Ah, Subspace, just read up on that. First of all it was shut down (the servers) way back, what is left now is reverse engineered/hacked/cracked servers and clients that people run.
Second, it's more of a multiplayer than a MMO and it's defiantly not a MMORPG.
It's status as a MMO is questionable as the only thing it store (persitently I assume) is the score on each server/zone/level/whatever it is. Each zone/server/level is tied to a Billing server, a billing server may be tied to other Billing servers to form a billing network. The Billing server seems to store the score (and settings like which ship you prefer to start with although you can change while playing it seems), there are several of these Billing networks, and they are not linked in any way.
By definition an MMO (and especially MMORPG) need to meet certain criteria.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistent_world
1. Persistent World (you log out and next day in and nothing has changed, or some things have changed while others not)
2. Large number of simultaneous players.
3. Stats, usually character stats but could be non-humanoid stats, skills, equipment and so on.
4. Must be able to evolve your character/avatar in some way.
5. Online play only.
Rather crude definitions but they do match most MMORPG's and the vast majority of MMO's (or MMOG's)
I did find an interesting game that is possibly the closest competitor to Anarchy Online.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mankind_(video_game)
Dates back to 1998, still exist and maintained.
The question and dilemma here however is the "Persistent World" criteria as both AO and Mankind meet criteria 2-5.
As far as AO goes I know that a character of mine on RK2 has existed and still does, and has not been re-rolled, and it was created/first played fall 2001.
That clearly shows that Anarchy Online's Persistent World dates back to at least the fall of 2001.
Is the same true with Mankind? If not then Anarchy Online could grab the title of:
Oldest Science Fiction Persistent World. which could be PR-ified to read:
The Longest Running Sci-Fi MMORPG in the world!
It would be really cool if you AO players and hey folks at Funcom as well dug some more around.
Maybe there are facts I've missed in my searches?
and if it seems the statement above holds up, we'll just poke Guinness and see if they agree with our assessments?
Although the wiki article on Mankind does not mention it,
I can't help but think that the persistent world of Mankind has been re-set or re-started at least once from 1998 to 2008.
EDIT: Oh and Mankind kinda falls under the MMORTS moniker rather than MMORPG although that could be debatable.
In AO's case, the 2001 "game world" still exist today, the characters does, the world does. They may have evolved, but they have not been erased and re-started. (aka, a "world reset")
So AO's world is truly a Persistent World, but is it the longest running Science Fiction MMORPG?
The mention of Science Fiction is important because I'm damn sure there exist some truly ancient fantasy worlds" out there, especially in the generalized MMO moniker which could include MMORPG/RTS/Text/web/Whatever.
Anarchy Online: The Longest Running Sci-Fi MMORPG in the world!
True or False?
