I saw a thread on the MMORPG subreddit a while back asking about MMOs that function well on low-end machines, and I was actually surprised at some of the answers. A lot of people suggested older beloved games like Lord of the Rings Online and City of Heroes, while others picked mobile-friendly games like Albion Online, and several people even recommended Guild Wars 2.
Now, I love all of the MMOs I just mentioned and keep them perma-installed on my main desktop PC, but I still would not recommend them for a potato rig. In fact, I have all four on my laptop too, but they all took a tremendous amount of fiddling to get them playable on that lower-end device, and the necessary graphical degradation makes them look… kinda bad. A lot older than they are for sure. They also overheat poor lappy super fast. That’s they thing about older MMOs: They’re often not optimized for modern low-end rigs just because they are old or low-end themselves. Many of them didn’t play all that well in the olden days, either! It’s a high-powered modern device with all the bells and whistles (and brute force) that keeps them pretty, relevant, and playable.
Then again, I still keep them installed on the lappy because even playing ugly is better than not having my pet MMOs with me.
Maybe you have some better suggestions. What’s the best MMO for playing on a potato?
Every morning, the Massively Overpowered writers team up with mascot Mo to ask MMORPG players pointed questions about the massively multiplayer online roleplaying genre. Grab a mug of your preferred beverage and take a stab at answering the question posed in today’s Daily Grind!
