This article ignores the true inventors of the MMO, Trubshaw and Bartle with MUD1 at University of Essex in 1980ish.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitat_(video_game)
I was involved in the campaign to increase TinyMUD capacity from ~64 players to ~256 simultaneously connected players in the mid-1990s. But nobody was calling that "massive" even when it seemed like more than we ever had.
There are other criteria that may be considered for a "massive" adjective. Size of the world, and time to explore. It seems that Habitat was rather expensive by the hour! The MUDs in academic networks were populated by students with a lot of free time, and possibly unlimited access from their CS-related majors.