Old MMOs and OSR Inspiration

I didn't think I would become the old man yelling at clouds when it came to my gaming habits (although many of my friends will tell you I'm a grumpy old man in a 32 year old body). But while I find myself endlessly fascinated with TTRPGs written in the 70s and 80s, I also find myself spending a lot of my free time playing MMOs that are more than 20 years old.
Up until very recently, that has been a LOT of RuneScape, both Old School RuneScape and its more modern cousin, RuneScape 3. Unfortunately, the developers of RuneScape, a British company called Jagex, constantly find themselves with "foot-in-mouth" syndrome as they flail in the throes of Private Equity vampires, most recently deciding to cancel an already completed Pride event to preemptively cede ground to bigots.
So on that bummer I had decided to re-install Final Fantasy XI, on the well liked classic private server HorizonXI. For those who have never played any of these games, to be honest they are hard to recommend. They look ugly, they're incredibly slow to progress, playing FFXI on the retail servers requires getting through PlayOnline, one of the worst pieces of software ever created by man. Also hilariously, both RuneScape and retail FFXI still require subscriptions to really play despite being old enough to drink.
And yet, I find them immensely charming and immersive, and have put more hours into these games than I would like to admit in polite company. It wasn't until one of my friends jokingly mentioned that FFXI is OSR that I realized yes, actually! Both of these games have some aspects that are great to apply to your OSR games.
Adventurers, not Heroes
RuneScape does a lot of things quite well, but one thing that always stands out is its quest design. While most MMOs fall into the trope of tedious fetch and kill quests, RS quests truly make you feel like you are on an adventure. They've got puzzles, they ask you to solve real problems using something other than combat, and they feature a lot of trademark British humor (or I guess it's humour if we want to be accurate).

But the most important part of these quests to me, in the context of the OSR, is that they treat your character as an adventurer, not a hero. Your character will frequently do incredibly stupid things; toppling governments, aiding evil deities, and smuggling goods, just because someone told them to! No greater interrogation, just "Yeah sounds like a cool adventure". Your character is also easily lured by promises of fame, glory, or riches (although rarely do they achieve such heights). In a world of stories and games about chosen heroes saving the world from evil, Runescape presents a much more grounded player character.
Final Fantasy XI employs a lot of this as well, at least early on. The game is much more about the rise of an adventurer who becomes a hero, rather than one who is chosen from the get go. Ironically NPCs treat your character like shit in the initial story missions; everything from insulting your dress to lamenting why they have the tedious misfortune of assigning missions to you at all! It is a very different energy from the Final Fantasy XIV Warrior of Light and how they are treated.
Danger Around Every Corner
Outside of some specific subgenres of game, modern video gaming is a lot like modern RPGs; real danger is often not something intended or desirable in play, what is preferred is offering the illusion of danger without real consequences. Not so for these two games. In OSRS, enemies can and will frequently aggro on to you, and often times quests will take you through higher level zones before you're equipped to fight back. Dying can also be consequential here; resulting in item loss (or gold loss when you pay Death himself to recover them). And dying in the Wilderness, Runescape's infamous PvP zone, will result in losing all but a few valuable items on your person! Caution and planning become necessary aspects of the game as a result.
Meanwhile FFXI uses a truly hilarious aggro system from a modern point of view. Enemies can aggro based on line of sight, the sound of your footsteps, whether you are using magic, or even lock on to you once you get to low health. Once they have decided to hurt you, the only thing that will save you is killing them or running to the next zone. Items and spells that quiet your footsteps and turn you invisible become essential for sneaking through zones to avoid this, and most combat is undertaken in groups to minimize the risks. Dying can bring about huge penalties, losing precious experience points and sometimes even being reduced in level.

Emergent Gameplay
When we talk about OSR sandboxes, a frequent term that gets brought up is "emergent", that is, the idea that gameplay progresses and emerges based on the choices the players make. In video games this term gets used a lot too, but carries a different meaning; instead referring to gameplay styles or choices that emerge as the proper or best way to play, despite whatever the developers had intended.
Old games in general have a TON of this; game design was (and still is) a relatively nascent art form and intentions rarely survived first contact with a playerbase. FFXI is a game with ninja tanks, summoner healers, and all sorts of wild combinations that clearly weren't intended by the developers. OSRS has had a bunch of skilling methods that revolve around manipulating the game server's tick rate, although now the current developers are much more savvy about designing around these things.
This leads to a feeling during play where exploration feels rewarding (in the same way that an OSR sandbox can feel rewarding). You feel clever and cool when you discover some weird combination or playstyle that pays off for you.
Concluding Thoughts
"Is this thing an OSR?" is a common question in the scene, and usually an annoying debate or discussion. I'm not going to sit here and pretend like the storied Final Fantasy franchise is OSR, nor will I say the same for a medieval clicker game from the year 2001.
However, I do find it interesting that these old MMOs evoke the same feelings that a good OSR game does; that sense of wonder and unpredictability, that sense of danger, and the idea that I have real agency in how I decide to play it. To me, these are the most important aspects of the OSR; not whether a game is 100% backwards compatible with B/X D&D or whether Gary Gygax himself would have enjoyed playing it. I want games to constantly be weird, wonderful, and full of cool actions and reactions. And these old MMOs fit that profile better than one might expect.