I played on a private shard (server) of ultima online for a long time. Official server players might have had a different experience. I have tried a lot of onli

I played on a private shard (server) of ultima online for a long time. Official server players might have had a different experience. I have tried a lot of online rpg's since then but never even got close to feeling similar to these days. - Core experience was free. - A lot of emergent gameplay all around. Games today feel more planned-out most of the times. - There were no quests. (sometimes there would be unique quests for a limited time - events) - The necessity to kill a same monster 700x times to try and find X item didn't exist. Because - Items were created using skill, which you had to train from 33.3% to 100%. - When you attacked a player inside a town, the guards would immediately kill you. But when we left town, there was a message saying there were no guards around. PK allowed. And if you got killed, your corpse would be standing there with all the items you were carrying. - Stealing was allowed as a skill you could train (and steal directly from another player backback - he could flag you if he noticed though and guards would come). There was also snooping which was the skill to see other player backpack. - Scamming, home invasion, and all that stuff was allowed. This may seem cruel, but it allowed for so much emergent gameplay that it was incredible. Also - The economics felt more playful, not so hard. Players not necessarily had to do the same stuff or take long time to achieve wealth. You had to be smart. - Scripting. Because to train most skills you would have to do repetitive tasks. - Small server with not that many players, but intense interaction. - There were a lot of bugs to explore, more loose systems, and it was fun :)