Worst MMO Ever? - Sherwood Dungeon

Damn Josh hitting me with the ‘oh shoot your parents turned your old room into a sex dungeon’ within the first 60 seconds is, indeed, ‘audience retention’ at its finest.

Josh just unlocked a crazy memory. I vividly remember (around the ages of 8-10) logging into the game every month or so, walking around being confused as hell as to what I was even supposed to do, get completely destroyed by random mobs and logging out. I always came back because I was either bored or because I wanted to admire other people's cool armors and cool mounts.

Fun glitch from back in the day for this game: if you hold the block button, (im guessing) it still logs damage dealt from you to the enemy but doesnt apply it, but will apply all the stored damage on your next hit. So to beat high level mobs or bosses you could just hold block and safely ignore all enemy damage for several minutes then attack them once and apply all that damage at once.

I started playing this game when I was 5, the only thing I could say in English was "follow me" because my mum taught me. I would make other players follow me because it was the only way to kill the big blue spiders back in the first version of the game. This game is not just my childhood, it's the reason I love RPGs and have learned English.

I love the way your avatar doesn't hold the weapons, they're just grafted onto the ends of his arms... And the fight animation is basically just punching... So you're walking up to monsters and punching them with your sword-hands. This may be the best thing about the game.

The Devs also made a social game called "MoonBase", which is pretty much the same as their other one but set on the moon. Every now and then I'll remember it exists and be hit with a wave of nostalgia

Yes! Man taking me back to being 10 years old , not knowing english and having a blast together with my younger brother smacking some spiders together

Tankball and Moonbase Alpha were the best parts of that website, but this was actually a great way to spend lazy afternoons as a kid back in 2004. Back then it was much much much more barebones than this, but being able to play a 3D interactive online game straight from your browser was mindblowing

Oh hell yeah I remember finding Maid Marian as a kid. Played this one for a just few minutes, but that low gravity moon thing held my attention and imagination for a decent while. Didn't care to interact with anyone but I was one of those elite few who could consistently land on the moon lol

I remember this playing this game over a decade ago. Back then the only character customization you could do was what color you wanted the default helmet wearing guy to be. There weren’t shops, or NPCs. But there were tons of players and people took the Pvp a little too seriously. I remember people trying to make guilds, however this was difficult with how easily you could steal someone’s name. There was only the one main castle map area and the “endless” dungeon. It was a pretty poorly made and silly game, but as a child I enjoyed it in its heyday.

Those dungeons are always what I imagine when reading "house of leaves". Something about the gloom, repetition, the spiral staircase, the feeling like they go on endlessly.

Club Marion was actually sick, you could drive the car around the map and do tricks by hitting ramps at just the right angles.

this game was never about the combat to me, it was a weird lil place where everyone was the same shitty knight model and they'd just chat and try to find ways to get to out of bounds areas or discover secrets, spread rumors, etc
It was like, a school playground, people had their lil groups, made their own fun, etc.
This is NOTHING like what I remember, but still recognizable enough to know it was once the game I played way back when, very odd.

This is a real blast from the past, and honestly I'm glad it's still up and running after over 2 decades! The cash shop doesn't seem predatory, just a little arbitrary, and the "updated" version seems just as basic and derpy as it always was. it almost feels like seeing a childhood neighbor who moved away long ago. Thank you for covering this game, Josh!!

IVE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS REVIEW FOR AGES. It was my first childhood MMO ever and I wass absolutely obsessed with it even though I literally didn't understand anything and just wanted the cool mounts and rainbow swords. I don't get why they've downgraded the game so much though? There used to be so many more hubs and things to explore.

Hey Josh! Have you ever consider doing a tier list about all the MMOs included in the Worst MMO series? I know tier lists are cliché by now, but I'd honestly be fun to watch what you think about your past experiences with those MMOs and which you think is the worst and the best of the worst

That jumping thing must've been either a baked in engine thing, or just a sign of the times it was made, because Both Toontown, And Wizard101 also have entirely cosmetic jump buttons

This was the only mmo I could play as a child in an impoverished household because the game didn’t log you out when you lost internet connection. I’d step outside with my laptop and steal my neighbors wifi to log in, then go back inside and just roam the empty world lol. I always appreciated it for that.

