I dipped my toes back into Ultima Online (released in 1997) last year for the first time in about 15 years. ICQ was the dominant out-of-band communication techn

I dipped my toes back into Ultima Online (released in 1997) last year for the first time in about 15 years. ICQ was the dominant out-of-band communication technology used by players when I was active (early to mid 00s). Since UO didn't allow talking with people you were in a party with unless you were near each other, it was common to put your ICQ number in your in-game profile. Upon returning in 2020, I ran into some old friends (now retired) in-game pretty quickly and found out that a lot of them still use ICQ to communicate, although many have moved on to Discord. I checked the profiles of random people walking by in towns, and saw ICQ numbers alongside other (apparently current) info.