Do you want to know which MMOs you should definitely stay away from? YouTuber Josh Strife Hayes has made it his mission to play the worst representatives of the genre. And his series on the worst MMOs is strangely fascinating.
What kind of MMOs are these? YouTuber Josh Strife Hayes searches for unique gems of the genre in his series “Worst MMO Ever?” looking for those that impress with their miserable execution. Or rather, do not impress at all.
Since July 2020, new videos of the series have been released. Hayes has already presented 31 MMOs. You can find all videos in his playlist (via YouTube.com). Among the games are also more well-known and larger titles like:
- Astellia Royale
- Mortal Online, which is getting a sequel on Steam
- Warhammer 40k: Eternal Crusade
- RIFT
- Life is Feudal: MMO, which was shut down in 2021
Who is the YouTuber? Josh Strife Hayes has been making videos on YouTube since 2017, primarily focusing on MMOs and MMORPGs. He started with tutorials and Let’s Plays of Dark Souls and Neverwinter Online.
He currently has his YouTube channel with over 121,000 subscribers, and the series on the worst MMOs along with scams and other criticism makes up the majority of the content. Hayes is a trained actor and acting teacher, which often shines through in the punchlines and presentation of his videos. This can be seen in the currently latest video of the series about the MMO Secondhand Lands:
Thieving Spiders and Furry Fetishes
Why is this so fascinating? No one really wants to play such games, or rather: find out why they don’t want to play them. After all, MMOs consume a lot of time, and hardly anyone wants to invest that time when they could be enjoying something good.
However, Hayes wants to document exactly what hardly anyone else gets to see, show people what they are missing… and why missing out is not a big deal: “I wanted to find the strangest projects, play them, and archive them […] because it has a strange, occult-esoteric nature when people look at something they would never have come across. They are fascinated by the unknown – or at least that was the case for me” (via PCGamer.com).
On his journey through the worst MMOs, he has had some particularly bizarre encounters. In the aforementioned Secondhand Lands, for instance, he suspects that someone wanted to live out their fetish and implemented it in an MMO.
In another case, he shows the MMO Dreamscapes Dimensions. Here, according to Hayes, he had to stop testing after four hours when a guard beat him up for entering a forge – and he couldn’t defend himself. According to his own statement, he couldn’t even manage four hours of testing because the game was too bad:
Isn’t that a bit unfair? Hayes paid attention to how the games were developed when making his selection. If a single programmer manages to create a decent MMO, he also highlights that accordingly.
However, if the cash shop is in the foreground and the game offers nothing else, it receives a poor rating. He explains that it depends on how the game was made:
“A guy who makes a reasonably playable game is impressive. But when I look at companies that make huge cash-grab Pay2Wins… I would consider them worse because they know they could do better. They just intentionally don’t” (via PCGamer.com).
Which MMO do you think is the worst? Do you know some of the games from Hayes’ list and absolutely disagree that they ended up there? Let us know in a comment!
Away from bad games and towards recommendations – you will find some games here that you should keep an eye on this June:
