No-one has mentioned, possibly because it is so old that few posters got to play it, the first MMORPG (and probably first MORPG), MUD. This was later reincarnated by Compuserve as British Legends and used to be notorious for causing addicts to run up phone bills they couldn't afford. It was text based and only came in hardcore mode - i.e. if the character you spent months levelling got killed it was permanent.
The state of the art was somewhat primitive when this game was first launched, and a 1200 bps modem connection was as good as you were likely to get. An early exploit was to use the game's version of the Mind Control spell to force someone to type "help". You'd then kill them at your leisure while their screen very slowly filled up with useless information.
The state of the art was somewhat primitive when this game was first launched, and a 1200 bps modem connection was as good as you were likely to get. An early exploit was to use the game's version of the Mind Control spell to force someone to type "help". You'd then kill them at your leisure while their screen very slowly filled up with useless information.