Offline, Self-Hostable, and Single Player MMOs
Some people don’t care for socialization, monthly fees, or a character they’ve invested so much time in on someone else’s server. Or maybe you want to set up a server just for you and your roommates.
Offline Games Inspired by MMOs
This “genre” isn’t very popular but I’m heartened by a few of the recent solo dev projects that specifically imitate 90s MMOs.
The Black Grimoire: Cursebreaker, perhaps the closest modern solo game to Runescape.
- The Black Grimoire: Cursebreaker - Grindy, point-and-click RPG often compared to Runescape.
- Ultima Adventures - A self-hostable heavily modded Ultima Online game. Supports multiplayer.
- Erenshor - A “simulated MMO” inspired by Everquest with AI bots.
- Atlyss - Like furry Phantasy Star Online with character progression like Ragnarok Online.
- Astrox Imperium - Space sim made with the goal of being “EVE Offline”.
- Ancient Kingdoms - Indie 2D top-down ARPG inspired by Everquest and World of Warcraft.
- Wurm Unlimited - The official offline version of Wurm Online, unfortunately not updated.
- Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning - ARPG with World of Warcraft trappings like repetitive fetch quests given to you by NPCs with yellow exclamation points.
- The Bloodline - An indie open world RPG with a large list of influences, among them Elder Scrolls Online and Runescape.
- Gedonia - An open world RPG with 2000s MMO vibes.
- Melvor Idle - An idle game with progression heavily inspired by Runescape.
- Wayfinder - Originally an MMO-ish GAAS that was “salvaged” into an offline ARPG.
- CrossCode - 16-bit style ARPG that takes place in an in-universe MMO.
- Uru: Ages Beyond Myst - Uru was conceived as an MMO, but released as an offline game so it may be of interest.
- Dragon Quest X: Offline - The MMO Dragon Quest X reimagined as a single player JRPG. Japanese exclusive.
- Afallon - A cool early access ‘solo MMO’ like Erenshor. One to check in on in a year or two.
- Swords ‘n Magic and Stuff - A cozy co-op RPG with some tangential MMO vibes.
- Crescent Quest - An obscure free furry RPG maker game with some Runescape in it.
JRPGs
Many JRPGs draw inspiration from MMOs or have overtly MMORPG themes. I know less about these and Eastern MMOs so I’m lumping them together:
Other Offline Games
Dungeons of Sundaria, a multiplayer dungeon crawler with MMO-style combat
- Rabbit and Steel, Dungeons of Sundaria, and Abyssal Blade are some games that imitate MMO boss/raid mechanics.
- Solo Raid Mage, Knightborn, and Attuned are upcoming indie dungeon crawlers and roguelikes with MMO-style cooldown bar combat.
- Goat Simulator has a parody map called “MMO Simulator”.
- Dragon Age: Inquisition - Open world RPG considered MMO-like due to large zones and endless fetch quests.
- Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and Valhalla - Both of these games have been compared to MMOs due to large zones full of tons of repetitive content.
- ARPGs have a lot in common with MMORPGs. In particular Sacred 2 has a huge map with repetitive kill quests. Grim Dawn is sometimes in the conversation with its enormous map and endless progression. Hellgate: London used to be a instanced “MMO” similar to Guild Wars.
- Parts of the survival crafting genre have DNA in common with MMOs. The grindy gear and skill progression loops in games like Project Zomboid, Valheim, and V Rising could appeal to people looking for an MMO. People also tend to play these for 100s of hours.
- Some sandbox space sims are compared to EVE Online, like X4, Avorion, Starsector, or No Man’s Sky but EVE is such a multiplayer economy focused game that I don’t really feel it.
- Kenshi and Elin - These sandboxes aren’t really like anything else, but if you’re still looking for that intangible special interest feeling after all these games, maybe these have it.
Self-Hostable MMOs
AzerothCore supports hundreds of AI-powered playerbots or you can scale raids to be solo-able
These are MMO private servers you can run yourself that have a reasonable amount of content. The custom servers you see hosted by others often have a ton of private development done on them that is not publicly available.
There are a large number of abandoned and unfinished projects so I’m focusing on playable ones. This is nowhere near a comprehensive list.
- AzerothCore - A classic World of Warcraft server up to Wrath of the Lich King. Many plugins including player bots and LLM chat.
- EQEmu - Server preserving the early days of Everquest. EQ2Emu unfortunately was shut down.
- OpenRSC - A Runescape Classic server preservation project
- 2009scape - A Runescape 2 server preserving the game as it was in 2009. Perhaps the most complete RS2 project (all of them are missing quests). Also has an Android mobile client.
- Lost City - A Runescape 2 server preserving the game from 2004.
- Darkan - Custom Runescape 2 server based on the game from 2012 with some changes. Includes the Dungeoneering skill.
- SMGEmu - Complete Star Wars Galaxy server preserving the game pre-Combat Upgrade (which made it more like WOW).
