Can't Let Go Of Them MMO's

Raph Koster on why MMOs and MUDs are the same thing, which of course strikes me as blindingly obvious (just as text and graphic adventures are essentially the same thing), but seems highly obscure to most people, who still seem to think that online games began with Ultima Online. Which is obviously fallacious. How open are you to MMO's in general? Apparently, the majority of us (speaking as non-gamers) don't really know. They believe Ultima Online is ultimately the limits of what an MMO is, but as gamers; we all know that is false. I feel it all depends on the gamer in general, and his/her own disposition on the genre. What makes MMO's so great in my opinion is the sense of the structure of a subculture. I think the variety found in these titles is so vast that you can't pinpoint one single aspect. My own personal preference lies in MMO, strictly because of my sense of romanticized escapism (that goes out to all the Media Theorists out there.) -Joe De Urso