That's basically what I've envisioned and it's how metaverse-like concepts have mostly been treated in literature, but I think the problem comes from a tiny par

That's basically what I've envisioned and it's how metaverse-like concepts have mostly been treated in literature, but I think the problem comes from a tiny part of that vision - the one where the metaverse is "a" virtual world. It's an intuitive analogy to our physical world but it doesn't really square with how digital technology works - we have lots of virtual worlds today, built with different purposes, different graphics and physics engines, etc. Second Life, Minecraft, WoW, Roblox, Fortnite, etc. It's easy to imagine there being popular virtual worlds accessed through VR that benefit from network effects to become dominant, but that'd basically just be a different interface to commercial technologies that already exist. Viewed in that light, "the metaverse" is evolutionary, not revolutionary - cooler 3D worlds, with more fun stuff to do in them as our computing power keeps growing, some of which may be accessed through VR and not just a screen and keyboard and mouse. But to see the metaverse as anything bigger than that is to succumb to a marketing blitz, I believe.