With that said, FF14 is still a theme-park MMO in every other way, but the crafting and housing systems are amazing.
Try playing WoW. Just about everything you described in is in WoW. The crafting system is crazy.
That said, the big difference is that crafting in WoW at launch, and for many years thereafter, was very much an adjunct to the primary game of combat. You cannot level up in WoW without combat.
In UO, combat was not a requirement. You could play the entire time, and become rich and powerful, just as a tailor, or whatever.
Early on in WoW development, I was one of 2 people in the company that played Ultima Online. And I was going to interview in depth about the way I played it. I guess my play style wasn't what they were looking for and they went in the direction of being combat focused like WarCraft.
But that discerning nature is what made the game (UO) what is was. It was very much an organic world. I had 4 different characters in UO across 2 shards and sometimes 3 or 4 shards. And each play experience was different.
I found one play style surprisingly effective. That being my thief character. Because noone leveled up their thieves. They mainly just stole scraps in mainland towns. Players were very cautions in these large places and called out "guards!" too often. And there was a lot of competition with low level thieves looking for quick wins. So I decided to level up my thief character with simple mage abilities & teleport to Occlo to see whats there. There I found a group of thieves and they welcomed me into their guild. And together we devised a plan to see if we could start stealing from all the mages that would congregate. Occlo was a mage hot spot because they would feel safe from thieves because it was an Island. We became a notorious thieving guild of 5 on the island. And called ourselves 5FD. We would literally surround one mage, basically lasso them into one corner of the super packed mage shop and steal their on-hand weapons as they packed their regents. And some mages would make deals with us, so they could shop safely without interference. etc.
Imagine having the ability to craft this kind of play style in any game today.
As an aside, I was reading one of your comments on one of my threads and realized you were the lead designer of UO. Really amazing to meet you here!
All of these houses and shops were customized and decorated to an incredible degree, giving the world a very cozy and lived-in feel. I know Star Wars Galaxies had player-owned housing but from what I remember the interiors of the houses were instanced away from the main world. This totally destroyed immersion. I can't tell you how many times I was playing UO, crafting in my house, when I'd see people outside wander by and step out to chat with them. Incredible stuff!
[1] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=uo+house+decorations&t=osx&iax=ima...
I'm not sure what you mean by that. Wasn't WoW just a theme park MMO? You walk around alone or with friends, killing camps of monsters and completing fetch quests?
UO had ridiculous levels of interactivity. You could go into the forest, chop some wood, turn the wood into bows and arrow shafts. Kill a chicken and butcher it for meat and feathers. Use some wood to build a fire and cook the meat. Use the feathers to fletch your arrows.
Now you're got a bow and arrow. Hunt a deer and butcher it for a large amount of meat and hides. Take the hides back to your house and tan them to make leather. Tailor the leather into leather armour with your character's name on it! Dye the leather a unique colour and put it for sale on your vendor NPC.
Come back another day and find other players shopping for leather armour in your store! Chat with them and make friends. Go on an adventure together. Build and design a new house to live in together.
UO was Minecraft before Minecraft. Servers had thousands of players and there was a ridiculous amount of interactivity between players and the environment.