Sherwood was the first time I ever trolled anyone online. I would find a conversation happening in the chat and then log out and rename myself as one of the people talking. I'd bring up key points in whatever they were talking about and the person who I wasn't doppelganging would struggle to tell who was the original. It's even better copying their knight model (or skeleton if you rolled that way) and waiting for the two to separate before taking over their life lol

Ah, the weird skeletons, the glowing weapons, those slightly articulated spiders... plenty of memories. Memories of those specific things and, really, nothing else.

"this game is 21 years old, this game can drink" and "the classic way of opening notepad to tell us what we are about to do", both pure perfect humour. Thank you so much

This brings back very ancient memories. I remember playing this game trying to find a free mmo to play as a child and I remember being instantly turned off by the controls and the way characters wield their weapons. It took me a while to identify this game in my memory banks.

I played this around 2008. Became the guild leader for one of the Major groups (BW). It was a lot of fun as a kid to pvp and play with decent action combat. Guilds usually had their own claimed rooms and other rival guilds would "raid" them causing a nonsensical pvp clash which would fill rooms with non-stop fighting. Good times.

Great game, I used my grandma's credit card to rent a horse and roleplayed as it until she found out and kicked the sh#t out of me 10/10

The timing of this video was impressive. A few weeks ago, I logged in and played for while, and a crazy nostalgia hit me. I remember being part of a clan with rankings, pvp events, group screenshots, facebook group and all. Fun fact: the ship actually sailed around the island back then.

This game… oh my god. I forgot the name years ago and occasionally think of it so fondly. I was probably 8 when I played, so I had absolutely no clue what I was doing and just spawned, fought people, died, went back to RuneScape, died there, and repeat.

The thing I remember most is how some of the biggest clans were just differently colored names of warriors, you had the Red Warriors, the Black Warriors, the Green Warriors, etc. And they were often keen on using special characters in their names so the average player name from a clan would look something like §±GW±§-Tøxic

Weirdly enough my fondest memory of this game is using Cheat Engine to just scout around the dungeons.

I remember asking Josh to review this game and forcing my friends to play this crazy hallucinogenic experience with me! It's so bad but it's so nostalgic, also being able to dance by pressing forwards and backwards at the same time always entertains me for at least 5 minutes no matter what

This feels like a fever dream. 11 year old me used to play this game for a good while, albeit I never really knew what tf to do besides throwing myself headlong into a dungeon and grind out the same enemies for levels.
Seeing this once again reawakened a lot of it and it’s very much just surreal on the fact I’m seeing it

I just got recommended this game. Like many others, I used to play this back in the day when you had the classic version and there on-ward until 2011. Thank you for the nostalgia you've brought to myself and others. Instant subscribe.

I believe every dungeon floor operates as a chat room and originally you used to be able to join any floor with the actual room id via chat commands. I remember playing the original very vividly when there were no runes, quests, mounts, or alternative maps. Besides the 1 update which added literally everything you saw today, the game has not changed at all except for a few updates

Never expected you to cover this game but glad that you did, I played this for a few hundred hours as a kid.

damn dude, I remember playing this game as a kid during the evening with only the moonlight and computer screen lighting my father's office while my sister would listen to "I write sins not tragedies" on the other room, for some reason this combo of events stuck with me all my life.

Seeing how much this game changed I'm kinda curios how the mmo Florensia looks like today. I used to play that one a lot but it's been over 10 years since then. Would love to see you cover Florensia as well

Holy fucking shit. I had completely forgotten about this game. I spent hours playing it when I was much younger. The thrill of finding good loot inside the dungeon and hoping to make it out alive was the craziest thing

Man I remember this game from my childhood, it's unlocking memories in my brain, And also, the damned ship actually worked back then, it was really cool.

