I don't know about conquering us, but gorilla warfare is a distinct possibility.

I played that version in 1985.

You did? There was a MMO space trading/combat game in 1985? What was it called?

There was actually one from '88 at least. Sort of. But text based. Some would consider it a MUD: Federation [1] from IBGames (and its currently still running sequel Federation II.

It started on Compunet, moved to GEnie, then AOL, then the web. The guy behind it - Alan Lenton - is a really interesting character.

[1] http://ibgames.com/archives/fed/index.html#classic

Elite originally came out in 1984

Elite isn't a MMO game.

The rows of the periodic table of finite simple groups -- what do they model?