There is a cottage MMO called Haven and Hearth which, if caught at the release of a new world, is the single purest source of "that original MMO" feeling I've ever been able to replicate in adult life.
It's a soft permadeath full PvP and PvE survival MMO designed by two insufferable Swedish libertarians. You start naked and alone in a very large procedurally generated world (takes over a full IRL day to travel across). You tame the land, domesticate crops and animals, hunt, roam, settle, build a farmstead, a town, or a civilization with other players, or strike it out on your own as a hermit, get involved in global or regional politics, join a player faction, find and trade coveted resources, and try not to get murdered by Russians, Koreans, or bears. The game uses a system of hybrid online/offline progression reminiscent of Eve Online.
It has some rough edges, like EQ, but if you can get into it it can be extremely rewarding. They essentially created the holy grail of sandbox player-run emergent open world PvP that Darkfall attempted so many years ago. Usually well over 1,000 people in a new world, steadily declining to a few hundred over the next year or two until it all gets wiped and starts over again with a new world. I believe they are on their 14th or 15th iteration.
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