The MMORPG is a relative newcomer to the world of gaming. Other than the occasional LAN party or dial-up connection, it wasn't really until the internet took off that the large-scale, open-world MMORPG became a possible dream. Gamers liked the immersion factor that MMORPGs provided. The immersion of a game typically revolves around the complexity or the size of its setting.

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It's not always the vastness of the world nor the quality of the graphics. Immersion is about the storyline, the lore, and the sympathetic characters the player actually cares about. It helps to have a big world, but if the underlying story doesn't have any heart, the game doesn't have any immersion.

7 New World

title image New World Lore questions split image Ice Gaunlet Corrupted portal Azoth Tree

Say what you will about Amazon's entry into the MMO market, but New World has made a definitive impact on the world of MMOs. It's given the gaming community an RPG without conventional classes or professions. Players can use any weapons they want and level as many professions as they have time and resources for without any superficial limitations in other MMOs, which make players choose between one or the other.

This has a lot to do with this game's high immersion factor, but that's not all the game has going for it when it comes to drawing the player in and keeping their attention. The vast and beautiful world of Aeternum, which is based on the 17th century Age of Exploration, looks distinctly familiar and has a lot of real-world historic references.

6 Elder Scrolls Online

Elder Scrolls Online New Life Festival Guide

By the time Bethesda released Elder Scrolls Online in 2014, it already had almost 15 years of previous games in the Elder Scrolls franchise to back it up. Players were able to immerse themselves in the vast realm of Nirn, which included not only familiar places like Skyrim and Morrowind but also the mysterious Daedric realms that only existed before in legends and songs.

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This was a step above the stand-alone PC games in the series, which often featured only one part of the Elder Scrolls universe at a time and was totally devoid of other features that help make MMOs more immersive generally, like crafting customized items and role-playing with other characters.

5 Old School RuneScape

old school runescape with logo

There are a few different versions of this iconic game, so why not the latest version with the best graphics? The reason is that storyline, characters, and world-building are what made the old game great when it was released in 2007.

Old School RuneScape was released in 2013, and was intended to be an updated version of that game but has evolved a lot since then to include other improvements. That's only improved an already high immersion factor, and today more gamers are playing Old School Runescape than its modern counterpart.

4 Lord Of The Rings Online

The Barrow-Downs in The Lord of the Rings Online

It helps that the game already has a guaranteed fanbase and a setting that came from one of the most brilliant minds of the 20th century. Sometimes it really is all about the story, and there are plenty of fans that love both the books and the movies, and there are few other games that can beat Lord of the Rings Online.

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The game has been online since 2007 and has expansions with names like Siege of Mirkwood and Mines of Moria. This would sound intriguing to a casual fan but is positively compelling to those who had read either the books or watched the movies. The game's deeply immersive world is sure to drive hardcore Hobbit fans completely out of their minds.

3 Classic World Of Warcraft

wow night elf druid huntress hunter sentinel

The retail version of World of Warcraft is little more than a glorified lobby game these days, and might not even qualify as an MMO anymore. The Classic edition, on the other hand, was created at a time when the competition was all about open-world with RPG elements, with games like Everquest and Star Wars Galaxies as popular alternatives.

Like other games that have a high immersion factor, Classic WoW has a series of previous games with an impressive amount of lore and history to back it up. The history of Classic WoW's creation is a dramatic one that pits gamers against company management, and that's another story that's not going away any time soon.

2 EVE Online

EVE Online

It's hard to compete with the realism of open space when it comes to immersion. EVE Online also has a reputation for a savage economic culture based on some cut-throat commercial trading and some wild PvP battles, and many players cite realistic commerce as one of the most immersive factors in the game.

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Other than the engrossing setting, EVE Online as a game has a long history going back to 2003, and that's as the same game, not revamped or resurrected like Old School Runescape or Classic WoW. As a science fiction-based game, it also has a vast expanse of open space for player interactions, space battles, and role-playing.

1 Final Fantasy 14

Sharlayan concept art.

It might be a matter of opinion, as this relies more on storyline and setting than player interaction and open-world exploration. However, the recent popularity of Final Fantasy 14 has a lot to do with how immersive the game is, and that's not just about the incredible graphics.

Final Fantasy is a brand that goes back decades, to the time of the early RPG console games of the 20th century, making it the oldest franchise on this list with some of the most expansive collections of lore and history. There's also a lot of drama involved in the history of its development, which has contributed to a loyal fanbase and deeply immersive environment.

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