My first experience with massively multiplayer online games was horrendous -- the opening days of Ultima Online. Anyone around at the time can tell horror stories of being slaughtered by rats and rabbits and being unable to take three steps without getting jumped by player-killers. Ultima Online was more "Anarchy Online" than the game that eventually bore that name. The problem with the game was the natural mistake the developers made... assuming that everyone who ever entered the world of Britannia would view it the same way they did, as a giant stage where they could act out their role-playing inclinations. What they created, therefore, was a world of complete freedom where anyone could be anything they wished to be.
The problem with that notion was that there's a word for complete freedom: anarchy. Not everybody dreams of being "Lord British" or being a tailor or a baker in a medieval serf's village. In a game with absolutely no social controls or directed experiences, many people used their freedom to indulge the worst aspects of their character in a consequence-free environment. Their "role" as it were, was to have their fun at the expense of the fun of others. Indeed, the more miserable they made an anonymous stranger, they more they seemed to enjoy themselves. Without an actual "game" to play, these folks found that "winning" by harassing another player offline was much easier than fighting a monster that tends to hit back.
The greatest innovation of EverQuest wasn't the game's graphics or the technology that let it push so much data over the primitive Internet technology of the time. It was in the very name of the product -- questing. MMOs are often derisively called graphical overlays for chat rooms, but that misses an important distinction: People already have such technology available to them if all they want to do is remotely chat. They're called "chat rooms." EverQuest did more. It gave people the other half of the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy. They not only got to live in a fantasy universe, they got to go out, slay a dragon, steal its loot and feel like a hero, in front of other people! It provided a structured experience for players that channeled the need for challenge, competition and excitement in an arguably more pro-social direction than the murderous anarchy of early Britannia.
The effects of this decision had a huge impact. It was an attempt to provide the compelling kind of directed content and structure so familiar from single-player RPGs with the added thrill of real people. It was the first game that realized the true source of wealth in an MMO economy isn't gold or dollars. In a world without material scarcity (after all, the developers can create more gold or another magic sword with a few key presses) the true source of wealth is player time (and the running subscription fees that come with it). The value of an object is therefore directly proportional to the amount of time, effort and coordination that it takes to achieve it and the social cachet that goes along with possessing it.
