For those of you who wonder what some of us are talking about when we talk about the "good old days" of MMORPGs, here is an article (including a screen shot) about Avatar, an early MMORPG on the University of Illinois' PLATO system.

Avatar was the first computer game that actually held my attention for more than a few hours. Oddly enough, the game was pretty lame (check out the 'graphics' in the article), but the fun part was that you were playing in close proximity with a few hundred people from all over the country with whom you could communicate by typing in a chat area.

That reminds me of a quote from The Breakfast Club... "Sad and demented, but social."