Related: a GDC 2018 presentation with Richard Garriott and other people from the UO dev team sharing stories from UO's early days:
Seems like the word 'shard' when used to define splitting up DB's etc. on different servers, actually originates from this game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnnsDi7Sxq0&t=1490s
- Sharding
- Paid early access
- Pre-paid game time in a box
Really pioneers of the gaming industry it seems.