Added a few screenshots, videos and links about Mythos.

Runescape maybe?
Quite skill focused and if you get into clans and stuff can turn out to be quite a nice community. You just have to ignore the thousands upon thousands of noobs (not newbies, noobs) that will annoy you on f2p.

Guildwars is also popular, although you have to buy the original game I dont think its very expensive.

Thanks guys, as for Runescape... no thanks, I'm no graphics whore and I'm sure the games great, but it's just not my style.

@gebx: That game sounds really really interesting, thanks for that post, I may juts look into that, I like the idea of user apartments aswell.

@omoneru: I went to the Guild Wars site and it looks pretty good, I will have to do more research on that one.

I don't like the look of the Diablo style RPG, I'm not a fan on those kind of games...
Currently I have played Ragnarok online and Maple Story (Currently worlds fastest growing MMORPG) so I like the whole Jap style.

I saw this at gamespot under wow killer. you have to watch the preview :) dunno if it is free.

www.wolfquest.org

Also I play Ultima Online. It's got a good Aussie community. It's the first major MMORPG (10 yrs old) I have the biggest and best guild on Oceania - Knights of Virtues. Which I started almost 5 yrs ago.

It's pretty hardcore as well - pvp is great, have you own house. recall everywhere, do crafting have vendors, do hunts. I hunt with like 30 ppl at a time sometimes.

They have have upgraded the gfx - it looks great. UO is the ultimate mmo and offers more than the other's. It's just got some things it needs to fix up.. I mean it is 10 yrs old so that is hard to keep up with the newer mmo.

uo.com

Check out Maplestory, it's a fun game with quite a unique art style, it has all the features of a typle MMORPG (levelling, specialisation, community, pets, etc..), it's free and it doesn't need much of a computer to run.

www.maplestory.com

Hey,

I have a Maple Story account, a Lvl: 29 Warrior, done up with about $100 USD worth of NX, it's a fun game, this thread was about giving it up and starting anew on a more in-depth RPG, but I might stick to it because the miss's plays it.

unless you play free shards with uo, theres a monthly fee.  I played it for around 3 years which ended 3 or 4 years ago but now I play free shards but you can hardly call it playing because I only log on to refresh my characters so they don't get deleted. 

o and AoA take a look at these sites, i know i didn't leave a link earlier

http://www.silkroadonline.net/

http://www.kalonline.com/

http://www.conqueronline.com/

^^edit i haven't played conquer but i had a friend who did and really liked it

Ah, Hellgate:London finally got its release date, US OCT 31st/EUR NOV 2nd. This is a highly anticipated title so I guess it doesn't need a detailed introduction here.

In Hellgate, I heard there were two online play modes, one being free. But it's still uncertain. I wonder how it will turn out.

It's been developed Flagship Studios that is also making Mythos. Both Mythos and Hellgate are coming in 2007 so this is going to be a big year for the studio.

Guild Wars is a great game if you want a light RPG with some rather nice graphics. It's coined more of a CORPG (Cooperative Online Role Playing Game since all the areas are instanced for your group instead of sharing it with the hundreds on the same server - it's in part to cut back on the costs of massive servers but I also much prefer it that way). There is a bit of grinding if you want to be a good PvP player but they also allow you to pay for complete unlocks for the various chapters if your time is more valuable to you. They've also added a lot for the PvE players who love grinding. I think I have some trial keys laying around if you want to try it out. From what I've heard people say, it's kind of a cross between Diablo & an RPG. I've never played Diablo but there is a bit of a hack'n'slash element to the game. An expansion is about to be released and it's the first one where you actually need to own a previous chapter. After that, I think Guild Wars 2 is being released in a year or two so you might want to wait for that if you can kill time on a free MMORPG.
Personally, I've tried a number of free RPGs and I've never really come across one that was worthwhile enough to play. Most tend to have the most boring "Kill 100 Montsters" quests where you're fighting with 20 other people over the same 10 montser spawns for 6 hrs. And once you're done with that, you get to do it again.

Planeshift is a free and open source MMORPG and is cross platform.

http://www.planeshift.it/