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The Last Days of an Online World
These are the last days of Asheron's Call 2. We've known since late August that the online world was slated for sunset, and Wired has a stirring look at the final days of a dying world. From the article: "The economy has also tanked. When the announcement first came down, players say, a majority of gamers immediately fled. Previously, you'd log on and find several hundred people online; now you'll get nine or 10. High-powered character accounts used to sell for as much as $500, but the online auctions have gone silent. That's partly because, as the end nears, Turbine is tossing out some freebies and giving away more "rare" items, making them less rare. Without a sense of a future, capitalism ends. There's no demand in a condemned world."
There's always Neverwinter Nights. You still have to buy the game, but there's dozens and dozens of different worlds all free to play on.
There's also the MUDs of old, or some 'free' MMORPGs, but generally speaking they make it a pain in the arse to play for 'free' (ie: Runescape's fencing off easy ways to get to places and then making a door that 'donators' can go through is one example of this, while people playing for free have to go the long, long, long long way around).
Also, Anarchy Online is free for the base client+world, no monthly fee, don't have to pay for the client. You can download it off their website of via their own bittorent tracker. You have to pay the monthly fee if you want to play with any of the expansions, but you don't NEED them to experience the vast majority of the fiction.
I'd suggest some websites with free MMORPGs, but those have gone downhill the past couple years as well. Well, at least the ones I knew about and used frequently.