Excerpt from the linked content^1 by John-Clark Levin:

>Today’s headlines treat the metaverse as a hazy dream yet to be built, but if it’s defined as a network of virtual worlds we can inhabit, its oldest extant corner has been already running for 25 years.

>It’s a medieval fantasy kingdom created for the online role-playing game Ultima Online—and it has already endured a quarter-century of market competition, economic turmoil, and political strife.

>Ultima Online—UO to its fans—was not the first online fantasy game. As early as 1980, “multi-user dungeons,” known as MUDs, offered text-based role-playing adventures hosted on university computers connected via Arpanet.

>With the birth of the World Wide Web in 1991, a handful of graphical successors like Kingdom of Drakkar and Neverwinter Nights followed—allowing dozens or hundreds of players at a time to slay monsters together in a shared digital space.

>In 1996 the “massively multiplayer” genre was born, and titles such as Baram and Meridian 59 attracted tens of thousands of paying subscribers.

> 

>But in 1997, Ultima transformed the industry with a revolutionary ambition: simulating an entire world.

>Instead of small, static environments that were mainly backdrops for combat, UO offered a vast, dynamic realm where players could interact with almost anything—fruit could be picked off trees, books could be taken off shelves and actually read.

>Unlike previous games where everyone was a heroic knight or wizard, Ultima realized a whole alternative society—with players taking on the roles of bakers, beggars, blacksmiths, pirates, and politicians.

>Perhaps most important, Ultima let people really live there.

>In most previous games, players occupied areas while logged in but had no persistent presence while offline.

>In short, [Ultima] promised to be a place.

^1 John-Clark Levin is an author and journalist at the intersection of technology, security, and policy. MIT Technology Review, 17 Feb. 2023, https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/02/17/1068027/ultima-online-oldest-metaverse/