Worst MMO Ever? - Villagers and Heroes 

I have to imagine if you play one of these less popular MMOs, seeing a toon named Josh Strife Hayes running around is like an omen of death

Villagers and Heroes is one of the games ever made.

You know your MMO is bad when Josh says hi in the game chat and the immediate response to that is "Are your filming for Worst MMO Ever?" lmao

"Whoever put a bounty on a sheep: You can sleep safely, once again." How could they possibly get to sleep without any sheep left to count?

22:27 JSH: "If this game were a spice, it would be..." Me: "Sporty" JSH: "...flour" Me: "That works too"

"We made a bot play 42 MMORPGs and forced it to code one itself and this is what happened"

Kevin MacLeod is often referred to as 'the guy who composed the soundtrack for the Internet'. For the longest time, his stock music was the de-facto standard for multimedia stuff, including RU-vid and Newgrounds. These days he has competition, but there's still about 50/50 change that the RU-vid video you click next has his music in it.

you know for the 100th episode it would be fun if you rated all the mmos youve done on this series from best to the worse. Good video keep up the good work.

I love how the mounts and pets were so obviously reskins that the animation is unbroken as you flip through.

Gotta say, as the first MMO created by an AI that was fed 600 hours of WoW Classic it’s kinda impressive

I could actually feel the pain in this one. Josh has met his true match. An MMO not bad enough to talk about how bad it is, but not good enough to talk about how good it is. It just is. How can you report on that which has nothing to report on?

Why does a game like this have voice acting this good though? Its like all their budget went into the voice actors and they had nothing left for the rest.

"This is the combat system version of a slightly cloudy Thursday" I have a headache from laughing

"As an actor, I can confirm this happens. If you damage a performer's ego even slightly, they will blow up." That checks out.

Damn, the voice acting is actually stellar, better then many huge MMO's

A lot of truth in this review. One fact I don't think you covered is the game's history. More specifically, that this game isn't a mobile port. It actually started out as a Facebook game called "A Mystical Land" and over the years the developers began fleshing it out to turn it into a full-fledged MMO. The mobile version actually came much later. So a lot of the questionable design decisions begin to make a lot more sense in that context.

Josh: "You will know this music too" Me: Eh, probably not. *Song plays* Me: Oh! It's the booster box song at the Tolarian Community College!

Josh: Enjoy my pain playing worst MMO Josh's impostor: You got me there!

Kevin MacLeod may be an internet saint for his music, but to me he'll always be the guy with the awesome graph paper generators. As a nerd, sometimes you need just the right kind of graph/dot/hex paper, and he fills those needs.

18:40 lmao Monkeys Spinning Monkeys by Kevin Macleod. Edit: Hah, guess not.

My uncle honestly loves this game. He's getting on in years so this is a relaxing game for him

I played this until level 22 or something, so I can actually answer your question. It's because I played it on mobile. And though it is bland and mediocre by PC standards, it stands out as one of the actual good MMORPGs on mobile. That's the entire reason.

"When you wanna play an online game but all of you're friends are offline so you hit up a friend of a friend who you don't really play with all that often doesn't talk that much and isn't really funny but he plays decent enough and it's better then playing alone" The game

y'know, the color palette in this game really is fantastic. It feels weird to say the best thing about a game is its color palette, but that's genuinely how I feel about this one haha

No shade on Kevin MacLeod - a lot of small streamers and creators use his stuff for background music - I've used it in game jams before. He's made a lot of good quality "game music" and it's free to use non-commercially, and I really respect creators who do this kind of thing, so smaller creators who need those assets (but can't make them) have free options.

Your whole experience reminds me of being a roadie for a local. At one show, there was a Metallica cover band. Their set never stopped, they played all the way straight through, by combing through all of Metallica's songs to form this perfectly flowing set. They played well and sang well. Within 5 minutes everyonenwas basically ignoring them. They were musically proficient, and the arrangement was actually very clever, but somehow they managed to make Metallica boring. Contrast this with other locals who would do medleys, or on one memorable occasion had the audience help them butcher War Pigs. Much more memorable and fun experiences(especially the war pigs one where the mic was being passed through the crowd). First is technically correct, but the second has a soul.

