WIRED ON FRIDAY: The world ended on February 3rd. Thousands gathered to say goodbye to the possessions they'd gathered, the papers they'd accrued, the friends they'd met, and finally their own lives. Before the execution, many swore to meet again in the next world - which would last forever.

Or at least, that's what the programmers of the Game Neverending (GNE) told their beta-testers, as they shut down their prototype website in preparation for its proper, subscription launch in the summer.

GNE, produced by Canadian company Ludicorp, is the latest entrant in the world of Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games - or MMORPGs. In MMORPGs, hundreds, even thousands, of players take part in long-running games, played out online on virtual three-dimensional playing boards, populated with landscapes, climates, architecture - and, of course, other players. The crowds of participants co-operate, betray, negotiate and trade in these imaginary worlds, never "winning" the game, but always progressing through many levels and challenges.

The games are immensely popular - and very profitable. Half a million subscribers pay Sony $13 a month to play Everquest, the pioneering four-year-old MMORPG. Addicts devote hours a day to tending to their progression in the game. MMORPGs are already being salaciously linked by tabloids to tales of young suicide and child abandonment. It's one of the quiet, background obsessions that won't stay out of the mainstream for long.

Your character proceeds up a ladder of levels in these worlds by accruing skills, earning money and completing tasks in the virtual world. In these feudal visions, a stark hierarchy of achievement and simple rewards fits well - and the rewards are clear. Play long enough, and you'll become the lord of your own domain. And, of course, controlling all from above are the kingly programmers, who determine the prices, shape the kingdom, and set the quests.

But then, there are limits to how much even kings and creators control. Some players take a short-cut past the slow labour of game-based advancement via our own rather more mercantile reality. Here, impatient gamers can buy the rights to in-game weapons, tools and even whole characters on real world sites like ebay. They literally buy their way into their game's stratified classes.

As one economist noted, a hardworking citizen in the world of Everquest could work continuously on dull, low-risk tasks, accrue small amounts of in-game treasure, sell what they gain in the real world and earn around $3.50 an hour for their time, a pretty respectable minimum wage.

What's peculiar, though, is how many pursue exactly such solid, low-risk, low-return labour in the MMORPG world. Many players will spend hours doing boring repetitive makework to advance a little in their chosen game. Grown men tailor and stitch imaginary clothes for hours in games like Dark Ages of Camelot in order to develop a new skill. Gangs of soldiers will hide from exciting dragon fighting and instead go around in packs mugging small mammals for minor - but cumulative - rewards. A lot of the players live in these worlds just to meet and chat with their friends. If MMORPGs are like any real world game, the game they most resemble is life.

This has not gone unnoticed by the game manufacturers. Some, indeed, feel that this is the key addictive element of the MMORPGs. Less fantasy, more reality show, MMORPGs provide the opportunity to live on in a recognisable - if safer - alternate life. GNE is part of a new generation of games that seek to exploit this view, in the hope that it may help MMORPGs cross over into the wider public.

GNE's early players describe it as "an MMORPG about nothing". It has a far gentler tone than the blood and axes of its medieval forebears. Unlike its predecessors, the main challenge in GNE will be to co-operate, and build on the quirky and flexible foundations of a far more skeletal world that its creators have built. Instead of forming guilds to fight other vassal armies, its denizens are encouraged to start new religions or elect their leaders.

There are few set goals or programmer-defined hierarchies in GNE. Like the real world, you do well by having lots of friends. Judging by the game's fan sites, inhabitants seem to spend more of their time indulging in wordplay than large-scale battles. Significantly, the GNE interface is run from within a normal Web browser, which means that casual players can dip into it whenever they want, rather than use a devoted machine at home.

GNE's temporary preview attracted it some strong plaudits on the Web, but it has a tough hill to climb when it reboots in the summer. It has some less than reassuring precedents too. Perhaps the purest attempt to turn gaming into mass soap opera was made by Maxis, creator of the best-selling Sim series of computer games. Their single-player game The Sims gave computer owners the chance to manipulate and spy upon a simulated neighbourhood of suburban families.

It was one of the most popular games in computing history. The long-awaited online multiplayer version dropped you right into a shared suburbia, where you could chat, participate or - most of the day - work in a deadend suburban job.

To almost everyone's surprise, the online multi-player version of The Sims was a flop. It turned out that while watching your computer simulate suburbanites was fascinating, reliving their lives in your spare time was no fun at all.

Even if the addictive element to playing MMORPGs isn't the game, but the company you keep while playing them, players still want an exciting backdrop.

And Game Neverending's escape from the medieval world of the MMORPG to its more meritocratic, light-hearted world may send it into the mainstream, but will its world be glamourous enough to keep their attention? Even chess, after all, has its kings and queens.