Comment Castronova has a great book on these points (Score 2, Informative) 339
In 2005 he published Synthetic Worlds. He is/was a mainstream economist who got hooked on Everquest but then used his professional skills to analyze what was going on. He quite strongly feels these MMOGs are more than just games, and in a certain sense are very very real. The book is a good read and Section 3 gives his possible scenarios for the future including potential "mass emigration" to cyberspace and possible governmental reaction.