"microwave meal you bought at the reduced section because you know it's not going to be a culinary delight but it's warm and you're hungry." is such a mood, christ.

16:21 Those aren't even 2 different models. It's just one model with 2 sizes and 8 colors...that's some impressive designer laziness.

I spent a lot of time in this game. The player base in my experience was never anything but extremely friendly helpful and always willing to go out of their way to help new players. Getting new mounts and cosmetic items for free was always pretty easy and not too time consuming. Idk I'm just glad to see it get some coverage tbh.

15:57 Dude, those dragons come from free models, I think. I remember playing a free mobile game years ago with those exact same dragon models. 90 dollars for a bunch of free models... yikes...

So you're an mmorpg chronicler, teacher, leather worker, martial artist and an actor?

I really want to see Josh's thoughts on the Korean MMO Elsword. I used to really love that game but it's turned into a complete fucking disaster, and I'd love for him to rip it apart.

"This entire game is one small favour" I felt that...I wish I had never remembered.

23:21 is crazy accurate Always felt like I was waiting for the best part to happen but never does. Except for those times when people keep helping me with quests, items, and stuff. The community is the absolute best. Cause everyone loves helping each other out especially new players

Honestly, from this video, I think the enemy design is pretty good visually. They dont look generic and that final boss made me chuckle when I realized its wearing feminine red dress and lace, like the actress.

Worst MMO Ever: Taquito Bandito's Apology Simulator, where you play as Taquito and make an apology. Sadly it's literally unplayable.

I had a slight nostalgia hit when watching this. Not for the game itself, but more all the names I recognised from the chat. I played this for a full year. There are daily/monthly. Got all the rewards for a year, rewards then stopped. Felt that was the completion of the game for me. Rewards cycle so playing another year gives the same rewards. There are more complicated encounters as you go along, and frankly quite good puzzles along the way. It does require you to go through a lot of unforgettable content to reach it. I think you need to reach mid 30's for the first great zone. Although most people hate and complain about these zones because it suddenly requires you to think and work out said puzzles.

That bit about actors exploding if their egos are damaged gave me immediate RDJ vibes lol

Watching this 2 years late right before Halloween. Touché Mr. Hayes.... Touché....

It may be a relatively simple game but it's relaxing to play, has a great community and no p2w, as a mobile playable game it's easy to pick up an play, works well on a mediocre tablet, for a free game you can very easily keep up without spending a penny how much can you ask for, and no pvp for everyone fed up of being ganked by whales. Oh, there is nothing other than cosmetic items you can't get in game. Motes you get gathering, keys you can get from drops, there is absolutely nothing behind a paywall but shineys that affect no gameplay

One day I'll see a MMO where the level up animation spawns a mushroom cloud and blows all the surrounding houses away.

Actually played this on release, it was fun and the community was great. Unfortunately, at the time, the main story quest wasnt complete so i ran out of stuff to do. Not sure how it is now.

Josh: "And you have to dodge the red-" Well I guess I'm colorblind cause that's clearly fucking purple

What are these MMOs made with? They all seem the same and there is no way they're making them from scratch (or it would take them years)

As a game dev having watched multiple videos in this series... note to self: don't make an MMO.

"If this game was a spice, it would be flour" lmao

Considering some of the games that have come out and the scam games and all that this game is seems pretty decent like one that I could recommend as a 10 year olds first mmo

When he said 'its like the second album from a band you like' I felt that

This games design suggests to me it's intended for bots to play. Because everything is easy to setup for a bot and you have a minimum of verity in it.