This really gave me a flash from the past - this, Wizard101 and Toontown Online were the MMOs of my childhood.
I got all my youth club to play those MMOs and remember it vividly.

Always a pleasure listening to your "Worst MMO Ever" series. I think I have a 100% completion streak on that one >__<
PS. Are you planning on reviewing Flyff (Fly For Fun - Anime MMORPG) ?

Man, this game was me and my friends childhood , good to know it still exist

I love your series so much and this... I used to play this as a kid without any idea what to do! Love from Catalunya, Barcelona. I truly love your videos and now even more.

This video literally just unlocked some hidden memories in the back of my head. It is actually crazy that i remember playing this as a child yet nothing about it

omg this game, been playing this for 15 years, i never expected you to review it xD
fun fact, while the game still ran through shockwave 3D or flash, the ship in the starting area actually sailed around the island and people would have PVP battles for the control of the ship, it was actually quite fun
then when they switched engines, the ship broke and now it never moves anymore

OH MY FUCKING GOD THANK YOU! You uncovered a memory from my early childhood that was buried deep in my mind

I played so many hours of this game as a 10 year old and never made significant progress ever, seriously some good memories.

the shot of nostalgia that hit me when I realized that I played this game as a child hit me soooooo hard

I played this game for 1 day when I was like 10. I loved it and spent the day from morning to night playing it. Even my parents scolded me for that but lucky for them, I couldn't find the game the next day. I found the game on one of those websites that hosts all kind of flash games but the next day I just couldn't find the game there and I didn't remember the title to search for it elsewhere.
Fast forward 8 years or so, I remembered the game and wanted to check it. After intense google searching I found it again. I tried to play it and man I felt disappointed. It felt uglier, clunkier, emptier and less lively than what I remember but I didn't want to be too hard on it because I just thought that the game has simply badly aged. In fact, I didn't want to keep playing because I just got bored after 30 minutes. But now, watching your video, the game really seems bad.
Conclusion: kids are stupid.

Oh man. This is a blast from the past. I played this game in it's earliest versions. Back in the early 00s they didn't have all those portals or even multiple characters to choose from. You were just the knight and you went into a dungeon collecting loot. Then they added the portals, then the multiple character models, then full on quests.

I've got a game you might enjoy Josh.
It's called Eternal Lands, and it's been around since 2004 and has a pretty decent community keeping it alive!
There's about a combined 8k people( in guilds, likely more non-guild people) that play it, and I'd say roughly a hundred people that play on each type of server!

This is such a blast from the past, and I'm pleased it's still operational after so many years! The cashier doesn't appear particularly opportunistic, just a touch random, and the

This game was my first introduction to seeing an "alive" RPG, there used to be so many players and it was an exhilarating experience as a kid, especially coming from games like Active Worlds, Gaia Online, and Battleon. I owe it to browser games to carry my love of gaming, my family was not the type to pay for game subscriptions.

Loved this as a kid, even bought some of the pets like the dragon, horse and wolf 😅

i actually looked for this game a couple months back and couldnt find it at all, saw this video and it looked somewhat familiar to what I remembered, checked the website cause I remembered a space game being made by the same people and holy shit this is really it, i played this when i was a little kid and had no idea wtf I was doing but its like a core memory for me for some reason lol

19:11 In the old times i played on a game version where the ship circled around the island. As a 7 year old it was fun rolaplaying a priate and just go around the map again and again. It was cool af.

I remember being super frustrated with my progress not being saved so I made my very first internet account in this game. I was so paranoid about losing my login details that I scribbled them with a permanent marker on the wooden trunk we had by the household PC.
It was probably the first MMO I ever played, one of the first places where I ever interacted with other people online in a live format, not knowing any English. If anything, this game has provided me with those opportunities and memories to cherish for as long as I can.

