the ultima series deserves a mention (except ultima 9).
i found it on a mysterious disk about 10 years ago, while looking for stuff.
i still don't know where that disk came from.
anyway, ultima 7 (both parts, expansion packs included) was in the disk. it was very old, even for that time, i decided to play it...it was the best RPG i had played and is still among my favorites (although it is not playable in modern computers, not without downloading some stuff anyway)
i was simply amazed, in a game older than me, people had schedules! they went to sleep, they went to the pub to eat and the game simply felt ALIVE because of that and more.
you had to EAT in the game, and could sleep to pass time, there was a day-night cycle, you could buy ships and carts, you were free to explore many areas (after passing a copy-protection test), the game world and everything in it was finely crafted and well thought out.
(and think, this game is from 1992-1993)
i simply cannot describe all of the awesomeness that took hold of me.
ultima 4 (from 1985) can now be legally downloaded. while it lacks some of the awesome things described above, it is still pretty fun for those who don't care about the graphics (remember, these games are incredibly old).
seriously, there isn't even a main bad guy in ultima 4, all you had to do was to be good! set an example to the people (but that doesn't mean that there aren't dungeons to explore and monsters to kill) and recover the codex of ultimate wisdom from the Stygian abyss.
i actually consider it better than many modern RPGs I've played.
some links to read at your leisure:
ultima 4 wikipedia page.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima_4ultima 7 wikipedia page.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima_7why ultima 9 doesn't live up to the others.
http://hacki.bootstrike.com/english/nitpicks_u9.htm