Highlights
- Boss encounters provide the greatest challenge in MMOs, especially in endgame content, requiring proactive understanding and mechanical skill.
- Some MMOs like Wildstar focus on individual mechanical skill, while others like World of Warcraft vary in difficulty between expansions.
- Final Fantasy 14 offers challenging raids, requiring a combination of proactive knowledge and mechanical skill for endgame content.
Massively Multiplayer Online games have always been a popular genre of gaming. Such games usually hold some of the hardest content available for players to face. The ways in which the difficulty of the game is presented vary between MMOs, but most of the time, especially in endgame content, it falls under the same bracket.
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Players will face enemies in instances, most commonly either dungeons or raids, in which bosses will provide the greatest amount of challenge and difficulty. Some difficult content might be found in the open-world, or with player vs player modes, but boss encounters are universally going to be where MMOs are at their most challenging. The philosophy of difficulty matters in MMOs, as some use different fight design philosophies, whether that be proactively understanding a boss or reactive fighting with mechanical skill.
7 Wildstar
A Shutdown MMO That Had Way Too Much Mechanical Skill Involved
Many games over the years rose with their own vision of an MMO, some successful, while others, not so much. Wildstar is an example of the latter, unfortunately, having been shut down in 2018.
An aim for Wildstar was for the game to not become another MMO chasing the glory of World of Warcraft. Instead, the main feature of fights was the individual mechanical skill of the player, somewhat similar to many bosses in Final Fantasy 14. Wildstar's combat design left players to progress fights reactively, watching out for the telegraphs of an attack a boss would place.
6 World Of Warcraft
This MMO Features Harder Enemies With Each Growing Expansion
World of Warcraft is by far the most well-known and successful MMO to ever be released. It set a milestone for which other MMOs would be compared to it due to how popular it was, and still is. Due to how long the game has existed for, its difficulty has fluctuated between expansions.
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In the earlier expansions, and in Classic WoW, the difficulty of regular enemies in the world was harder than in the modern version of the game. If a player got swarmed, then they would most likely die, as opposed to the modern game where players can breeze through overworld enemies. However, boss fights in Retail WoW are much more intense, with Mythic fights providing a hard challenge. The philosophy of fights also requires prerequisite knowledge, and understanding of the mechanics of a boss to progress the battle proactively.
5 EverQuest
Time-Consuming MMO That Had To Have Some Difficult Elements Removed Entirely
EverQuest was one of the original MMOs that exploded the genre, with the developers still updating it despite releasing a sequel five years after the first launched. As a milestone for MMOs, EverQuest possessed features that were improved upon in later iterations of the game, as well as in other entries of the genre.
Some of the general difficulty has been removed, such as egregious corpse runs after a player died. The game is very time-consuming, especially in the modern version given the amount of content. Gearing up with higher-tier items can be challenging, and more complex gameplay has emerged in the modern versions. Perhaps why new players find it difficult can be the desire to compare the game to other MMOs, especially WoW, as it is quite different, owing to it being an earlier title. The developers are even aware of this and strive to keep the game's difficulty while separating it from playing like WoW.
4 Old School RuneScape
Lengthy Classic Tactics Make For A Difficult Time For Newcomers
Old School RuneScape might not look all too difficult on the surface, but underneath it has some elements that are extremely challenging. Most famously, OSRS is a very lengthy game, with some parts of it, such as leveling up skills, taking hundreds and thousands of hours.
However, despite some players' impressively dedicated time-consuming achievements, OSRS does have challenges that can prove especially difficult. Notably, the Ironman mode limits players from trading with other players, purchasing items other players are selling, and picking up items dropped from enemies, among others. Another example of difficulty is the Inferno minigame, where players are tasked with defeating escalating waves of enemies in which they must restart from the beginning if they die.
3 Lost Ark
Endgame Challenges Will Test The Patience & Might Of The Best Players
MMOs usually follow a pattern where the game slowly gets harder as a player progresses, with endgame instances providing the most difficulty. Lost Ark demonstrates this greatly, where the earlier parts of the game are incredibly easy, yet the late stages offer some of the most challenging content out of an MMO.
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The endgame raids, and some of the dungeons, are well-known for their difficulty, with many players spending a lot of time trying to beat them. The amount of content can also contribute to the overall challenging nature of the game, as it can be very time-consuming. However, many players have criticized Lost Ark's propensity to pay to progress, making some of the content not as personally challenging as other MMOs.
2 Final Fantasy 14
Providing Some Of The Hardest Raids In MMO History
Final Fantasy 14
- Platform(s)
- PC , PS3 , PS4 , PS5 , Xbox Series X , Xbox Series S
- Released
- August 27, 2013
- Developer(s)
- Square Enix
- Genre(s)
- MMORPG
Final Fantasy 14 is a mostly casual game, with many of the main trials and dungeons not providing that much of a challenge. The game does require skill and players must be focused, but for the most part, the dungeons of the main story are on the easier side.
However, the optional harder content such as Extreme Trials, and especially Savage and Ultimate Raids, truly pushes the boundary for difficult instances. Even some of the Hard Dungeons can prove challenging at times. Most of the mechanics of these instances are brutally unforgiving, with players requiring a combination of proactive knowledge and mechanical skill. And as if this weren't enough, Yoshi-P still wants to make the game even more difficult.
1 Final Fantasy 11
Endgame Fights So Difficult That It Could Take Potentially Hours For Just One
Final Fantasy 14 might have become the most popular of the Final Fantasy MMOs, especially in recent years, Final Fantasy 11 is still regarded as holding some of the most difficult content ever. Not only was the endgame content challenging, but the open world was difficult.
The difficulty of the world has been reduced since the game's launch, but in past years players would need to group up to complete a good number of tasks. However, endgame content has remained difficult. Even previous years ago, there were some crazy difficult fights, such as Absolute Virtue, a fight that took hours to complete. One of the top guilds spent over eighteen hours in the fight, with some members vomiting and falling ill as a result of the length. While most of the spotlight is now on FF14, FF11 still receives updates, so maybe they could outdo the difficulty of some of their past fights.
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