>That’s the thing about UO... nobody was the hero, everyone was just trying to survive and thrive in their own way; whether that meant crawling the dungeons as a warrior, bard, tamed, or caster; terrorizing those same dungeons as a player-killer out to strip the dungeon crawlers of all their loot and gear; or, spending your days baking bread or running your own player shopping mall, your only limitation was your effort and imagination. The idea that you could stake out your own small part of this vibrant world, right down to building a house in the limited land space available; or making your name as an accomplished crafter who people sought out for their superior crafted equipment, it was so fascinating to me.

This is absolute magic to me. Wow. It sounds like an absolute dream. It is my opinion that the possibilities of a shared, persistent, virtual world were never fully realised. The description you make: of a fantasy world, persistent, vast, "real" (as in, internally consistent and fair), a world you can live in... modern MMOs offer absolutely none of that. It's a shame.

It speaks volumes that probably the best realisations of the MMO were... Ultima Online, Star Wars Galaxies, maybe Everquest? Maybe even some primitive MUDs and, oddly enough, a couple Minecraft servers. Instead we're stuck with WoW (and its clones), which was an excellent game in its own right, but it wasn't a true MMO in the sense above described.