I find it interesting that MMORPGs didn't actually develop in the direction that MMORPGs portrayed themselves as. The idea of an MMORPG was to be an entire world and the player would simply be a participant in it. Ultima Online, at first, tried to have some form of an ecological system where carnivores eat herbivores etc. This didn't work out, but you can clearly imagine that the goal was to create a world. However, somewhere between that and modern day MMOs things seem to have changed. The goal doesn't seem to be to create a world, but to simply provide a multiplayer game with a bigger map. It's as though it's meant to be social media with a game attached.

I'm not sure if I worded things correctly, but it just seems to me that MMORPGs aren't trying to build a game world anymore.