MMOs are happily two orders of magnitude easier to write today. Before game engines you can license or get for free really existed, it was just you, the compiler, and a text editor, which rapidly turned into many people, the compiler, your editors, and pain. I worked at Turbine off and on from 2001-2012, and was the MMO game engine tech lead in the time period up to when Lord of the Rings Online and Dungeons & Dragon…
I played through the F2P beta for LOTRO too. That was a bit rough at times, but fun.