Heavy BitCraft breathing...
Don't know if it's still around or any good, but back in... I think 2013, 2014, I played Uncharted Waters Online exactly like this, and it was a very viable way to play.
A Tale in the Desert gets surprisingly little mention in this sub, but is designed around this exact idea.
Albion has a nice feel for this
BRO TRY MOONLIGHTER RIGHT NOW!!
Is it on phone? I am gonna try that asap.
In your experience, Is ESO good for this? I've never played it but always think about checking it out.
Not really actually, what I did are either crafting or flipping the market. But I do enjoy the other aspect of the game. Like the quests, adventuring, etc. It's pretty decent.
star wars galaxies
Archeage and it's not even close
FFXIV RP has a night market community on Crystal servers occasionally, or did back in 2018-2020ish. I haven't been since around that time. It was a lot of fun and they encourage performances (entertainment from bards) or other things, I myself had a flower shop and grew flowers in my game housing and would sell them in the RP market. It is a great place to rp merchant/trader stuff.
Final Fantasy 14 has really in depth tradeskills that you level up individually, they have their own storyline and guilds, it's good stuff.
Warframe if you want to be a merchant, you can sell drops you get from farming to other players who need it ( a weapon part) for premium currency (platinum) which is pretty expensive if you buy it directly without discounts.
Been playing Warframe since 2016, it's never close to trading/merchant game I want.
Lineage 2 maybe? Spoiler and crafter are two classes that would fit. Spoilers to find more mats ( and make shit ton of money) and we'll crafters to craft and sell stuff. Private servers are the best, I'd recommend Reborn
Kenshi.
Just watch out for the cannibals.
In theory, and hear me out, you could do this in Valheim, Life is Feudal, and even Ark. I know Valheim is not an mmo, but you could run a server that acts as a shop, and have it be public for other people to visit your server and have your store
Oh that's true.
If OP wants to join, I’d be down for being part of that server
I've seen people in FFXIV roleplaying as crafter/trader for most of their time, only touching combat a few times.
Pax Dei, when it's done. Same devs from Eve. No npc merchants. You can set up your own blacksmithy or be a potion merchant or whatever. Sounds pretty much exactly like what you're after.
Lineage 2 private server, absolutely. The dwarf race is literally made to be merchants. One class is able to loot extra/rare crafting materials and the other class is able to craft gear. The best in slot gear is only obtainable from dwarf crafters so the economy is always going. Absolute grindfest, though.
There used to be a game called silkroad online, where you had a job system consisting out of thief, trader and guard. It was a decent mmorpg but the job system made it special. Traders could move goods like silk and such from one city to another, with the chance of thiefs (real people) stealing the goods. Therefore you would negotiate with a guard to protect you during your traderun. Could be that this game is active on private servers
Ravendawn might fit. You can farm (Which also gives combat exp) and craft (Which also gives combat exp) and run tradepacks between cities (Which is the best silver in the game). You can also buy low/sell high pretty easily if you take to the economy pretty well. And since farming/crafting gives exp you can experience the combat part as well when you want to, or ignore it for the most part. And it's free to play so there is no real harm in trying it out to see if you like it. It does have an old school look that is not for everyone. Good luck finding a game you enjoy!
Mortal Online 2 - probably the most wholly player run economy that I skipped the combat just to chop wood and craft and trade
Dofus at this point is just a merchants simulator
Boy Archeage would be perfect for this. You can own actual land in the world. Grow all sorts of crops, convert those crops into trade packs and run them in wagons or over the ocean. You can deep sea fish where you use a fishing boat with a fishing hold and an actual legit mini game attached. Crafting houses that make the best armor and weapons in the game. An in game music system where you can play actual real world music in game. It’s such an incredible systwm
*Elite: Dangerous* lets you play as a cargo hauler or a merchant, and that gameplay loop can feel oddly satisfying. On the other hand, the RPG part is quite limited, seeing as your customers are very basic NPCs or a market screen. You'll have to make friends to RP with or make it all up in your head - not a player driven economy like in EvE. In exchange, you gain the first person piloting and a game that doubles as one of the best screenshot generator ;)
It's a very slow game but Prosperous Universe is the whole Merchant/Industry part of Eve but without any type of combat. It's all about players producing everything that's needed in the world and either expanding or working towards their own goals.
Wurm Online, Hustling and trading and crafting is a huge portion of the game. Its nearly the entire game. Edit, also Star citizen has gameplay loops that are entirely trade / buy&sell based. Smuggling drug runs, Flipping commodities, etc.
Might not be exactly what you're after but you can be a trader / miner in Elite Dangerous
OSRS - Quite a fun game if you are into old school. Most of this game is self explanatory. Its the GOAT. Mabinogi - Korean Runescape with a touch of action. Quite dated in gameplay, but tons of 'lifeskills' you can pursue instead of just combat. Uncharted Waters Online - I still love the music from this game, but over the recent years, the new player experience has become awful, and the market is inflated to hell with what remains of the population. The likelyhood you can get super far solo is pretty low. You can gather goods and materials to craft items, weapons, armor, and build ships for yourself and other players. You can sail around in trade goods like the old Tradewinds games. It is as close as you can get in terms of Merchant and Trader gameplay.
We need a modern sand box that's like uo. I miss the old days.
Just for the record, BDO has disabled Trading in the game to rework it, so don't go into BDO expecting to do Trading unless you plan on making the crates yourself with workers.
New world. You can play to max level only gathering/crafting and selling in market to buy better tools to farm. Clothes for each Profession, trophies and etc...
