MMOs today vs MMOs in the early age of gaming - they differ a lot. Now they are shinier with a lot of gameplay features, but they lost the core feature - global player interaction & competition.

Most MMOs today just offer you some version of singleplayer RPG quests that you can do with your friends. You might see the other players but you can’t do any offensive actions, many dungeons are just generated for your team and cut from the rest of the playerbase. While that’s fun, that’s…

Not on the level of fighting other players who keep you out of a good leveling location fun. Not the same as 5 competing guilds go to the same worldboss and now they need to fight each other and worldboss fun. Or some local rivalries that end up in clans viciously fighting each other, and that can chain react into some alliances fighting each other. All while a single death slightly de-levels you.

And yes, I’m talking about Lineage 2. When players and social interactions are what actually writes the story of the world, there is some charm in that.