My job allows me to meet many interesting people, and meeting my childhood heroes is definitely a huge bonus. When I found myself speaking with Richard Garriott for 45 minutes, I felt the need to pinch myself. This is the man who created Ultima, crafted one of the earliest virtual worlds in Ultima Online, and then used the money to go to freakin' space. We'll have more from the fascinating discussion a little later, but I wanted to share his answer to my most pressing question: is he playing the games he dreamed of while working on the Ultima series?

"What Ultima Online did very well, and what I think has never been recaptured, is allow you to become a citizen of that world in a very personal and relevant way that is unique to you and not like anyone else," he told Ars. "As brilliant as World of WarCraft is—of course it's an astonishingly well-done product—but everyone is pretty much a fighter. Your life is, you're a fighter."

It's that lack of differentiation in experience and jobs that Garriott misses. "There aren't really people that own a shop in town square and that's what they do, and they have a friend who's a fishermen, and that's what he does," he explained. "With Ultima Online, what was so cool about it is that there were people who were just fishermen, and who never fought monsters, who didn't care to buy any armor or craft a sword—they were fishermen."

Garriott describes these characters going into the virtual pubs to drink beers and laughing at the fighters who go off and risk their lives. "That kind of diversity of life has still never been recaptured in any game since, and it's something I hope to recapture in my next work," he said.

He's right: in almost every MMO the players are all going into the virtual world to fight, kill, and collect. There isn't much else to do.