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The online hangout where millions of kids waddled around as cartoon penguins, decorated their igloos, adopted puffle pets, and played mini-games for coins in a safety-focused chat environment. Club Penguin was one of the first MMOs designed specifically for kids, and it became an after-school addiction that defined a generation's online childhood.
A browser-based MMO that ran on any school computer—no download, pure Java, accessible everywhere. RuneScape let you trade with strangers in Varrock, cut yews, dodge scams, and explore the Wilderness, all while technically just looking at homework on another tab.
This MMORPG wasn't about saving the galaxy—it was about living in it. Crafters built everything from blasters to starships, player cities elected mayors, and Jedi were so rare and risky (permanent death, at first) that seeing one felt like a legend sighting. Then the NGE overhaul flattened it all, and players never quite forgave it.
The Korean MMORPG where hundreds of players threw themselves at a castle wall and the grind between sieges was measured in months. Lineage II arrived in the West in 2004 with a reputation for being enormous, beautiful and utterly unforgiving of anyone with a job. It is still running, more than twenty years on.