A lot of them are. You’re not wrong. There are a few gems, but I feel like technical limitations made a lot of early ones pure grindfests. Never my favorite genre. I did like Ragnarok Online back in the day. Total grindfests. Lol.
I’m not sure it’s really the same kind of thing. I’d argue anyone who is genuinely interested in an MMO would like a different game better. RuneScape has more in common with an AOL chatroom or text based game than a moden MMO even by the standards for an MMO way back when.
Other games wish they were WOW and WOW is a bad game imo.