There are some interesting points you raise, but you made some rather basic mistakes in understanding this game: * You mention sound balance, but that's controlled by your settings. There's a separate volume level for voices. I'm surprised you didn't check that. There's a discussion to be had on whether the default balance is good (I didn't notice balance issues on my end but YMMV I guess), but that's the solution. * Motes of Yorick aren't only available at the cash shop. You get them in vast quantities from gathering, especially at villages, and you can also buy them from NPCs for gold or charter tokens. I'm at level 27 and have literally gained several thousand Motes of Yorick just from gathering. My girlfriend actually had to make a point of using them because they were taking too much of their inventory space. Also, there's quite a few things that you missed. Of particular note: * It seems you didn't notice the gnogmenting mechanic at all. That's what crafting is useful for; you can gnogment one of those with one of your stronger weapons to get more skills in your action bar (up to a maximum of 3 unless you use sockets). There's an NPC in Summer's Hollow who explains gnogmenting to you in a quest and even gives you a bunch of low-level weapons to learn gnogmenting with. * Every player gets a vault and a house to store things in. In Summer's Hollow, it's in the area where all the crafting stations are. * There's a calendar thing that gives you daily rewards, and those daily rewards include extra bag and locker space (days 13 and 20). It's true that bag space is unreasonably tight, but you seem to have gotten the impression that it's worse than it is. * You seem to not have noticed the "plentiful nodes" mechanic of gathering. You were harvesting from one at 23:17. Plentiful nodes will give you substantially more materials than regular nodes, though this only works if your gathering tool is a high enough level for the node. You also seem to have missed gathering supplies, which speed up gathering and can be used strategically on these plentiful nodes to amplify the effect. They also give you rare consumables. As for why I play this game, it's because it's a nice casual game that doesn't frustrate me and can be out of my way when I need to be doing something else. If you approach it as a hardcore game is must seem dull, but if you approach it as something to log on every day for a little bit to do some story or some gardening or some crafting or whatever else you happen to be interested in at the moment, it's really good for that. Yes, it's got some flaws (having trouble sitting down, not a lot of variety to enemies, generic music, not especially engaging story), but overall it's quite good as a free casual game. The fact that it's also on mobile also means you can pop in and do a little gardening and ranching basically whenever you want. And while you seem to find them boring, the simplicity of the gathering and crafting (they're basically just little idle minigames) is real nice because you can just run it in the background while you do something else. The game also has one of the least toxic communities I've ever seen.

"If this game was a spice, it'd be flour" - I lost it at that statement. This commentary is too much

I want to like this video because you are very talented at what you do. The problem is that while I found some of your comments to be accurate, they were spoiled by a glaring inaccuracy near the very beginning. You cited statistics from Steam to illustrate how sparse the game population is and how much that population has diminished since the game came out. Later in the video, you mentioned it was available for mobile and pc. The game is actually available through Apple and Google for mobile play, An SAC [Stand Alone Client] download for pc, and is also available through Steam. That's four sources from which you could have gotten your statistics but you only used one source, the least popular of the four, to cite how unpopular the game is. If you had bothered to do your research you would have discovered that while Steam usage has dropped, SAC and mobile usage has grown to the point that the game has had to add two servers during a time when many premium titles are merging servers. You followed that up with several screenshots of negative reviews, to support your case, ignoring the larger number of positive reviews that had been posted to the same sites from which you obtained the negative statements. By citing data from the least popular source while ignoring data from the three more popular sources, you present evidence that the game has declined when the exact opposite is true. While I would not go so far as to call this an outright lie, it is, all the same, a lie of omission. If you begin your video with a false statement, why would I be inclined to believe anything that followed that statement? You complained about the fact you have to buy high-priced boots to jump higher. Did you not see the free boots on the new player calendar? You complained about having to buy a mount in order to move faster. Did you not see the free mount, also on the new player calendar? Did you not turn in your quest for another free mount when you finished the opening questline? You complained about having to buy more motes for crafting. Did you not see that motes are available as quest rewards and drop while gathering? In the eight years I have played this game, I have never bought a mote and all my crafting is at max level. You also complained about having to buy storage space in order to continue, so I suppose you missed the free vault and free bag space on the new calendar, and the free vault on the daily log-in calendar. I guess you missed the free ultimate weapon and premium outfit as well? The truth of the matter is that this is the only "free" MMO I have ever found where you can play to end content without having to spend a dime. I honestly think you are a talented guy and do an awesome job presenting your content. Sadly, you seem to begin your research with preconceived notions and ignore anything that does not support those notions. You put forth a lot of criticism that was accurate, but half or more of what you presented was either false or misleading. Yes, the game has faults. Yes, the game has room for improvement, just like every MMO ever made. And yes, the game continues to get active development and continues to improve which is why it is still growing after a decade of service... but I guess those observations don't fit the narrative. The devs and players of V&H deserve better than a one dimension review that points out all the flaws while ignoring the many virtues. It's disappointing to see someone of your talent rely on negativity in order to build views and subscriptions.