- ModernUO, ServUO, and Moongate are popular Ultima Online server emulators.
- MHServerEmu - Server emulator for Marvel Heroes with a 2017 client.
- Cosmic - Server emulator for MapleStory v83 based on HeavenMS.
- rAthena - Server emulator for Ragnarok Online.
- L2J - Server emulator for Lineage 2.
- NexusForever - Server emulator for Wildstar.
- LandSandBoat - Server emulator for Final Fantasy XI.
- Aion-server - Server emulator for Aion: The Tower of Eternity.
- ForgottenServer - Server emulator for Tibia.
- GServer-v2 - Server emulator for Graal Reborn.
- Melia - Server emulator for the international version of Tree of Savior.
- Erupe - Server emulator for Monster Hunter Frontier.
- Open-KO - Server emulator for Knight Online in early but active development.
Open source MMOs
These MMOs are completely open source. No emulated server or retail client needed.
- OpenMeridian - The community-supported way to play Meridian 59. The original M59 is also available, which I believe is the version on Steam.
- Daimonin - The open source isometric MMORPG Daimonin. Actively in development!
- Stendhal - Another completely open source, self-hostable MMORPG with an old school 2D top-down view.
- Crossfire - Open source multiplayer dungeon crawler with a very retro aesthetic. Check out the similar games Deliantra and Mangband.
- Blade Mistress - MMO from the 2000s designed for low system specs and low bandwidth. The original source code was released to the public domain.
MUD Codebases
CoffeeMUD, one of a number of popular DikuMUD derivatives
There are a large number of open source engines for MUDs (text based multi-user dungeons). These usually only include some example maps, so are not feature complete like real games you’ll find running online. They are meant to build your own game with. There are hundreds of MUD codebases that go back to the 70s that would still work fine today but I’m listing some more active/interesting projects. MUDs in 2026 are very niche.
- CoffeeMUD - A large and well-documented Java codebase. Does not include the full game running on Coffeemud.net.
- Evennia - A modern MUD codebase built in Python.
- MuOxi - Evenna “reimagined” in Rust, because Rust. Actively in development.
- GoMud - A very new (in MUD terms) MUD codebase built in Go.
- DikuMUD III - DikuMUD is the most popular early MUD codebase and parent to many codebases.
- tbaMUD - A modern continuation of the CircleMUD codebase (derived from the above DikuMUD).
- FluffOS - The modern continuation of the popular LPMud codebase.
- SmaugFUSS - A modern update of the Smaug MUD (DikuMUD derivative). See also the Star Wars projects SWRFuss and SWFoteFUSS.
- Luminari - A Pathfinder/D&D game built on tbaMUD. Very well documented and in development! There is discussion on the Discord of eventually releasing Forgotten Realms world files, but no world is included yet.
- Dusk - An open source graphical MUD that was very recently revived. I’m not sure how much is here yet.
This old collection of MUD areas may be useful too.
Complete MUDs
These are some of the few self-hostable MUDs I can find that include maps/data. It is rare to see still-online games do this because MUDs are a dead genre and they really want you to play on their online server.
Please feel free to email me if I’m missing something cool from this list. The history of MUDs is unfortunately spread out in a series of old repos and dead links.
- Riftshadow - Preservation of an early 2000s fantasy MUD.
- Legends of Future Past - Recreation of a commercial MUD from 1992.
- EmpireMUD - Self-hostable version of the city-builder EmpireMUD, unfortunately very out of date from the live server.
- Usurper-Reborn - Modern update of the BBS dungeon crawler Usurper. Still in active development.
- AwakeMUD CE - Community maintained fork of Awakened Worlds, a Shadowrun MUD. Includes area data!
- Dibrova - Late 90s fantasy MUD that was entirely open sourced including the world.
- Crimson Stained Lands - ROM-based fantasy MUD including world data.
- Dark Castle - Fantasy MUD from 1995 that was open sourced in 2020.
- Merc - A backup of Merc v2.1 including area data, a MUD from 1993.
- Forgotten Dungeon - Ukranian DikuMUD game from the 90s including area data.
- Land of the Rair - Open source graphical MUD. I haven’t tried to build this yet but the content might all be there according to the repo?
- SneezyMUD - Open source DikuMUD game including area data active since 1992.
- GroundZero2 - A PVP (deathmatch?) DikuMUD game from the 90s. Add
-fcommon to CFLAGS in the Makefile if you have trouble building it.
- 4Dimensions - Time travel MUD with old west, sci-fi, and prehistoric themes. New accounts seems to get stuck in a starter room #3007. Edit
mud/lib/world/30/30.wld and change line 647 from 0 0 501 to 0 0 3001 to get past this.
- Twilight Grove - A tiny graphical MUD made in Godot.
- MUD1 - The original commercial MUD: MUD1. You need to run this in a PDP-10 emulator like SIMH.