When you played a PC game online, you didn't just hit a button and get put into a game somewhere; you had to look at all the servers and pick one. You could then come back to that same server whenever you wanted to play and hang out with the same people.
Also the server wasn't ran by or owned by the game creators, but by the players themselves who would host servers or at least rent them from server hosting services.
Oh and content wasn't sold piecemeal to nickel and dime the fuck out of you.