Tibia comes pretty close The older versions, anyway. Apparently it even started as a copy of Ultima. Never found anything close to it either. Every kid in my school played this game... It was like an IRC client with a fun game embedded in it.
Tibia was absolutely HUGE in my country (Poland) around 2002 and it was my first and last major experience with MMO. I remember it was the only time back then I voluntarily woke up early in the morning long before the school because the servers were usually empty at that time and the spawn locations were full of monsters which meant quick exping :-) Trying to sign in after the school usually took a looong time but once you did it, it truly felt like going to a different universe.
Some time ago I got a craving to play the Tibia version from my childhood and it turns out there's an active server called [1] Classictibia where you play using the 7.1 client version on a faithful recreation of the world from that time - a real blast from the past!