I ABSOLUTELY love how you wrapped that up. This is why you're my #1 favourite youtuber of all time. Once I get financially stable again ima be looking into a solid way to support you that doesn't break the bank. Cheers, Josh

Damn, this is painful. I used to love to play this. Even back when it was just a single room in 2005, the students who were still waiting for their parents would be allowed to go to the computer lab, and we'd all go here, and just play together. We'd make sure we were in the same lobby room, then go around and kill the transparent spiders and warriors. A couple of years later, I'd stay up late, playing this with Nick at Nite playing in the background... the fun memories! And that weird bug where, no matter how strong you got, if you got at least 5 floors higher, it would ignore your level and treat damage the same as the lower stages.

Just got out of Bootcamp and immediately came back to this gem of a channel. Missed you dearly and keep up the good work my man 💜☕️

I loved playing this game as a kid.
I remember being an absolute menace at pvp/dueling, because I had managed to get to clearing out high 20s, low 30s dungeons, so my weapons were pretty strong. At the same time, because I had played runescape around the same time, I understood the fighting mechanics a little better, so I'd always end up having an upper hand. I somehow ended up as a clan leader, despite me not even knowing what a clan was at the time. I just rolled with it :P

Man this takes me back. I used to play so much of this game alongside Adventurequest and Runescape back in the browser gaming days. I swore I was one of the few who had ever heard of this game.

Oh wow I thought this was a fever dream. I found this game as a kid but for whatever reason the textures didn't load properly, so everything was dark green and black with a grey sky. I'm not 100% certain they're the same games, but the walk is super familiar and they both have Sherwood in the name.

Oh my god.. I used to play this when I was still a child. It looks so much different now though. Made a lot of friends and memories, got me into RP (forums) and such. PvP was fun too back then.

I remember this game and some of how bad it was, but my memories only scratched the surface. Surprised you didn’t mention the hilariously goofy way characters hold and swing weapons

I was just thinking about this game a few days ago and wondered if it still existed, but I couldn't remember what it was called. It's crazy that it still exists despite a lack of content and plethora of bugs. Maybe the rented mounts and stuff are only 12 month durations because there's absolutely no way you can stretch the content out that long.

Madly impressed with the frequency of uploads yet no drop in quality. You the bomb Josh

Wow, this is very nostalgic. I remember my little brother and I formed a guild for this game around 2008. There was no in-game support for guilds, so we made a WordPress site for our guild and recruited players in game chat. We even got about 30 people to join before we lost interest in the game. This is also the game where I got my first online girlfriend, though she broke up with me an hour later when I told her that i was a girl lol

Holy hell what a wave of nostalgia, I used to play a lot of Sherwood Temple (which now apparently goes by Sherwood Classic) as a kid, what an absolutely horrible game.

This game somehow passed the restrictions at school, and we were able to play with each other in technology class ❤❤ those were the days

Remembering the entire map while watching was an interesting feeling, I played this game quite a bit as a kid lol.

Thank you for your service Josh. Doing the Lord's work playing these so no one else has to.

I once saw someone play this game when I was a kid and it has lived rent free in my head for almost 2 decades. I never knew the name so it just haunted my brainspace. Thank you for letting me finally forget haha.

never played this game as a kid, but going the Sherwood Forest with my parents was always nice. i live real close, but i haven't been there in a long while.

I had the time of my life watching this review! I spent so many hours playing this back when I was like 9 or 10 years old, before I played Runescape and before I discovered World of Warcraft. I laughed a lot but I'm still happy this game somehow still exists somehow, 21 years later. it's unbelievable!
As I'm reading the comments I see a lot of people that know the game and have memories having played it too.
Imagine what this game could've been if the devs actually put minimal effort into it lol

I remember when attack was "hold shift." My freewebs page had a "combo list" you could do in this game, none of which were actual combos, but just right animation cancellations of the two attacks. Half of the game was forcing your browser to lag (by scrolling the window) so that the lag compensation would warp you through walls. You didn't have jump, but you'd use the lag tech to speed enough to walk forward over the edge of a railing. You could climb all the way up those bronze towers in the main world, on their railings alone.

I was thinking about this game the other day but had absolutely no idea what it called or basically anything about it other than I remember playing it on the browser and there were skeleton knights. It was like a fever dream trying to piece any of it together but this is it.