It's really telling when this is considered among the top 3 best MMORPGs on mobile. :/ If only we had a proper multiplayer rpg on mobile that wasn't p2w, buggy as hell or dying (because the actual good ones are old games). It's almost as if people can't make a decent multiplayer mobile game now without cramming it full of ads, cash shop items that suck the soul from the game and gameplay mechanics that are barely functional (if at all) whilst having auto-play as a "feature". 🤢

That final score at the end is so spot on it hurts xD My PC died today and I'm too poor to afford a replacement so I downloaded this on my phone to attempt to fill the MMO void I know this can never sate. Excellent video and phenomenally well written!

Fun fact: that scribbling sound they use for quest objectives as the exact same as one of the sounds used for the Minecraft mod Thaumcraft, leading me to believe it's actually a freely available sound asset (although I've yet to track down the source)

I played this game with a mate for about 20 hours, the highlight of this experience was that fishing made fish explode out of the water.

I won’t lie, it hurt a little to watch, but can’t argue with the valid criticism… And I had a great time, quite a few good laugh, thanks Josh!

It's really wholesome seeing the patreon list get really big

I am watching this during halloween :)

I can't believe Hayes describes *this* abomination of game design as "mediocre" and "meh". A mediocre game, in my mind, is something like Fallout 4, Diablo 3, Civilization 5. Are standards really that low in the MMO genre, that "this" is what is considered "fine"?

Actually there aren’t many good mobile mmorpg better than this.

No PvP either

Been playing this on mobile for a week or so, enjoying it to far. P.S Neighbour in Valhalla ;)

Do like how even though he found someone who was pretending to be him, he seemed to just chat it out with the dude, then leave on positive terms. That's cool of Josh.

this is one of my favorite game to play with my nieces they love this game. neat little game and thank you for being honest about all your games you play

I play this and it has a great community. But … yeah some definite flaws as well. To do it justice, it really needs to be seen as a pc game and mobile. The two experiences are quite different.

"The good scooby-doo from the 90's" Oh you sweet child. The good scooby-doo was from the 70s.

This is like the default project that opens up when you boot up the MMO Maker program they use to make all the other games Josh reviews

love this gane, its relaxing & is enjoyable

I started playing because of this video, and imo it's the best mobile mmo currently out there. Very little p2w, no autoplay, very very friendly community, lots of quests/story 🙂

This game is actually one of the best mmos on mobile :V lmao

Please you should also cover Allods Online, it is russian pay to win WoW clone but has actually some quite nice art style. Would love seeing it on this series and hearing your thoughts on it

I'm wondering why you think the combat of many of those mmo's in your worst mmo serie is bad while also praising Osrs? In the case of this game the combat look like it's about starting the fight then waiting but so is runescape. There's the argument that osrs have prayers to add depth to the combat but you don't use prayers on 99.9% of your fights. What's the difference between this game as an exemple and OSRS?

This looks like an MMORPG my mother would play. That's not a good sign.

i am watching this close to halloween

" feels like a microwaved dinner " - *puts down my salisbury steak and Mac and cheese* 😕

I kinda want to see Josh's opinion on Project Gorgon. I personally love the game, but it's never had a high player count and a lot of progress takes a while to actually get done.

