I found it. The perfect game. All I wanted from onrpg, coming here daily for years, was to find the perfect f2p game. All the f2p games I found here inevitably fell short. I fell in love with Conquer Online when it was in beta - incredibly fun pking n00bs with my fire taoist... before they introduced buying of meteor orbs through cash shop, making it buy2win. I fell in love with trickster online, and guess what... gacha coins and the grind killed it for me. Sure, they need to make money to keep games going... But if cash shop is inevitably going to make it difficult to play for FREE, then why, goddammit, introduce your game as FREE TO PLAY.
Then I had a revelation. F2P games are never going to be as balanced, as well-designed, as updated as P2P games. And for these P2P games, I find that the PRIVATE games SERVE me well. I played World of Warcraft and Ragnarok Online, and they are everything that I could ever ask for.
If you want a F2P game that is balanced, no cash-shop, I did find a few, but they are all-browser games. No downloads, no subscription fees. Full and complete game for free users.
Check out Naruto Arena, or Soul Arena - based on Naruto and Bleach respectively. They are strategy games. For NA, you pick a team of 3 characters, each with 3 unique skills and challenge another randomly chosen player in a turn-based battle. You unlock new characters via missions. There is a newer and better version of this game in beta - War of Ninja.
Another game I found is Estiah, which is a card-based RPG. There are 12 Tier-3 classes. You fight in dungeons, get new cards, join guilds. It is deeply strategic because you "choose" your attributes and they affect what cards you can use. There is pvp.
Oh you're right. The last time I visited Neopets was 5 years ago. It has Neocash now. Lol
W.r.t. your last comment, gamers who visit this forum searching for FREE MMORPG, emphasis on free, should know of the alternatives that are actually completely and non-deceptively free.
The other games I played (judge for yourself if they are really "Free"):
Lost Saga - have to pay cash to get permanent and more imbalanced characters.
Wonderking - pay cash to get skill reset, exp bonus.
Mabinogi - pay cash to get mount, and stuff
Lunia - pay cash to get rebirth, unlock characters (you can unlock characters in-game, some more easily than others)
Atlantica Online has a decent microtransaction system though. It doesn't throw off the game for non-paying players, so I definitely recommend it.
All I have to say about free mmorpgs is, well, you get what you pay for. Hence why I have simply given up on em all. There will never be a f2p mmorpg worth playing. For one, p2p games are dirt cheap anyway, much better quality in every aspect, and in most cases have better communities. Also, most f2p mmorpgs are copies of each other, they look different sure, but they play out the exact same way, the "best" ones are the ones that blatantly rip off a p2p game, but lower the quality to make it f2p and therefor not worth playing anyway.