It will indeed be a virtual wild west. SecondLife is a prime example of everything you talked about. It had it all, just with a few zeros removed from the economics. Major corporations opened large areas, but the reality that the number of Advocates never reached critical mass led to corporate spaces being abandoned. SecondLife still exists with a community of creators that support Advocates who have been playing there for years. Might SecondLife become a metaverse ‘island’ since it’s survived so many years?

I think interoperability between islands will come to pass. Advocates who inhabit current metaverses will likely not want to ‘move’ to another ‘island’ once they’ve established a community. As with SecondLife, the cost of keeping a failed metaverase operating is the cost of a hosting server. They would want to buy tickets to entertainment venues on other islands and return home to their economical island where they don’t have to pay huge sums of money to participate.

At the end of the day, the metaverse is just an elaborate interactive gaming play. Without millions of Advocates in the metaverse, paying their $30/month to landlords, there will only be a handful of wealthy avatars wandering through vast empty spaces.