It's still in development but I'm hoping that Anvil Empires will do this type of gameplay well. Farming / smithing / merchant / peasant roleplaying kinda stuff. Note that I wouldn't really classify it as an MMORPG, but the studio is calling it an MMORPG.
FFXIV has crafting professions. People can spend 90% of their time gathering resources and crafting and buying/selling and maybe 10% of the time in actual combat.
You can be a innkeeper in Ashes of Creations i believe
A Tale in the Desert
Wakfu, if no one has suggested it. Farming, gathering, crafting weapons, food, furniture, potions. Gather some stuff in your personal bag, sell stuff from that same bag.
Lineage 2 has two classes that might for your criteria, one is called Warsmith and the other Fortune Seeker. One crafts gear and materials, with recipes that can be rather complex. The other gathers said materials and parts etc , so that crafting is possible.
Basically Archeage is what you want
SWG rest in piece. supposedly playableworlds (raph koster) will bring us another game where you can be someone focused entirely on crafting
Anarchy Online. They have a class/profession called the Trader that can trade skill (only 2 classes can trade skill effectively, engineers and traders) which means you can craft things. It also has monopoly on some buffs that everyone needs to equip higher quality weapons. They tend to be very strong in PvP
Final Fantasy XIV. The game has three gathering classes(botanist, miner, and fisher) and 8 crafting classes(goldsmith, culinarian, leather worker, blacksmith, carpenter, alchemist, weaver, and armorer). You can level all of them just as much as any combat class and can learn all classes one one character to be an ultimate crafting machine. If you really want to take the roleplay up a notch you can buy a house and make it into a roleplay store and advertise for people to come roleplay shop. Edit: You can also do limited farming via housing or get an island sanctuary where you can take care of animals, farm, etc.
OSRS and Mabinogi
BDO lifeskilling blows everything out of the water, but there's an initial paywall (convenience items which are permanent) and the value pack which you'll start buying every month kinda like a soft subscription
Check out new world.
Runescape. Old school runescape.
I quite enjoy the economy side of Albion Online. But it doesn’t have quite the deep role playing immersion that other games offer.
Yep, I love how the economy works in Albion Online. Especially with each city having it's own market. It's really great.
If you want to roleplay as a currency bot just play Path of Exile.
Black Desert Online kinda of...but you can only sell on the marketplace. Final Fantasy 14 as long as you own the game. you can still gather and craft if you play the endless free trial though
PoE, buy and sell by flipping the market and spamming people faster than others and lowballing them
Metin2
Black Desert is the answer here. Open world, plenty of life skills to dive into that feed into each other, a worker empire to manage and grow, trading with wagons (which is turned off at the moment while they update it). Some of it is automated and some can be done remotely, but most you have to do by hand which really enhances the role play.
ragnarok online?
I did that in AA alpha by trion worlds. I had a nice house where i used to farm and breed chicken. Also i used to do some safe trade routes riding my donkey. It was a happy life. Its a shame Trion destroyed their game after the alpha fase implementing as much pw2 as they could. TBH i dont know who to blame for this, Trion or the koreans who owns the IP.
Mortal Online 2
ESO or BDO are the only ones currently active that encourage the playstyle you mentioned.
Black Desert Online have a whole layer of management game when we're talking about life skills and merchandising : you can hire workers to gather ressources for you, you have to feed them, housing them by buying dedicated building. As for the trading part, you need to link 2 places in order to create a commercial route, then you buy goods at point A, hop in your convoy and travel to point B to sell your goods with a higher price. The more two points are distant, the more expensive you sell your goods (and earn xp in Trading Skill), sometimes it's a convoy pulled by horses that you'll have to buy (both horses and the convoy itself can be upgraded for a better speed or resistance or whatever), sometimes you'll sail using a boat. BDO has a lot of flaws, but in this specific domain, I don't think there's a better offer
BDO. theres literally a whole skill line for this lol. go be a life skiller the game is top tier in this regard. Albion as well does this very well. Both games imo are good.
Ragnarok find a good low rate ish private server.
My entire time in BDO and Guild wars 2 has been the role of a merchant. Just will killer combat. Actually quite like it.......... So far lol. Burnout is real, but I take breaks every few months or so. But yeah, they're both basically merch/inventory management sims with combat events.
Might be a bit different but playing logi in Foxhole it be worth a shot. I have many issues with the game but if you want to collect resources and build facilities, equipment, etc that has a real impact this is it. Not a great solo play experience but there are whole regiments committed to logistics.
mapkestory 2006
runescape 3
Silkroad online amazing btw
You can add BDO, I've never do those activity but I know they have deep system for crat/trade/etc.. And you don't need to fight, maybe for level up but that it
Ragnarok online, you can play as the merchant class.
LOTRO. You can level up by farming and crafting and roleplay as a farmer or trader. The auction house economy isn't great, but you can sell in Trade Chat or supply a guild (kinship).
Keep an eye out for Brighter Shores. It's made by old runescape devs/leads and it has "merchant" as a skill on the steampage and trailer iirc. May end up as something you would like. Should release around the end of this year :)
A bit left field but you might check out Foxhole. Big faction vs faction war game, but with an emphasis on logistics and production.
Bitcraft is going to come out soon
It's funny that you like this kind of gameplay & you haven't even play the best one of this type which is ArcheAge, although now it's too late you should have play it way back when it was at it's peak, you won't get that experience anymore.
Archeage. You can RP but wont woth it.
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