Your comment is vely insightful. I first played runescape in 2001 I think (and then I came back later), and I had never thought about it the way you describe it. I too learned a lot of life skills: scamming, bartering, arbitrage, and quite a few social interaction skills despite being online. My best friend had some weird pubescent (text-based) sexual things with weirdos claiming to also be 13, or whatever we were at the time. It was a precursor to AIM for my small group of friends. Scripting/botting that game taught me a lot of basic skills in computers.

I wonder what today's version is. Maybe Fortnite?