I played a game for PS2 call Tribes: Aerial Assault, 300 people max played online, no not daily on & off.
However, we held tournements that contained up to at one point 30 clans, which we held at a website that only supported Tribes, but now supports many games(Check sig

). Well, Inevitable's programmer I believe D. Micheal Traub, "Ricochet" created servers that they ran called Aerial Assault Dedicated Servers, AADS, well he developed an IRC program where people could get on IRC & watch what EVERYONE did, i.e. kills, flag grabs, destroying of things, & people's lag.
So we all got in IRC & basicaly knew what was going on in the games.