Because you asked nicely, I say the following with 2980.9 hours of gameplay on Steam (not counting play on the test server) in only 2 years: The reason I choose to play a game like this isn't the game itself. It is pretty much what you experienced for the majority of your stay all the way to level 95 and then some. I play the game because there is an amazing community of players in the game that create an atmosphere I don't see anywhere else today. If you are looking for the best mechanical experience ever, go somewhere else. If you are looking for a group of players unlike any other, then come join us at Villagers and Heroes. For me this game does what no other game does: It facilitates positive player interaction. That is my opinion and I'm stiking to it. :P Keep producing excellent content and "as always, have a great day".

"If Warcraft is Lego, this is Playmobil." Love that comparison.

Im still patiently waiting for Secret World! There are dozens of us!

"On my way to the next station, I kill Shrook the sheep, who was a bounty enemy. Whoever put a bounty on a sheep - you can sleep safely once again." THAT is where I lost it!

The game is also cross platform play. It's on mobile but you play with PC players.

I love how Josh suffers every game flaws but at the same time beatifully explains why it's bad and enjoys the process! What a legend

I was hooked on this game years ago when it was still small. Brilliant. Then they introduced a million insane mechanics and vomited a million new items into my inventory. I come back to it from time to time but can't ever figure out how to play again. That's bad.

When I heard the Simon Miller reference my head automatically filled in headslap noises, so thank you for that.

For the first time since this series exist I have to disagree. V&H is the best MMO I ever played in the last 10 years. Balanced, good social interaction needed, village building with your clan. Funny puns in quest dialogs. Never found something this appealing then V&H.

if all those random mmos I have tried out over the years had even half as good voice acting as this (they mostly dont have any) I would not have skipped the story all the time

This game has crossplatform PC and Mobile. Few years ago when I moved together with my gf we only had one PC and wanted to play something together. I found out about this game and gave it a try. Truth be told we haven't played for more than a month but it was still better than most purely mobile games out there o.o

I feel personally attacked watching this on Halloween 2022👻

When ur going to comment that he shouldn't be hating on this games crafting and skilling so much, because he likes runescape, which is also lame. And then he mentions why runescape isnt as lame. Well played.

Truly riveting gameplay. It boggles the mind how these games can even exist.

Ooh I think I requested this once. Glad to see you reviewing it.

I thoroughly enjoyed this review of a microwave meal you buy at the local corner store, at the end of the day, because your refrigerator is completely empty and you have nothing else to eat for dinner. You've got some great wit and humor, Josh. I'm quickly becoming a fan of your classic British eloquence and palpably pleasing demeanor.

You can fish and grind to get a cornucopia which gives you the yorkshire thing. I play on mobile so idk if its also on the pc version. The cornicopia gives you a guaranteed chance at getting at least 1 of the motes or yorkshire eqch time for up to 5 or 6 times (sometimes you can get 2 in 1) so you dont have to buy the motes of yorkshire but you do have to grind to get the cornucopia. Dont know if you can get the cornucopia with other things beaides fishing

I usually like your critiques of bad games, but it seems like you're being critical to be critical with this game. It looks stellar compared to the majority of the games in this series and some of the things you criticize are common features in larger successful MMOs (near identical resource gathering and crafting in WoW for instance). It's almost like this game did something against you personally like slept with your mom or something. It looks like a good game for what it is.

First raid: level 20 required Reviewer: you'll hit a paywall at level 19 Is there no feature too sacred? The travesty.

that obnoxious pencil sound he mentioned.. Ive heard that before, used in a mod for minecraft (thaumcraft 4 for those curious) that music thats apparently from secondhand land is a kevin macleod track. AKA it has no licencing and is thus free to use Im beginning to see a potential theme here.. EDIT: I paused to write this right before he pointed that out

this and AQ3D are great on mobile, which is why I think they survive. they're not great MMOs by any means, but if you have some down time and just wanna play around on your phone and be social, you can count on your fingers the amount of options you have for games that don't feel like they're made by an AI program.

1:31 DANG that pose is FRUITY

Ah. I know "The Builder," but I didn't know where I knew it from. I used to use it for some demo presentations at one of my previous jobs. It was one of our approved license-free commercial songs.