God, this unlocked some absolutely ancient memories

I'm so glad you're doing these videos. Sherwood Dungeon is one of those games I played where I never thought i would see any kind of essay about it!

I preferred the moon chat room thing. Being one of the privileged few who knew how to boost up on the tiny Earth planet was prestigious.

Josh the version I played of this was "use the basic melee attack until you or the enemy dies". This game has not changed in any meaningful way since around 2006. Oh my god.
I should stress that I adore this goofy oddity and all the other games Gene has made. It's just a strange artifact of a strange era.

I used to play this ALOT back in the day, the thing I loved about this game was you could choose a certain color/gang. Made me feel more immersed

I used to play this game, and if I recall correctly - elemental damage actually used to do something, and also DoTs were a thing - spiders were at least a little difficult cause they poisoned you.
I did actually go back to sherwood about a year ago, played 10 minutes and had to drop it. its mind numbing.

I remember playing this with my brother and cousin waaaay back in the day. We were looking for multiplayer games we could play online and found this one. We thought it was great for about 2 weeks until we found runescape and never touched it again.

Nostalgia! Played this a lot back in the days, I didn't even knew what I was doing most of the time, the random colored spiders, very weird.

This was the first MMO I ever experienced, along with Maid Marian's chat room game. I am actually shocked they even updated it and kept it going even today. You've got to do the other games now Josh, you have stumbled across a rabbit hole if you have never seen this before. It HAS to happen! I can't believe this game turned up here. Thank you for the video!

This revives some core memories man jeez! I played this for hours and hours back in the day, most of the time had no idea what i was doing. They should do a little remaster for the og nerds 😂

this game actually had a really developed pvp/clan scene back in its heyday. PVP had some cool tech and whatnot that actually made it engaging. It's a shame that anyone checking out the game nowadays wouldn't be able to experience what was the actual core gameplay, as I'm sure the pvp/clan scene has been long dead now.

Man thank you so much for this video! Even when I was in middle school I realized that the game was basic but I grinded to level 18 just to see all the special attacks and also to show off to my friend who for some reason loved the game.

I remember there being real jump physics and you could glitch onto ledges and climb the towers and the castle which was unintended. Wish i could play that version again.

With everything going wrong with this game, this review was very entertaining.

OMG THIS IS IT! There was a game I played for a bit a while ago and I could never remember its name. It was this! Cause I was a skeleton! Also, PvP could be broken where I would walk and phase straight through who I was fighting, hitting them in the back. Their attacks would stop and they'd have to spin around to retarget me. I'd just walk through them again and... Yeah 😅

Some crazy nostalgia here. I remember playing this very faintly as a kid not having a clue what I was doing and just exploring.

I used to play this on my school's computer back in the day. Selecting the skeleton model gave me a lot more fps than any other. Good times.

This is bringing back a lot of memories. My buddy and I played this 12 or 14 years ago, the graphics are the same I swear lol (and gameplay and bugs)

I played one of the first versions of this one as an kid, with way less stuff but i still loved it. Game memory also got random wiped multiple times, maybe with updates, and there was not an inlog i think

I used to love this about 10 years ago it has changed a bit since i played it. It was amazing

Sherwood Dungeon was my favorite childhood MMO because I legitimately couldn’t afford to play any other MMO games. But after trying out the game earlier this year, it truly was a shadow of its former self. Couldn’t agree more with this review. And yes, those bugs and certain exploits have been in the game for over a decade now. 😂

The elemental effects on the weapons bring back so much nostalgia

omg I have been looking for this game for SO LONG. I vaguely remembered playing this as a child but couldn't remember enough of it to actually find it online. Thanks for digging this up!!

I remember getting the whole class to play this in computer lab back in 6th grade. That was the closest thing i had to a LAN party lmao

OMG, YES! I loved this game, it is really unique and uniquely bad. The creator was probably the only person to develop this kind of games with Adobe Shockwave, I love his Tank Ball 2 game, an online multiplayer tank shooter.