How the Metaverse Started with Habitat

Maze introduced the concept of "online players" in 1973 and muds prior to this lucasfilm example and compuserve had some crazy innovations in the 80s.

I’d argue this concept has been happening since almost the earliest days of networks.

Wikipedia’s history on virtual worlds is a great resource on the subject:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_world#:~:text=Maze%2....

Is this still a thing?

(2022)

Nope