Playable Dragons and Real-Money Economy in the 2000s
The MMORPG classic Istaria: Chronicles of the Gifted was released in December 2003 under the name Horizons: Empire of Istaria and brought a nice feature with it: In Istaria, you play as a dragon, with 4 legs, wide wings, deadly bad breath, and a suitable dragon cave that supports housing features.
Sounds too crazy for you? Well, you can also choose more classic races like elves, dwarves, and humans. Istaria is still playable today, via istaria.com.
Another notable representative of the genre is Entropia (now: Entropia Universe) from MindArk, which aimed to offer a virtual experience in 2003 that today would be marketed as a Metaverse and implemented with blockchain technology. On the planets of the universe, it is largely about ownership and real-money trading.
One of the more well-known stories from the game: British actor Jon Jacobs bought a virtual holiday resort in Entropia Universe for the equivalent of 100,000 US dollars. Through the sale of mining and hunting rights as well as the rental of hotel suites, he is said to have made more than 1 million US dollars.
Apart from trading, hunting, and mining, you can also expect MMO activities like quests or PvP battles in space. In March 2025, the game made headlines because support wanted to charge for a simple account service: Notorious MMORPG charges players 50 dollars per hour for simple account support.
The First Superhero MMORPGs
Several months after Entropia, namely in April 2004, the first superhero MMORPG City of Heroes was released. The project was developed by Cryptic Studios, founded 4 years prior, which would go on to work on various MMORPGs like Star Trek Online and Neverwinter over the coming decades. Unfortunately, today the studio plays only a minor role as part of the Embracer Group.
City of Heroes was followed in October 2005 by the standalone expansion City of Villains, where players could play as supervillains and which was connected to City of Heroes through the PvP battle zones. A few years later, in 2009, Cryptic was to develop another superhero MMORPG: Champions Online, which you can still play today, for example on Steam.
City of Heroes was discontinued by publisher NCsoft in December 2012. However, like other fan favorites, various private servers have emerged for City of Heroes over the years. The operators of the popular Homecoming server were even granted permission by the publisher in January 2024 to officially offer City of Heroes. In April, there was even a party for the 20th anniversary, where some of the original developers were present.
One of the trailers for City of Heroes:
The First MMORPGs from Asia
Let’s go back a few years, but switch regions. Just before the start of the 3D era of MMORPGs in the West, the first relevant online role-playing game appeared in Asia. Nexus: The Kingdom of the Winds became the first million-seller of the genre in 1996, despite its 2D graphics.
Furthermore, three years later, a record 12,263 players were logged in simultaneously in just one world – another record in the early history of the genre. And since Nexus is a few months younger than Meridian 59, it is considered the longest-running MMORPG of all time (via guinnessworldrecords.com).
In 1998, Lineage – again in 2D – followed with an even greater success, generating billions of US dollars in revenue for NCsoft, a direct successor (Lineage 2 was released in 2003, with a 3D engine), mobile spin-offs, and modernized clients.
Unlike many other genre representatives, the first Lineage focuses on community conquest and management of territories. For example, whoever captures a castle may set the tax rates of the surrounding regions. The development of your character, which is controlled from an isometric perspective, is less important.
Sega and Sonic Team released their online role-playing game Phantasy Star Online on the Dreamcast in 2000, securing a historic entry in the history of MMORPGs. Just two years later, Final Fantasy XI from Square Enix offered crossplay between PC, PlayStation, and Xbox for the first time in the genre.
The successor Lineage 2 offers significantly more classes and even more opportunities for intense PvP brawls – including the permanent PvP event Olympiad for experienced characters and a duel mode where virtual death is not penalized.
Other Asian milestones from this time include Dark Ages (1999, which had an unusually deep political and legal system), Ragnarok Online (2002, colleague Benedict Grothaus is a fan), MapleStory (2003, still among the MMORPGs on Steam with the most players), Metin2 (2005), and Fantasy Westward Journey (2004, one of the most successful online games of all time in China).
