I've been playing a couple of weeks or so now on the free shard at http://www.uosecondage.com/
UO is an older game, but it is the O.G. of MMOs, and arguably the best as many aspects of the game are copied into Everquest, WoW, etc.
The graphics are still charming by today's standards but apparently they are more retro so a turn-off to many (ex: http://images.google.com/images?hl=e...=g10&aql=f&oq= )
This is a free shard with many active players and an active IRC. Just check out the website's FAQ and they link you to one file you can download that has everything you need to get started, it just takes a few minutes to set up. If you're on Windows 7, post here if you have problems (or google it) and I can tell you some of the problems everyone has and how to fix them.

This shard in particular focuses exclusively on the "Second Age" era, which they deem to be the pinnacle of the real servers before EA bought OSI and ruined the game for everyone with shitty changes to make things more accessible to non-hardcore gamers such as a whole version of the world that was player-killing free - while they're usually nice to newbies here and stick mostly to dungeons, there is a good chance that you'll get jumped by a PKer if you venture far from town. The learning curve is thus quite steep and you are provided no instruction or goals really whatsoever. It is an incredibly open world - you can make a decent living crafting within the protection of town guards and never venture outside into the wilderness, or you can dungeon crawl and/or fight with other people. Of course, I can help get you started with some seed money and show you the ropes and answer questions you'll surely have. I played this game a LOT in the mid-late '90s and have played a couple of free shards since, so I'm pretty decent at the game mechanics and can state with authority that this is one the best free shard going - the staff is great and actively tweaking mechanics with regular patches.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima_online