I’ve been playing MMO’s since Everquest (EQ) but I never got into Ultima Online (UO). It had a huge following and lasted a very long time.
This video talks to Richard Garriot about how they anticipated their players interacting with the world and how they had to create sharding or instancing in order to keep the ecology working on each shard.
Apparently, humans enter an ecology and kill everything they possibly can, regardless of if there are rewards or resources that can be gained. Who would have thought it?
Short, interesting watch for those of us into MMOs.